Did you know that having an active Facebook fan page for your blog can increase your blog’s viewership tremendously? The reason why everyone is establishing a base on Facebook right now is simply because that’s where all your potential viewers log onto every day. As of the 31st of December 2011, there were over 845 million active users connecting to Facebook on a frequent basis. This means that when done right, gathering a substantial amount of followers on Facebook will also mean increasing traffic to your blogs.
Create a Fan Page
The first thing you need to do is to create a Facebook fan page for your site. You should create as many fan pages as you can according to the number of blogs you own. While this means that you would have to do double the amount of work and spend even more time on Facebook, it also means that you will be able to target your market niche even better. After all, someone who’s interested in cupcake blogs will not be interested in joining the Fan Page dedicated to palm oil estate, so there really is no point in jumbling all your blogs together under one Page.
I don’t recommend using your personal Facebook page to promote your blogs as this would make it harder to brand your blogs. It would also make things awkward when you decide to post an emotional or heartfelt message too, so just like in real life, you should always keep business and personal postings a separate matter.
Spruce Up Your Fan Page
As most Internet users have the attention span of less than one minute, each of your Facebook fan pages should be attractive enough to deter them from abruptly moving on to the next page. The golden rule to creating a truly attractive Facebook Fan Page is to literally look different from the rest of the Fan Pages on Facebook. To get inspired, you might want to check out the McDonalds, Skittles, Victoria’s Secret and Red Bull Facebook Fan Pages for a start.
Making your fan page look fun and pretty would also probably mean that you should prep yourself with graphic software such as Photoshop and knowledge of HTML and CSS programming. The good news is that this stuff is pretty easy to learn and the long term results are definitely worth the effort. Remember, you can be anything you want to be on the Internet, so why not aim to have a Fan Page stylish enough to rival that of Louis Vuitton or Gucci?
Posting Content
Nobody really wants to be a fan of a Facebook page which only concentrates on promotions and advertisements, so be sure to post interesting information on your page. Your posts can be relevant to your blog or it could be totally random (but attention-grabbing) videos, pictures or statements which will keep the viewer scrolling along your page for more content. Do remember that while there are plenty of eager visitors on Facebook, they are much more interested in being entertained, as opposed to buying a product or service from you which is why you should keep your materials free and easily attainable.
At the initial stages, you might want to simply repost popular videos, photos or images onto your Facebook page. Overtime though, you should think about creating your own original content as the more authentic your page is, the more well-liked it will become as people tend to prefer going to the original source of any cool postings. In general, you should spend about half an hour updating the content on your fan page at least once a day to keep your existing fans interested. Just like how you would go about writing a good blog post, your goal on Facebook is to also create posts which can trigger conversations and dialogues between yourself and your fans.
Do note that while those who have liked your Facebook fan page would be able to view your posts on their newsfeeds, not all of your posts will be viewable in this manner. To increase the viewership of your post, Facebook judges your posting based on its Edge Rank, which is made up of your Affinity Score (i.e. the more you interact with your fans, the higher the score), the Weight (i.e. the higher the number of people who have shared your post, the higher the weight) and time decay (i.e. the more recent the post, the better)!
Do Housekeeping Everyday
Nobody really wants to see you post up advertisements on your fan page, so why should you let any other rogue fan page promote their page on yours? Be prepared to log on and clean up your fan page at least once a day as when left unwatched, there will be individuals who will use the opportunity to advertise their blogs, sites, fan pages, products or services on your Facebook Wall. Occasionally, you might even have the occasional virus or lewd graphics left on your Facebook page as well, which is why constant monitoring is essential to maintain the branding of your blog.
Make Friends
The most expensive and arguably the fastest way of building your database of Facebook fans is to simply have your page advertised on the Facebook side bar. However, a better (and cheaper) alternative would be to simply fish out interested users and then establish your fan base from that point onwards. To do this, make it a point of spending about half an hour everyday visiting other similar pages and leaving comments on their posts.
Just like how you should follow forum posting etiquette, you should also be just as amiable on other fan pages. Do not start a fight, a controversy or write something like: “Hey guys! If you like this Page, you’ll like mine too! Click on this link NOW!” as that will just have your comment deleted and you may even be reported as a spammer to Facebook.
The Best Time to Promote Your Blog
Once you’ve gathered about 1,000 Facebook fans, you can then begin subtly promoting your blog. The easiest way to link your fan page to your blog is through the Notes feature. The best thing about notes is that it can also be viewed by your fans via their newsfeed and you can also tag loyal fans onto your notes as well. You might also want to consider forming a tagging relationship with other similar niche fan pages so you can indirectly share the information to more fans with similar interests.
Another direct approach would be to promote your blog’s URL directly on your Facebook fan page profile picture or to post up images with your blog URL at the bottom. I believe most fans don;t really want to be forced to view a page, so you need to make it as voluntary as possible.
Popular Fan Page Equals Popular Blog
The key to boosting your blog views via Facebook is to literally plan out your Facebook campaign just like how you would have planned your blog creation. Think about the people you would like to attract, the purpose of your page and how you would like to grow your fan base overtime. Just like in the blogging world, creating, maintaining and growing a fan page requires us to think long term and leverage off relationships to achieve wider viewership!
This article is written by Alicia. She is a web designer and developer. Loves WordPress themes and plugins. If you wish to write for us, kindly check this.
Hi, nice post.
please tell me the procedure to import blog to face book by using notes feature.
Thank you.
Aside from tweeter and other social media sites, Facebook is one of the famous sites where you can promote your own blog. This is a good post and surely this will help other online marketers especially bloggers.
Yes, Twitter and Facebook are two most popular social media sites and great for us to promote our blog on!
Alisia, Social Networking always shows a great effect on blog traffic and popularity. Great Read. Thanks for sharing.
Great tips to optimize facebook fan page and getting traffic from it.Thanks for share bro 🙂
Great article. I was actually looking for articles that talk about the influence of Facebook on your blog! Thanks for sharing the tips.
Thanks for the awesome tips! Just created a fan page on FB. Looking forward to a large fan base!
http://allthingstelecommute.blogspot.com
E-Hustlin Momma
Organic traffic is good but traffic via facebook (and also other social media channels) has been a key for a blog success. A good number of good audience on facebook can be vital for a blog.
That's very true, Kunal. I think this is even more evident when big search engines like Google is taking social media into search engine ranking algorithm. These days, we have to be good in Facebook, Twitter and all the other popular social medias!
This is an obvious process. Even a noob knows what to do to make your Page famous. Sorry HBB
nice article…. most of the blogs get their high rate of traffic by social media….. especially from facebook
Excellent article regarding facebook,read a lot of articles these days but this was so informative.Gonna start steps to increase the fan base and then traffic.Thank you,
Well I would like to recommend all potential social media brand promoters overdose of anything is harmful so posting status updates more than three times a day will only let your fans move away from your page after getting annoyed by too many updates it is better to post once in two days and retain user interest. Targeted Facebook Mobile Ads help in increasing volumes of targeted traffic towards a website.
Usman, come to think of it, yes, you are right. Posting too much promotional material on Facebook might annoy your fans or readers. Unless your content is really useful and interesting, of course.
Great tips, Alicia. I am sure by following your tips, and with dedication and hard work, we will get a good amount of traffic from Facebook.
Great post, facebook can be best source of traffic if used correctly.
thanks for sharing
What I have noticed is that you cannot comment on a Facebook page from your Facebook Page account (i.e., the Facebook address / URL associated with your blog). How can one comment with that Facebook address then? Is there a way out? Commenting from a personal Facebook profile will not help promote your blog.
I guess you can comment mate, just use your page as your profile, and first like the page you want to comment. Then you can easily interact.
No doubt in that FB Fan page is become very important thing for your site/blog in now adays because this is one of the nice way to convert much traffic for your site/blog and you mentioned very well if we will add content in that then it will prove some more beneficial for us.
Well, I tried that and quit. It wasn't worth the few 100 visits that I get from FB. However, if those numbers are 10,000s, I would have given it a thought.
The real issue for me is that, as such we have to do a lot of writing, moderation, editing etc on our blogs. I do not want to do much the same on a fan page as well. Well, only if I could hire a social media manager lol…
Hello Alicia,
Well this topic is pretty much known topic to the bloggers because social media is the most effective and effortless way to get traffic at the initial stage of blogging. What I liked about your post is the way you represented and described. You have covered every gems 🙂 and strategy of using Facebook to get continuous flow of loyal traffic. Moreover what I feel is it would be very helpful to the new bloggers out there if you had included how to build trust able brand using Facebook.
Any ways keep up your good work going on…. 🙂
-Sam
Social networking is always being a top source of my blog traffic. I have tried much to attract more users to my fb page. Custom tabs and notes are very useful to do so.
Nice View! 😀
Nice and helpful article Alicia. But I didn't quite understand the linking part between the notes and our blog. Will check that out! Thanks for the info.
nice infomation….fb is really the best site for getting referral traffic
Facebook is a best marketing tool and if any blogger is not active on it then he or she is losing tons of traffic. so I think that it is essential that those bloggers must make the profile and fan page, to grab more and more visitors. This post is really awesome and the way you have given explanation is just amazing :D. Good work Alicia. Keep it up.
Thanks, Manish. These days, even search engines are taking social media activities into consideration in webpage ranking.
Facebook Fan Page is one of the best way to get maximum votes and visitors
Alicia That was Really Great article . For me Facebook is not so good till now to get traffic . will have to work hard on it
Good luck, aatif. I am sure with hard work you will get the fruits. 🙂
Hi, this is always be true that Facebook is gift for free traffic and proper use of Facebook potential increase your traffic from low to high.
This is really helpful for newbie bloggers to create and maintain a good fan page. Its very difficult to get fans in the initial stages.
To get started is slightly more difficult, but with the right strategy and hard work, everything is possible.
thanks a lot for your awesome presentation