Does Your Company Have a Facebook “Like” Strategy?

A few weeks ago we welcomed our good friends from Facebook TabSite to present a webinar with us – Building Leads with Facebook. During their portion of the presentation they spoke about having a “Like the page strategy” and ways you can use custom Facebook landing pages to solicit a like. The information shared is must-have knowledge for inbound marketers wishing to use Facebook to drive leads. The below is our expansion on the “Like the page strategy” shared by the experts at Facebook TabSite.

Non-fan vs. Fan Landing Pages

Remember, not all custom Facebook pages have a like strategy. With applications like TabSite you can create a unique page which is only visible to visitors that don’t like the page already. This is called a non-fan page. Ideally, this is the page you want to deploy your like strategy on.

Facebook Like Strategies

There are two distinct “Like the page” strategies – On-page and off-page. The on-page like strategy should really be called an on-Facebook strategy. A page can get likes on Facebook by having Facebook users land on the page and liking it, via PPC or CPM, or by Facebook presenting it to the visitor because their friends like it already.

The off-page like strategy is simply an off-Facebook approach to earning likes. Facebook gives marketers the ability to move the like function to websites. You can easily add a like widget or button to a website page which when clicked will cause the visitor to like the associated Facebook page if they’re logged into Facebook – below is an example on this very post:

On-page Facebook Like Optimization

For those of you wishing to optimize your custom Facebook landing page in order to maximize likes consider these four on-page tips.

• Vivid, Simple Imagery
• Masking
• Ask for Support
• Give Incentives

Off-page Facebook Like Optimization

Some of you may want to incorporate an off-page like strategy. The easiest way to do this successfully is to tie it into a sweepstakes, contest or giveaway on a website and Facebook. The key is to require someone to either like your page or undergo an action which requires them to like your page (like posting on your wall) in order to enter the contest.

Earning the like does not guarantee that the individual turns into a lead or becomes a customer. What it does mean is that the individual has opted-in and therefore is allowing you to syndicate your Facebook posts on their news feed. Whether or not your posts show up in that individual’s news feed is determined by the Facebook EdgeRank algorithm. Because of this, Facebook likes aren’t good enough to be considered leads or prospects yet. Stay tuned for our next Facebook post where we’ll discuss ways to convert Facebook likes into real leads and sales.