A Reminder for Geographically Dependent Business Owners:  You are a different beast than national brands, so you have to run your Facebook Page accordingly. Feel free to get ideas from what Coca-Cola or other national brands do, but do not expect the same results, or measure your success by the same standards.  And be sure to adjust your efforts to fit your demographic and your budget.

How to Reap the Benefits of Social Promotions

Running a contest or promotion on Facebook can get you well over 10x the number of fans you started with. But, not all of those fans are quality fans that are going to improve your bottom line. Many are looking simply to win your contest.

Your goal once you acquire large numbers of fans should be keeping them. WARNING: Keeping them is more work than getting them. This might mean adjusting your content to fit the interests of the newly acquired fans. This might mean posting less often, or different times of day. Experiment and pay attention to the response you get and whether or not people begin to drop off.

Please keep an eye on your insights right after a promotion and base your retention goals on the number of fans that are geographically relevant.

Nah, nah, nah, nah…nah, nah, nah, nah… hey, hey, hey, goodbye.

Accept the fact, before the promotion starts, that a percent of promotional fans will unfollow no matter what you do or don’t post. It is that simple. They have no interest in you and never will. They wanted to win or help someone else win the prize you were offering, they are not geographically relevant to your business, and/or are loyal to another business that competes with you. Unless you want to PAY them to stay, with a constant flow of giveaways that work only to keep fans that you will never convert to customers…you’re going to have to let them go. Try not to be upset about it. And try not to measure the success of your Facebook page and its content based on the number of people who leave within a few weeks or months following a big promotion.

Don’t Get Discouraged

Instead of looking at the total number of fans, look at your insights to see how many new fans you are gaining while you are at the same time losing those low-quality fans. Also keep an eye on the amount of interaction you get with each post. If you are getting feedback and positive attention – don’t sweat the total number. When you do the next promotion you’ll make up for it and then some, starting the cycle over again.

Reminder: Having 100 true and interested fans is better than having 10,000 who have no interest and no chance of converting into a customer.

**Originally written as a guest post for Crowdshifter