Lena Gott said:
sooverthis said:
I think Facebook has the potential to be very powerful. However, it's also the hardest. It's VERY difficult to get fans without bribery. If you just want numbers, you can buy those pretty easily, but if you actually want engaged fans who will comment and share your posts, thats tough to do. The few times that a post of mine has been shared multiple times on Facebook, I saw a TON of traffic.
I am not above a little bribery. Anyone have good ideas for bribes to dangle in front of potential FB fans?
I'm the social media manager for a large online brand and FB and Twitter are a huge part of my daily routine and a large portion of our traffic.
Giveaways have been the fastest way to grow our Facebook likes and we try to have something going on every week. For bloggers without a budget I'd suggest trading your time for likes. Share your experience and knowledge by giving away an hour of your coaching, or an article, mp3, or something you've created that would add value to your audience.
If you're a bit farther along and have established an audience (even if it's a small audience), you can also contact brands who carry products your readers will value (and that you've personally tried and found value in!) and ask if you could do a giveaway on your blog and facebook page. Make sure you have a media kit ready sharing the demographics of your audience, the size of your community, what they're going to receive in exchange for the item they're giving you to give away (i.e. free advertising on your blog, blog posts, tweets about them, etc.).
Remember to giveaway an item on Facebook you have to play by Facebook's rules. I'd suggest using a program like ShortStack, which is free for facebook users with a small audience (under 2K I believe), to build the sweepstakes app for your Facebook page and include a fan-gate which requires Facebook users to like your page before they can see the entry form for the giveaway.