5 RULES TO EXPAND YOUR FAN BASE ON TWITTER

In today’s social media world, honesty weighs heavily on a brand’s success. Fans need to be able to trust the brand and since they can see and judge brands’ posts and interactions, brands need to pay attention to what message they are sending. Having a high number of fake followers in your fan base causes your brand to seem dishonest and therefore ultimately phony itself.

here are tips on how to grow your fan base without seeming "phony"

1.     Always have a good description of your product. Fans don’t want to guess what your product is, how it works and/or the services it provides. The clearer and more detailed you are about your product, the more likely the fan is to trust in it.

2.     Always put your face behind the handle. Fans tend to believe in the product when there is a human face connected to it. Therefore, you shouldn’t hide behind a logo, or sign off as admin. You should always sign off with your own name. For example, Vodafone UK has photos and names of their tweeters listed directly on their Twitter page, allowing fans to see which person has tweeted what.

3.     Always try to keep a conversation. When responding to fans, make sure that you are polite and honest. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to apologize for mistakes. The social media environment is very forgiving, but you have to make sure that you acknowledge where you have done something wrong

4.     Always check who follows you. When receiving a new follower, always click on their profile to see who they are, thank them for the follow and set up a relationship. Fans will appreciate the interaction. However, if the follower displays signs of ambiguity and seem to have a fake status, then block them because they will hurt your community in the long run.

5.     Be proactive with your posts. Don’t only syndicate out your news (a practice commonly used by media outlets), but try to create a dialogue and make sure to reply to fans. Also, look proactively for opportunities to engage your followers. This will help to genuinely grow your fan base

Facebook: FanPage or Profile?

Are you a brand or an individual? Facebook has made it clear that there is a demarcation between these two, hence, there are different types of account serve different purposes to the different types of users and thee accounts are more advantageous when used rightly.  Since personal accounts are meant for individual people, they aren't suited to meet your business needs and vice versa.  While profile pages have their advantage as they bring closer and personal relationship with your friends, there are a lot of reasons why a Facebook fan page is better for you as a brand

1.       Facebook Insights: As a business on a personal Facebook profile, you have no access to Facebook Insights. You are unable to export and digest the thousands of rows and columns of information that can help you understand your customer, what they like and don’t like, where they are from and when they are online which should serve as your measure of success/failure

2.       Facebook Tabs and Contests: With Facebook tabs, you can use apps to explain more about whom you are, provide a video introduction, feature your products, provide a newsletter opt-in form, highlight the history of your company, run games and contests and so on.

3.       Facebook Offers: It’s an official way to promote a deal you have to your Facebook audience. And when your fans and non-fans claim these offers, their friends see it.

4.       Facebook Ads: If you use a Facebook Page, you can reach more of your Fans and you can reach friends of those Fans with Promoted Posts. You can create ads that target people with relevant interests and attract new fans and new customers.

5.       Facebook Places: When you set up your business properly, you can also connect your Page to a Place and your customers can also check in, alerting their friends that they are at your store or restaurant. This is a great way to allow your customers to naturally promote your business.

6.       Friendship limit: Perhaps the most important is that Fan Pages can have an unlimited number of fans. Profiles can only have 5,000 friends. If you’re trying to build your business, why limit yourself?

More importantly, Facebook is taking more aggressive steps to remove misclassified personal profiles used for business purposes. As a result, millions of business owners who are incorrectly using personal Facebook profiles to market their businesses are confronted with two choices:

1) Convert your personal profile to a business Page, or

2) Risk getting deleted.

 are you currently using a Facebook profile for your brand, Do you already have 4500 friends on your profile and are afraid to losing them by creating a fan page?  Are you wondering how unfair it is for Facebook to require you to start from scratch?  Cast your worries aside as it is now possible to convert your 4998 profile friends to fans on your page, that’s right! And the best part is that almost all your contents and friends info move too! All you have to do is continue from where you left off.