In this day and age a Facebook fan page is all but mandatory. I often find myself checking Facebook first when I learn of a new company and I’m trying to decide if I want to do business with them. And that includes handmade businesses.
Monthly active users now total over 850 million and 23% of users check their Facebook more than 5 times a day according to this post.
The key to using Facebook to build your creative business is to build the number of people who like and interact with your page. Once people start liking and interacting then the folks on their friends’ lists will see the posts and your audience will slowly, but surly grow.
Here are some tips for growing your Facebook page. Nothing super involved, and no promises of a million fans over night, but they will help you get a steady trickle of new fans and customers.
- Invite your friends and family. Some of the people who are friends on your personal Facebook profile may not know that you own a business. The moms from your children’s school, your dental hygienist and some relatives you don’t see often. Send them an invitation to like your page and see what you are creating.
- You don’t need to send an invitation every week but just one to let them know where they can find more about what you do. You can also share some of the posts from your business page on your personal page. Use caution with this one! Family and friends might find it annoying to see everything you post posted twice on a regular basis and they might UNLIKE your business page if you share the same content twice on a regular basis.
- Link your accounts. If you have an Etsy shop you can easily link your Etsy shop to Facebook. The same goes for your blog, Twitter, YouTube and some other accounts. Make it easy for people who follow you on other platforms to like your Facebook page. Remember that when you list an item in your Etsy shop you can share it to your Facebook page. If you are listing many items you may only want to push one or two through to Facebook to keep from flooding your fans feeds with items.
- The school of thought used to be that Facebook Fan pages shouldn’t post to more than 2 or 3 times a week. But now you will often see a page post 2 or 3 times a day. So how many times should you post for your business? Experiment. Try posting at different times of the day and differ the number of times you post per day to see what seems to be a good number for your fans.
- What to post? Behind the scenes action, personal thoughts, favorite quotes, live action thoughts or photos from craft shows. Make sure that whatever you post is relevant to your business but have fun with it. Keep in mind that images are more likely to be seen, be commented on and be shared. Photos rule on Facebook.
Be sure to let your personality come through on your page. Let people know that they are interacting with a real person who is passionate about what they make. Be silly, be honest, be transparent, but don’t be phony, pushy or irrelevant. No one wants to be asked what kind of superhero they would like to be if they had the choice, but they might like to share what their favorite color for the upcoming season is.
And, hello, THAT is also market research.
Does your creative business have a Facebook page? How do you reach out to fans?
By: Vicki O’Dell, The Creative Goddess
You can find more of Vicki’s article right here on her profile page!
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I have found that having a contest such as a drawing for one of my items has helped me boost my page like count. By having my fans share a photo or post on their own wall others have seen it and have become fans. I also post in groups that sell stuff. I list my fan page and my website. I have made a few sales that way.