Facebook For List Building
Many people starting their own business online fail to realize the importance of social networking sites. They know that in their personal life, they either hate the existence of them or maybe find themselves spending too much time on them.
So they ignore their value in terms of business – and more specifically in reaching their audience and building their subscriber base. Social networking sites are fertile ground for new subscribers, so you need to get onboard and embrace this as a hot spot for your business growth.
There are many social networks online. You might even find some specific to your niche! But right now, we’re going to cover the big one and show you how to use it to build trust and relationships that convert into a larger, loyal list of subscribers.
Facebook is still one of the hottest social networking sites in existence. But many marketers use it all wrong and don’t see the results they want, eventually abandoning it.
First off, never use your personal Facebook account for your business workings. As your business grows and you have more people “friending” you, you’ll run out of room.
Facebook only allows 5,000 friends per personal Facebook account. You might be new and thinking, “It’ll take me forever to get to 5k!” But the reality is, many marketers have reached that limit and then had to delete people and move them over to a fan page.
Why not just have that page set up from the get go so that you don’t lose people along the way? So launch your fan page instead and have your prospective subscribers sign up there.
You want to promote your Facebook fan page from your blog sidebar (along with all of your other web 2.0 account links) and possibly also include them as part of your email signature, so that if someone emails you, they will see your presence on their favorite network and can follow you there.
So what will you post on your new fan page? Well, you can post some of the following for starters:
- Links back to your blog with a short commentary about it.
- Memes or quotes – because images do very well virally on Facebook
- Questions to ask of your FB fans to generate a thriving conversation.
- Facts about your niche – short quick facts and tips they can “Like” and Share.
When people sign up to the page, or every once in awhile, remind your Facebook fans that if they don’t elect to receive notifications, they may not see every post that the fan page makes.
Unfortunately, Facebook uses this as a loophole to make you pay for exposure to the very people who chose to follow you there! The more active your posts are, the more exposure they get.
You want to install the opt in form onto your Facebook fan page, too so that it’s always in the sidebar ready for your new fans to subscribe to. If you’re using Aweber, they have an easy app that does the job for you.
Find it, along with the instructions here:
https://help.aweber.com/entries/21775438-How-Do-I-Add-An-Opt-in-Form-To-My-Facebook-Page-
Aside from posting in your own fan page, you want to expose your presence here to others on Facebook. That means you sign in as your page and then sign up to follow other pages in the same niche.
When you participate as your page on other people’s pages, sharing good information as a participant, people can see that and click on your fan page name and link and sig up for your page, getting exposed to your opt in form as well.
One thing that’s great about Facebook is the viral nature of it without people even meaning for it to be viral. Facebook has a way of showing your friends what activity you do – even if all you do is like or comment on something, without sharing it.
So let’s say you have a niche Facebook fan page about low carb dieting. You have Jane Doe, who signs up to your page and loves your lessons.
Every time she comments or Likes a post, her friends on her personal page see it, like this image on the left.
If her friends are curious, they can click on the activity notice and see the post where it took place. Then they have the option of heading to your page, Liking it, seeing your opt in in the sidebar, and becoming a new subscriber.
Never forget, on Social Media you can lose everything in an instant if you run afoul of someone’s interpretation of the site’s terms of use. Pushing your followers to become subscribers while giving them a good reason for doing so in