How to Make Your Business Boom | 5 Minutes of Expert Tips

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael and welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I thought we'd do a quick screencast. It's a little bit easier to follow along. And we're going to answer a question from one of my readers, Terry, who posted on my Facebook fan page in response to a post I wrote about Ted Turner. Saying, "If you can check out my fan page, give me some advice on my business, how to keep it growing, make it a success," and it's Drop It Like It's Hot Wings. So this is Terry's fan page, and if we load it up, we'll see here it is. It's a business based in Nashville, Tennessee, and they have 225 people who like the page. So the first thing I would recommend is putting a Reveal tab on here, and this is basically where you create special content or you put a coupon or something to incentivize people to want to become a fan of the page and give you a like. So in my case, if I load it in a different browser where I'm not signed into Facebook, if you go to my page, you'll see this. So before you see the wall, you'll see a page here. If you like this page now, you'll get Steve Jobs' number one tip for entrepreneurs plus top advice from 9 other famous entrepreneurs. So in order to access this content, you have to be a fan of the page. And to do that, you have to click like. We won't do that because I want you guys to actually go through and check it out. But basically, this is giving some premium content away to people who become fans of your page. So looking back at your site, if you can offer some premium content or give away a coupon or something extra special, if you're giving a recipe or something else to make people want to sign up for the page, and it's basically the first thing that they see before they hit the wall. So give them an incentive to want to become a fan. The next thing I would encourage you to do is try to post a little bit more frequently. So I'm loading on the page here, I see that you posted August 17th and today is the 31st as I'm recording this, so it's been a while since you posted. And as I scroll down here, I see that you've got some fans who are posting, which is great. So this is yesterday, yesterday, an hour ago. So it's great that you have people who are posting to your page and talking about you, but you haven't posted anything really except for this post here. So you want to make sure that you're posting on an ongoing basis to encourage your fans and make them want to get more engaged with your site as well. One thing that really helps as I do it, and the third bit of advice, is to ask questions. So when you're posting, you don't necessarily want to just say, hey, you know, we want to hit 100 likes. You want to ask them questions. So ask them what their favorite wings are, ask them what their favorite time of day is to eat wings, or how many times a day they want to eat wings. Ask them fun questions that they can answer, you know, in a couple words and make them want to get involved and more tied to your brand. So a couple of examples of how I do this, if we load up my page here, I try to post a couple times a day and usually in the morning I'll do something about a famous entrepreneur So when Terry found my page, it was actually through one of the quotes that I put up of famous entrepreneur Ted Turner, so a quote that he put about not quitting. If we go back to my page here, so this is today. So I shared content about John Johnson, a quote from him. So I'll do that usually every morning, and then in the afternoon, I'll also try to get people engaged by asking them questions. So here's an example, you know, fill in the blank. 'One thing I did to grow my business today was,' and 14 people left a comment on it. And it's usually quick, easy things that people can answer without writing too much, and it starts getting them involved. And then the next time I ask them for something, or if I tell them about a cool link I've just posted, they're more likely to click on it because they feel a little bit more engaged with the brand. So here again is another one, a post that I created, and we had, you know, 6 people, 7 people like it and some comments. Going down, a quote of the day, Lillian Vernon, you know, 9 people like it. Another question, what's your favorite food to snack on while you work? So it's a fun question that ties to the brand of entrepreneurship and people working, but it's not, you know, so specific and too serious that people don't want to get involved. So we had a whole bunch of people leave comments on the question like that. So think about posts that you can put out on a regular basis that is interesting to people, and then also ask them questions and make them want to get more involved and more engaged with your brand to give them a reason to become a fan of the page. So I hope that helps, Terry. If anybody liked the video, for all you YouTube video people watching out there, please give it a thumbs up. I'd love to see it and help me make more of these videos. And I'd also love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you want to leave a comment. Below the video, and stay tuned for the next episode.