Discuss the fun task of marketing a t-shirt shop. Where to advertise, local marketing tips, word of mouth, press releases, search engine marketing, keyword advertising, magazines, etc.
Hey, we kicked off our fanpage at the start of august and have done a few things to try promote it..
- competitions run via the fanpage
You want people to comment on your page and become fans. Then their friends might check out your fan page as they will see that someone they know has "fanned up" or left a comment..To do this create some competition where people have to leave comments..we did this and it has been quite successful..has gained us about 350 fans or so I think..I have a blog post you can check out where I talk about what we did..
- discount for "fav t-shirt is.."
Instead of 30% for joining give them a discount for letting you know which t-shirt of yours is their favorite. Then again you'll get a comment which their friends might see except it will be the best advertising you can get "My favorite t-shirt is your XYZ design - give me my discount" - imagine if you were getting a few of these a day how many people would be checking out your page to see what its about and how many new fans you might get
- Keep interacting
Try engage your fans, again, more comments = more fans..it will also help you maintain your activity rating which I think increases your chances of your fanpage appearing in the right hand side ad section, where it says "Friend Y has become of fan of Fanpage X"..
- Create a poll
Get people to vote on things...You can create polls that appear on tabs on the fanpage where people can vote o whatever..make the poll interesting and relevant to you niche and then set about marketing it. On the likes of twitter "link bait" it to a degree so that people want to click on the link to see what the poll is about..the poll is housed on your fanpage so you might get more fans that way..Don't limit your tweets to polls though - tweet til the cows come home...
- Ask your friends to join
Really, invite them all...to your good friends ask them to invite their friends as well..this can have unprecedented jumps in numbers...Also, importantly, when a friend joins your page leave them a comment to say "thanks for joining the XYZ fanpage - spread the word" or something like that..now anyone who visits your friends page will see a comment saying that they have just joined a certain fanpage and us humans are curious creatures so they might just check it out...
- Fanpage Exchanges
Know someone who has a fanpage? How about you suggest their page to all of your friends and vice versa..again, you don't want to do this too often or you'll annoy the crap out of your friends but it can be a good way to get some fans..
- Facebook Ads
Facebook ads can be a good source of a steady stream of fans..you might not get dizzying numbers but done well the costs can be kept down and you'll get steady growth..also, for every person who joins you don't know how many of their friends might also join...you can just hope that some do and that the circle of fans keeps extending...I recently ran Facebook ads - there is a thread about it here somewhere..
- Targets
Set targets for what you want to achieve. Be realistic, break it down into the number of fans you want to get per day and what you can do to get them...Work hard to get these fans..
- Blogs
There is no harm in having a blog, perhaps not for growing a fanpage but for keeping fans happy. Give them a place where they can find out more about the company etc..they may send a link to a friend and then you might get another fan - make it easy to join straight from the blog..also, blogs are a useful tool in the never ending SEO battle so the sooner you start the better..
- Website
On your webpage make it easy for people to join your fanpage..use the "facebook badges" that you can get which are really handy..again, tell them that if they join they can get a discount or find out about competitions or the latest product news..
After doing all that our fanpage has grown to a little under 1200 (hehe, and I don't have that many friends).. Not stellar by any stretch of the imagination but a nice start...Hopefully some of the above will help you and feel free to ask any questions you may have...
Wow thanks for taking the time to write all that. Thats great information. I really like the discount for fav t-shirt idea. I took a look at your Facebook page and was impressed.
But don't a lot of these ideas depend on you already have a solid base of fans? At what point did you start kicking off polls, competitions etc?
I kicked off the competition when we reached 500 fans..I started talking about it when we had 400 or so I think and encouraged fans to get other fans so the competition could begin...when we reached 500 the competition started (on september 23rd) and ended october 23rd...during the competition is when you have to work hard to make it a success - find people who want to take part..have a gander at my blog post - ladyumbrellatees.blogspot.com/2009/10/blogs-t-shirts-and-competition-tips.html
Hi ladyumbrella! I've seen you do raffles for new fans when you reach a certain number like the 2000th..
I'm just wondering if you get an alert from facebook when a new fan subscribe to your page. I've been wanting to keep track of new people but I have no way of knowing. How do you keep track of them?
Hi ladyumbrella! I've seen you do raffles for new fans when you reach a certain number like the 2000th..
I'm just wondering if you get an alert from facebook when a new fan subscribe to your page. I've been wanting to keep track of new people but I have no way of knowing. How do you keep track of them?
There is no alerting system to my knowledge. I just check the fan page frequently..
Hey aryanna, as chobay said facebook doesn't provide any alert system really, its just a case of manual monitoring for me. By checking the page frequently you can see how many new fans you get. Also, when you press the "view fans" button you see the fans who joined most recently first - this can be useful to try track where new fans are coming from so that you can better ascertain your niche and how to market to them and find out what channels (twitter, blogs, etc) are getting new fans for you...good luck with it..
Thanks for tips! and i see that you've fanned our page too ;-)
I still have a lot of online work to do and juggle that with production.
I'm learning a lot from your posts in these forums. oh, there's so much to do!
I try to keep the content on Facebook and My blog different. People will have no reason to go to both..you know? Also having links on each page to get back and forth helps alot. I guess....
I only just started a fan page as part of the 'soft' launch of my site. These ideas are really good, I especially like getting people to comment for a discount.
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Once they tag their name there, the photo will appear in their stream, and more people will get a chance to look at that particular design. The more people participate, the better it will be for you since more of their friends will check it out. So, we gave people two weeks for this. Once it's over, we will give a free t-shirt to one of the fans that tagged himself there.
I even renamed the album with the competition details so other people that don't know about it will get a chance to see it.
Incentives for Facebook fans 
