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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 

How I Got A Bunch Of New Facebook Fans

by Madalyn Sklar

So many people ask me how to effectively increase Facebook fans on their music or business page. First I have to say it's not an easy task. We are all used to easily adding friends on Myspace and seeing instant results from it. When it comes to Facebook, that isn't the case. They don't allow you to add friends on public profiles (fan pages). You can only do so through your personal profile.

This is where you have to get creative... or just go ahead and steal my ideas. Actually I'm giving you this information so you can try it out. All I ask is that you report back to me on your success - what worked, what didn't.

A few weeks ago I devised a giveaway to try out on the GoGirls "fan" page. I did what I learned from Jack Canfield (author of The Success Principles and Chicken Soup for the Soul books and was featured in The Secret). He says instead of  Ready, Aim, Fire it should be Ready, Fire, Aim. That means just do it and figure it out as you go. Many times we over plan, over think and in the end get nothing done. I don't work like that. I just do. So as I developed this giveaway I was ready and fired. While aiming I came up with a name for this type of Facbeook giveaway: "FAN US, SHARE US, COMMENT US".

Side note: If you're not familiar with GoGirlsMusic.com, it's an online community I developed well over thirteen years ago that promotes, supports and empowers indie women in music. It's interesting because in looking back I created a social network before any of us knew what a social networks was.
Here is the GoGirls Facebook "fan" page:



How I did it:

I started the giveaway on Friday, August 14. My thinking was do a quick one that would end on Monday afternoon. I wanted to see if over a weekend I could generate more interest in our site. And keep in mind GoGirls is a niche so it doesn't appeal to everyone. On that day we had 299 fans. I wanted to give away something I knew our audience would want - a 2009 Musician's Atlas. I posted a comment on the wall at 4:34pm announcing the giveaway and encouraged our fans to click on the "share" button located at the bottom of the left side column on our page. I even attached a screen shot image showing them and highlighted the "share" button. Hey, I wanted to make this as easy as possible! I then said to come back and post a comment on our wall letting us know you did this. That was it. Simple! And it worked. Within minutes comments were cropping up letting us know they posted this to their wall.



Here is where it got cool. Less than 30 minutes later I received a message from my friend Steve at Music Business Registry saying he wanted to donate some prizes to this too. He offered up an A&R Registry and a Music Publisher Registry. I was floored how viral this was in such a short period of time. So I now had three prizes to give away!

My thinking was it's late Friday afternoon so I'll let this sit over the weekend. On Monday I posted a reminder on the wall that the giveaway would end that afternoon. I couldn't believe how many comments came in. As promised on Monday afternoon I randomly selected three winners. And we now had 401 fans. I was wow'd at how easy this was. And the best part was reading all the cool comments and what people posted about us on their own wall.



So I now had a cool way to quickly increase our number of fans. It shows us all the power of marketing yourself on Facebook.

Then an interesting thing happened.... someone copied my idea. It was actually one of our winners. She was so impressed with this that she did the same for a site she manages and thanked GoGirls for the contest idea. In thanking us she included our Facebook fan page link which promoted us even more!



What will I do differently next time?

I'm planning to do this same giveaway on my other fan page, Social Networks for Musicians. This time I plan to launch it on a Monday and let it run for a week. I'll send out periodic reminders throughout the week.

So try it out and let me know how it goes for you. The only thing I ask is you not steal the name I gave it... "FAN US, SHARE US, COMMENT US". Take my idea but at least get a little creative here and come up with your own name.

Until next time...

Copyright © 2009 Madalyn Sklar

Madalyn Sklar is a music business coach & consultant, blogger, social networks expert and author. She has spent over 13 years helping independent musicians and music business professionals achieve greater success in the biz. Her motto is: working smarter not harder. She also founded GoGirlsMusic.com, the oldest + largest online community of indie women musicians.

Madalyn's Sites:
GoGirlsMusic.com
Social Networks for Musicians

i've been trying it for awhile with free t-shirts and /or cds.
I think it's the area i live in.
Not working for us.

Is this against Facebook policy? It says you need permission to do contests.

I haven't seen anything that says you cannot run a contest on your Facebook page.

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WHO IS MADALYN SKLAR?


    Madalyn Sklar is a music business coach & consultant, blogger, social networks expert and author. She has spent over 15 years helping independent musicians and music business professionals achieve greater success. Her motto is: working smarter not harder. She also founded GoGirlsMusic.com, the oldest + largest online community of indie women musicians.

    Madalyn's Sites:
    * GoGirlsMusic.com
    * Social Networks for Musicians
    contact: madalynsklar(at)gmail.com

         

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