October 16, 2012 3 Ways to Convert Facebook Engagement from a Profile to a Fan Page
Last week I explored the answers the all-to-commonly asked question of ‘why do I need a Facebook fan page if I already have a Facebook personal profile?’. And while I hope that got through to some of you who hadn’t yet made the move to a fan page, there is still another question that needs to be addressed, which is: “Once I have a fan page and have invited all of my friends to join me there, how to I continue to convert fans, and ultimately the engagement, from my personal profile (that has hundreds, if not thousands of friends engaging with me) to a fan page with little-to-no existing engagement?” This is an incredibly valid question, but in all honestly isn’t an easy one to answer (especially with FB changing their own rules on a monthly basis for how posts are seen by your friends and fans), so let’s take a look at a few simple ways that can become an important part of a long-term strategy to convert fans and engagement from your personal profile to your fan page:
‘Teaser’ Content Strategy
A major pitfall that many musicians make is to cross-post the exact same content on both their fan page AND their personal profile. Look, the reasoning is certainly sound; you need to post your great new content to your fan page, but why WOULDN’T you your new content to the page where there is most engagement with your fans. I get that, but there is strategy to cross-post the content effectively so that it works towards building engagement in the right place. First off, you need to understand that not EVERYTHING that is published to your fan page needs to be also posted on your personal profile. In fact, the more exclusive you can make the content on your fan page, the better off you will be, as it will give your fans more of a reason to join you there more consistently. That said, when you do post this type of exclusive content, you should cross-post a ‘teaser’ to your personal page. 
To do this, you essentially want to announce the fact that there is something that you’ve shared exclusively (yes, you can use this word!) on your fan page and that people should head over there to check it out, and of course, you want to be sure to that you also tag your fan page by typing ‘@FAN PAGE NAME’ which will create a link directly to your fan page.
Privacy Settings
If you are trying to build a strategy around your fan page, making your personal profile page more hidden from the world is a great measure to take. There are two steps that can be taken here to ensure that you existing, and new fans, find you on the right page. 
The first step is to go to the Privacy Settings (found by clicking your name on the top right corner of the Facebook page) then clicking the ‘edit settings’ button under ‘Timeline and Tagging’. Here you can limit the default visibility of your posts by allowing only current friends to see content (hiding all new content from NEW people that find your page). The second step is to limit the audience of past posts, so that again if anyone new was to stumble upon your fan page, they wouldn’t see anything published to the timeline on your profile page. The final piece of this strategy is to then post 1 new PUBLIC update on your personal page letting people know that anything related to your music will now only be published to your fan page (again tag your fan page so they know where to find it).
Consistency of FB Fan Page Content
Of course, driving your current and new fans over to your fan page from your personal page will only work effectively if you are consistently updating your FB Fan Page with new, high-quality (and varied media) content. At least once per day, you should be updating your FB Fan Page with a video, picture, song, link to an article, shoutout to an other artist or blog (tagging that page) or question. Keep your target audience in mind and choose content that is consistently relevant to THEM so that it encourages engagement. Oh… and only post self-promotional content once per week. Doing so more often than that will likely drive your fans away from engaging with you.
BONUS: Promoted Posts
It is an unfortunate truth that Facebook’s algorithm for deciding which posts are displayed on your main News Feed has made it increasingly difficult for your fans to see your content. While this is a never-ending uphill battle for many independent musicians, Facebook DID recently launched something called ‘Promoted Posts’ which allows you to pay to have your content seen by more people. Now believe me, I know how terrible it is that FB has made it difficult for you to get your content seen, and their only solution is to make you pay them to increase the reach you should be getting in the first place, but such is the reality of a platform built on an ad-revenue based business model. Paying for ‘Promoted Posts’ certainly isn’t necessary for you to do, but as a bonus, I wanted to at least make sure you were aware that this option exists, should you have the budget to take advantage of it.
How have YOU converted engagement from your Personal Profile to a Fan Page?
The above will absolutely get you started on the right track towards converting fans from your Facebook Personal Profile to your Fan Page, but they certainly aren’t the only strategies. Let us know which strategies have worked for YOU in the form of a comment below!
Facebook tagged Facebook, Fan Engagement
Reader Comments (1)
Thanks for this post, Jon!
I think all the strategies you mentioned here are a great way to get started with Facebook engagement.
I have often adopted a help-others-first mentality with FB engagement, and as such it's definitely a good idea to cross-promote other people's content.