Facebook Features, pt. 2: A New Way to Invite Fans to Your Business Page

This week I’ve decided to do a few posts on some of the newer, or lesser known, features related to Facebook Business pages. In this installment we take a look at a new tool that Facebook has given us to invite fans to “like” our business pages.

One of the biggest problems facing many businesses when they jump into using Facebook is getting that initial push of people to “like” your page. This is especially true for smaller businesses that don’t have many employees, since employees and their friends are a great place to start. There are certainly a number of ways that you can let people know about your business page, but now Facebook has given us one more rather powerful tool.

In addition to using the “Suggest to Friends” and “Share” functions, as well as a variety of offline methods, it is now possible to invite people via email. This is especially helpful if you have any sort of business email database. Facebook now allows you to upload email addresses from a variety of platforms in order to send an email to your contacts to invite them to “like” your page.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. From your Business Page, click on the “Edit Page” link under your profile picture.

2. In the left sidebar, click on “Marketing“.

3. Then you click on the “Tell your Fans” option.

4. This will open up the following window:

5. If you choose the first option, you can upload a CSV (Comma Separate Values) file which you have created from an email client, such as Outlook or a database from Constant Contact or other Email database. Facebook will walk you through the process for a variety of email clients if you click on “How to create a contact file”.

6. Or, you can log into various webmail accounts, such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo, and automatically import your contact list. If you choose this option, you then have the ability to individually choose who will receive your email request.

7. Once you are ready, an email will be generated to send to your list that looks something like this:

You’ll need to check the box acknowledging that you have permission to send the invite.

Note: Be very careful how you use this. This is best used with people that you know pretty well, or if you already have a business e-mail database which was opt-in for your subscribers. If you don’t do this properly it will appear as being very spammy.

Good luck, and let me know how it works for you!

Tagged as: business page, Comma-separated values, Constant Contact, Email address, facebook, gmail, Hotmail, Marketing, Social Media, Yahoo