Written by ContentPowered.com
Facebook is only truly useful to a business when that business page has two things: a large number of fans, and a high level of engagement among fans. Neither alone will work; having 10 highly engaged fans won’t give you much to go on, and having 10 million robot accounts following your page just ensures your messages are never displayed.
Now, one very effective way to pull in more fans is to run highly targeted PPC campaigns on Facebook. Unfortunately, this costs money. What you’re looking for are free ways you can integrate into your life to keep the fans rolling in. Here are 30 good ideas, some of which you’re probably doing, and some that should be new.
1. Use the Suggest to Friends Button
This one only works when your business page is relatively new, as the functionality disables once you reach a certain level of fans. If your page is new, go ahead and suggest it to as many friends and family members you can. Your goal is just to get a steady start.
2. Tag People in Photos
Whenever you upload a photo with people in it – and you should do this frequently – tag those people. If you need to friend them on Facebook to do so, do so. You can always notify anyone you tag that they can remove the tag, if they don’t want the publicity. Most people will let it stand.
Facebook and Twitter work very well together. You can post a longer post, offer or other valuable content on Facebook and then share the post with your Twitter audience. You can do the same with other social networks, to help merge your disparate audiences.
4. Always Include Pictures
Text posts receive much less engagement than posts with pictures. Picture posts are also weighted higher in Facebook’s sort algorithm. When in doubt, use a picture. When shouldn’t you use a picture? When you’re posting a video or app instead.
5. Remove Links From Posts After Previews Appear
Are you sharing links properly? When you paste a link into a post box, Facebook leaps into action generating a preview. Did you know that you can then remove the link and customize the text box, without removing the preview? In fact, Facebook gives preference to posts that have done exactly that.
6. Keep Posts Short Whenever Possible
Facebook may not have the character limits of Twitter, but it certainly has just as short an average attention span. If you’re posting something longer than a tweet, you’re losing people. Under 80 characters is ideal. If you’re stretching into four or more lines of text, you need to adjust your strategy.
7. Use Links in Digital Marketing
Post your Facebook page link everywhere. On your website. On your blog posts. In your newsletter. In your off-site ads. Any time you send out any form of digital marketing or communication, it should have your Facebook link embedded in it.
8. Use QR Codes in Physical Marketing
Take everything from point seven and apply it to offline marketing. Write it on your pamphlets. Post it on your business cards. You can do a plain text link, if you have a compelling and memorable URL. Or you can use a QR code to create a mobile landing page. Either method works.
9. Use the Facebook Like Box
The Facebook like box widget is great to have on your site, for one reason above all others; it shows images of the people who like your page. When a user visits your page and looks at that box, they will see all of their friends who follow you. It’s passive peer pressure at its finest.
10. Use Social Sharing Buttons
Social sharing buttons can be configured to like your page, or they can share a post, like a post or anything else you want. Use them for your best social networks, including Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Don’t over-do it with numbers, or it looks like bragging.
11. Post What Interests Your Community
Knowing what your users like helps you create posts that will attract them to you. If you share what they like, they’re more likely to follow you and share those posts in turn. When they share a post, it allows their friends to see it, which gives you a source of new faces.
12. Post at the Right Times
This is a personal metric you’ll have to measure yourself. When is your audience most active? Identify the ideal days of the week and the ideal times of the day, and schedule your posts appropriately.
13. Engage With Other Businesses on Facebook
It’s one thing to engage with users, and quite another to engage with other businesses. When a business interacts with you, you get the eyes of their whole audience on you, and you can take steps to attract them to your page.
14. Maintain a Frequent Post Schedule
The longer you go between posts, the lower you fall in Facebook’s news feed algorithm. You can almost always stand to post more often, unless you’re posting several times a day to a small audience and are risking the spam label. Post frequently, post consistently and keep to a schedule as much as possible.
15. Post Facebook Offers, Coupons and Deals
The Facebook offers app, and other apps like it, allow you to offer exclusive content to your Facebook users. You’re no longer able to hide this content behind like gates, but you can still make your Facebook page the place to be.
16. Customize Facebook Previews
When you share your blog posts on Facebook, the site generates a preview based on your meta data and your post images. You can use Facebook’s graph attributes to customize the image and text that shows up. Always do so.
17. Refresh Your Image
When was the last time you changed your profile picture or your cover photo? You should change them occasionally, to keep up with modern trends and branding efforts. If your profile picture is your logo, you don’t need to do much, just adjust it. Your cover photo, meanwhile, should be treated as a billboard you can change every month or two.
A good word from your users is about the best thing you can get in terms of social marketing. Whenever a user sends you an unsolicited bit of feedback, thank them for it and ask if you can use it in marketing. Slap it on a branded image and upload it.
If your brand is the sort that attracts users taking pictures of themselves using your products, you can encourage them to submit them to be featured on your page. If not, you can find some other way to feature your readers. Others will follow for their shot at fifteen minutes of fame.
20. Use Pop Culture Memes
Memes are short, funny images that trend and fall quickly among younger users online. If you can keep an eye on those trends and make funny images that are relevant to your business, you can pull in the attention of that entire demographic.
21. Newsjack Popular Trends
Newsjacking is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you can piggyback on trends to offer sales and value to anyone amused by the trend. On the other, you risk appearing crass and classless if you try to profit from tragedy. Be cautious, but make use of positive trends.
22. Offer Facebook Exclusive Content
You don’t even need to like gate or hide Facebook exclusives. All you need to do is post them on Facebook and nowhere else. If users can get the same thing from your website or Twitter, they have no reason to follow Facebook. If they can only get it from Facebook, they have much more reason to follow.
23. Link Other Profiles to Facebook
Any other profile you have on a social network should have a link to your Facebook page in the information section. This includes Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit and StumbleUpon, and any others you might use.
24. Own Your Web Presence
Do the same thing as point 23, but with any profiles you otherwise don’t control. Sites like Yelp aggregate business data and allow those businesses to maintain the information for accuracy. Do so, and link to Facebook while you’re at it.
25. Ask Fans to Spread the Word
Word of mouth advertising has been powerful for literally thousands of years. It’s no less powerful today. Simply ask your users to spread the word, or go one step further and create a referral program.
26. Create a Task App
Do users typically visit your website to accomplish one or a few specific goals? Consider creating a Facebook app that helps streamline the process, so they can accomplish those goals directly through Facebook.
27. Have a Mobile Website
Over half of all Internet traffic takes place through mobile today. If you don’t have a mobile site, you’re losing out. You’re also losing out on the entire mobile group that would follow your Facebook page from your mobile site.
28. Measure Success and Iterate
Put analytics to work for you. Track everything you do. Measure your success and iterate the programs and posts that are most successful. Track timing, engagement, conversions; anything you can think of, and work to improve it all.
29. Host Organically Like-Gated Contests
Like gates in apps are no longer available, but you can still post a simple “like this for a chance to win” post. It’s a little more work to pick a winner, but you can keep the power of contests as follower bait.
30. Post High Quality Content
You knew this one was coming. Everything comes back to content. You can take every other step in this post and none of it will work if you don’t have interesting, valuable content on your page. Make yourself useful and it all falls into place.
