Five-step process: How to get more fans on your Facebook page
It’s something we get asked a lot here at SMO Pros: “What’s the best way to get more fans on your Facebook page?” Gaining more fans for your Facebook page can seem complicated, but with a little effort and a good plan, it’s easier than you might think.
Step 1: Reconsider your content.
Examine the content that you are posting. Make it more engaging. Are your posts primarily text, or do you mix it up with images, videos, relevant links and other diverse content? When posting to Facebook, it’s important to think visually as well as informationally. By this, we mean that you should not only provide great information for your target audience, but also make the presentation visually appealing. After all, the Internet is a very visual media, and engagement levels are significantly higher for posts with images than those without. According to KissMetrics, “Photos get 53% more Likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click-throughs.” So when posting to Facebook, don’t just say it, show it.
Step 2: Use all your outlets.
If your Facebook business page is a bit of a ghost town, but your Twitter account is booming, then cross-promote. Same goes for Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn – wherever you are getting the most traction, use that audience to promote your other social accounts. Most people aren’t going to follow your business on every social network. In fact, many will only follow you on their favored network, even if they have accounts elsewhere. However, if you can show some value in following your company on multiple platforms, people are more likely to respond. So mix up your posts. Don’t just duplicate your posts on every social network. Send different messages to different social media. Try using images and videos differently. Run different contests or promotions on different sites. Give people a reason to follow you on multiple media and increase your opportunities to connect.
Step3: Demonstrate your expertise.
Post content that shows you are an expert in your field while also demonstrating what your brand is capable of. Make your Facebook page a repository of insider knowledge and valuable tips, a place that people want to return to again and again for more insights.
Step 4: Post when people are paying attention.
To get better engagement and more likes on your page, you need to make sure people are seeing all those great posts. Facebook doesn’t show every post to everyone who follows you. And posts that come at odd hours of the day can get buried in your audience’s news feed – even with some updates to the Facebook system that re-post content with users’ news feed. So as a general rule of thumb, try to post when people are checking their Facebook accounts, which tends to be first thing in the morning for people just logging on at their jobs (8:00 – 9:30 a.m.) and just after lunch, when the mid-day doldrums lure them away from work and into social media (1:00 – 4:00 p.m.) According to Fast Company, those afternoon hours “result in the highest average click through” for Facebook posts.
Step 5: Buy friends.
If all else fails, or if the growth of your page following is sluggish, you can buy friends from Facebook. We offer this option with some hesitancy, since there has been a lot written about the dubious relevance of page fans purchased through Facebook’s system. But if you want to ramp up your page numbers quickly, it’s an option.
Basically, the way it works is that you go to your Facebook page and click the “Promote Page” button. It looks like this:
When you click “promote,” Facebook will give you options for creating a custom audience, which you can do by entering the geographic area you want to target, the demographics of the people you want to reach and the interests of those people (other topics or pages they follow within Facebook). Then you can set a budget for your promotion, as well as a timeframe, and launch. The promo will then appear in the news feed of your target audience as a “Suggested Page,” giving those people the option to click the post and like your page.
We’ve done a few of these promotions and worked with our clients on some as well. In our opinion, they work okay, but not perfectly. You get some legitimate followers, and you get some weirdos as well. It’s not the most finely tuned tool, but it works for bringing up your overall numbers. One tip: Make sure to target the area in which you do business as narrowly as possible. If you leave your promotion open to everyone across the globe, you will certainly get a lot of irrelevant page fans from other countries that are unlikely to ever turn into real customers.
Okay, happy Facebooking, everyone. If you’re interested in more in-depth insights on Facebook and other social media, but sure to check out our free e-book download: Why Your Business Needs Social Media.