Great, you have a Facebook page. Guess what, so does everyone else. You don’t have many people that have ‘liked it’, so your messages are seen by a very few people. It is disheartening, frustrating, and makes you question whether or not it is worth the little time you spend on it.
You Are Not Alone.
Data from recommend.ly suggests that after studying 1.7 million Facebook Pages: Half of Facebook Pages have less than 256 fans and 31% have less than 32 fans
What gives?
Well there are a few characteristics of Facebook pages that lead to the issue:
- Facebook does not allow you to proactively contact new people via your page.
- Facebook is closed to web search, so people looking on google for your business won’t find you. (Google+ it)
- Your content on your page probably does not appeal to people, or make them want to share it. \
- Everyone has a page so it is hard to stand out, and people are numb to it.
- Facebook wants you to buy ads, not get found organically.
So What Do You Do?
- You should strive to have your Facebook page be a unique resource for some aspect of your business. In other words make it THE PLACE to go get some info, insight, news, etc. That way its perceived value will rise.
- Consider offering amazing specials to a few of the most influential people who have liked your page. Then start conversations with them, via your page, that highlight their experience with your business. Ask them to recommend your page and business via Facebook.
- Consider that Facebook is not the only place to be, Google+ is searchable obviously and helps you get found outside of social networks.
- Make a blog the center of your online promotion and share it from there to various social networks.
Then Look to Your Stakeholders
A stakeholder is anyone that has something to gain or lose based on the success of a business. Some of the most obvious are the owners, the owners family, the employees, the vendors who provide goods and services to the company, and anyone else who has a chip in the game.
These people should be asked to take part, to share the content your business publishes, it is easy and it is effective. Take a look:
This is a fairly average page based on the statistics we talked about earlier, and as you can see an average page has access to more than 105k people if each fan shared a particular post.
That is the crazy part of all this, basically each fan is on average a link to 427 people. So take your stake holders, count them up say you have 50 of them. That is 21,300+ people you can reach via your page if you get them to buy in.
Thats all for today, next week I am presenting these ideas to a group I am trying to get to buy in for a local company of 60+ employees, I am going to try and get it on video for you. If I do I will share it with you here. Subscribe to updates to get notified.