[Ed: We are excited to introduce Kevin Gaither as a contributor to this blog. Kevin is Business.com’s Director of Middle Market Sales and will cover various B2B Online Marketing topics. Learn more about Kevin by clicking here.]

How many fans does your Business Facebook Page have?  If it’s less than 624 (the average), then listen up!  Here are 5 tips that will increase your fan base and get your content shared with more people.  More importantly, leveraging your Facebook network effectively may help you generate more leads for your business. 

I recently attended a webinar hosted by HubSpot called “The Science of Facebook Marketing” presented by Dan Zarrella.  Dan shared key insights on how to effectively use Facebook as a marketing tool and here are my top 5 takeaways. The full slideshow is available at the bottom of this page.

#1 – Help your users look cool. 

Being on Facebook is ultimately a performance.  When you post a status update, you’re performing.  When you “like” something, you’re in essence performing for your friends and fans.  Nobody is going to “like” a Wart Remover Fan Page!  Dan tossed out the idea of creating a fan page called “Being Awesome.”  So if I liked it, my status update would read “Kevin Gaither likes Being Awesome.”  Cheesy example but you get the point.  Do things with your brand that help users look cool or “perform” based on their affinity with your brand. 

#2 – Get to know your audience. 

 One of the things that Dan measured was Facebook Profile Activity by Age, slide 17 below. This tells us that younger people tend to have more friends and wall posts. Older people like talking about themselves more.  If you’re trying to reach a younger audience, you really want to focus on the social aspect of your marketing campaign.  If you’re trying to reach an older demographic, focus on activities that would get them to like quotes and books for example.  How do you find out the demographics of your audience?  Among other methods he mentioned, you can go to Quantcast, which is a free service, put in your URL and it will give you US Demographic information. 

#3 – Stay away from buzzwords. 

Of a sample set of marketing terms, pages mentioning SEO or even Blogging had less than average fans, displayed in the graph below.  Facebook users will engage with topics such as Ice Cream or other kinds of food but they won’t share SEO or Branding topics, see slide 27.  Be creative with your brand to incorporate references that are NOT buzzwords to get your content shared and more fans to your page. 

Science of Facebook Marketing by Dan Zarrella, slide 25

#4 – Have content around Movies, TV Shows and Books.  

More users “like” pages about these kinds of topics and less likely to speak about topics regarding services, education and local business.  Perhaps you can have content on your page that profiles a popular documentary or a book that’s relevant to your brand so that people will be more inclined to “like” or share it. 

#5 – Make your content sharing-friendly. Here’s some data he cited that will help you do this: 

There was much more to this webinar but these were a few of the juicy tidbits that I felt might help you out today.  Below is the slideshow in its entirety.

What are your thoughts?