We've written about how to get more Facebook fans before, but this is social media marketing and things change quickly! In this blog I'm going to show how to drive Likes to your Fanpage (offline Like building strategies will be covered in another blog in the near future). With Facebook's new timeline, now mandatory for brands social media marketers are left with a whole slew of new ways to drive engagement to their fanpages.
Also on TechWyse:
Where Do All Of My Facebook Likes Come From?
How To Get 1000 Likes On Your Facebook Fan Page in Four Weeks
One of the new and exciting ways to drive people to your Facebook Fanpage is importing contact lists from email, LinkedIn and other sources. To do this go to your Fanpage and open the Admin Panel on the top of the page (it should be open by default). Click "Invite Email Contacts"
UPDATE: this feature will only work for pages with less than 5000 fans. Please see this page for more info: https://www.facebook.com/help/212291088790957/
Please feel free to try the other tips mentioned in this blog post.
Note: you will only be able to use invite contacts if you have fewer than 5000 Likes.
Here you'll be able to invite your Windows Live Hotmail contacts, Yahoo! contacts and Skype contacts. There is also a section called "Other email service" where you'll be given instructions on how to invite your email contacts such as those from Outlook!
You can also invite your friends. So if you have multiple admins you'll be able to invite all of their friends.
One of the really cool features of this is the ability to invite your LinkedIn contacts to Facebook, here's how to do this:
1.) Sign into LinkedIn
2.) Visit the Address book export page
3.) Select "Microsoft Outlook (.CSV file)" and click "Export"
4.) Save and name the file
5.) Go back to your Facebook Fanpage click "Build Audience" and "Invite Email Contacts." Then follow these simple steps:
Congrats! You're well on your way to getting your friends and contacts liking your Facebook page, but before you go ahead and invite your contacts I have one important tip.
Facebook does not allow you to customize the email you send out to your contacts, but it does include a fairly sizable image of your square profile picture. So when you go to send out your "Like my page" email, you may want to consider uploading a new profile photo temporarily. Make the profile photo say something like: "Like Us to enter our contest!" or "Like our Page for Free Giveaways," etc.
NOTE: To make sure your email was sent, try adding your own email address to the CSV.
Using Your Pinned Post to Drive Likes
With the new timeline, Facebook introduced the idea of the pinned post which is a post from you that is pinned to the top of page and will not be bumped down by subsequent posts. Your pinned post must be uploaded by you.
Let's say you have a video that talks about your contest or a great you have a really great image with prize pictures and contest info. You can pin those posts and increase the visibility of your contest. The size of your photos should be 404x404px in order to display the full image without having to expand the view.
Custom Apps with Fangate
Custom apps or tabs have changed quite a bit with the new timeline, they are wider (810px) and existing on a separate page basically housed within Facebook. One of the drawbacks of these pages is that they can no longer be made the default when someone lands on your facebook domain e.g. facebook.com/yourbrandname. They can still be used as the default page for Facebook ads and when you place a Facebook button on your website you can always make that URL point to your app.
You can still create a fangate that will allow users to get a special offer once the page is Liked. See this example (the TechWyse 2012 eBook) in action. These take some coding and design know-how to get exactly what you want, but if you're not picky and just want a quick page then I recommend trying Pagemodo.
In Conclusion
There you have it. As mentioned earlier in this post I will be talking about offline strategies for Like building in an upcoming blog. I will also discuss how Facebook advertising can help you build your fanbase. As some of you may be thinking, Likes are not the be all and end all of social media success. I look forward to sharing my new discoveries about timeline with you; until then, begin building up your fanbase with these tips!
on
Right Tips Man. Thanks for your efforts on making this article.
on
Thanks for your Idea I tried this one but even though It is very complicated to get likes by using this way. I was almost inviting more than a one thousand of friends on facebook but even I can able to get only a countable numbers of likes. And I found one fine auto like a generator with the step by step description.
on
Wow~
Thank you so much for this informative artice.
on
So frustrating FB invite contacts feature DOES NOT WORK. Does anyone have a work around?
on
@ryan, unfortunately, this feature is no-longer available on Facebook! 🙁 I think it was a tactic to get more users trying out promoted posts!
on
The “Invite Contacts” function on Facebook simply DOESN’T WORK. Don’t waste your time. I’ve tried everything from importing a small amount of contacts for it to send an invitation to all the way up to 500 contacts for it to send invitations to – nothing worked. No one gets an invite.
Looking at other blogs and posts around the web, everyone is experiencing the same issue. Facebook needs to fix this or scrap the feature altogether and stop wasting people’s time.
Import all of your contacts into your email client instead and send a mass invite directly from yourself. That’s still the best way to send an invitation for others to please ‘Like’ your business page.
Good luck!
on
Great tips indeed
on
After a lot of hassle I managed to sent a list of 4960 contacts (email addressses). Is there a way to check the status of ‘invites’ to a fan page?
on
Nick – I’m getting the same thing. What’s up with this?
on
Hi,
This is really straight foward but I can’t get Facebook to accept the CSV file. It reports this message:
It looks like you were going too fast and misusing this feature, so you’ve been blocked from it for up to two days.
“Learn more about blocks in the Body of an error/warning message. Title is: You’re Temporarily Blocked.”
HELP!
on
The trouble with just inviting friends and contacts is that they are exactly that – friends and contacts (unless they are business contacts). If you have gone to the trouble of creating a Page, it is usually for a purpose i.e. a service or product, club or group, charity etc whilst your friends and contacts may well be interested they only form a minute portion of the 1,000,000,000 users on Facebook, Twitter and web surfers.
There are plenty of websites offering to sell you Likes, Followers etc but the big players don’t really like you getting 10,000 Likes in a couple of days and you run the risk of getting banned. Search engines like Google and Yahoo also reward you for making ‘proper use’ of the social media websites. Using a website pexs-pro.com allows you and other start-ups to swap or trade Likes, Followers, Re-Tweets, YouTube views and website visitors. you get to choose who you visit, like follow and it is more natural so not much chance of getting banned.
on
I have the same problem. Please help!
“Harry Thompson
I upload the CSV file to the FB page but the invitations are not getting sent, I don’t even get an error message. Are there terms and conditions plus minimum requirements you need for you FB page so you can invite people via email.”
on
please…how can i invite freinds to like my page on my mobile device?
on
WOW! You’re article really helped me a lot! I wasn’t expecting that this would really make my fanpage blast!
Thanks a lot. Highly Recommended Post!
on
Glad to be of service!
on
Hi,
I am able to send invitations to contacts using “Invite Email Contacts”.
But the problem is every day i need to send invitations to contacts.
Is there any way to automate this process i.e.,is there any API to send invitations to contacts for facebook page.
on
Hi Zilla,
There’s no way the API can be used to automate the invitation process.
on
“Harry Thompson
I upload the CSV file to the FB page but the invitations are not getting sent, I don’t even get an error message. Are there terms and conditions plus minimum requirements you need for you FB page so you can invite people via email.”
^^ I am having this same problem. Any ideas?
on
Very nice tips, thanks.
on
Interesting tips. I just started a facebook fan page for my blog and have been trying to get as many likes as possible to immediately make my blog look more legitimate. But in the beginning it is very tough to garner traffic to my page. I will have to look more into your suggestions.
on
Have you heard of corkin.com?
They are a social media that can help with getting fans as well.
Thanks again for this info.
on
Thanks this is very helpful! Needed this! Thanks again.
on
I upload the CSV file to the FB page but the invitations are not getting sent, I don’t even get an error message. Are there terms and conditions plus minimum requirements you need for you FB page so you can invite people via email.
on
The “invite email contacts” will be very helpful in building fan pages if you have a huge database of emails. But the problem is that I’ve heard this feature doesn’t really work (yet?).
on
nice ..it is nice way to promote your fan page but there is a question that how it is beneficial for site..i am in way to promote our page but ….from last one year i want to know that how is it help to our site…?
on
Ive imported my contacts but no one including myself has received the invite. Please help!
on
Hi Sabrina,
Since writing this post, I’ve noticed that Facebook, instead of sending an invite email only provides an “X (name) recommends this page” in the right sidebar. I’ve noticed this to be case only when I uploaded a larger list.
The other you option you have is to send out a newsletter encouraging people to like your page.
Hope this helps!
on
Hi, I’ve sent an invite to my email contacts using the method suggest above, at least I think I did, not one has liked my FB page. Is there anyway I can tell the status of my invites?
on
When you upload your contacts, it’s a good idea to add your own email to the list. I will add this tip to the post.
on
Hi, for some reason, I don’t see a way for me to invite my contacts from my admin panel account. help!? Just importing email contacts from email is what I see :S
on
Try going to “Build Audience” and “Invite Friends” or try going to “Invite Email Contacts” and then “other tools” Hope this helps!
on
But the problem is, people does not have to like your page to view the content or enter the competitons placed on FB page anymore – the biggest challenge the companies faced with new timeline. Most of the companies are interested in having more people to like their pages and that is why they do competitions on their FB pages. Now, even if you give a car on the FB competition as a prize, thousands of people can review and enter it without liking your page at all. What is the way to control that?
on
I suppose you can’t, but you can always ask people to like your page in order to stay tuned for winner announcements and future contests.
on
Contest is excellent example of an important pinned post so no one will miss it.
on
Absolutely Allan, promotions and specials are another great thing to pin.