Facebook doesn’t offer very many things for free — other than creating a business page at no charge, it’s pay-to-play and the people behind Facebook are making millions.But with a little digging, I discovered a free feature that business small and large can capitalize on.All you’ll need is your email list.
Unlike most blogs in the modern world, ours does not allow photos, so bear with me as I explain how this all works.
First, delete all information from your email list except for the emails themselves. Second, save the document as a CSV. (Facebook will not accept Microsoft Excel spreadsheets unless they are saved as CSV files.)
When your email list is organized and save properly, the only thing left to do is upload.
To do that, visit your Facebook Business Page and click on the “More” tab on the bottom right of your cover photo. On some pages this tab will have no words, but three black dots. Select “Suggest Page” from the dropdown menu.
The site will prompt you to “Upload your email contacts to suggest your Page to them on Facebook.”
Click the “Upload Contacts” button that lines up with “Contact List File.” Select the CVS file from your computer and wait for it to upload.
Select all contacts to show your suggestions to. Always double-check to make sure your list uploaded correctly before pressing “Preview Suggestion.”
How cool is this? Press “Finish” and all of your email contacts that are already on Facebook will see the message in their News Feeds.
According to Facebook, “you can upload contacts up to five times for a maximum of 7,000 contacts per day per page. You can upload a maximum of 5,000 contacts at a time.”
I’ve found it’s easiest to upload list much smaller than 5,000 (around 1,500) because of upload and processing time.
Facebook does not provide analytics with this tool, but we’ve seen a bump in new “Likes” since using it.