If you have a business fan page or are considering building a fan base on Facebook, there are some wonderful tools for getting great results from Facebook. The crew at Facebook is constantly changing the tool and adding new features, and there are two I’d like to highlight for you.
“Suggest to Friends” Feature Disappears
For now, it seems that Facebook has permanently removed “Suggest to Friends”. If you’ve tried to find it in recently weeks, you may have thought you simply couldn’t find it within the new Facebook fan page layout. Well, it’s not you. Facebook took away your ability to suggest fan pages to friends, unless you are the fan page administrator.
If you are the administrator of a page, the “Suggest to Friends” button is still available, and you can find it in the upper right hand corner.
So, doesn’t this hurt your fan page’s ability to go viral and pick up new fans? How do people find your fan page without this feature? Facebook is one step ahead of us, and replaced it with the “share” button found at the bottom-left of every fan page. This method appears to be superior to the “suggest” feature. When people “share” a fan page, it posts to their profile and will appear in their news-feed to all their friends. They have the option of writing why they “Liked” your page and why they are sharing it with their friends. This has the potential for better conversion results, and less “spammy” qualities than that previous “suggest to friends” feature.
If you encourage your fans to “share” this page, I recommend you get creative. Ask on a day when your community is lively, or discussion is heated. Entice people to “share” this page to spread the word about this issue, great sale, etc.
New “Questions” Feature Added
You’ve always had the ability to ask questions of your fans and stimulate discussions. However, using your status update bar to do so, doesn’t adequately allow for your questions to go viral and break outside of your fan base. With Facebook’s new “Questions” feature, you can really start gathering feedback in an organized fashion.
Get better fan engagement by asking questions or taking a poll!
Anyone can use the “Question” tool, which has been added directly above your update status bar.
You can use it to ask a question that allows open-ended answers, or you can choose to use the poll feature. You will see friends and non-friends who answer questions, and it will show up in their profile/newsfeed when they share it. Therefore, “Questions” has the potential to go viral. It is not only a great way to gather new “Likes” and grow your fan page, but a wonderful tool to gather feedback and keep it organized. You can go back through your “Questions”, similar to referring back to your “Notes” on Facebook.
Do you have a question about either of these features? Please leave your question below and we’ll do our best to help you.
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