The number of Facebook users continues to grow, as well as Facebook’s overall influence. What once began as a tiny sharing site for college students has been transformed into a social media behemoth boasting over 800 million users. With an audience of such a size at your fingertips, it’d be foolish to not develop a strategy for engaging your own fan base and increasing their numbers. “Facebook Community Pages” can help make that happen.
With Facebook pages, anyone can create an online command center to share information with subscribers. Whether you post a video, a photo, or just an explanation of what you’re working on, users who “follow” you will be reminded that you exist, a great place to start when building a fan base. Along these lines, the most important thing to do to generate new followers and interest in your work is to make your page worth looking at. Really strive to have your page be more than just a boring information site. Seek ways to engage your audience. Post links and ask for comments. Film Q&A webisodes of you speaking directly to fans. Create surveys using apps like Facebook: My Polls or Zoomerang. Anything you do to place good content on your page will pay you back with new followers.
If you haven’t already, connect your Facebook Page to your personal website and any other social media sites you already use. These days, all major companies have a Facebook page, in addition to their webpage. They send out their Facebook address to fans in an effort to better understand their audience demographic. Use the same practice to find out who is into you and your work, and why. By connecting all of your other sites to your Facebook page, you will be able to get an idea of who your fans are, as well as having one central place for them to interact with you as closely as possible.
Reach out to other authors, and praise them, when deserved. Just as you are building a Facebook following to connect with your fans, other authors you admire may be doing the same thing. Seek them out and support their mission by sharing them with your fans. Don’t be afraid to speak highly of them, if your praise is genuine. As you show more of yourself, people will respond in kind, and before you know it your online fan base will be growing faster than you would have imagined.