Put out the Welcome mat on Facebook
If you have a Facebook page for your business, chances are you have people posting messages on your wall. Most will simply be from new likers letting you know they have arrived.
Whether or not you mark these as spam or delete them is entirely up to you. Personally, I don’t mind people posting a simple “Hi from your newest liker, looking forward to reading your blog,” then putting a tag to their page. If the message is a blatant plug for their business, I delete their post as soon as I can. My page is to promote my blog – that that’s another post.
Recently, I have made a point of welcoming people to my page when they post. Generally it’s along the lines of “Welcome, it’s great to have you here.” If the liker has written a comment or a question, I will answer when I reply.
I started doing this as an experiment in 2 things. The first was to see if it reduced the number of spam posts I received as people could see the sorts of posts I responded to and hoped it would give people the idea of the posts I accepted. The second was to see what would happen with likes and recommendations.
The first goal – I’m not sure if it has been achieved, I do know that I don’t get many spam posts, and a lot more new likes do post to say hi. I’ve discovered some great pages, and those pages have also given me ideas for blog posts as I can know the businesses of my readers.
The second goal – I know on one page I’ve had a few recommendations. I’m hoping with the page for this blog that the recommendations will increase as the blog gets up and running again. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
I do know, however, that when I go to another page, say hi and the owner replies to welcome me, it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.
So, do you welcome your new likes when they introduce themselves? If not, it might be worth trying.
