Written by ContentPowered.com
Facebook is all about the people. They’re like pogs, or baseball cards; you need to collect as many as possible, sort through them, keep the best around and try to make the best of the worst to gather more.
1. Post More Often
How often do you post on Facebook? Once a week? Three times a week? Once a day? You might be surprised at how often your audience will support you. In fact, you pretty much need to post more often, unless you’re already on the verge of spamming.
How often is often enough? That depends on your audience. You can take advice found on the Internet, and post two or three times per day. You should, however, test your audience and find out what works best.
How can you do this? Make use of Facebook’s Insights. Measure the engagement, clicks and other performance metrics you might find useful. Post once per day for a few weeks, measuring the stats. Jump up to two or three posts per day for a few weeks, and measure the same metrics. Which is better? If you see them rise for two posts a day, but see them drop again for three, your sweet spot is two.
2. Post at the Right Times
You should also schedule your posts to show up at the right times each day. When is the right time? Again, measure your audience. I can’t tell you when they’re most active; it all depends on individual factors like family presence and career. If you’re marketing primarily towards night shift workers, you’re going to want to present your message at certain times. If you’re marketing towards people predominantly in California, you have other best times.
When I say schedule your posts, note that this does not mean you should set them to fire and forget about them. You still need to be around and available to engage with your users when they see your posts. The more you engage, the more they will engage with you. The more they engage with you, the more visible your posts are. The more visible your posts are, the more people will come in to see what’s going on.
3. Post Compelling Images
Facebook has been increasingly becoming a visual platform. Where before, there were small profile pictures, tiny sidebar ads, no app pictures and mediocre thumbnails for your posts, now there are pictures everywhere. The cover photo is huge, apps have thumbnails and your posts have massive preview images you can choose using open graph attributes.
There are a lot of practices you should keep in mind when you’re posting images. They need to be sized properly. They need to keep within Facebook’s text ratio guidelines. They should catch the eye compared to other posts on a page. They should be interesting and have something to do with the post they’re attached to. There’s a lot to remember, so get started learning and experimenting as soon as possible.
4. Post for Mobile Users
You know how everyone is always complaining about other people checking Facebook on their phones all the time? That’s not an exaggeration. Over half of all Facebook traffic comes from people using mobile devices, be they tablets or smartphones. This is a phenomenal metric, and it means if you’re not posting for mobile users, you may as well not be posting.
How do you post for mobile users? Just make sure your posts link to pages that are visible on mobile devices. That’s pretty much it. Just make sure mobile users aren’t left out of the fold. Of course, you can also target posts specifically for mobile users, if you have special local deal to run.
5. Comment As Your Page
When you’re using Facebook as your page, you have access to your control panel, your insights and all of your other options and features. You also gain tunnel vision and forget that the rest of Facebook exists. Did you know you can use your page to comment on the posts made by other pages? Or that you can comment on blog posts that use the Facebook comments plugin?
You need to be careful when you post as your page. If you’re not, you might end up posting too often or in ways that don’t benefit your brand, and that can come across as spamming. A spammer label can be more dangerous than anything else on this list done improperly.
6. Use a Website Like Box
The Facebook Like Box is a simple widget that’s easy to set up and customize. You barely even have to do anything to configure it; set a few options, copy and paste some code and you’re good to go.
The key to using the box effectively is simple; just use it. Make sure it’s visible on your website at all times, so users always have that subtle pressure to follow your page. It’s visual and it’s more effective than the other like widgets, mostly because of the profile pictures. See, it displays the pictures of the friends of the person viewing your page, if they like your page. It’s like peer pressure!
7. Run Targeted Contests
A simple week-long contest can be an amazing way to pull in new fans in under a week, but you need to run it properly. Your prize needs to be something you provide or something your users want, but that isn’t generally desired. As they saying goes, if you give away an iPad, you’re not attracting interested followers; you’re attracting people who want iPads.
The key to a successful contest is targeting. You need something that your users want, and you need to reach out to those users to let them know you have it. Encourage your existing users to share the contest for additional entries, run ads mentioning the contest, post about it on your blog and in your newsletter, and anywhere else you can find.
8. Link to Facebook in your Newsletter
This one is simple. Your newsletter is full of people who are interested in your website or product. Get them to join you on Facebook by posting about Facebook in your newsletter. Unless you gathered your newsletter entirely from Facebook-based opt-ins, there are going to be people on it who aren’t following you. Target those people.
This can be done ideally if you’ve kept track and cross-referenced who is on both your newsletter and your Facebook page. You can send a specific newsletter out to anyone not following you and encourage them to follow, without spamming your existing followers with a message for something they already know.
9. Ask Questions and Respond to Answers
When you ask your users a question, you get them to answer. When they answer, it shows the post in their news feed, and is exposed to their friends. Their friends can then answer as well, and that encourages them to follow you.
Looking for something to ask? Here are a bunch of great question formats to try. Find what works best for your audience.