3 tips for gaining value from your Facebook likes Published March 13, 2012 Social media has become the new wild west of marketing, every business is flocking to networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+ on the promise of gold and unimaginable riches. This dream can come true if done right, but so many companies get it wrong and end up with nothing but a pile of rocks… In this blog I’m going to explain how to use Facebook effectively and more importantly how to turn those ‘Likes’ into gold. If you are yet to create a Facebook page for your business you can follow the instructions here to find out how. Why Facebook? I have to confess I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to statistics! These are a few of my favourites: Facebook accounts for 1 out of every 5 page views on the internet worldwide 425 million mobile users 49% of the British public are on Facebook 42% of British users household income averages between £30k -£39k There are 2.7 Billion ‘likes’ every single day (my favourite!) Facebook clearly isn’t going anywhere soon but how can you ensure you are integrating it with other forms of marketing to ensure you are reaping the benefits? Here are my top three tips for using Facebook effectively and integrating it with your email marketing campaigns. 1) Engage in conversation People tend not to engage too well with the hard sell on Facebook, the network is all about people sharing their experiences, interests and lives. So my advice would be to take this tactic when using Facebook; split up posts about how amazing you are with fun random posts that you think your audience will respond to as well as news about your industry. If you can make your Facebook page a source of fun and knowledge you will see much higher engagement levels. 2) Register fans for email campaigns The easiest way to make money through social media is to convert your likes into email addresses, people are accustomed to being sold to via email and this is where you can control your customers attention and conversions best. If your tactic on Facebook is to bombard people with special offers you will soon see people reaching for the ‘unlike’ button. Tell your audience that if they wish to get your special offers then to ‘click here and register for special offers’ as then they know full well what to expect and also you have them pro-actively requesting you send them something salesy… result! Because Facebook allows you to have a number of apps attached to your page you have a great opportunity set up a data capture form, or if you like an easy life, you can use some nifty Social register functionality from your ESP which will give the user a one click option to capture their Name, Date of Birth, Location, Number of Friends and most importantly their email address, all without typing a single character. 3) Share your email campaigns Following from my previous blog ‘Using email with social media’ I mentioned that your “audience is no longer the size of your list”… due to the power of Social Media you can now project your email campaigns across yours and your recipient’s networks. By posting a Facebook status linking to a web based version of your email will give your campaigns more legs, now not only will your email data see the campaign but your social audience now can too. This is also a great way to sell on Facebook as your likes will have to make a conscious effort to click the link and move away from Facebook to read your sales material, this means they then will not feel like they are being sold to on the network. Using an auto post function will not only publish the status automatically for you but will also feedback additional social reporting so you will be able to see how many likes the status received, who has commented on the status, and what they said.