So you've finally decided to establish an official presence on Facebook. You went and setup your fan page and entered your information gleefully, expecting a large number of visitors. You send some messages out before you sleep.

Next morning only 5 have shown up. Is this the kind of progress you can expect?

Your goal is to convince and convert. Turn strangers to fans to customers.

Well, that’s what you have heard about fan pages and that’s the reason you have got on to the social bandwagon. It would be a nightmare to have succumbed to the shiny toy syndrome. Are you prepared to put in hard work?

The following are some guidelines from the Fan Page Chieftain himself :

1. Be yourself, not the marketer- The foremost important thing you should keep in mind is that its not traditional media you are dealing with. It’s social media, and you might have to brush your hair and get ready to greet the guests. Remember, you are not there to sell, you are there to influence. Think of them as your parents that you wish to buy you a car next year. How much do you want them to love you? If you address people the way advertisers address to people, they'll ignore you - straight up. Act like a human and give them what they want, Information and Entertainment.

2. Be friendly – While being friendly is a seemingly wise approach towards fans, researchers have shown that being too friendly exudes a corporate-speaky attitude that you want to avoid at all costs. Plus a friendly attitude with no value add is just - well an attitude. People want financial benefits; they want discounts, quality products with cheap rates. Are your competitors doing the same?

3. Add value – Come up with rewarding tactics that add value to your brands. It is a simple technique to keep your customers coming back and develop your brand loyalty. Coca Cola is a great paradigm for brands on how effectively it has added value to its brand and earned a huge fan base in return. Eric Tsai goes into deeper detail about this topic in his blog post.

4. Be helpful – This is one of the ways to earn customer’s trust and loyalty as this addresses their needs and demands. Being helpful doesn’t only mean helping them with your brand but also by being supportive on other matters that they share on your wall. If you make solder and people are concerned about their health issues - provide them with health and safety information regarding soldering. If they are concerned about how their lifestyle may change by purchasing your services, then provide them resources and advice on dealing with those other aspects of their lives that might be affected.

5. Get into action-don’t be passive- No one is going to visit your page unless they know you are there. Make your presence felt in an authentic way. Use Facebook advertisements to point Facebook users to your page. Participate in conversations on various groups but remember you are not there to advertise yourself so don’t tell the group to become your fan. Post customer related content regularly (neither too often, nor too seldom). Reply to them if they post on your wall. This adds a human element to your brand.

Humanness, authenticity and hard work is what really matters online and that’s what businesses will learn.

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