Know-How Exchange : Social Media

How do you invite people to like a Facebook page when they are not your friends?

You don't.

Or rather, you DO if your sole intention is to lose friends and get yourself reported for spam.

This single technique is the number one way to get blocked, banned, or unfriended (if you were a friend to begin with). Likewise with tagging of people in images when those people are not in those images.

Do. Not. Do. This. Because. It's. Annoying!

As for having people's e-mail addresses ... if all you've done is mine these from people's profile pages go immediately to jail and do not collect $200. If these people have opted in through a double opt in in response to an offer, fine: that's classed as permissions based messaging and it complies with CAN-SPAM regulations.

If all you've done is trawl for e-mail addresses and add them to a list WITHOUT the e-mail address owner's EXPRESS permission. your list is useless ... no matter HOW many names you've got on it.

As an admin for these pages you ought to have access to invite these people THROUGH the account you manage NOT as yourself. Even then, to invite people to carry out this action you first need to give them something of value. No one owes you a thing and they sure as heck don't owe a page a like if that page has first failed to offer any value. That's NOT how social media works.

Social media is about engagement and about value over time—not about up front selling and promotion.

Give people REASONS to like these pages. Give them content that leads the action of liking as a logical result of their liking something. The whole concept of liking a page in social media is not driven by the instruction "Like this page" it's driven by significance, attraction, and trust.

And do NOT do this kind of thing through a generic e-mail account such as Yahoo or gmail. Drive these kinds of actions through Aweber or Constant Contact. These platforms will give you greater deliverability, they offer forms you can place on websites and specific pages, and they allow for double opt in.

Requests to "Like" something sent through non-opted in routes and delivered by e-mail are also more likely to be classed as spam by the majority of e-mail delivery systems ... and to be classed as spam by most recipients.

So, engage first, offer content that's valuable and THEN ask for a like. You'll see responses climb as a result. Do it the other way around and you'll lose trust, faith, and fans.

Great response to the question. It's important to remember that Facebook revolves around creating a community around your cause rather than advertising to a massive amount of strangers.

It may be temping to just friend every person in the universe, but it is wholly better to find people who are actually interested in what you do. Creating an advertisement on Facebook can help your cause, but in the end you will want people to 'like' your topic on their own.

Engage and create compelling content in addition to building a network of followers through personal interaction. It's the only way to truly succeed in drawing committed viewers.

Good luck!