Do you desire to grow your Facebook page to a minimum of 10,000 fans? Or maybe you would like to witness persistent growth in the number of active Facebook followers.
There are best practices that you can deploy to make your Facebook campaigns very effective. In this guide, I will break down the steps to growing your Facebook presence in an easy-to-digest manner.
Facebook is a great platform to grow awareness of your brand, engage new and existing customers, and grow your revenue. We will start with some reasons you should commit your resources towards building your Facebook Fan base.
Reasons for Growing Facebook Fans for Your Business
Every business ought to have a Facebook business page and also experience growth in the quality and number of fans. To help you understand the importance of this fact, let’s look at some reasons this is necessary.
I – Social Media Network with Over 2.3 Million Active Users
Records show that about 60% of all internet users have active Facebook accounts. This makes Facebook a nation with citizens from every country, continent, race, religion, and walks of life.
Imagine the potential reach that you can expose your brand to by simply using a platform like Facebook to promote it.
II – It is a Social Proof
Having an actively-growing presence is social proof of how authentic your product or brand is. People will not follow your brand except they are able to recognize real value from what you offer as a brand.
III – The More the Better
Let’s face it, the more Facebook fans you have the more exposure you will have for your messages. For instance, we have Business A that has 100,000 Facebook fans, and Business B with 20,000 Facebook fans.
If both businesses were to post similar messages on their Facebook business pages, they won’t enjoy the same exposure. That’s because one has a higher number of fans and so enjoys a higher reach than the other business with lower fans.
III – More Fans More Organic Traffic
Getting a high number of Facebook fans is an ideal tactic for increasing the amount of social traffic to your business website. If the link to a blog post was posted on a business page, the number of fans will determine the number of visits it attracts.
It is important to note that not all Facebook fans will get to see the link or any updates on your Facebook page. That’s because Facebook made some algorithm changes in the way and the number of followers an organic post can reach.
This doesn’t mean that your posts won’t reach anyone, just that not all Facebook fans will be able to see your organic posts.
IV – Good for Your SEO
Social media engagements (likes, comments, and shares) show how popular a page or blog post is. Although Google hasn’t given any official statement to show that social engagements are search ranking metrics, they do play a role.
For instance, the total number of social shares helps improve the visibility of your brand on social platforms. This should increase traffic to your website and also boost the total number of backlinks to your web pages.
Step by Step Guide to Growing Your Facebook Fans
Step 1 – Set Up and Optimize Your Facebook Business Page
Facebook started off as a platform for users to find, connect, and share stuff with family and friends. For you to enjoy the basic features of Facebook, what you need is creating a personal account on the social network.
However, if you require an account for business purposes or for a brand, then it is advisable to set up a Facebook business page.
That said, a Facebook business page is free for anyone to set up; plus it is a simple process for anyone to follow. To get started, you will need to first create a personal account on Facebook before setting up the business page.
After you have this sorted out, you will need to optimize the business page you created to make it attractive to others. Also, Facebook users need to understand what your business or brand stands for the moment they visit the page.
Optimization involves such activities as using attractive page titles for your page. You will also need to write a catchy description of your brand or something compelling about your business.
There is also the need to provide detailed and accurate information about your business – vision, mission, and goals. These details help to establish connections with those who come visiting your business page.
Once you are done with these details, you will need to start posting valuable content for fans and the public. If well-optimized, you will not have much trouble attracting the right kind of audience to your Facebook business page.
Step 2 – Leverage on Your Personal Facebook Page
This is where your personal Facebook page comes in handy for attracting fans and promoting your posts. Recall that a personal account is quite different from a business page and you need to treat them as distinct entities.
The fact that you created a business page doesn’t stop you from being active in your personal account. If anything, you should be more active because it is through this account that you will be able to invite family, friends, and colleagues to your business page.
You should be able to get more positive responses to your business page to invite from friends on your Facebook account. The next use of your personal account is to promote your business updates to members of your friends and family.
If you’re an active user on Facebook, you will be able to attract engagements for your business posts. The more likes, comments, and shares you are able to attract, the more people you will be able to reach.
Though Facebook limits the number of business page fans that can view your posts, there are no restrictions on personal accounts.
That means you can expand your organic reach and engagement by simply sharing business posts through your personal account.
Step 3 – Using the Facebook Like on Your Site
This is a social media marketing tactic that is used by virtually all businesses or organizations. A Facebook business page is easy to set up and add to your business website or blog. If you’re using WordPress to power your site, then you will find lots of social plugins to help with this.
Facebook makes it easy for your online audience to engage with your content on its network. It also helps to connect your business website to your Facebook business page. This tells search engines what your official Facebook page is and how to locate it.
Also, building up your Facebook fan base provides social proof of the number of followers you have. This is a true test of popularity, trust, and genuineness of your brand among social users.
One more thing, have the Facebook like box placed in a strategic position, usually above the fold.
Step 4 – Boost Post Engagement
After working your way through the first 3 steps, this is where you work on improving the social engagement of your posts. Normally, the goal of setting up a Facebook business page would include brand visibility, social engagement, and conversions.
In order to do it right, you will have to follow proven methods to improve social engagement with your posts. Your first focus should be on posting relevant content on your business page.
Your posts should be relevant to your fans, your business, and your niche or industry. Do not forget that your fans follow your business page because of the value they hope to gain from it. And this value can only be communicated through the content you share on your page.
So stick to pieces of content that are relevant and which offer real value to them. Also, you have to ensure that your posts project the right image of your business and brand. As much as possible avoid goofing around or posting pieces of content that are not related to your brand.
Lastly, do not turn your business page into a channel where you only promote your offers. This will defeat the purpose of setting up the page and it will engender mistrust with your followers.
Seek to first add value to your fans through your posts before offering products that meet their needs. And even when you promote your products, let it be as infrequent as possible.
Always keep your eyes on the goal which is to grow your brand’s awareness, engage followers before making sales.
15 Best Social Media Management Tools for Boosting Engagement
Step 5 – Include Visuals in Your Posts
Visuals such as images, videos, and emotions are elements that drive user engagement with your social posts. One of the things you will find with actively-growing Facebook pages is the use of these visuals.
Images make it very easy to pass lots of information to your followers at a glance. If you use brightly-colored images, you will be able to attract more readers to your Facebook posts. Videos are also essential tools to include in your posts if you want higher post engagement.
If you do not have a budget for visuals, you can make use of free online tools for creating images. One of the best tools to help with the creation of attractive images is Canva and you could use it for free.
Step 6 – Offer Gifts and Prizes to Followers
The primary reason anyone would follow or like your page is the value they hope to gain. This value comes in the form of high-quality content that your business will be posting and sharing over the social network.
The best gift you can give to your fans and followers is to provide high-quality content consistently.
Also, you may want to give incentives to those who have been very active on your page. You could create posts and offer giveaways to those who share these posts.
You could also run contests or quizzes for followers, and reward the first set of people to provide the right answers. Anything to inspire your followers to contribute valuable content to others is welcome.
However, let the focus remain the high-valued content that your followers hope to gain from your page
Step 7 – Promote in Other Social Networks
Creating high-quality content, giving gifts and different prizes are great. If you continue with these activities, you will witness steady growth in the number of your fans
However, there are activities you need to indulge in if you want growth in leaps and bounds. One such is the use of other social media networks to promote your Facebook business page.
You can devise tactics to use on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. However, you need to be smart about it because all the social networks prefer to keep communications within.
Whenever you create a new post on your Facebook page, you can promote it through Instagram. Facebook makes it possible for users to easily do this without leaving its website.
Also, you can communicate with Twitter users directly to like your Facebook page. There isn’t any law that prevents you from inviting others from other social networks but ensure you do not violate any of their rules.
Step 8 – The Use of Facebook Ads
To reach more people on your business page, you would have to use Facebook ads to boost your posts. Recall that I mentioned Facebook placing restrictions on the organic reach of your posts.
The idea is to get you and other business page owners to use Facebook Ads for reaching your target audience. You can target your posts based on demographics, interests, gender, age, and country.
Ads are so inexpensive that you can run an effective campaign with less than $10. You can also set the duration of campaigns or set limits based on your campaign budget.
Conclusion
If you’ve never thought of having a Facebook business page, I’m sure this guide has convinced you of the need to. Also, those who have their pages but do not experience growth would have learned a thing or two.
Follow the steps outlined in this guide and you will witness an increase in your brand’s visibility, social engagement, and conversions.
There are still more to learn when it comes to social media engagement and traffic! Get enrolled with Wealthy Affiliate University and grab all the useful resources that analyze all you need to know about content marketing, social media marketing, and affiliate marketing.