Comments on: How I Built A 6-Figure Facebook Fan Page

By: Murlu

Murlu — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:23:26 +0000

I’ve been doing some small testing in Facebook Fan pages lately (not anything extreme, I don’t have the backing of a business) but what I did was create a Fan page for my DJing website and ran a small Facebook ad campaign.

The results? About 30 fans within the hour.

This had me thinking, why bother running ads on Facebook to directly send a user to a landing page when you could build a better community by promoting your facebook fan page instead?

One of the things the business I worked for tried was running simple ads but they didn’t convert all that well (landing page really needed to be optimized) but I told them my small experiment and it had them thinking.

I think people are more willing to become a fan of a brand on facebook, compared to RSS and Twitter, because it’s a very simple one click opt in. It’s very non intrusive, with RSS you have to check your reader and make the commitment to view the article. With Twitter, you need to set up and account, learn how to use it and again, make the commitment of choosing link A over link B.

With Facebook, almost everyone has one and they use it regularly. Every day I see friends “become a fan” of a brand and ask myself why? What good do they receive from becoming a fan? Engagement.

With the fan page, as apposed of PPC campaigns and other social media, you’re able to talk with people that are within your demographic, instead of whoever just feels like following you for the hell of it.

I helped with the creation of a fan page for a new bakery my friends family recently started and within a few days it reached 300 fans. This may not sound like a lot but when you have 50 of these people now actively talking about the bread and coming in, this is a lot for local businesses when they are doing it every single day.

Sorry about being a bit all over the place but I think Facebook Fan pages are the way to go. You can “capture” people without having them give up email or use an external service, engage with them and gain amazing feedback.

By: Morgan von Ancken

Morgan von Ancken — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:52:33 +0000

This is quite an insightful post Adam. Facebook fan page analytics have frustrated me in the past as well, I especially like seeing that sentiment echoed here.

By: Adam Singer

Adam Singer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:29:31 +0000

Hey Jason – it was a relatively known consumer brand with a presence nationally. With that said – I sparked initial growth of this network without needing any mailing list or national advertising budgets.

Additionally – I don’t think a mom/pop small business needs a 6-figure Facebook group, especially if they are local.

With that said, if that mom/pop is shipping product online nationally or internationally they are on equal playing field with any other national brand to grow a following. Name recognition helps but I see plenty of name brands with relatively small followings (Ford is far more well-known than the brand I used as an example above and their following is currently 1/10th the size).

At the end of the day, you could spark growth for any good idea or brand in Facebook – well known or not – it’s totally possible. They just need to be worth talking about, or do something worth talking about.

By: Jason Falls

Jason Falls — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:03:10 +0000

Great stuff, Adam. My only questions here revolve around the type of business or client this is. I’m sure you didn’t divulge for good reason, but I think it might be helpful for folks to understand the context of this brand compared to theirs. It’s doubtful many mom and pop small businesses that don’t have 150K email contact lists and national advertising budgets can drive a six-figure fan following, as an example. Frame it for us and give us some general ideas of what people can expect on scale. Make sense?

By: Josh Braaten

Josh Braaten — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:33:07 +0000

I really appreciate these pointers. It appears to be very true that getting that initial push to get fans is the really difficult part. And if you don’t have a budget for incentives or an existing marketing list, it can be up an uphill battle. In cases like these, perhaps it’s more critical to focus on building your community/email list first rather than putting too much focus on a fan page. Obviously you don’t have this problem with your six-figure fan page; some of us aren’t quite there yet :D

Thanks for sharing the wonderful data/visuals… great post!