In social-media land, much like all aspects of business, getting the desired results takes time—especially if you want to build a community of advocates who love what you do. You have to start by building a solid foundation, sharing quality content, and engaging daily to create a quality Facebook page.
You want to get quality “likes” and return visits to your page over and over, right? You want visitors who are actively interested and engaged in what you do.
[See The 50 Best Careers of 2011.]
Let’s break down the answer to common question of `How do I get more likes?’ and examine how to create an outstanding landing page that attract more likes and build a thriving community.
Just ask for the “like”. A simple arrow and instructions is all you need. Check out Mashable’s Facebook landing page. Pretty simple, right?
Give them a reason to stick around. You should offer them at least one compelling reason to like your page—the WIFM (what’s in it for me) benefit they will receive from doing so. People get several page invites per day, and with hundreds of thousands of pages out there you need to let people know why they should like you over and above anyone else. Here are a few examples:
• Like us for instant updates on the hottest social media trends
• Like us for early bird offers on our latest jewelry designs
• Like us for the latest news on smartphone apps for your business
• Like us to access one daily cartoon that will make you laugh your face off
[See How to Stand out When Applying for a Job.]
Create an extension of your website. A Facebook page is like a free mini website, so think of the landing page as the home page. It’s your opportunity to catch the visitor’s attention in four seconds or less with your unique selling proposition—what you do, why that matters, and who should care. Using photos, creative images, or videos are effective ways to do this. And people especially love stories that resonate with them.
Make it actionable. The beauty of a landing page is you can make it dynamic like your website. You should have a hyperlink to your website—and without overcomplicating the page—you can also showcase your key social media links.
The Redbull Facebook landing page demonstrates this principle with a link to their website, an embedded YouTube video, and the embedded Twitter feed. While you’re there, check out their other tabs too that show you that you can separate landing tabs for different reasons.
Reveal yourself. You’ve likely interacted with a page that when liked, either revealed more information you or another page with a call to action. I’ve done this on my Suitcase Entrepreneur Facebook landing page, and it’s been really effective without overwhelming the visitor. This is something you can ask your designer to include in the landing page design.
Make it competitive. Who doesn’t like a good deal, special offer, or a fun competition? These sorts of activities work well to create buzz and engagement, while enticing visitors to click that “like” button. While you want to be careful to stay within the Facebook promotional guidelines, there’s no rule against using a competition to get people interested in what you’re doing.
[See New Fund Could Help Finance Your Startup.]
You can create a branded contest or sweepstakes with Strutta’s flexible builder and design options. You can run this from a Facebook tab on your page, a microsite—or both. You can even build your own custom contest site or application on top of the Strutta platform. You can get started from $299. Strutta even walks you through a step-by-step setup process, where you can customize your promotion by choosing from a variety of contest models, allowing multiple media types (video, photo, audio, and/or text), configuring voting and judging options, and easily adding custom survey questions to gather data. Plus, it’s integrated fully with sharing on Twitter and Facebook, which means your competition is even more “sharable.”
In a recent launch on a brand new Facebook page for Women Entrepreneurs Mastermind, we gained over 12,000 views of our Win a $5K Biz Startup Package competition using Strutta, received 72 entries in a week (starting from scratch), which received 4,645 votes. More importantly, as a result of running this promotion, the contest page was shared more than 1,700 people. By requiring people to like the page before they could enter or vote in the competition, our page earned 1,200 likes in a little over three weeks.
Natalie Sisson is an intrepid entrepreneur who lives out of her suitcase, travelling the world and running a thriving online business. She teaches others how to do the same with a variety of products, programs and free resources through The Suitcase Entrepreneur. Sisson is also member of The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentoring, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.
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tinagleisner of NH 11:47PM January 24, 2012
Mark Allen of CA 6:16AM January 24, 2012
david k of WI 11:16AM January 14, 2012