Almost every blog and brand have their own Facebook Page. If you have a list of customers, members or email subscribers then you can then use the Contact Importer tool provided by Facebook to upload your list, find them on Facebook, and let them know about your Facebook Page.
Contact Importer for Facebook Pages
I found the Contact Importer for Facebook Pages above the page thumbnail, click on it and follow the instructions.
You have two options for importing contacts to view your page :
#1 – Upload a Contact File : Upload a contacts file and Facebook will securely import your contacts.
Outlook, Constant Contact, .csv files and others are supported.
#2 – Find Your Web Email Contacts : Search your email for contacts. I believe it is the fastest and easiest way to find potential fans.
As of now Facebook supports Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and some other services.
Maximum of 5000 contacts supported as of now.
Finding Your Web Email Contacts
I used #2 method for importing contacts which worked well for me.
A suggestion for your page may be shown to your contacts who are already on Facebook and an email will be sent to your contacts who aren’t on Facebook.
Have you tried this Contact Importer? Did it work for you!? Share your opinions below.
I have seen Nick Bowditch from Facebook Small Business Support in Sydney talk twice about this feature. It seems an important part of their strategy to engage with our customers and ultimately increase Facebook’s ad revenue.
We have a slightly outdated database of … significantly more than 5,000 … so we are really interested in refreshing it via Facebook and relaunching a new business so this limit is very frustrating if it is a total lifetime upload limit.
If anyone has any updates or workarounds, we would be glad to hear of them.
DON'T USE THIS FEATURE!!!!
Either there is a huge bug in the Facebook system or Facebook's instructions fail to specify how this "feature" is intended to work.
I had the same exact problem as Reuben and Kim. After doing an import, Facebook has taken it upon themselves to invite 5000 strangers (from my client's contact list) to connect as a friend to my personal profile instead of my client's Facebook Page.
Reuben/Kim – I'm also suffering from this problem with no solution. So far, the only thing I was able to do was delete my invite history by going to this link: https://www.facebook.com/invite_history.php I don't know if this prevented some of the emails from going out, but it was worth doing.
At this point, Facebook has some explaining to do. I'm irate about the position they put me in because of their failure to properly QA their system. I truly believe this is an error that started after they implemented their "Use Facebook as a Page" feature.
Anyone have a resolution for this horrible problem?
Oh, Dan, this is new to me and I seriously wonder why they would do like that.
Yeah, it's really odd and a major security flaw which really increases my concern over the level of privacy Facebook provides. If Facebook can't create a strong enough firewall between business pages and personal accounts, it leaves me with little confidence over whether their billing system can do the same for my client credit card data, etc.
I do have an open ticket with Facebook but I have not had any response and no signs of anyone even planning to respond despite the level of urgency I suggested in my ticket.
The problem is pretty major and seems to be effecting other areas of Facebook as well. For example, all of the "people you may know" suggestions on my personal account are now from people somehow associated with the email list I uploaded for my client's Page invites. And since some of these complete strangers actually accepted my "friend request" (the erroneous one FB never should have sent), I had to modify my entire account so strangers wouldn't have access to my posts/pics/etc for the few hours they would have friendship access before I was able to remove them.
I seriously contemplated deleting my account because of this issue, but I'm linked to too many client pages and personal links. However, instead, I created a workaround that is better than nothing. If anyone else has this issue, here's what I did to protect my personal data….Create a list for your friends and call it "current" "temp" or whatever you want to name it. Then in your privacy settings, block everything except for people that are on this list. Then when new "friends" (the strangers you never invited) accept your request they don't see anything. You'll then have time to remove them as friends. After a few weeks, you could change your settings back with less risk of strangers becoming your friend.
hello
i tried importing my contacts by through the files importer and through email. i could go so far as it saying " the invitation has been successfully sent". but none in that contact list ever received any message. could you please tell me as to how get this problem fixed
I hardly believe they will receive notifications or messages mate. I think they changed the format which prompts, the invitation will be shown at the top right side kinda thing now. 🙁
I agree with Rueben below. I tried to import contacts from my email list to my Facebook Business Page and it went and invited all the people to my personal page. I now have people on there that i have had business dealings with but i did not want them to be able to access my personal page. I now have to delete them all as friends and how rude and silly does that look. Why did this happen when i actually did it from my Business Page and not my personal page.
Contact Importer for facebook improves the chances of more followers and traffic from facebook fan pages
Recommending Facebook page to others increases the possibility of increased fans on a web page
This is a very good way to attract user’s towards a facebook fan page
I used this and somehow all these contacts f=got a friend request from me!!! It’s horrible, i now have some 4700 invites in my invite history and have to keep checking for people who accepted and remove them from friends!
I didn’t know you can do this but I’m going to try it
We can’t find it either. We looked under edit page and searched google. I assume since this is early stages not all pages have access?
I’m not able to find the link which I can use to upload the csv file. It’s not on the “edit page” too. Please help me find that link. Thanks
Am not sure bro, if you can’t find import contacts option under Edit, then I believe it should come soon. Almost all the pages have this option. Will check it out and ping ya mate. 🙂
I am not still familiar with all facebook features, I will check out this option in facebook now. Well thank you Pradeep.
this is a good way to increase the amount of fans for our facebook fan page, i see that you got a big increase of your fans from the last time i saw it… have you used the importer option on HBB?
thanks for sharing it, time to give it a try now 🙂
Yes, I have used the option, but removed some people.. they will go mad.. 😀
I did import a 3k contact list successfully. But now the option to do it again disappeared. How can I make another import? It is not about a 5k TOTAL limit, since I only imported 3k emails…
Any help or info would be appreciated!
Felipe, the same happens for suggesting fans for Facebook Pages, possible to split the contact list and upload!? Or else try the email option instead mate. 🙂
hey, S.Pradeep,
it was actually the link for importing contacts that I couldn’t find. It used to show up on top of my page, but since I made that first import, it disappeared.
Now I found it under “edit page”, thank you!
Congo Felipe! 🙂
I’m not able to find the link to importing contacts. I searched Edit page too. How can i find it ?
I have a list of 25000 contacts. Can I import them in parts ?
Parveen, it is possible to upload only 5000 contacts list. If possible try to split them or use the Email Contacts import option. Cheers. 🙂
Nice and very useful application. Gonna try this one for sure! thanks buddy 🙂
I didn’t know you can import contacts using a file, I going to try it right now.
Nice facebook feature. It helps in more engagement with customers.
Thanks for the heads up will certainly have a go at this one sounds fascinating thanks again
It may be annoying for those who do not want any emails from facebook..
Nice feature added by facebook,,,,,
will try this asap .
Nice info man!!
Thanks will do this asap! But where to find the importer?
It aint popping up…
Try reloading the page mate, am not sure whether we have separate option to access that. 🙂