The 5 Types of Facebook Fans Every Business Needs

Your Facebook page needs fans. And it turns out that all fans are not created equal. There are five types of fans that every brand page needs. 1. Sycophants: Employees, Friends, Spouse, and Kids This is how most Facebook pages start. You need 25 fans so you can get that custom address. By the way, it looks like not needing 25 fans was only temporarily true, and Facebook has gone back to the 25 fan requirement. So just use whatever persuasion techniques you have at hand to get this accomplished -- bribing, cajoling, guilt trips, or threatening to fire employees (Just kidding!). 2. Your Current Customers Many businesses new to Facebook think this is all they need. The problem is, it's hard to get a large percentage of your current customers to click like on your Facebook page. Even if you have them all on an email list, only 30 percent will open your email, and a smaller percentage will click on the link to your Facebook page. You might be a local business person and you can put a sign up in your store, but how many will remember it when they get home? Few local businesses go so far as to set up a computer in their store specifically for customers to use to log in, like and log out, but if you incentivize them, you can make it happen. Incentives are the key to getting current customers to go through with finding and liking your page. But get used to the idea that if you get 50 percent of them to do so, you're doing awesome. You may find yourself getting some of them by going after the next type of Facebook fan, because this is the only way they'll eventually all see your Facebook page. 3. Potential Customers Facebook advertising provides incredible targeting criteria that will help you meet your future customers. Targeting geography, interests, topics, demographics, and so on, will help you narrow it down the the best quality prospects. You have to pay for these fans, but it's worth it. The estimates are that the average fan costs $1.07 and is worth $8.00. Those exact numbers don't hold for all businesses, but that's an average of almost 700 percent return on investment there, buddy. 4. Media And Trade Publications -- P.R. Speaking of targeting, have you targeted ads to the publications and blogs you'd like your business to be covered in? Maybe you didn't think of it. Are you going to do it now? I do. You can target people who work at various publications, or who like them. Guaranteed, the writers and editors have liked their company on Facebook (see fan type #1). 5. Mega Fan Bodyguards If you do a good job collecting happy customer fans and hyping up prospects with your positive Facebook posts, then you will find this type of fan stepping up to defend you against the rare critic. That's assuming your business provides value and doesn't have bad customer service or destroy the environment or something evil like that. If people are essentially happy with your brand in the real world, these happy fans will protect you from the occasional crazy person. So What? Based on how your fans are interacting with you -- or not -- and what you've done on Facebook in the past, have you missed out on any of the preceding suggestions? Shore it up! Brian Carter is author of The Like Economy and Facebook Marketing. He's also speaking at Socialize West tomorrow.

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The 5 Types of Facebook Fans Every Business Needs

Your Facebook page needs fans. And they're not all created equal. But here are five types you want to cultivate.

1. Sycophants: Employees, Friends, Spouse, and Kids

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Brian Carter

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1. Sycophants: Employees, Friends, Spouse, and Kids

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