Community Building Strategy Series: Your Facebook Community

Starting today, we are releasing the first post in our Community Building Strategy Series to share some of the techniques used to help you grow your community for specific online platforms...and today we are going to cover Facebook.  Facebook is one of the many social medial channels that are available today and a Fan page on Facebook gives you the ability to reach out to your community who use Facebook frequently.

In our past posts, we shared with you many strategies for using Facebook and today we're going to break down some of these strategies into 7 simple steps for you to follow and grow your fan base on Facebook.

Create a Facebook Fan Page

For every business large or small, a fan page is a great way to connect to anyone who uses Facebook frequently.  Our post on the 10 Ways to Maximize Your Facebook Fan Page shares the essential elements that you should consider while creating a fan page.

Plan your Time

Set aside some time everyday or every week that you will use to manage your fan page on Facebook.  This will enable you to consistently build awareness of your business and create regular communications with your fans.

Promote

Promotion is an important step...promote and encourage everywhere you can (with proper etiquette of course).  This could be a post on your blog or posting a message on your personal Facebook wall or sending email requests to your friends, customers and community members to become a fan of your Facebook fan page.  And don't forget all your friends and family as they are great promoters for you and can reach across their own networks to build your fan base.

Share Information

This is one of the steps that you should do regularly.  Share useful information that will help your fans and it doesn't have to be just about what you're selling...anything relevant to your community and their interests is great information.  Adding value is critical to attracting fans...so share information about your products as well as information from others on new trends in the market, community news, etc.

Connect with Others

Connect with others by becoming a fan of their businesses and groups.  Share their information on your fan page and share your information on their fan pages.  This will enable lots of visibility to you and your business which will help build your community.

Start a Discussion

Start a discussion on your fan page and talk about what's important to your community.  Share resources relating to this discussion and encourage everyone to participate by posting comments and messages on your wall.

Create an Event

Events are a great way to build your community.  Creating an event on Facebook and promoting others at the event will give you lots of visibility and be sure and let everyone attending the event about your fan page on Facebook.

Social media is a wonderful tool for building community and growing your business...it is a process so set your goals, commit to working regularly and you will see positive results.  Here are some other helpful resources:

• How to build a Facebook community
• 10 Tips for Facebook Community Building
• Demystifying Community Building on Social Media (Facebook)