I would like to share with you two Facebook pages that I find fabulous and that are good examples of how to grow a loyal following in a Facebook page without the budget of RedBull or Starbucks.
Case study 1: Lingopal
The first is the Facebook page of Lingopal, an iphone travel app. The application gives you a list of well selected sentences translated in the language of your choice. You can find the classic “Hello”, “How are you?” but you also have some very funny sentences to use for flirting. I personally love the “I am a dolphin trainer” in the French version of the app 🙂
Anyway, the people running this iphone application are definitely expressing their humour through the application and the Facebook page and I love it 🙂
So why is the Facebook page so special?
1. Welcome page. When you first open the Facebook page, you are greeted with a funny info, a well chosen picture and you are encouraged to like the page:
2. Product page. The Facebook page helps you discover their products straight from inside the page, rather than having to go to the website:
3. Interesting regular posts. But the best part of the Facebook page are the daily diversions!
Everyday or so, they post a funny / witty / interesting expression of a different language, together with a well picked picture.
Why is it a perfect example of how to run a Facebook page? Because they have found a theme that allows them to post regularly, that is related to their products, that is not spammy, that is viral and engaging, and the picture makes it more visible in the Facebook stream. All the best practices combined in one post.
4. Interaction with a personality. The Facebook page is not only about pushing info to your audience, even as interesting as the one Lingopal manages to publish, it is also about engaging and interacting with your audience, and again Lingopal does that well. This is the thread of comments of the daily diversion shown above:
As I was writing this paragraph, I received a notification from Facebook telling me Lingopal had left a comment in a discussion I participated and it definitely proves my point of an interaction with a personality:
Although the page is still quite recent, I can definitely see it getting traction in the next weeks because it has all the components for success without overdoing it. Too often I see Facebook pages with thousands of applications (polls, discussions, top5, quizzes, …) that nobody uses. Just focus on one thing and do it well and your page will become remarkable.
Case study 2 – Not pixel perfect yet
5. Give away (some of) your services for free. On July 20th, a group of designers from Czech Republic posted an offer. They will review the design and usability of your website and publish their comments to their Facebook page. The announcement alone received over 8000 visits.
You can check out the Facebook page of “Not pixel perfect yet” to read the different reviews they have already posted.
6. Increase your posts quality score. I guess that there is no need for me to explain why this is a great idea to get some visibility as design freelancers but I would like to show you a trick they are using that could change the way you use your own Facebook page:
Because they post their review in the comments section of a post, the post ends up having several likes and comments. To determine whether a Facebook page update should appear in the news feed of its fans, Facebook looks at the number of comments and likes of the posts (among other criteria). By posting the feedback in the comments, NPPY gives a kickstart to its posts’ quality score and increases the likelihood to be visible in the news feed of its fans. This trick should be used with moderation…
7. Have a clearly defined audience. There are certain things in the NPPY page that are not perfect though. The most obvious one is that they mix English speaking audience and Czech audience. It means that when they post in English, they create noise for their Czech audience, and when they post an Czech post, they create noise for their English speaking audience. Try to avoid this in your own Facebook page by having a clearly define audience.
Maybe NPPY should decide to go 100% English or 100% Czech, or to create two separate pages (probably not a good idea)
Parting words
This year is the year of the Facebook page. Every business wants one. Although Facebook pages are still quite a recent addition to the marketing / social media toolbox we begin to see some best practices emerging. What best practices have I not mentioned in this article? Please share them in the comments for everyone’s benefit.
UPDATE: Just discovered an interesting article about 40 highly effective Facebook pages. Check it out!