5 Tips to Help Grow Your Facebook Page

Times are a changing!

These days any size and type of business need to be active on Facebook and Social Media in general. Despite the decline in Facebook`s organic reach of posts from business pages it still has a place and a role to play in your overall strategy.image of a Facebook Like button

Clients often ask me if they really need to be using Facebook and my reply is nearly always the same:

  • Facebook has 1.9 billion users
  • Your customers are there, potential and existing
  • Your competitors are already there

So the question is not whether you should be on it, but what you are going to be doing once you’re there. A crucial part of not just your Social Media strategy but your overall marketing plan is growing your Facebook business page, not just the number of people who ‘like’ it, but also those who engage with you – so here are my 5 tips to help you do just that.

Facebook Business Page Tip #1

image of a screenshot on how to Add To Interests List on Facebook

Make sure you ask your fans to click Add To Interests Lists when Liking your Facebook Business Page

Make sure you tell everyone you know about your business page, give them a clear Call To Action to first of all like your page. You want your as many of your friends, colleagues and contacts to visit your Facebook business page and encourage them to ‘Like’ it. Not just `Like` it but also clicking on `Add to Interests Lists` from the dropdown box, this will ensure that your posts have an excellent chance of appearing in their personal Timelines.

Your friends and existing contacts will give you a solid base on which to build your Facebook page, they are likely to endorse you, your business or your products and help spread the word amongst their contacts.

  1. Start off by writing a public announcement post on your personal Timeline. Explain what your business page is, what it is all about and what you’re trying to do with it and pf course ask them to like it.
  2. Invite your friends. You can do this straight from your Facebook page while logged in as you personally. Some don`t like being sent invites or being asked to like a page but this is not the time to be shy or timid, you want to grow your business page and along the way it is inevitable that you will upset someone, you cannot possibly please everybody!

Facebook Business Page Tip #2

Managing your Facebook business page – Your strategy and aims for your page should include the facts that your Facebook page is only going to go one way and that is to continually grow, your page is going to be useful to your fans, to add value to their business or solve their problems and meet their needs and that you will constantly be sharing useful content with them whether it is original content from you or sharing others content that you feel will be of value to them.

  1. Add value to your page. Think to yourself `if you were a fan of that page would you be interested in reading or sharing that content and is it of any value to you?` Remember…every time you’re adding content to your page, you should be focusing on providing value. Your focus is always on your followers and not on you and so with each piece of content you put there think of your users: is your post answering a common question, is your post solving a common problem, what other value could your post provide?
  2. Consistency is crucial –  Your followers will leave in droves if you post 4 or 5 times in a short period then leave it for another 3 months before you post again. Be consistent, it has to be that `drip, drip, drip` consistency. So, how do you find this content? Look at what you currently have in place for sourcing useful and valuable content for your followers and what tools do you use to help with this process? I have 3 primary methods in which I source, curate and distribute my content socially:

i) To find relevant content I use tools like Google Alerts, Feedly and Zite (on my Iphone) which delivers results of various blogs and news related to my industry. Each day I receive maybe around 25 – 30 links to articles which are useful to me to help curate my own content and is of value to my followers if I wish to share this with them.
ii) I also follow around 20-30 people on Twitter within my industry who consistently produce, or link to, content that is valuable and related to my exact target audience.
iii) I have these influential people saved in a private Twitter list, so that I can easily and quickly find posts that I know will be of value.

Facebook Business Page Tip #3

image of a screenshot of setting up an ad on Facebook

Don`t just disregard advertising on Facebook, it can and will increase your following

Advertising on Facebook – Yes that`s right paying to advertise on Facebook and this coming from the man who once said “the day I pay a single penny to Facebook is the day I dump it!” but from as little as £3 spend you could reach a far bigger audience, a targeted audience and quickly increase your Likes this way.

In my opinion advertising your business page using Facebook Ads is one of the best way to build your following. It’s inexpensive, it’s very targeted and it certainly works. Putting it simply and done correctly you’re advertising your business to a very selective fraction of Facebook’s 1.19 billion users, targeted to people that will most probably be interested in your services or products.

However bear this in mind, just as with your general marketing, your advertising will be useless if you don’t offer a compelling reason for people to take the action you’d like them to. Make sure you add a short, snappy headline along with a reason to act on your advert followed up with a strong CTA (Call To Action). Can you offer something for free? An e-book for example, free entry into an exclusive weekly or monthly competition, whatever it may be, if you can offer something of value, something that your followers are unable to get elsewhere, you will generate far more followers than normal.

Facebook Business Page Tip #4

Keep your Facebook strategy closely linked with your strategy for your website. When I write for my blog (or Guest Blog), I’m looking to generate content that will be shared across my Social Media channels and primarily my Facebook business page. I know that this strategy will drive traffic to my website as when I check my analytics I will see that the biggest driver of traffic to my site is Facebook.

My blog posts receive more traffic than my Facebook page and this in return will drive people to my Facebook business page. Each of your blog posts should, no sorry…MUST, have the Facebook ‘like’ button (as well as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, etc). My goal is to reduce the gap between the content on my website and sharing on Facebook.

Facebook Business Page Tip #5

Don`t give up!

Don`t get disillusioned if the fans don`t suddenly flock to your business page. Keep going and make sure you don’t stop, keep producing and sharing quality content and it will happen. Once you have these processes and strategy worked out and in place, it is important to carry on and keep going.

Your efforts must be focused on two areas…your fan growth and engagement.

For growth of your following look at advertising on Facebook, look at your advertising budgets and decide if you would spend money on newspaper or magazine advertising, which can be very expensive and not as targeted, or £3 or more on a targeted advertising campaign aimed at age, sex, location, interests and even marital status.

For engagement you need to understand the impact of your content and the value it offers to your followers. Facebook Insights offer you valuable information on the not just the reach, but the engagement of your posts, as well as your ideal target audience and even the best day and time to post.

The crucial thing is to keep on testing and measuring, try new ideas, look at your Insights to see what type of content is receiving the most engagement and reach. Promote your most popular posts to help increase your exposure and engagement even further, this in turn will lead to new followers..

Facebook is still a great method to increase your brand awareness and a fantastic way to give value to your folowers and customers. it will increase the trust and build up relationships between your brand and your followers, potential and existing customers.

Remember if you`re not putting your business in front of this massive audience I can guarantee your competition are!

Let me know your thoughts on my 5 tips and if you have any that you`d like to share by leaving a comment in the box below.

Until next time…

Martin

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