I had no idea what to expect. But it appears that a large part of our audience (home users) are on Facebook.
Now, 10 months later, the Collectorz.com page on Facebook has almost 12,000 fans and it has proven to be a great new way to communicate with our customers.

Here’s a quick post on the why and how of Facebook fan pages for software.

Why create a Facebook fan page

For us, the most important benefit of having a Collectorz.com page on Facebook, is being able to reach 12,000 of our customers a few times each day.
Sending email newsletters to your existing customers is powerful, but you are limited to once or maybe twice a month, for risk of being reported as a spammer.
While on Facebook, nobody has a problem with seeing a short message from us a couple of times each day (as long as the messages are interesting/useful/funny).

Some examples of what we post about:

• Small updates on what everyone at the office is working on.
• Announcements of new releases (including small maintenance builds).
• New testimonials.
• Reminders for sales we are running.
• Tips for using our software.
• Special offers for fans.
• etc… etc…

Want more ideas for Facebook updates?
Just “Like” my Collectorz.com page and watch my daily posts

Doing this helps to keep our company “top of mind” and our customers involved. They comment on our posts and create new wall posts themselves. We always try to respond as soon as possible and our users like seeing that there are actual human beings behind this company, directly interacting with them.
The result: they buy more stuff and are more likely to tell their friends about us.

How to attract fans for your Facebook page?

Of course, the more fans your page has, the bigger the effect (and the more effective your time spent on Facebook is). Here’s some things we do to attract fans:

• Facebook fan boxes on our home page and all product pages, like on our Movie Collector page (on the right, scroll down a bit).
• Regular invites to existing customers to join us on Facebook (in newsletters).
• A link to our Facebook page in the signature of all our emails.
• A dedicated email about our Facebook page on Day 2 of my auto-responder sequence for trial users and Day 7 of my new customer auto-responder:
  

  Howdy,

  Alwin again, of Collectorz.com. I will keep it short and sweet.
  I was just wondering, are you on Facebook ?

  You see, I am posting regular updates on our Collectorz.com Facebook page. The latest news on what we’re working on, hints and tips for our software, special discount offers, and other fun stuff.

  So if you’re on Facebook: Connect with Collectorz.com by going here:

  http://www.facebook.com/Collectorz

  then just click the “Like” button at the top.

Now go create your own Facebook page.
Let me know about it in the comments and I’ll “like” it

Well, maybe Twitter is the way to do just that. I am not sure yet, but I’m having a go anyway.

In last week’s newsletter, we invited our customers to “Follow us on Twitter”. Up till now, this has generated over 300 followers.

Nice… but now there’s the need to tweet…

And if writing content for a monthly newsletter was hard, how am I going to say something relevant, useful and interesting a few times a day?
Here’s some things I am trying:

• Explain what everyone’s working on at the office.
• Give little progress updates for current projects.
• Teaser screenshots of new upcoming products and features.
• Answers to today’s common questions.
• Snippets of fresh testimonials, linking to the full text on our website.
• Links to new reviews and blog posts about our software.
• Highlight popular or especially interesting forum topics.
• Point to new or rewritten FAQ entries.

I will let you know how it goes in a future blog post.
Or, just follow my Twitter adventures here: http://twitter.com/collectorz