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View Full Version : 4 Strategies for Getting More Facebook Fans



vangogh
06-16-2011, 08:04 PM
I came across a post on Skelliewag about how they increased Facebook Fans (http://www.skelliewag.org/how-we-got-126244-facebook-fans-1216.htm) across the Envato network of sites. The sites may or may not be familiar to you, but the strategies should work for any site.

Strategy 1: The Like Box
Strategy 2: Fan-only Content
Strategy 3: Automation
Strategy 4: Targeted Content

The post talks about 126,000+ new fans. I wouldn't expect those same results given the Envato Network runs a lot of popular blogs for web designers and developers. Still these strategies should work for any site.

Hopefully the article generates some new ideas.

greenoak
06-16-2011, 08:46 PM
THANKS VG...SOME GOOD POINTS THERE...SOME NEW ONES FOR ME!! like about special landing pages...and fan only ideas...
THE skellliewag page itself has under 300 fans.....
still im showing this to my web person.... i think we just hit 1600 fans.... i read once that over 1500 you start losing the personality or the community feeling of the site....i dont believe that tho...

vangogh
06-16-2011, 11:15 PM
Ann, I had a feeling you might like the article. :)

The article wasn't specifically talking about the Skelliewag fan page. She spends most of her time working for the Envato network now so I'm not sure if she's put much work into her fan page. She's a great writer, but I don't think she gets to spend as much time on her own blog as she'd like. She used to write for it a lot more.

I've not heard specifically about the 1500 fans thing, but there's been some studies to show that once any community grows past a certain point it becomes too large for any one person to know everyone else. What happens is small communities form within the larger community, which I'm guessing is what was meant by losing the personality after 1,500 fans. I think it's about the community taking on several distinct personalities within the one major personality.

greenoak
06-17-2011, 08:12 AM
right...i definitly dont know all our fans...but they all must have some nice interest in us....and probably know one or 2 of us....my aim is to keep it local about how it its now...and still interesting. to them...

KristineS
06-17-2011, 11:23 AM
I like the targeted content and creating a landing page for people who aren't already fans ideas. I hate automation though. Really hate it. I know it's a personal dislike, but I will unfollow or unfriend people if their feeds are automated.

tylerhutchinson
06-20-2011, 01:32 PM
Good points. Thank you for sharing.

AaronConway
06-23-2011, 09:20 AM
I agree with Kristine about automation, hate it. There's also a big drawback to automated posts on Facebook. For example, if six companies you follow on Facebook all post a new blog entry and all use NetworkedBlogs to feed that blog post to their FB page then chances are that only one of those will show on the end users wall and the rest will be sandwiched underneath. The user will have to click a link to expand and see all those individual posts. I bet the majority of those users won't see all six posts. You're much better off manually posting the link to your new blog post.

Aaron

vangogh
06-23-2011, 10:59 AM
It depends what kind of automation we're talking about. If I follow you and you send me an automated reply then I agree. On the other hand some people do write genuine content and prefer it be publishes at a different time. I don't think there's anything wrong with that kind of automation. In the article the only suggestion for automation was to have your blog posts automatically show up on Facebook. I don't see a problem with that either.

There are many different kinds of automation and not all are bad.

AaronConway
06-23-2011, 03:03 PM
Here's a snapshot of what I'm talking about:

[/URL][URL="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/fbsnapshot.jpg/"]http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4640/fbsnapshot.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/fbsnapshot.jpg/)


I wouldn't want my blog post to be one of those 18 hidden posts.

Aaron

KristineS
06-23-2011, 05:19 PM
Here's a snapshot of what I'm talking about:

[/URL][URL="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/fbsnapshot.jpg/"]http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4640/fbsnapshot.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/4/fbsnapshot.jpg/)


I wouldn't want my blog post to be one of those 18 hidden posts.

Aaron

I used to used Networked Blogs and I stopped and what you're illustrating here is one of the reasons why. Plus Networked blogs used to take forever to put up a new post. I just add new posts as a link now and that works just fine.

vangogh
06-23-2011, 07:29 PM
Yeah I wouldn't want that either. I was just pointing out that automation on it's own isn't automatically (pun intended) a bad thing. There are good ways to automate things and bad things. For example:

Things have more potential to be shared on any social site at certain times of day. See

The Science of Social Timing Part 1 (http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-social-timing-1/)
The Science of Social Timing Part 2 (http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-social-timing-2/)

If you look at the first post above you'll see that the time where most things get retweeted is 5:00 PM eastern time. What if you live in China? You're probably asleep at that time. You wouldn't want to automate everything to post at that time, but it would make sense to sometimes automate the sending of a tweet you've written at that time. The tweet can still be original, genuine, created manually. It could be the exact kind of tweet that everyone wants to see. The only automated part is the time it's sent. I don't see that as a bad thing.

Aaron with the image you posted the issue isn't that you can link your blog to Facebook and have it automatically post. Your issue is with this specific blog. I agree it's not what you want to see, but that doesn't mean everyone who links a blog to publish automatically on Facebook is doing a bad thing.

I'm not sure why the hidden part is so bad though. It's no different than only showing one blog post on the home page of your blog and requiring clicks to get to the rest. Or showing the first paragraph of several blog posts on the home page and requiring a click to read more. In all honestly it's good design. People who want to see more posts can easily get more posts, but those posts aren't in the way of the people who don't want to see them.

It's a basic principle of usability called the progressive disclosure. You show only the information necessary to complete a task or based on a given context, while providing easy access to those who want more.

AaronConway
06-24-2011, 08:33 AM
It may be considered good design but I don't like it, especially if it's my post being hidden. In the example I showed, those 18 hidden posts could be from 18 different people I'm following or all the same person. Usually when I'm scrolling down my wall I'm doing a quick skim and if I don't see a good headline I don't click. It would be interesting to see stats on click rates of these hidden posts.

Aaron

vangogh
06-24-2011, 11:34 AM
Why is it a big deal? The most recent post shows and only older posts are hidden. Is that any different than showing some content on the home page and other content on deeper pages. Presumably most people who are following your blog on Facebook will have read those other 18 posts already and don't need to see them. And anyone who hasn't can easily see it.

Do you know if it's set up that way by default of if it's a setting in Facebook. I'm thinking it's a setting and you don't have to hide everything, though I may be wrong about that.

One positive reason for not including everything right there is it would possibly mean Facebook would outrank you for your own content. It might even lead to your own content on your site being considered the duplicate version.

With the 18 posts wouldn't they all be from the same site? They could be different authors of course, but wouldn't they all have to be from the same site? Or is this someone's personal rss reading list that's pulling in posts for whatever they're interested in?

AaronConway
06-24-2011, 02:18 PM
They could be different authors of course, but wouldn't they all have to be from the same site?

More times than not it's all different posters compiled under that "See 18 more posts..." link. I just clicked on one on my wall and there were four different authors making up 21 posts.

This isn't a personal setting that you can choose, it's automatically listed that way by Facebook. If you like it that way it doesn't matter to me. All I'm saying is...personally, I don't like it.

Aaron

vangogh
06-24-2011, 07:22 PM
I can understand if you don't like it. Just trying to understand why. I'm not saying I like it. I hardly ever use Facebook so I'm really only trying to understand what's happening. An image only tells me so much.

So are these links to blog posts or post on Facebook? And if they're blog posts is it 4 authors on one blog or 4 different blogs? I think you're saying they go to blog posts, but I want to make sure.

I'm also not really sure what you don't like. When you click the link I assume the 18 posts (or summaries) show up right there on your wall. How would you prefer it to show?