Over the past week I have looked at why a museum should set up a Facebook fan page, discussed how you can make this look attractive to potential fans and touched on how to create engaging content.
In this article I am going to look at how you can promote your Facebook page to attract fans.
Start with your friends:
Virally building your fan base starts with your friends, simply click the “Suggest to Friends” link on your fan page and select those friends who you think would enjoy engaging with your museum on Facebook to become fans.
You should spread the word internally within your museum about your new fan page and get your colleagues to sign up, and suggest becoming a fan to their friends.
As your fan base grows you will find yourself linked to more and more networks of friends, and as people engage with your fan page this will feed back to the people who are connected to them, and encourage them to investigate your fan page for themselves.
This is why it is incredibly important to create good content which people can engage with, because good content will be spread virally.
Promoting your Facebook page in existing channels:
You wouldn’t produce a leaflet without your website address on it, and increasingly your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and You Tube sites are becoming just as important. With this in mind, you should consider signposting all your social networks on printed promotional materials.
As well as printed materials, you should also link to your Facebook fan page from your museum website, and talk about it in your e-newsletter and on other social networks.
I would also encourage museums to look at ways to tell visitors to the museum that they can be found on Facebook, whether that is a poster in the café or a notice on your information desk.
Facebook Advertising:
I haven’t seen any museums using Facebook advertising to promote a fan page (though I have used it successfully myself to promote museum websites) but this may be something you wish to consider because of the low cost and the fact that the people are obviously already on Facebook.
Facebook advertising also allows you to target your advert at people in your geographical area, and to target specific interests or age groups.
Search Engines:
I am always surprised at how hard some museum fan pages are to find, both with Facebook’s own search facility and with Google. Make sure that your page contains enough information about your museum that the person visiting it doesn’t need to go to your main website and that should provide enough content to make your fan page stand out in search engines.
Do you have other ways in which you have promoted your Facebook fan page? Please leave a comment and tell us what has worked for you.
Related Posts:
Facebook for a Museum (Part 1) – Getting started on Facebook
Facebook for a Museum (Part 2) – Creating a great looking fan page
Facebook for a Museum (Part 3)- Creating engaging content
Facebook for a Museum (Part 5) – Analytics for your fan page
This can help with the fifth part about evaluation!!
Facebook has recently created a new feature that allows groups, with more than ten thousand members, to receive feedback about their post and about the number of fans who have “liked “them or commented on them. As explained on the Facebook site the idea is that “these insights are aiming to help Page administrators understand more about the time of day, day of week, and type of content is most effective for delivering information to a fan base.” (http://www. facebook.com/FacebookPages#!/FacebookPages?v=app_2347471856)
We’ve used Facebook advertising to promote our museum’s page, and more specifically, upcoming events. It’s so inexpensive and we can target all local Facebook users (or all art lovers, etc.). I recommend it! http://www.facebook.com/#!/pulitzerarts?ref=ts