Having a large subscriber list is an essential part of your overall promotional strategy. After all, without a list it will be difficult to sell anything.

For a long time, website owners primarily built their subscriber lists in one way – through a sign-up form on their website. That technique still has value, but today there is another promotional strategy which involves the most significant and widely-used social networking property on the internet – Facebook. With a little thought and planning, you too can use it to bolster the number of subscribers on your list.

Step #1 – Sign Up and Create Your Page

The first step, of course, is to set up a Facebook fan page for your business.  Take a look at a few existing business fan pages to get an idea of how you want to structure your page, and what types of information you want to include on it. At a minimum, be sure to include links to your website. You can check out one of mine at http://Facebook.com/BizCharmSchool

Now every time someone comes to your Facebook page you have the opportunity to turn them into a subscriber. It’s important to note that simply having a person “Like” your page does not give you access to their e-mail account. There are a couple of different ways to account for this privacy-based limitation. You just need to have your potential subscribers take a couple of additional steps.

Step #2 – Your Facebook Subscriber List

You can develop a “subscriber list” that relates only to Facebook. When you publish something to your subscriber list, you also publish a new notification to your page. People who have liked your page should then receive the notice in their own news feeds, and if your notification is drafted well, it will bring them back to your Facebook page again for a new visit.

Your second option is to use your fan page as a way to drive potential subscribers to your website. You might motivate this action by providing a freebie or giveaway that they can access from your site. When they come to your website, you can direct them to a traditional opt-in form for your subscriber list.

These sign-ups may be more valuable than simply getting a “Like”, because you have a direct link into that person’s email inbox. However, it might take more convincing to get someone to actually sign up for the service outside of Facebook.

Consequently, the best approach might actually be to use both approaches. Use promotional campaigns to drive traffic to your Facebook page, but then post occasional invitations on your fan page to invite users to come to your website and sign up as a subscriber. Over time, you’ll be able to identify the approach that works best for your particular website and audience.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 at 10:30 am and is filed under Internet Marketing, PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.