Attracting and retaining customers on Facebook business pages: a content analysis of an online discussion forum

As social networking sites (SNSs), and in particular Facebook, become more popular among users and as organisations more and more appreciate benefits of communication with customers on Facebook, it has become increasingly important for organisations to attract more customers to their Facebook business pages and to retain them. Yet for many organisations the question is in what ways they can attract more customers to their Facebook page and also how they should use this website to effectively interact with customers. This paper examines the content of business owners' as well as SNSs experts and gurus' online discussions to address this question. The findings suggest partnership and link exchange, content creation and management, and design and promotion are three high-level strategies that organisations can use to attract and retain customers on their Facebook business pages.