Does your business have a Facebook Fan Page? If not, you should consider creating one. It’s a very valuable way to connect to your customers amongst an incredibly committed user base (more than 300 million active users and growing fast).
If you do have a Fan Page, do you promote it either on your website or blog with a Fan Box? A Fan Box is a little snippet of code that you can paste into your website or blog. Here’s an example:
A Fan Box is the perfect way to drive awareness of your Fan Page. More importantly, you will get more fans!
Here’s a real-world example from Matt Hasselbeck, one of our clients. Just before the first game of the NFL season on September 13, we added a Fan Box to his home page. At that time, he had 2,716 fans. According to Insights, a handful of users became fans every week prior to adding the Fan Box.
Since we added the Fan Box, his fan base has jumped to 3,023 (as I write this). That’s better than a 11 percent increase in just over two weeks. Since we launched his Fan Page in early 2008, there’s never been a spike like this.
Here’s a screenshot of the chart over that same time from Insights.
It shouldn’t be too hard to believe that promotion raises awareness which leads to more “conversions”, especially with something like a Facebook Fan Page. Fan Pages are still relatively obscure. And, people don’t really know where to go to find them for their favorite brands.
So if you have customers on Facebook, connect with them through a Fan Page. Make sure you use a Fan Box to publicize to your customers your presence on Facebook. Once you do that, watch for your numbers of fans to increase.
of course his Fan base went up, he’s a professional athlete and people know who he is. I don’t think this is a “real life” example.
Aimee – I appreciate the feedback.
Even though Matt may be famous, the premise still works. Placing the widget on his HOME page has caused his fan base to increase. It’s given people who visit his site an easy way to join his fan page. If they don’t like Matt (or in any case the company or product that’s in the widget) then that person doesn’t have to become a fan.
So I see the widget as a facilitator. It’s there if people want to use it. If it wasn’t there, I’m willing to bet he’d have less fans.