7 Ways to Engage Facebook Fans & Generate Sales

Here are 7 simple ways to engage your fans to generate sales.

# 1: Use the Facebook Page Status Updater

It is crucial that you start engaging your Facebook fans as soon as possible, because whether something shows up in a user’s news feed, or not, is determined by whether or not they actually come to visit your Facebook page – so you need to encourage them to visit frequently.

If you’re not engaging your fan base by offering regular status updates or note worthy content items, you will loose your audience before you ever have a chance to show them how great your business really is.

The fact is, Facebook will only show status updates (or news feed items) on a particular users news feed depending on who that user has engaged with recently. If the user hasn’t spent much time viewing or engaging your Facebook page, it is unlikely that they are even seeing your Facebook page status updates at all.

# 2: Post News Updates, Videos or Note Worthy Articles

To post a news item, simply type in your message (and or “link”) within the “Status field” on your wall and click the “Share” button, as shown above.

Note: you must be an administrator of the Facebook page in order to post status updates.

If you add a link to your post, be sure to put it in the status update message field, and not the separate “Link” Attach box, for better results.

Also be sure to only post HIGH QUALITY news items, videos and/or articles. If your news item is bland and boring and not relevant to your audiences interests, you will quickly be put into the “messages from this person aren’t important to me” box.

# 3: Get Your Fans to ‘Like’ Your Posts

Fans are more likely to “Like” your status update if you specifically ask them to click the Like button in a particular message.

A simple example of how to ask your fans to “Like” your post would be:

“We just released our Buzz Network iPhone app! Click the Like button if you think this is cool.”

It’s a known fact in the social media marketing world that you are more likely to increase the number of “likes” by 200-500% simply by adding an explicit request to the end of your status updates, exactly as I’ve done in the above example. I.e “Click the Like button if you think this is cool”.

# 4: Ask Questions to Get Comments

A great way to get fans to comment on your post is to simply ask them questions, particularly ones that are easy to answer.

So be sure to encourage brief answers – such as yes or no. For example, “we’ve just released a new jellybean flavor. Do you like this – yes/no?”

# 5: Entice People to Promote Your Page to Their Friends

Tell fans that you will release something new or provide a coupon or win something special if they send a message to their friends or post a status update.

For example, give them a message or “status update” that they can share to their friends or post on their wall, such as: “I just liked this page to win a FREE years supply of Jellybeans!”.

I hope these ideas got you thinking about ways you can engage your fans.

At the end of the day, you are only limited by your imagination. The sky truly is the limit! And that’s the beauty of Social Media.

# 6: Segment Your Audience and Target Your Message Accordingly

Do you know that you can push out status updates that only specific segments of your fan base will see?

For example, if you have an Australia wide business and you have an offer that is only relevant to your Sydney customers, you could push out a story that only your Sydney fans will see.

Right next to the “Share” button in the messaging box is a targeting tool– while the default targeting is normally set to “Everyone,” you can limit the outreach by location and by language.

If you have a message that you don’t need or want all of your users to see, you can customize who the message will be revealed to, by using this functionality which is built into the message box!

# 7: Make it Worth Their While to Lookout For Your Status Updates!

Studies have proven that the greatest percentage of people, by far, responded best to ‘exclusive deals & offers’. So, if you want your fans to watch out for and look forward to receiving your updates, you should reward them from time to time with special offers like coupons, giveaways, contests and more.

We’ve seen companies that offer regular scheduled deals (e.g. Friday specials or Tuesday Giveaways) build highly engaged fan bases. So why not start by creating a promotion today and working this into your fan base culture. They will love you for it!

Have a question or comment regarding this Facebook engagement? Please post your comment below.