Facebook is an excellent place to encourage community growth around your brand. One of the nicest ways to do this is through fan appreciation. Many social communities run ‘fan of the week’ promos, to stimulate further growth and interaction on a weekly basis. But how do you go about running a promo like this?
Courtesy of blog.gliks.com
The Fan of The Week
Simply put – a fan of the week is chosen on a ‘weekly’ basis, that has contributed the most conversation on your Facebook page. These fans are key players in your community and should be appreciated. It also inspires some friendly competition between fans, as you give them some exposure if they win.
Understanding The Rules
Facebook has very strict rules on running competitions and promos on its platform. You may not run these promos using a Facebook-made app. So that eliminates all of the average Facebook features. Of course many companies do this weekly fan appreciation on such a small scale, that Facebook allows it.
In this instance, the community knows that there is an ongoing ‘fan of the week’ contest, and at the end of every week a Facebook update naming the fan is published. Short, simple and far more effective than you might think. Anything more than this, and you are going to have to do it through a third party application.
Facebook allows promos on third party apps, so use these to really impress your fans.
Creating a Featured Fan App
The most effective form of fan appreciation is when you spend some money getting an app made that really showcases your fan of the week. This is best for service-based niche businesses that would love the added exposure. The more you give them, the more your fans will comment and interact.
This can include a tab dedicated to the feature, with branding, design, image and video sharing capabilities. Choose your fan yourself, or get your community to vote for the best comment during the week. If you have a small budget, reward your fans with a prize – either digital content, or something you can send them.
You’re allowed to put up photos of the winner with their prize, which is great for future fan of the week prospects. There are a lot of great app development companies that will create an app like this for your business. Avenue Social, Appbistro and Involver are just three options you can look into. They often work to a set budget, so you can negotiate a price that suits you both.
Once your fan of the week promo is up and running, promote it on your other social sites. Do a blog about it, include a few tweets detailing what it’s about, and send out a memo to your LinkedIn community. If you have the budget – get a short video made that spreads the word, it’s a good investment in the engagement value of your Facebook community. Now you know, so start one!
Do you have any questions about running a fan of the week promo? Just ask us here, and we’ll do our best to answer it!
which app should i use to integrate in my fb page ?
@Vineet – The best kind of Fan of The Week promo should be custom made. You should find an app company that can do it for you (Avenuesocial is good). There are free apps you can integrate online, but many of them are branded – which sort of defeats the point of using them. Hope this helps!
Thanks a lot for the info
1 more thing – I wanna promote my blog – http://www.vineetgupta.net
can u pls share how it can be done. And should I use blog submission directories to submit my blog link to them ?
Thanks
@Vineet – There are a lot of great ways to promote your blog – but the most effective is still guest blogging. Find ten blogs in your niche, and do posts for them. Make them really good, and soon your readership will grow.
Okz. And thanks for the reply
Hi can this be set up on and in a group on face book? thanks
@Julia, yes it can, just follow the advice in the post. Be careful not to post too many times though, or you’ll lose group members!
Facebook says, “You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines) or Pages.” My question is, this fan of the week IS announced on your page. Doesn’t this count as notifying through Facebook, and does this mean you can’t reward your fan via Facebook?
Thanks!
Hi Shawndra, technically fan of the week isn’t a contest, because no prizes are given away. There are also loopholes to the whole ‘don’t announce contest winners on Facebook’ thing. Send your contestant winners an email, then you can announce that you did so, and that they are the winners. Then it’s just a notification, and Facebook wasn’t the platform used to announce your winners. – John
Is it ok to post the following announcement in our page wall?:
“ANNOUNCEMENT ! Starting from this month, we’ll be giving away a fabulous eBook to anyone who’s qualified as Fan Of The Week ! All you need to do is just be ACTIVE in our page by either Liking, Commenting or Sharing our posts on a regular basis and you’ll stand a good chance to be picked as our Fan Of The Week to earn yourself the free eBook.
P.S. Every Fan Of The Week can only receive the free eBook once.”
@Louis – Offering a prize means that it’s a competition, and Facebook may not like that Louis. Go over their official rules and see if you can find a better way of offering that free ebook. It might be totally fine, but just to be sure – best to read the terms and conditions again. – John
[...] Simply put – a fan of the week is chosen on a ‘weekly’ basis, that has contributed the most conversation on your Facebook page. These fans are key players in your community and should be appreciated. It also inspires some friendly competition between fans, as you give them some exposure if they win. [...]