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7 Important Tips to Creating a High-Converting Facebook Fan Page

We all want them! We all need them! Some will take desperate measures to get them. What am I talking about? The highly sought-after Like. Every day, I hear or read that business owners are in a frantic state of mind as they stress and strategize to get more Likes. I hear time and time again that brands are investing time and money (lots of money) to get more fans but don’t get the results or fans they want. Here are seven carefully compiled tips to increase conversion rates on Facebook. With well over 1.11 billion users (and growing at an exponential rate), Facebook is king when it comes to social media. What does that mean for business? Ultimately, you have to get a piece of that pie. A savvy marketer will tell you that to brand yourself and promote your business, you must be invested in your Facebook campaign. Cut through all the muddied waters and follow these seven important tips:

1. Custom Landing Page. Top marketers embrace it, people often overlook it. Creating a custom landing page can really entice your audience and allow you to start engaging with them right from the get-go. Create interest visually with a catchy video or a clever photo incorporated with a visual direct call to action button, most commonly seen as a bold colored arrow asking your viewers to “Like Us.”

The ultimate goal is to increase your number of fans and get them to your custom reveal page, which I will go into more detail in tip number two. Even if you aren’t tech savvy, there’s a number of tools that, with a minimal investment, will help you to create a professional-looking landing page. Pagemodo is one such tool. Here are five popular custom-landing-page apps that I suggest––pick the approach that most identifies with your brand:

• Like Our Page
• Share Our Page
• Make a Purchase (or participate in a promotion)
• Visit Our Website
• Experience Our Brand

2. Reveal Page. As previously stated in tip number one, you want to increase your number of fans. By following the above tip, you’ve already created an awesome custom landing page, which has now converted visitors into fans. Congrats! You now have their attention, and you have already enticed them to want to know what’s on your fan page. Your reveal page is a great place to reward them for clicking on Like by offering them an awesome “coupon” or special offer “for fans only.” This is a killer strategy, and it offers an increased value to customers. Here are four common promotions:

• Coupons
• Sweepstakes
• Contests
• Valuable Free Content. E-newsletters, etc.

3. Awesome Profile Image. You might be thinking that this is a no-brainer tip, but I’m including it because I need to stress both the importance of choosing a stunning image and how it captivates your audience. Now that you have created an active fan base, your fans will see this image every single day, so the image you choose needs to work for your brand and portray your intended message. Consider this: The profile image will appear in the news stream of every one of your fans, so it’s going to be the most-used part of your Facebook page. Don’t leave this to chance. Overall, this image is the most important and most noticeable design element of your whole Facebook page. Check out this stylish and über-creative image:

4. Customize Your Banner. Consider this your opportunity to showcase your brand’s uniqueness by creating a design element worth talking about! Astute use of imagery can create a marketing campaign all its own. Remember to keep it fresh; change your banner on a regular basis, say once a month. Computer Arts Magazine updates its banner image with the latest cover illustration every time a new issue comes out as do a lot of other magazines and news organizations.

Just a side note before you begin:

• Get the banner sizing right the first time. Facebook banners are 851 x 315 pixels. There’s nothing worse than spending a lot of time designing and creating a cool banner only to have it not fit. If the banner is the wrong size, adjusting it could end up cropping out an important part of the picture.
• Unfortunately, Facebook lowers the resolution of your images, so to avoid displaying a blurry banner, use high-quality, high-resolution images.

I have seen a lot of amazing looking banners, but check out the latest and greatest from Old Spice! They certainly nailed it when it comes to an in-your-face image!

5. Post Significant Content, and Post It Frequently. People go to your Facebook page because they are compelled to think that there will be something of value for them. Whether they came across your page while on another site or a friend shared it with them, this is your chance to lure them in and keep them coming back for more and bringing their friends along. Captivate your audience with status updates, shared links, photos, videos, and blog posts.

We have all heard the phrase content is king, so be diligent about knowing the types of content that tailor-fit your audience. Here are the different types of content, if you’re struggling with a strategy.

• Tips and help: general tips, or product/service specific
• Brand promotion: promotional campaigns, product promotion, events, etc.
• Active engagement: Polls, questions, comments.
• Press and media: links to relevant articles and press releases
• General content: videos, images, etc.

As mentioned, you’ll want to post frequently; therefore, I suggest developing a content-delivery schedule. You will want to answer the following questions when preparing the schedule:

• How do your fans use Facebook?
• What time of day are my fans most likely to be on line? Kissmetrics is a great tool for learning about your customers and providing analytics that will answer questions like these.
• What type of content is most effective?

6. Use Pins, Highlights, and Milestones. Capture the attention of your fans and potential customers by integrating the use of these three timeline features.

 

• A pinned post is a specific post that you choose to put in your status update and will stay at the top of your timeline. The purpose of pinning a post is to keep it at the top of your page and prevent it from slipping on down with the rest of your content. You’ll want to utilize this strategy as another way to offer something of value for when the visitor clicks the Like button. A pinned post will stay at the top of your page for seven days, at which time you can add a new offer or a captivating video. You can also feature images in the pinned post that you want new visitors to see right away.

Here’s an example of Miracle Whip using a video in their post:

• Highlights are posts that you put in the status update that takes up both columns of your timeline. The purpose of highlighting a post is to draw attention to the most significant content on the page. Just note that you cannot pin and highlight at the same time; however, be sure to do one or the other.
• Milestones. Think of milestones as the storyteller for your brand. Through the use of words and images, milestones will create a picture about your humble beginnings and history, such as the first day you opened your doors. Ben & Jerry’s did an awesome job transporting their fans back in time when they opened their first shop in Burlington, Vermont, by posting a nostalgic photograph.

If you want to take your marketing efforts one step further, attach a call-to-action with your latest milestone posts. For example, if you were launching a new pair of running socks, you can add a link in your milestone, thus creating a call-to-action for them to learn more about the product that you launched. This will increase interest and drive more sales.

7. Respond to Messages. Interact with people when they post comments. Also, don’t be afraid to show your personality by being genuine. Take, for instance how Five Guys Burgers and[a] Fries commands their audience to share their memoirs in the following Facebook post:

I especially like the real sense of familiarity and interaction that occurs among the 51 comments on this post. This is what we want to see happen when posting content.

Take this opportunity to look closely at your Facebook campaign and pinpoint its strengths, focusing on where it happens to fall short. Try some new approaches, and tweak a few things. You’re already ahead of the game at this stage. With room to integrate these seven tips, you’ll boost your fan page quickly. Just a word of advice: Don’t get caught up in numbers. If you keep true to your message and continue to create value, the numbers will speak for themselves!