“We think we are ready to start a fan page. We have noticed lots of companies out there with fan pages and not a ton of followers, but we feel we just need to start somewhere. Any tips on setting it up? ” I thought I’d tackle this one for everyone:
A Facebook Fanpage is nothing more than a simple place to begin an online community. Just because there are 500 million Facebook users, doesn’t mean that they all want you to advertise to them. Don’t forget to think about your target market first and the tools last, based on your objectives and a clear strategy to achieve them. More importantly, forget about attracting a large number of fans or followers. As consumers, we’re already overwhelmed with businesses who we don’t care about trying to get us to ‘Like’ them. Unless I’m passionate about your product or service, its just noise. Attracting a large number of Fans is old advertising mentality: find a large audience and broadcast to them, hoping for a certain level of uptake.
First, you’ve got to think: ‘who would want to follow a hotel on facebook’? Which is another way of asking, who would want to be part of our online community. Your online community is a representation of your offline community so the logical starting point is staff and friends/family of staff. This is how word of mouth travels in the real world. How far you take this depends on how comfortable your team is with connecting their personal life to their work and this is a decision that only you can make.
If you establish solid relationships with repeat visitors, these are your next logical community members. Your goal is to find the people who really love your product and give them a place to interact with you and others. Prospective clients will see this interaction and find it to be a resource. The challenge is encouraging clients to actually take the time and go to the fan page to click Like, and then once you’ve figured that out, the next challenge is getting them to come back again.
What value can your fan page provide to people? What problem can you solve? Why would people go there? Think of this from a consumer perspective yourself – can you think of a hotel that you’ve stayed in that you actually remember?
Make sure you’ve got a remarkable product first, otherwise people will have nothing to talk about. Here’s a good post from William Bakker at Tourism BC about being remarkable. When I dive deep into my memory bank, there’s only one hotel that sticks in my mind. A little island in Fiji where I formed a close relationship with the owner over a beer every day. I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels.
Other businesses in your area are also part of your offline community. You can use the @ symbol in facebook posts to engage with your DMO or other businesses in your area. For that feature to work, the admin posting the comment must personally be a fan of the Page you’re trying to interact with. Here’s an example:
Can you remember any hotels you’ve stayed at that you would want to be involved in their community?