Facebook followers?!

[jilo]

I've released my portal site (www [dot] myashford [dot] com) about 2 weeks ago, and traffic is growing steadily.

But, I want to know how to build up a successful Facebook fan page. I released a facebook fan page around a month ago, and have 168 fans. This was mainly done through facebook ads.

But how do I increase this? Since stopping the ads, the number of fans has obviously stopped increasing.

I don't really want to page so much for advertising at this point in the sites lifetime.

[jonee]

Well if you say that your traffic is growing then a good way is it to put the facebook widget in your site then :)

Good luck on your site!

[Martin Brock]

Maybe we can persuade James David to post a few ideas - his facebook following is quite impressive - and I don't think he used any paid advertising to get there.

I definitely don't think you should pay for advertising in order to get facebook fans - unless you know exactly what the value of a fan is?

Your resources (time/money) would be better spent on developing your site, populating it with content. Give people a reason to become fans, naturally - and give them and incentive to come back.

Post an interesting/provocative/entertaining/etc article about a local event, story, phenomenon - and maybe tie that to a facebook group. That could go viral all by itself. Or contact one or more local businesses and make a deal with them to offer a discount exclusively to your users. Things like that.

Shift the focus from promotion to content, and future promotions will simply work better.

[jilo]

Great, thanks for the advice. I started by doing an interview with a local
mp and posting it on the spotlight section, and I'll contact some local stores soon.

@jonee I've put a facebook widget where the square ad on the front page should be.


I see @jamesdavid has a pretty good amount of fans! Would be interesting to know his methods, if he is willing to share!

[JamesDavid]

Of course I am willing to share!

First Off Martin is correct when he says a FAN following on facebook is useless without content. So make sure before you push facebook hard you have your site at least close to complete.

I read this post last night around 8:00pm CST. Just for the sake of showing you how vital a good facebook following is I did a test.
At 8:00pm I posted a facebook link on my facebook site with a link to my JOBS page module. At 8:00am I had over 400 page views on my jobs portal since last night. That is 400 views in 12 hours and I am sure that number will double again during the dailylight hours.

That shows how important and what an asset a facebook page can be. K3County has around 100,000 residents, so once my fan base gets to 1000 then that would mean I have imeddiate connection to about 1% of the population. From a marketing standpoint that is HUGE.

HOW TO GET, KEEP, AND GROW YOUR FANBASE:
Now I am by no means a facebook expert but I will share what got me where I am... I will do a timeline format...
Jumpstart: I created the fan page then sent a message to MY FRIENDS telling them about the site and asking to FAN it...
Ask once: After a week or so I sent out a facebook message from the K3County Fan page asking everyone to invite a couple friends to join the FAN page.
Advertise: Now I did use Facebook advertisement HOWEVER I went about it a very cheap way. If you go to Digital Point Forums (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/) you can find $75 facebook credit coupons for about $6-7 dollars. You can only use one per account but say you have a partner, make your partner an ADMIN on the fan page and then they can use a coupon too.. Anways I spent like $13 on two coupons and I ran ads under my account and my wife's. Now you can specify with facebook that you only want local people from your town/county and depending on where you live it may cost anywhere from .20 to .50 per fan. I think I averaged about .40/fan or about 375 fans for my $13. Not a bad deal...
Ask Again: Once you ad campaign is over send out another FAN post asking everyone to invite a few friends, explain in your post that it is sites like yours that help the local economy grow.

That right there should give you a decent start. Once you are that big you will appear high in the search results on facebook and people will see other people you have "FANNED" your page.

Maintaining people is a different ball game.

I lose a fan or a few fans a day, and I gain a fan or a few fans a day. I am sure this is do to people shutting down their accounts, accounts get suspended or people unfanning me.

I have found that too many constant little updates that aren't important will just make people ignore/unfan your posts. I try to always post quality posts even if they arent as often as they should be. The goal is that when people see you made a post that they will stop and read it eveytime, they will follow the link everything, they will share it with friends...

I have found facebook to be a very important part of the site.

Any questions just ask!

Thanks

[Mike]

Thanks Mike:)