How To Build A Fanbase On Twitter

Your business has a great Facebook and Twitter page. I take it that:

You are creating and posting good, if not great, interesting, compelling content and your Facebook page and Twitter feed are full of information, news, reviews and links.
You are interacting with your fans on a daily basis.
You have acquired a short USER NAME for your Facebook page. See my blog on how easy and important it is to do this!

Yes? Yes!

OK. So here are my tips that have worked for my clients on ways to get people to LIKE your Facebook page, and increase your Twitter followers, both online and offline:

#1: Website: Direct customers from your website to your Facebook Page with a Facebook "Like" and "Follow Us" button. Make sure these buttons are prominent on your home page as well as all your internal pages. And of course, your blog. Here are nice examples. Ask your web developer to attach the correct code – you can find it on Facebook here.

#2: Email Newsletters: Add these buttons to your email newsletters!

#3: Email Signature: Make sure you and your employees add and link your Facebook and Twitter URL within your email signature. See how I've done it on my email signature below:

#4: Printed Material: Add your Facebook and Twitter URL on your business cards, print ads, brochures, menus – anywhere that you have printed material. That's why it's so important to get a SHORT USER NAME for your Facebook Page, and not one with a string of numbers attached to it. For example, my Facebook user name is ymarketingmatters. So the URL is www.facebook.com/ymarketingmatters – easy to print this on anything.

#5: Get Local Sign Ups: Use real world traffic to find followers. If your business is local, and people frequent your store or your office, here are some great ways to increase your fans:

Set up a computer at your store or office so people can log into Facebook and Like your page or follow you on Twitter on the spot!
Take photos of them in your store or office, upload them on Facebook and tag them. Attach their photo to tweet.
Print inexpensive flyers or small cards with "Like Us on Facebook" and "Follow Us on Twitter" with USER NAME info to give out.
Involve them in competitions that they can only enter if they join your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter.

Offer an incentive, a nice "something" for them to do this.

#6: Promote Your Page: To get followers of other pages to your page, you need to post and comment as much as possible on on relevant Facebook pages, people's pages and groups. Use the Facebook Directory and Facebook Search to locate other Facebook pages in your niche and look for public discussions based on search terms related to your business.

#7: Use the @ tag on Both Facebook and Twitter

Use the @ tag on your wall: By placing the @ tag before a page or person's name (tagging) on your wall, your post will show up on their wall.
Use the @ tag before your name on other walls: By placing the @ tag before your page name when you post on someone elses wall will divert some traffic from that page to your own page.
Use the @ tag with a person's twitter handle afterwards as much as possible in your tweets.

#8: Use Facebook Ads and Promoted Tweets: One of the best ways to get a lot of extra traffic is to use the Facebook ads and promoted tweets. You can start off with a small budget, test results. You will need to spend a fair amount on advertising to get real results, but it's the fastest way to find interested fans and followers.

#9: Make Your Content Sharable: Use easy social plugins and widgets to share your content on Facebook and Twitter which will drive people to like or follow you. See my blog on this.

#10: Add a Welcome/Like Us Tab to Facebook: This is called a Fan Gate or Reveal Tab. Its a customized welcome tab with "LIKE OUR PAGE" that people are sent to FIRST when they come to your Facebook page. Stats show that a custom landing tab DOUBLES conversion to fans. You will need a graphic designer to design the "LIKE US" graphic and "THANK YOU FOR LIKING US" graphic. You should give away something for people liking your page. Its tricky to build this tab on your own, but you CAN do it with WildFireApp, or contact me, and I can do it for you.

See my Welcome Tab on Facebook and here are some great examples of Welcome Tabs from Social Media Examiner: Top 10 Small Business Facebook Pages: 2011 Winners.

Please add YOUR tips on what have you done to be "liked" or "followed"! Would love to share this with my readers.

Follow @yasminbendror

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I opened my own social media and marketing boutique agency in January 2010 providing strategic consulting… View full profile ›