10 Facebook Promotion Tips You Don’t Know About

There are two important factors to building a fan page which works for your website, and they are; getting people to like your page, and then getting them to click on your content. All of these tips listed here today are new tips that I have personally come up with, tried, tested, and have had proven results with. When you build your fans, you need to build on the interaction, and then you’ll start to really see results. Here’s what I like to do…

Images, not Links

This point was actually the inspiration for this post, because it seems so obvious, works so well, yet no one else seems to be doing it. The idea is that instead of using your links to attract visitors, you use a relevant photo instead. This works better in three different ways.

Firstly, people are more interested in looking at photos, than reading articles, so if you can ‘trick’ someone into clicking on the photo and reading your description, you’re easing them into the article. Also, if the image is relevant (which it should be), you spark an interest in the article too. The images also appear much larger on the page too, so they’re more likely to be seen, and then clicked on.

Secondly, your links become much easier to browse. When you post a regular link on your Facebook, it’s shown for as long as it’s on the page, or in a person’s timeline, but when you add that link to an image, it stays around indefinitely. How often have you gone to view a photo, and then clicked next? That is what is happening with your links. A reader could be viewing your image and then click through the rest of them, all the while viewing your old links, and reading their way through them. As your fan-base grows and people view more images, these old links are going to get more clicks.

Finally, we have people’s news feeds and ticker. Think of how often ‘Dave has liked BLANK’s photo…’ has appeared in your newsfeed, rather than a link. Facebook tends to share that sort of content in news feeds more, and when they do appear in news feeds, people are more likely to view them. The same is true for the new Ticker, where people will mindlessly follow everything a person is doing, and stumble upon photos, such as yours.

An extra little bonus feature of using an image to promote your content is that you can always change what you’ve written about the link, by editing the description. This means that if you’ve changed your mind about something, or you’ve made a spelling mistake, you don’t have to remove the link and lose all of your likes, you can simply go and edit it.

Quotes

This is all about creating content that you know is going to be shared by many people on your Facebook, which will then find you new fans. Some content can be more viral than others, but I find that interesting quotes work really well. Again, you’re going to want to make sure that you turn these quotes into images so that they can be shared much more easily. If you make an image, rather than share one you’ve found somewhere else, add your logo too; my image below was shared from another source on the internet.

When you’re choosing a quote, make sure it’s something that appeals to as many people as possible, with an element of humour, and preferably something that annoys your reader. Remember that the idea is to get as many people as possible sharing this, and that includes fans’ friends. Focusing on an annoyance or something negative always works better than something positive, I’ve written about this before here, and I’m no psychologist so I don’t know why this is, but I do know that it works. The image below was shared on my page, when I had around 2,500 fans, and it received 118 likes and 47 shares.

Questions

The right questions typically result in lots of interaction from readers, because everyone likes to have their say, and as your page grows bigger, people will see it as a way of having one on one contact with you. My post below was put up rather late at night, but still managed to receive 86 comments and 31 likes, and even a week later, I’m still getting comments on it.

Not only did I manage to increase interaction on the Page, but I managed to learn a little bit more about my readers, what they like, and what they don’t like. You’ll notice that I’m not talking about polls here, I’m using an image and appealing to the photographer in them, to find out what they like. I’ve noticed in the past that polls really don’t work all that well, perhaps because people are less inclined to vote on them. I put this down to the fact that they show up in people’s newsfeed after someone has voted on them, and often people don’t want this.

Think about what people in your niche are interested in and appeal to them. It can be done for almost any niche. 

Share Old Content

This is great for when you can’t be bothered, or don’t have time to write an article one day, but you still want some Facebook traffic for the day. My fan base is now at 4,000 fans, but I have load of content written from the months when I was struggling to even reach 1,000 fans, but that content is still just as good. When I link to my website on Facebook, I link to the post that I’m trying to promote, not my homepage, so chances are, when I share an old post with my fans, the majority of them won’t even realise that it’s old. Not that it really matters.

Not only does this bring me the traffic I’m looking for, but it makes me feel a bit better about my writing because it means that all my old posts aren’t going to waste, which is what it can feel like when you write some of your best content, when you first start your website.

Like their Comments

Make commenting on your Facebook an enjoyable experience for your fans, and thank them for doing so with a simple Like. It’s a personal touch that costs nothing, and takes next to no time at all. Don’t go liking everything, and certainly not negative comments, but liking comments that you agree with, or are compliments, are important. This is especially important as you grow and people have less of a chance of personally interact with you. When you like what someone else has written, then you’re encouraging them to come back and comment again, which will increase your reader interaction, and in turn make your content appear in more news feeds.

If your readers asks you questions, then answer them too.

Don’t use Custom Banners

This added feature from Facebook is a little bit misleading because many people think that they can use it to make their page look better, when it doesn’t really work like that. You would have seen it before, either on fan pages or friends walls, where people have used custom banners to display a single image, such as a logo. This is something that I have looked into, but ultimately decided against.

Firstly, it’s hard to keep them in order in the first place, especially if you take my advice and use images to promote your posts. Secondly, these little thumbnails are an excellent way to spark interest in new fans, because it’s easy for them to explore the posts when they’re all listed at the top of the page. Set up the banner, and then just leave it. 

Custom Profile Picture

Most people choose a simple image as their profile picture, and whether that’s landscape, or portait, it’s still wrong. If you pay close attention to Facebook marketing, then there’s a good chance that your profile image is 180 x 540 pixels, but there’s more to it than that, and the good thing is that you can do it yourself.

The first thing to consider is your thumbnail image, which is what will appear whenever you comment or post something. If you have a look at my posts above, you’ll see that my thumbnail image is the simple logo pictured below at the top of the image. You will want to make this smaller than the width of your image, and ensure that it’s not cluttered by any other part of the photo.

I’ve backed away from using excessive writing about what I do, and I’ve opted for this much simpler design instead. My full logo at the bottom of the image, my logo at the top, and an image in the middle. It’s the image in the middle that makes this really special for me though, because I can change this whenever I want, so that I can keep things fresh an keep people noticing it. The reason I’m using my logo at the top, rather than the title of my website, is because I want to build up some brand recognition for the image. If I change my picture once a month, people will continue to be drawn to it, and in turn, the logo too. Soon enough, my website will be recognisable by the logo alone, just like many other famous brands.

Use Memes & Trends

Keep up to date with current trends on the internet, whether they’re internet memes, or funny pictures like the one below. A great example of this, was how I received 500 fans overnight, which you can read about here. It was something that I had seen twice already on Facebook, and something that I wanted to get involved in before it was too late, and people were starting to get annoyed with it.

One thing I spotted last night, was the image I’ve shared with you below. It’s referred to as the ‘six perspectives…’, where you compare six different perspectives of the same thing. There are many variations of this, and I had originally thought that I would talk about what it’s like to be a photographer, and what people thought of it, but I decided that this was a little bit more niched and people would find it more interesting, and want to share it. It took me about an hour and a half to put together, and then I simply posted it on Facebook, and over night it got, 71 like, 7 comments, and 24 shares. If the right people pick it up, then it can be a lot higher than this. If you have friends in the same niche as you, ask them to share it too. This image found me 20 new fans over night.

You can always share it more than once too, through your Google+ and Twitter too. Like I mentioned earlier, if you’re going to come up with your own original content to share, slap your logo on it so that people know where it’s come from incase someone decides to download and share it as their own, which is something that I found this morning with another photography fan page, sharing a different version of my own. One final thing to note is that you want to include your website address is the description, so that if it does go as viral as you would like, then you can always get a few more hits on your website. 

Have a look at the one we posted on IncomeDiary today. Click here to go to the image and share.

Post Interesting Facts

This is all about providing valuable extra information for your readers, which they can’t find anywhere else on your website. Have a look at the one I posted on the IncomeDiary fan page last night. It’s exclusive to our Facebook, and through that, Twitter too. This keeps our readers interested, and helps them to feel like they’re getting something that no one else is getting. Not only that, but it reassures them that IncomeDiary is a valuable resource for them to be following, and makes us more of an authority.

Ask Their Opinion

Make your readers feel like their opinion matters, so ask them what they think. Whether you personally care about what they think is one thing (I personally do), but making them feel like what they say counts is what really matters. I changed my profile picture the other night, so I asked them what they thought of it, and I got likes on both the image, and the wall post, all of which were positive. It helps you to understand your fans better, and what they like, which is all useful information for providing them with better content, and finding more people like them.If you’ve enjoyed this post, then please press like below to like our fan page.