Win Back Friends that Didn’t Like Your Facebook Page
Downhearted that your friends don’t like your Facebook page? Take action!
By Ken Morico updated What happened when I asked a few friends and blog readers to like my professional Facebook page? Crickets. 1 like after about 50 invites. I didn’t send requests to all my friends, but a few that I thought would be interested. I wasn’t disheartened, but I’m now starting to change my strategy.
There are two things to consider when getting people to like a Facebook page: understanding the psychological reasons people want to subscribe to a page and mastering the mechanics helping people to click the Like button.
Psychological Reasons Why People Like Facebook Pages
I lot of times we feel that we build a great page, site, or multimedia content and no one is paying attention. We feel there must be something with us. Is our content not good enough? Are we not likable? Did we show up too late and there are giants in the land?
You need to spend some time and think like a user – see the other person’s point of view. Why should they care? We are all bombarded with messages. We need to respect our fan’s time and make our messaging important and useful.
Why People “like” a Facebook Page:
- Join a tribe
- Stay up-to-date — fear of being irrelevant in an industry
- Want to be first to know news
- Group think: their friends liked the page so they like the page
- Intellectual stimulation
- Want to be entertained
Facebook has an entertainment bias, so posts need to be fun or presented in a fun way. Just about every post should have a photo or video. If you’re not good at creating graphics you can use Canva or Adobe Express to make graphics with ease.
Mechanical Ways to Help Users Like Your Facebook Page
Build a Facebook Audience By Inviting Users – I Have an Email Address List
I used the Build Audience tool in the Facebook Page administration area and imported some email addresses. Pages with fewer than 5,000 likes can have email addresses imported to jumpstart the audience. The import process was simple. If you have an existing list to send to, there’s not really any harm in asking people to like the page as long your expectations are low. I think a better idea is to create an email marketing campaign and ask your real fans to like the page with a link in the email.
Permission Marketing – Filter Your True Fans
There are two ways to get people to like your Facebook Page – hound them, or make them want to like. There’s a form of marketing called permission marketing where users take actions to receive marketing. This is different from interruption marketing where people get messages they didn’t ask to receive or are totally irrelevant. A few ways to get Facebook Page likes: use the like plugin on your blog/website, ask for a like in an email campaign, or spread links on business cards, email signatures, and anywhere your name appears. Facebook Page posts are great, but I’m starting to see real benefits in outbound marketing – Email campaigns.
Email Campaign Difficulties
When I recently started my email campaigns there were some difficulties I didn’t expect:
- It took me 6 hours to gather and organize my email lists
- It took 3 hours to investigate the right email campaign provider for my needs
- High bounce rates can disable your account
- It took me 4 hours to create a campaign and create the right graphics
I’ve done email campaigns in the past for clients without difficulty, but spam laws have gotten tougher in recent years and email campaign providers are not taking any risks. They don’t want ISPs to block their emails from other users. Remember, you are on a shared server, so the bad practices of user can affect all users of the service.
ConvertKit – Free Email Marketing
I’m using ConvertKit and have been very impressed with the service. It’s free for basic emailing and reasonable amounts of subscribers (less than 2,000). The one important feature that requires a paid account is autoresponders, but that’s about it. Their drag-and-drop tools are great for non-technical users and the site is fun to use. They have a creator network and ecommerce abilities.
Converting a Personal Facebook Profile to a Facebook Page a Good Idea?
Many people that visit my viral post Separate Personal and Business with Facebook Pages want information on converting their personal Facebook profile to a business page. This is a bad idea. As you can see, the people that want to be your friend and the people that want to follow you are different. Forcing them to follow you through a profile conversion would leave a bad taste. The feature was a good idea when brands could only create Facebook profiles and pages didn’t exist. Now people should know better.
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