Facebook: How to Increase Followers

Ways To Get More Followers on Facebook

1. Develop your Facebook marketing strategy

Having a social media strategy for your Facebook Business Page is the first step in attracting followers to your brand. A robust strategy gives your team direction and a playbook from which to develop new ideas. It also helps you assess your performance from the right lens.

When developing your playbook, here are a few questions to consider:

• What does success look like?
• What does our audience want to see?
• How should we engage our audience?
• What tactics are our competitors using on Facebook?
• Once you are clear on your approach, it will be easier to explore the growth methods outlined below.

2. Post often

Your posting schedule is undoubtedly linked to your followers. Why? The more you post, the more visible you are to your target audience and the more likely you are to reach new users.

Here are two tools to streamline your publishing process:

3. Host giveaways

Giveaways can be an effective and low-cost way to build brand awareness and attract new Facebook users to your Facebook Page. To maximize the impact of your giveaway, set rules that encourage audience participation. For instance, your giveaway can require each user to tag a friend in the giveaway post and make a post of their own to qualify to win. The more engagement you can get from your followers, the better chance your giveaway will reach new users.

4. Vary your posts

One of the reasons why your follower count may have plateaued is because your content isn’t connecting with consumers. Start experimenting with various types of posts to see what garners more shares, comments, and other forms of engagement. You may find that videos perform much better than images, or that covering certain topics get more shares than others. As you notice trends in what’s working and what’s not, tweak your strategy, observe, and keep experimenting.

5. Post at the right time

If you post something on Facebook but no one’s around to see it, does it make an impact? With social media, visibility is key. The first part of increasing your visibility is posting regularly, but you also have to align your posting schedule with your audience’s scrolling habits. If your users are most active on Facebook between 5:00 and 9:00 PM., that’s your time to publish your content. Publish outside of that window and you risk your content being missed altogether.

6. Create shareable content

Whenever you see something that’s informative, entertaining, inspiring, or just interesting, what’s your first instinct nowadays? Mine is to hit the “share” button and send it to other people.

Making shareable content is one of the best ways to get followers because it expands your reach. What makes something have that shareable quality? It varies, depending on the audience you’re targeting, but one common thread is that it has to resonate. Maybe your content addresses a concern they have, or it discusses a topic they’re interested in.

Lastly, make sure your content is visually appealing. If your team doesn’t have the bandwidth to invest internal resources to create these creative assets, consider outsourcing them through independent contractors.

7. Interact with your audience

Facebook users, like most social media users, like to feel seen and heard by the brands they engage with. Your brand should make it a priority to interact with your followers regularly, whether it’s answering a direct message or responding to a comment under your latest post.

These interactions not only boost your engagement rate but can also build brand loyalty. And we all know that a consumer who is loyal to a brand will spread the word and bring on more brand promoters, serving as unofficial influencers.

8. Promote your Facebook Page everywhere

If your goal is to gain more followers on your business page, you should direct traffic to your page whenever possible. There are a few ways to do this:

• Add a Facebook plugin to your website;
• Include a CTA in your email newsletter to encourage your subscribers to visit your Facebook Page;
• Embed your Facebook posts whenever relevant in your blog posts;
• Host your giveaways only on Facebook;
• Promote your Facebook Page on other social media platforms.

9. Add your Facebook social link to all digital platforms

Your Facebook link should be accessible everywhere you have an online presence. This includes your website, email, and social media platforms. It’s as simple as putting “Follow Us,” or “Connect With Us” with the social icons, as shown in the business above. The easier it is to find you, the better your chances of gaining followers.

10. Work with influencers

Working with influencers is great for many reasons, the main one being the credibility they give to your brand. When an influencer promotes a brand, it’s social proof (i.e., a stamp of approval).

You can work with influencers to target an audience you haven’t yet connected with and drive traffic to your Facebook Page.

Beyond that, studies show consumers tend to trust the word of an influencer more than a brand’s word. So, by collaborating with influencers, you can earn new followers who already have a certain level of trust in your brand.

11. Partner up with another brand

Co-marketing is a collaboration between two brands with similar audiences and marketing goals who team up for marketing efforts. A co-marketing campaign on Facebook could look like a video series released over a month or week-long Facebook Live events hosted with your partner. This strategy allows brands to use their individual distribution channels to reach new people and share the results of the campaign.

12. Offer a coupon

In addition to giveaways, there are other ways to incentivize your audience to promote your brand, including offering coupons. With a plugin like Shopify’s Facebook Likes Popup, for example, you can offer a discount code to consumers who like your Facebook Page as they are completing a purchase on your site. You can also offer discount codes to encourage Facebook reviews, which serve as social proof and can help you gain more followers.

13. Join Facebook Groups

Joining a Facebook Group can give you direct access to your target audience. You can get direct insight into your audience’s needs, concerns, likes, and dislikes. In addition, it’s another channel to connect with them more intimately. But keep in mind, it’s not a place for selling – use it as a way to introduce yourself to your target personas and build authentic connections.

14. Create your own Facebook Group

Having your own Facebook Group is arguably the second-best channel you can have behind an email list. Similar to email subscribers, a Facebook Group user has opted to join your group and stays in because it adds value to their lives. It’s another way to attract your target audience, build a strong community, and provide value to your user personas.

15. Learn from your Facebook Insights dashboard

Your Facebook Insights dashboard is where your page’s analytics live. It tells you how users are behaving on your Facebook Business Page and how your posts are performing. Use it as a resource to identify which strategies are earning you followers and what’s worth changing.

16. Use hashtags in your posts

Hashtags are a great discoverability tool on Facebook. You can use them to help your target market find your post and increase your follower count. It’s important to use a mix of popular and niche hashtags to ensure that your posts are getting enough visibility without disappearing in a sea of posts.

17. Make your page easier to find

The last thing you want is someone who wants to follow your page but can’t seem to find it. While some may be persistent, others may give up once their initial search is unsuccessful.

To avoid this issue altogether, optimize your Facebook Page for search to ensure you’ll always be easy to find. Here are some ways to do so:

• Use the same username on all your social media profiles;
• Add your logo to your profile picture and add a cover photo that reflects your brand;
• Have a complete “About” section;
• Keep your contact information and business hours updated.

18. Don’t over-promote

Your Facebook Page should be used to connect with your target audience and publish content that resonates with them. While a certain level of promotion is expected, it shouldn’t be the majority of what you post. Depending on your industry, pushing your products and services could repel your audience and lead to high unfollow rates.

19. Authenticate your page

Social media is rampant with bots and fake business pages aiming to deceive consumers. This can make Facebook users a little reluctant to follow brands they don’t recognize.

“Authenticating your page can give your brand the credibility needed to both protect your audience against fraudulent pages and give them the reassurance they need. To request a verification badge on Facebook, you must fill out theform.

20. Create original content

Every social media platform is different and so are its users. For instance, Facebook users tend to prefer videos over other forms of content, according to a 2019 Buffer study. The best performing content on Facebook is funny, entertaining, or practical.With this in mind, it’s important to customize your content to the platform. Repurposing can stretch the life of your content. However, it shouldn’t be your only strategy. Be sure to listen to your audience and build content around their needs.

21. Run ads

In addition to all the steps mentioned above, you can also run ads to reach more Facebook users. Facebook Ads allows you to target users based on demographics, behaviors, and interests. This guarantees that you reach users who match your user persona and are more likely to convert. Getting more followers on Facebook requires more than just posting regularly. You have to tap into what attracts your audience – through data analysis and community engagement – to develop sustainable strategies.

https://youtu.be/PvzF4z8D71I

How to Determine Your Facebook Marketing Goals

Goal #1: Get More Facebook Followers/Likes

More likes = more trust = more purchases. As your business grows, your Facebook followers will probably naturally grow too. However, there are plenty of things you can do to get more followers on Facebook!

• Facebook “Like” Campaigns.

A “like” campaign is exactly what it sounds like — an ad campaign on Facebook with the specific goal of helping you find more people who are interested in your business and getting those people to like your Page. “Like” campaigns allow you to pay per 1,000 impressions or per like.

It’s common to target either custom audiences or interest-based audiences but it’s probably best to leave this to the social media advertising pros. Otherwise, you could end up wasting money by targeting the wrong people.

• Invite people who have already liked your Facebook posts to like your Facebook Page.

This is so easy, and it tends to work since the people you are inviting are already interested in your business. Here’s how to invite people who have liked your posts to like your Page:

• Go to a recent post.
• Click/tap the list of people who have liked (or reacted to) your post.
• You’ll see a screen that says “Invite to like [your Page].
• See where it says invite? Click/tap that and start inviting.

If you have Facebook Pages Manager on your phone, you can do this at night until you fall asleep and drop your phone on your face. Or not. Up to you. We all have different hobbies, I guess.

• Don’t forget that you can also invite Facebook friends and employees to like your Facebook Page.

Add the Facebook “like” icon to your website. Adding the Facebook “like” icon to your website prompts people who found you through a search to engage with your business on Facebook too, so it’s a win/win! You can also link to your Facebook Page in emails to drive more traffic that way. If your goal is to get more Facebook followers, you should be linking to your Facebook Page any time you can (and feel it’s appropriate).

Goal #2 – Get More Facebook Engagement

Getting more engagement can be tough. Everyone wants to go viral, but most businesses that focus on social media marketing will find that engagement tends to grow steadily the more you work for it. Besides, going viral is short-lived. It’s better to steadily increase engagement rather than see one huge spike only to watch your engagement plummet and return to where it was before you went viral.

Here are some ways that you can work to build Facebook engagement:

1. Post questions and ask people to answer the questions in the comments.
2. Ask for shares and likes. Seems easy, right? That’s because it is. Ask your followers to like and share your posts.
3. Try a contest. Ask followers to like and share a post for the chance to win a coupon or discount. Make sure to follow Facebook’s promotion guidelines, though. If you want more details on social media contests, click here.
4. “Like” it when someone shares one of your posts or mentions you in a post.
5. Reply to all comments on your posts. And don’t forget to “like” the positives and resolve the negatives.
6. Share visual posts. Images and videos get more engagement than text-only posts.
7. Be consistent. Because Facebook’s algorithm favors friends and families over brands, you’ll need to post consistently to make sure that your posts have the best chance of being seen. Besides, if you’re not posting regularly, your followers might forget you. Keep your business fresh in their minds by showing up regularly in the Facebook Newsfeed. Here’s how often you should be posting.
8. Use what’s worked in the past. Look at past posts that have received high engagement. If that’s what is resonating with your audience, you should be posting more of it!
9. Figure out when to post. Test different posting times to see when you get the highest engagement.
10. Try Facebook advertising to expand your reach and boost engagement.

Goal #3: Drive Traffic to Your Website

Social media can be a great way to get more website traffic and drive people to pages on your site that are designed to help your customers through the purchase process.

Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Share updates on your business hours. Any time you update your hours (for winter holidays or if you lengthen/shorten your hours for any reason) let your Facebook followers know. Write a quick post with a link to the page on your website that displays business hours.
2. Share blog posts on Facebook. If you have a business blog, share new posts with your Facebook followers. Link to the blog post and write a quick caption of what it’s about.
3. Add a new service, product or menu item? Link to the page on your website that houses that particular item and let followers know you’ve got something new!
4. Share your promotions. Running a new promotion? Share a link to the landing page or coupon to let your Facebook followers know.
5. Add links to your website from your Facebook Page. You can add your website to Facebook and also add links in your About and Our Story sections, so take advantage of that.

Steps to an effective Facebook marketing strategy

1. Set goals for Facebook

The first step to any marketing strategy is setting the right goals. This roadmap will be an essential reference to measure against to make sure your Facebook strategy is successful. But to set goals, you’ll first want to do a little research to ensure your plan is attainable through the platform.

Addressing Your Goals

Here are some common yearly goals for businesses and how an effective Facebook strategy can help you:

• Increasing quality of sales: Improving the quality of sales starts with better targeting. Through a well-planned Facebook marketing strategy, you reach your target audience more efficiently. Just because the pond is bigger, doesn’t mean you’ll get bigger fish. Work on what you know best and use Facebook as a source to improve your reach.
• Adding more value to the organization: Facebook can better nurture customers, improve awareness and provide more resources to you audience. Make Facebook your go-to source of information.
• Better pulse on the industry: Are your competitors always one step ahead? With the help of social media monitoring tools, you can track, listen and report on all social conversations revolving around you, your competitors or the industry. Always try to increase your listening powers before speaking.
• More efficient recruiting: No one said social recruiting is easy, but it’s only growing in popularity. Social can be a great source for increasing recruiting efforts and reaching top talent faster. Working your employees’ social networks for a higher social reach makes your chances of recruiting higher quality employees better.
• Smarter growth: Reducing churn, limiting spend and increasing acquisition are all parts of a successful business, but Facebook can help you in each of these areas. Whether it’s through ad spend, increased targeting or more social selling, addressing your Facebook marketing strategy can help you get closer to these goals.
• Tracking progress: Of course, making sure you’re on pace to accomplish these goals is essential, and with a tool like Sprout, you can easily keep tabs on all your Facebook reporting such as displayed in the picture below.

2. Know your Facebook audience

Understanding who is on Facebook and what your current audience breakdown looks like will be important in determining which Facebook marketing strategies you should employ and how. 

3. Engage proactively with your audience

Like most social media channels, they’re built as networks to converse, discuss and share content. As a brand, you can’t forget that basic idea of what makes a social media network. That means conversation and engagement should never be put on the back burner.

4. Aim for Higher Brand Awareness

You Facebook ad campaigns should always be focused on two things:

• Cost Effective
• Relevant

For starters, you want to stay within your allocated weekly or monthly spend with Facebook to avoid over exposure and useless clicks. Ad spend can shoot up in a hurry when you’re targeting isn’t effective or set appropriately, which brings us to the next step. Your Facebook ad has to be relevant. Targeting a broad audience isn’t a bad thing. At first, you want to actually see what works best to build awareness. However, relevance is crucial toward great Facebook ads.

5. Decide on Creative Content

Some of the best aspects of your ad content should include:

• Identity: Does it relate to your brand and effectively showcase your product/service? Are your logo and business colors correctly displayed?
• Reward: What do viewers get out of it? Is it a deal, promotion, offer code, whitepaper or industry guide?
• Tone: Does your content maintain the same tone across your entire Facebook page or business in general?
• Action: Your content must drive an action, which goes back to your Facebook goals. A clear and precise call to action is best.

6. Create a spreadsheet and document your core metrics. 

Each metric will provide you with unique insights into what you specifically want to achieve with your ad:

• Click-through Rate: If traffic is essential, track CTR and see where you can improve.
• Impressions: Having trouble with visibility? Revisit your image or content and see what can drive more impressions.
• Cost to Acquire: If your purpose is to limit spend and budget more effectively, track cost to acquire and set weekly or monthly goals.

7. Drive traffic from your website to your Facebook Page

Consumers use the Internet to search for products and services they need. Having an active website will help your business gain the credibility it needs to convert web users into customers.

Types of Facebook posts

Facebook text post (a.k.a. status post)

We’re talking just words here. No photos. No videos. No links.

They’re direct and to the point, but if your goal is to drive traffic to your website or directly convert a lead to a sale, text posts aren’t a great option. The social network’s algorithm also isn’t too fond of these bare-bones posts, and they usually don’t get much reach in the news feed.

What text posts are good for, however, is sparking conversation. Use a text post to ask a question or call for feedback.

Text posts can also be useful for sharing important information your audience might be seeking out on your page, like ticket availability or opening hours.

Facebook photo post

Generally speaking, photo posts see much higher engagement than text posts. An eye-catching photo (or illustration or infographic, we’re not picky!) is a great way to catch the attention of a potential customer by scrolling through their news feed.

Facebook video post

Video posts see even higher engagement rates than photo posts do. Whether it’s for a short-and-sweet video announcement or a longer, artfully shot vid with a narrative, video can be incredibly compelling.

Facebook Live video post

Live video is an intimate, authentic way to connect with followers. These broadcasts can be used for Q&As, behind-the-scenes tours, product demos and much more.

Linked content post (aka link posts)

A link post is a post that shares a URL with your followers. Just paste a link into the composition box, and a preview of the website will automatically preview.

Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories live at the top of the News Feed — which means they’re immune to the Facebook algorithm. This might be why more than half a billion people view Facebook Stories every day.

Pinned post

A pinned post is any regular Facebook post that stays put at the top of your Page. This ensures it’s the first thing people see when they visit your Page.

Facebook Watch Party

Watch Parties are a way to screen a public video on Facebook in real time, so you and your Fans and Followers can experience it together. This is a great way to build buzz for a new product launch, or a world premiere of a music video, by making a standard video into an event.