This is Day 29 of the 30 Days to 3,000 Fans program. You can learn more about the program here.
Any internet marketer knows about the power of e-mail marketing. As I discussed in “The 5 Phases of the Facebook Sales Funnel“, it’s important to drive users to take an action. Often that may be registering for an email newsletter which can then be used to upsell the user on a product or service. In addition to e-mail newsletters, every modern marketer sends numerous e-mails every day and each of those e-mails should be used as an opportunity to drive new fans.

4 E-Mail Marketing Strategies For Facebook Page Admins

Despite the power of social technology as a platform for marketing, e-mail marketing still remains to be one of the most effective tools for keeping in touch with users and promoting services and products. That’s why we think it’s a great idea to take advantage of e-mail marketing to promote your Facebook Page. Below are five e-mail marketing strategies that will instantly boost your Facebook fan base.

1. Promote Your Newsletter Via Your Facebook Page

If you have a newsletter one of the best ways to get new members is via your Facebook Page. Use sidebar promotions as outlined on Day 24 to drive new member registration. Also feel free to occasionally post updates that encourage fans to register for your e-mail newsletter. Be careful though because overly promoting your e-mail newsletter will drive many Facebook users away from your page.

2. Use Mundane Emails As A Promotion Opportunity

I personally send hundreds of emails a day and any professional marketer is most definitely sending numerous emails daily. That’s why I suggest taking that opportunity to drive new fans to your Facebook Page. In addition to your name and phone number, add a link which directs your contacts to your Facebook Page. Most people are willing to become a fan. To increase conversion place a call to action at the end of your email such as “Please support me and join my Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/allfacebook“.

3. Promote Your Page Via Your Newsletter

This one should be pretty obvious: use your e-mail newsletter as a tool to promote your Facebook Page. Also invest the time necessary to optimize the conversion of newsletter subscribers to Facebook Page fans. As you promote your Facebook Page it’s a great idea to find out how many of your readers are clicking on your Facebook Page. There are numerous email marketing platforms but not all of them provide detailed analytics services. One of the best email marketing systems I’ve found is Aweber but there are many others as well. Determine what sort of click through rates you’re getting and modify your email as necessary to increase the number of people clicking on your Facebook Page link.

4. Use E-Mail Registrations To Score Interviews

One of the best features about e-mail marketing is that it’s easy to quickly browse through e-mail addresses and determine what companies your subscribers work at. I typically reach out to people that may have interesting positions and ask them for an interview. When somebody provides you with an email address look them up on Facebook and LinkedIn to determine what their position is and if it sounds interesting, just ask them for an interview opportunity. It helps you to expand your network and it provides valuable content for your readers.

Daily Task

Register for an email marketing service. Not all services cost money. For example, Campaign Monitor is free to register and only charges you when you send emails ($5 + $0.01 per recipient per campaign). AWeber is another great service and charges you a flat fee based on the number of subscribers you have, not the number of emails you send out. If you are going to turn any of your Facebook fans into customers, the best way is through contacting them directly and the easiest way to reach them online is via email.

This is Day 27 of the 30 Days to 3,000 Fans program. You can learn more about the program here.
Facebook provides all page administrators with a tool for tracking the growth of the page as well as the number of interactions on your page. There are a few numbers which you can look at to determine how to improve you page most effectively. Ultimately by performing the steps outlined over the 30 days to 3,000 fans program, you should have figured out the most effective methods of improving your page.

Understanding Post Quality

Facebook provides one metric which they suggest page administrators use to determine the quality of their posts called “Post Quality”. I tell most people to take this metric with a grain of salt. The system encourages that you increase the volume of posts that you make to a reasonable level (2 -3 times a day) and to improve the quality of the posts as measured by the number of comments and likes on each post.

As I’ve written a number of times, it’s possible to increase the number of comments and likes by asking questions as well as posting more relevant posts. I’ve also found that jokes tend to get a larger response. Facebook then determines post quality in a number of ways but the most obvious is the number of interactions as a percentage of the size of your fan base. If 50 percent of your fan base is interacting regularly, you’ll end up with a high post quality score.

While there are a number of other metrics that you can keep track of to increase your post quality, I honestly don’t think this is the most effective measure of the success of your page. It may be possible to attract a large number of fans who are simply not active. Well known brands and personalities tend to get a larger number of replies per post. The best model to improving your post quality is to test out various types of posts and see which attract the most responses.

Whenever you find a post which attracts a large response, you may want to make it a habit to post similar updates.

5 Important Insight Metrics

Total Fans And Unsubscribed Fans

One of the most useful charts is the number of fans you have and the number of unsubscribed fans. Depending on the type of page you have and the level activity on your page, you will tend to see different growth charts. One of the most important levels to monitor is the percentage of fans who’ve unsubscribed. If this percentage is increasing over time, you may want to check out the type of content you’re posting as well as the volume of posts. While posting often is important, you can chase fans away by posting too often.

Interactions

As the number of fans on your Facebook page increases, the number of users interacting with your page should increase as well. Whether it’s comments, wall posts, or likes, you can view the number of interactions on your Facebook Page by viewing the “interactions” graph. This graph tends to be pretty useful for seeing how well you are engaging users on your Facebook page and also happens to be the default graph when you view your page insights.

Interactions Per Post

This happens to be one of my favorite charts. If you’re fan base is growing you should also slowly improve the quality of your posts as you see how fans respond. It can be a misleading chart though as interactions per post should increase proportionally to the number of fans you have. Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t show any percentage charts but basic division will give you that information. If your interactions per post aren’t increasing over time then you aren’t doing a good job of producing valuable content. Tomorrow I’ll be discussing content strategy more in depth if this is an area where you are having problems.

Page Views

If you’re a webmaster there is no doubt that you have spent countless hours working with Google Analytics. The page view has become one of the standard measures of success on the internet. This chart is pretty straight forward as it depicts the total number of pageviews to your Facebook Page. Whether it’s new fans or existing fans, all page views are grouped into this metric. As you grow your page, the total number of daily page views should be increasing as well.

Demographics

One of the best features of Facebook page insights is the ability to track the demographics of your fan base. While Facebook has the breakdown of your fans’ demographics as percentages you can also view the absolute number of users within your Facebook page by their gender and age. By viewing the demographics chart you will be able to see which demographic groups are growing quickest as well as which demographic groups are the largest.

Daily Task

Spend some time navigating your Facebook Page metrics. To get there, click on “See All” from within the “Insights” box on the left-hand side of your Facebook Page.

This is Day 26 of the 30 Days to 3,000 Fans program. You can learn more about the program here.
If you are the average small business owner, there is a good chance that the majority of your competition isn’t doing much in the social media space. However there always is at least one person who stands out from the rest and I’m sure you can think of at least one company which accels where others aren’t even trying. For larger brands, having a social media presence (including Facebook) hasn’t been optional for at least a few years now. If you plan on succeeding at building a large presence on Facebook, you will most definitely want to invest time researching how others are succeeding.

The Keys To Success

If you want to analyze the competition, you’ll need to determine what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong. To acquire this information you’ll need to do some research but first you need to define what you consider to be successful. If generating more sales is your definition of success, no amount of research you do on Facebook will provide you with answers unfortunately but I can just about guarantee you that any business which has built a sizable fan base is sitting on an opportunity to generate a lot more income. Despite not being able to track the direct impact of new fans to your competitor’s Facebook Pages, you can track a number of other variables:

• Demographics of fan base - This takes some time to compile depending on the number of fans but is extremely valuable information. If you don’t have the time to do this, grab an assistant off oDesk to do the research for you. Ultimately what you can determine is whether or not the Facebook page administrator for each page has done an effective job at aggregating their target market. If you have thousands of fans but none of them fall within your target market, you aren’t doing a good job.
• Frequency of updates - Are your competitors actively engaging their fans? What methods are they using to engage them? Over the past 25 days we’ve discussed a number of effective models for engaging fans. Which of those methods are your competitors using? Has increased engagement resulted in an increased number of fans? Take notes about each of their updates and the type of content they are posting. Is there any way you can improve upon what they’ve already begun testing?
• Level of comments and likes - It’s great if your competitors are updating their fans on a regular basis but how many comments and likes are they receiving? Take a look at those updates which are receiving the most feedback and post similar updates!
• Completeness of profile - Did your competitor fill out all of their profile information to make themselves more accessible in Facebook’s search tool? Are there empty boxes that aren’t being used and are just sitting around? If so, improving upon what your competition has done won’t be that hard. However if they’ve completed their profile and have a lot of information, see what added value your competitor has been able to provide their fans with. Is there a custom tab which includes additional information? Is there a unique offering in the content of the custom tab? If there are any subtle adjustments that you see in your competitor’s profile, try using them out in yours to see what effect that has.

Post Research Activites

Now that you’ve taken a look at your competition and have essentially ranked them on how effective they’ve been, start figuring out ways you can improve upon what they’re already doing. While I’ve provided a large number of ways to increase your new fan acquisition rate, there are plenty of methods that I’ve missed in this guide. Come up with a full list of some of the new tactics that you’ve found and start testing them out.

Daily Task

Create a list of all your competitors’ Facebook Pages and analyze them using the four factors outlined in this article. Now that you’ve determined some of the tactics that are used by the best Facebook page administrators (as described on Day 19) as well as those tactics already outlined in this guy, you will be able to see what opportunities your competition is seizing as well as missing out on.