Meet Tom. Tom is your fan. He has 467 friends and really love watching movies – you can tell from his cover photo, but the rest of his profile is blocked. Dang. You’re not sure how he found you but boy-oh-boy are you glad that he did. He took you from the big 4-9-9 to 5-0-0.

Now that you have Tom’s attention, what are you going to say? What are you going to do? Maybe he found you during a giveaway or promotional post. You know he’s there until fan #501-507 come in and move poor Tom down. Hey Tom, where’d you go?

Suddenly, you’re not really sure. You’re at 600 fans now. Where is he? Did he leave? Did he stay? He hasn’t “liked” one thing you posted since that first day – oh, glorious day – when you met Tom.

But, seriously, where did he go?

OK  now you’re in a panic. You’ve spent one hour looking carefully through all your fans. Tom is gone. You think. Your eyes started to cross around fan #207, so you can’t say for sure.

Tooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!

No response.

But, why would he? Was he ever your fan to begin with? Sure, he “fanned” the page. What about the follow-through?

Currently Facebook does not have an “export fan emails to excel sheet” button. And I don’t think they ever will. So how are you going to secure Tom 2.0 as a real life engaged fan beyond the ‘book?

How about asking for Tom’s email? Simple as that. “Hey Tom, Thanks for being a fan. I’d really love it if I was able to share my company updates with you directly, as soon as they go live. Mind if I jot your email down?”

Or grab him on another platform. “Hey Tom, every Sunday at 9pm CST, I have a real-time conversation with my Twitter followers about the meaning of life. Use #thishashtag to join the conversation.

Hey, instead of telling him about your business, show him. “Hey Tom, did you see my latest and greatest Instagram pic? It’ll be under the hashtag #mycompanyvaluesconnectingwithyoubeyondFacebook. Don’t worry, the period won’t be a part of the hasthtag.

If all else fails, you can’t say you didn’t try. You can always roll back to Plan A – provide interesting and relevant conversations to keep Tom engaged on the ‘book.

Psst. You shoulda kept that up the whole time.