20 Ways to Promote Your Roofing Facebook Fan Page

How are you spreading the word about your Facebook page?
Your fan page can be one of a roofing company's best sources of customer interaction and lead generation. The only problem is making people aware of it. You definitely need to educate your customers and potential customers on how to find you on Facebook.

To help you out, below is a list of 20 different ways to promote your Facebook page. Even if you only do a few of these things, you should start to get more fans and begin to increase your return on time invested.

1. Put your fan page URL in your email signature. How many emails do you send every day? That is how many chances you have for someone new to find out about your page. Free publicity!
2. Write a blog post about your new fan page. Give your blog readers five compelling reasons why they should join your fan page (tell them about the kinds of information you share on your page).
3. Tag well-trafficked fan pages in your status updates. Fans of those popular pages your target customers visit (that are at least semi-relevant) might see your page and click over, giving you some additional cross-traffic.
4. Ask your Twitter followers to join your fan page. Give some compelling reasons why your Twitter followers should join your Facebook community. If Twitter is the new water cooler, think of your fan page as an invitation to come in and chat. Maybe Tweet something like "Want more conversation than 140 characters will allow? Join us on Facebook at ” and leave the URL to your fan page.
5. Invest in Facebook ads. They are a lot easier than you might think and you can spend as little or as much as you want. You can pinpoint fairly accurately the demographic you are targeting.
6. Put a Facebook fan page widget on your blog and website. Have your website developer put a basic widget on your website and blog that automatically displays the last 5 or so Facebook status updates from your fan page. Visitors will see this content and a) know that you have a page and how to find it, and b) get a sense of the kind of information they have been missing out on.
7. Customize your fan page URL. Vanity URLs are a fantastic way to make your fan page memorable. For example, my Facebook page URL is http://www.facebook.com/RoofPal.
8. Put your fan page URL on your business cards. Combine offline and online by letting the people you meet in real life know about your fan page.
9. Put a link on your personal Facebook profile. You can put a link to your company fan page under the “Links” section of your personal page. This may remind your friends and family to share the link to your company page with their Facebook friends.
10. Leverage the power of your team. Ask everyone in your company put the link to your company fan page link on their personal profile.
11. Ask your Facebook fans to post a link. Simply ask all of your current Facebook fans to post a link to your company page on their personal profile. As long as you don’t ask this often, often times people are willing to help you out. This becomes a personal recommendation, or word-of-mouth advertising (the very best kind).
12. Put a tag in your YouTube videos. If you make compelling videos as a part of your content marketing strategy, throw in a well-timed Facebook fan page link at the end of your YouTube videos.
13. Put your Facebook fan page URL on your Twitter profile background. Many people still use the web-based version of Twitter, and your profile background is a prime piece of internet real estate. Cross-advertise and use one social network to promote another!
14. QR Codes for your page. Create a QR Code that takes people directly to your Facebook fan page and use that code in your marketing, stationary, email signature lines, etc. If you aren't sure what a QR Code is or how to create one, please read the article I published, titled QR Codes for roofing contractors.
15. Actually use your Facebook fan page. Use the “Tell Your Fans” feature on Facebook. With the tools built in, Facebook allows you to import a contact file or import your contacts from your email account. This is particularly good for when you’re just starting out and want to tell people you already know.
16. Add a Like box. Place a Like box in your blog and website sidebar so people can "Like" your content automatically when they are signed in to Facebook and browsing the web.
17. Use targeted keywords in a Google AdWords campagin. Use a keyword-based ad and direct people to your fan page. This is like Facebook Ads on steroids. If you’ve never used AdWords before, it’s fairly straightforward. Google the term AdWords to set this up.
18. Redirect your webinar guests to your Facebook fan page. If you use GoToWebinar, you can choose to send registrants to a URL of your choice after they sign up. This is where you can direct them right to your Facebook fan page.
19. Put your Facebook fan page URL in your Keynote or PowerPoint presentations. When you present, the last slide can be your contact information, complete with your company's Facebook fan page vanity URL. Most people are already on Facebook, so it’s a no-brainer to give them an easy way to connect with you.
20. Invite all of your friends. Facebook automatically suggests people and pages based on the connections and Likes of your friends. The more of your friends who Like your Facebook fan page, the more their friends will have your page recommended to them without you lifting a finger.

These are just some examples. What are some of the most interesting ways you’ve seen people or businesses promote their fan page? Let me know in the comments box below and share what you have found.

Why You Should Blog

Simply having a static webpage and social media presence is no longer enough in today's rapidly changing digital world of marketing - you now also need to blog!

A website may be an important component of your online presence, but it doesn't engage your customers and can be cumbersome to keep updated. Social media is great for building relationships and trust, but you are limited to the depth of information you can post at one time. Alternatively, a blog enables you to easily update your website with fresh, relevant content and engage your customers (and can be shared via social media to attract readers back to your website).

Similar to social media, customers can leave comments on a blog which you can respond to. But unlike a status update, the discussion is centered around a specific, detailed topic that you have shaped and encourages ongoing community conversation and debate far after the post was uploaded.

Some business owners are concerned about the time it takes to properly maintain a blog. The good news is that a blog can actually take the place of many of your existing static pages, and they become interactive (not "brochure material"). Blogs can also be easily integrated into your static website as a dynamic component, giving you the best of both worlds. Blog posts don't have to (and shouldn't) just come from your marketing department - your employees who are experts at various components of your company should be encouraged to write blog posts (published with management review and approval, of course).

A blog enables you to attract new customers, build brand awareness and compel more prospective customers to buy from you. There are also great search engine optimization (SEO) benefits when using a blog. Due to its dynamic nature, a properly set up blog can attract twice the visitors your website can, and blogs get indexed by search engines like Google 4x more often than static websites.

My challenge to you is to set up a blog today and post something - almost anything, just to get started. RoofPal uses Blogger.com partly because it is free, but mostly because it is owned by Google (and I assume as a result, Blogger.com blogs are indexed more frequently and ranked higher in search results).

If you have any questions about blogging or would like assistance setting up and even managing your company's blog, please email Chris@RoofPal.com.

Roofing Customers are Extensions of your Marketing Department

People trust the opinions of their friends much more than corporate marketing messages, hence the growth of social media networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, and so on.

In fact, a recent AdAge study found that 90% of American consumers trust recommendations from people they know and that 70% trust recommendations of general consumer opinions posted online.

I began thinking this morning about how personal recommendations relate to the roofing industry... and I came up with an idea!

Because of what I do, I happen to see a lot of the content that roofing contractors post on social media. Most of it is sell-sell-sell posts and links with the occasional pictures of jobs in progress or recently completed. BORING! On my personal social media accounts I don't follow any contractors because there is almost no content shared that is value-added for me, let alone anything I would care to share with the rest of my network. But I know that there could be.

On Facebook for example, I almost never see contractors tagged in their customers' posts, photos, or videos. Why is this? My guess is it is a combination of a) we don't ask them to, and b) they don't have anything interesting to post about us. Essentially roofers do their job, leave, and send the customer an invoice. What's the fun in that for the homeowner, property/facility manager or building owner? Nothing. So here's an idea: give your customers content they could share and ask them to do so.

All roofing contractors (and especially residential roofing contractors) can get their customers to become extensions of their marketing department by doing a few simple things that could go a long way. Here is a simple 4-step recipe for engaging your customers on social media and getting some free advertising through personal recommendations (the best kind of marketing):

1. Take at least 5-10 pictures of every job you do. There should be before, during and after shots - as well as a few from interesting angles (from vantage points the customer wouldn't see from the ground).
2. Take 3+ videos (30-60 seconds in length) of every job you do. Videos should give the viewer a "peek behind the curtain" of what was found (i.e., why you are doing roofing work), an idea of exactly what you did, and how it turned out.
3. Email only the best pictures and the videos to the customer(s) of each job with a simple note thanking them for their business, asking them for feedback, and letting them know you thought they might enjoy seeing exactly what was done and how it all turned out. Give a brief description of each picture and video and then encourage them to share those photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, etc. using the descriptions you have provided (and to tag you in them). If you aren't connected online with them already, provide them with links to the pages of the networks you participate on and ask them to send you an invitation to connect (so they can tag you, and so that you have a newly established ongoing connection).
4. Once you are notified that you have been tagged in content they shared, acknowledge their efforts by "Liking", leaving a positive comment, re-Tweeting, etc.

Not all of your customers will do this, but even if just 10% did wouldn't that be a huge improvement in obtaining personal recommendations that you never had before? For the minimal investment of time required to do this, I think it is definitely worth trying. My challenge for you is to do this consistently for the next 60 days. Then please come back and leave a comment on this blog post and let everyone know how it worked for you. Worst case, you will show your customers that you care enough to follow-up and share with them details of what was done, which is much more personal and thoughtful than just sending them a bill.

If you have any questions about this blog post or would like assistance in implementing a strategy to get your customers to become an extension of your marketing department, please email Chris@RoofPal.com. I would be more than happy to discuss this with you. Best of luck!