Facebook Viral Fan Pages – Do They Work?
Do Viral Facebook Fan Pages Work At Driving Traffic To Your Website?
This is the question, and I would love to hear any of our readers experience with them. Have you had success with them?
If you are not sure what a Viral Facebook Fanpage is,
then go through all 3 steps outlined here
After you complete these steps, I would really like the answers to these questions:
- Did you like the experience?
- Do you think this will work to drive traffic to your site if you had one?
- Would you want a Viral Facebook Fan Page?
- How much would one be worth to you?
Please answer these questions on my blog. They will be informative for other readers, and if you complete these 3 steps, we all can see how effective these fanpages are.
If you are completely Sold on the idea of one of these for your business, then Contact Me, and I can make one for you. I am in Beta with this, and unsure of their effectiveness, so unlike all these other companies that will tell you that you need them, I need to see proof that they work. So if you want to take the Gamble with me, I will do this for you cheap. I want to see them in all sorts of Businesses and Industries with all different sizes of friends lists, optin lists to REALLY measure their effectiveness.
I don’t want to be pimping the next greatest thing if they do not work.
Please your feedback is much needed in this one.
Facebook comments:
Powered by Facebook Comments
Mike Leys says
The question would seem to be ‘should social networks be used for customer acquisition’. While, as a marketer I’d like this to be so, experience shows that people are turned off by unsolicited ‘sales approaches’ on social networks. It’s all about the state of mind of users of these sites (and I include myself in this). For the vast majority, we use them to keep in touch with friends and families and yes join groups and become fans of brands – commercial and cause related – that we have an affinity with. People’s perception is that these sites should be ‘safe’ places to interact with others and not somewhere to be sold to.
So what can social networks be used for in a commercial sense; yes they are great for supporting brands, so yes a form of CRM. Those who try to use them for overt or covert customer acquisition do so at their peril as I suspect it will rebound and damage their brand.
Gillian says
I am a fan of some fan pages, and to be honest, they are an extension of other peoples business, I don’t have a problem with this, especially if it is someone I trust and is full of good information and not just another sales page. If it leads to a blog thats fine, I like to see just who I am dealing with on a professional level. I have not bought from a fan page, but if I see something that particularly interests me, I will ask for more info.
This is different from annoying your family and friends who have no interest in marketing. This keeps business and your private life seperate so no problem there.
I will close a friendship or hide all their posts if they treat my page like a twitter ad This annoys me no end. when all they have to say if try or buy this.
Maybe later I will start one, but at the moment with all the social sites I am a member of, my time is stretched as it is. I do not want to spend a whole day flipping from one to the other. Don’t get me wrong, I love networking with like minded people and have gained some good friendships and valuable information, but when you spend all day on social sites, your business will suffer from lack of maintenance. I don’t care what anyone says, nothing is fully automated and needs attention to keep it fresh.
For me, maybe later not now.
Gillian
James Rivers | Titan Media Marketing says
Dave,
I have to agree with Ryan Bessling. I have worked on several client Fanpages and they really work well when put together correctly.
I would also agree that things in the “IM” world are not as easy for the average person as they follow every new technique coming out every single day and are “immune” to this type of marketing.
For the average business whether offline or online these types of pages are very effective. For those of you that are unsure you can go to the Nike, NFL, Budweiser, Future Shop… the list is long of large brands that use custom designed fanpages with great success.
There is also a long list of average people, businesses and personal brands/authority figures using these techniques and custom fanpages with great success.
Dave as you mentioned to me earlier maybe your example is not as polished as you would like. For those unsure of what Dave is trying to display… think of the possibilities pages like this can have for fans vs non fans. Remember you still need to provide daily value to your fans and not just sell sell sell.
You can create any kinda reward, offer, discount, coupon, freebie, contest that you want for fans vs non fans. For example Future Shop offers special codes to Fans only to decorate their holiday rooms which you can win some cool swag and in turn Future Shop will donate $1 for every room created to put gifts under the tree for deserving kids across Canada. Up to $25,000. That is a great example of how to use these types of pages for a contest.
Each month you can offer a great discount on one of your products for fans only. People always want a deal if they know one is coming each month or week then they keep returning.
Many people give away one of their paid products free in exchange for name and email so they can continue their list building and continue to grow their business.
Bottom line there are many successful people and businesses using Fanpages to grow their fan base while generating income and deliverying great content…
I suggest you go out and find other successful Fanpages in your niche market and see what they are doing and how they are doing it… believe me you will be surprised how well many of these pages doing for these businesses and or people.
Warm regards,
James Rivers
Ryan Bessling says
Hi Dave,
I personally know that fan pages work.
Just recently we set a fan page up for Black Friday Fire Sale.
We made several sales. We set the fan page up right at Black Friday.
We got 42 fans to like the fan page. The fan page went viral with very little effort.
I have to say, if you don’t have a fan page now is the time to get one.
Warm Regards,
Ryan
david Blair says
I’m not sure they do work. Yes your post goes viral but in a similar way to twitter on a News feed. These are next to useless as people scroll down their feed to names they know avoiding urls.
The old FB groups with their direct email system was much more valuable.
I think the problem is that the world is becoming immune to this type of marketing and email marketing in the same way as we ignore TV ads.
Emmanuel Mba says
I think it works if it is setup right but you have to drive traffic to it.
I feel it is a good advertising technique.
Ron says
Honestly…I don’t think any of this stuff lives up to the hype.
I see MANY people with the 5,000 “friend” limit, who struggle to get any action on their promotional efforts. They’re still begging and bribing people to “like”, “comment”, “post” or whatever.
I only see significant action on pages whee their is a great deal of passion among the participants…like political subjects, or MLM’s. Other than that…people don’t seem that interested in “liking” pages, etc…even with bribes (er, rewards) that they are not totally passionate about.
As far as what’s market value for something like that…fiverr.com gives you a pretty good indicator.
Admin says
Good points Ron,
For instance. The page that I setup will have 0 relevance for someone that does not have a website, or doesn’t care about SEO. The point is, does it act like a funnel, and filter those people on Facebook that are interested in things regarding a particular fan page.
You are right. If there is passion behind a subject, you will see fanpages explode with hundreds of thousands of users very quickly. Would a Viral Facebook Fanpage help or hinder this process, that is the question.
david Blair says
Ron,
I have 21000 members of ‘old’ groups across 10 groups all in the IM niche and 4100 fans.
6 months ago when I had half these numbers I was making about $1000 per month. This has dropped month by month and November earnings are down to $300.
People don’t leave these because I don’t think they know how to – they just start ignoring posts and DMs
Admin says
Ah…which brings up the real point.
The IM industry is taking a beating. It is apparent everywhere, and some of the gurus will have you disbelieving this, but the truth is open rates are down. Clickthrough rates are down, and I have talked to several of my IM buddies and this is happening to everyone. Mostly this is due to Marketers getting numb to Marketing techniques. This is why I have moved my entire business away from the IM niche into SEO and Consulting to Brick and Mortar businesses that need a stronger presence online.. Do you have any idea how effective all the IM stuff you have learned, when applied to offline business is?
I helped one client make 500,000 dollars in 3 months, when his best month ever before was 30k. (excluding a few one time deals he does from time to time)
The marketing techniques learned in the IM world are still just as powerful as ever, however, not “IN” the IM world.
Which could possibly mean that these viral facebook fan pages may work great, but to those pages that have nothing to do with marketing any internet marketing related service or product.
Hmmmm….what do any of you think?
befreeca says
I like facebook for reasons of social contact. It helps me to stay in tune with my family on 3 continents. Personally I don’t like the intrusion of marketers, who plaster my FB site with their product comments etc.
Admin says
You are correct. However, the only way marketers can plaster your facebook pages, is if you let them in. You can unfriend a person as quickly as you friended them.
Fan pages in particular are places that are meant for this. I more than anybody is all aware of facebook spam on my pages. I get marketers (or people that think they are marketers) posting links, and stuff on my homepage all the time. This is not going to help them.
However, If I post something on my homepage on facebook, it will show up in all the newsfeeds for all the people that have friended me. So the appropriate thing to do if you are a marketer, is to be responsible, and NEVER post advertisements for anything on others people pages.
Its a waste of effort, and rude to the Facebook Profile owner.
Wherever there are marketers, there will be good and bad ways of showcasing products and services.
Great input Befreeca,
Dave
Vern Brown says
From what I have studied about VFPs, it’s the “concept” that makes this an excellent system for marketers.
In effect, when a person “Likes” your page, it allows you to have access to ‘all their friends’… Who then [supposedly] would be “possible customers”.
And, every time someone “Likes”, either your or one of the “friends” [or friends of friends... ad infinitum] . . .
That’s the “viral” part and the whole reason this was created…
Is it a ‘good’ thing? Only time [and FaceBook] will tell.
Ingrid Baker says
Do they work? I’m unsure yet as I have only had mine going for a week. I have lots of friends that travel and have been encouraging them to press the like button, load some of their photos…..etc Maybe in another month or two I will have a better idea as to whether its been worth putting up. Best of luck to all people with a fanpage.
Wendy McKee says
I am not comfortable using Facebook as a Social “Marketing” network. The people I know hate even the ads on Facebook. This is a place where friends meet and chat and share pic’s, etc. ……….Not a place I do marketing. While I do promote a bit of clickbank product there, they relate to games currently played on Facebook. That’s it. I don’t want a page full of advertisements from others. I see that all day, every day, everywhere else.
Walter Williamson says
I have no idea what it does except go to your web page!
Admin says
Thanks for the feedback.
The theory is….. YOU have to LIKE the page before you can unlock the other parts of the page. This increases visibility on other facebook users page, which attracts them to the fan page which then starts to repeat the whole process.
The jury is still out to see how effective these are, but lets give it 72-96 hours to see what happened. There were 150 fans to the page, before this process was started.