After your Facebook page is set up, then what? A page that is beautifully designed with awesome content doesn’t mean anything if there aren’t people there to look at it! After the page is set up, then it is time to recruit new friends, or likes, to the page. When people start liking the page, then it becomes visible to their friends and they will in turn like it and the process will grow exponentially. How do you get those likes to your page so the business can really begin to grow? There are a few steps you can take to make this happen.
How to Get Likes: Paid, Viral and Organic
There is a difference between the types of likes a posting can get. Posts from a company are usually open to the public, meaning that anyone who sees it can like the post or make a comment on it. The people who are friends of the page who like the status updates are considered organic likes, because they are already associated with the page.
Viral likes are the ones that are given by people who happen to see their friend like a post and then they in turn like it. They are not friends of the page, but since it is a public profile they are able to see the postings and add a like, even though they may not be friends. These people who read the posts and like them will have a great chance to become friends of the site over time. Keep adding fun and engaging posts where they feel inclined to like them and they will eventually like the page because they are afraid of missing one.
Paid likes are ones that are attained after payment is made to boost a post. Facebook offers options for how much should be spent per day on a post. It also displays how far of a reach that budget will get you for that particular post. The best part about promoting a post to get more paid likes is that it targets people who might be specifically interested n the brand, which in turn converts them in to a friend of the page.
To get all types of likes on a post, make sure they are open to the public. Before posting, check the security of the post and see that a globe is present. The globe represents that everyone can see your post and has the ability to like it or comment on it. Any other symbol might mean that the post is restricted on who can view it, thus it will limit on the likes it will receive. One of the best ways to get people to like your post, ask them!
Pages set up for businesses have a tracker at the bottom of the post that displays the reach of the post. When you click on it, it will show how many viral or organic views the post has. Posts that are all organic aren’t getting the exposure they need. When this happens often, it means the posts need to be made more interesting so that they get more likes to them and become interactive.
Tips and Techniques to Maximize Engagement
There are a lot of ways to encourage the engagement of the people who like your profile page. These ways include offering contests, interactive posts, fun pictures, relevant tips, useful information and interacting with other businesses that have profile pages on Facebook that could compliment yours. The more engagement they have with your page, the more of their friends there are that will see the interaction on the news ticker and be intrigued. When they are intrigued, they will visit the page and be inclined to click the like button for themselves.
Content that Gets the Best Results
When there is a post put up by a person or a business that just states something obvious or without enthusiasm, how inclined are you to press like or just keep on scrolling down until something interesting does catch your eye? What catches someone’s attention is a picture, a witty posts, some interesting tidbits or some topic they can contribute to.
Contests
Everyone loves to be a winner, so offer up a contest on your site. When offering a contest though, make sure there is some type of prize to make it worthwhile for people to enter or else the entrants might be scarce. Offer a free product from your company, a gift certificate, or free service to the winner to make them want to enter the contest and want to keep coming to your page to see if you are offering more contests. The contests should be easy to enter and require minimal effort by each person that enters.
Some great contest ideas involve ones using your brand. For example, have a photo contest where the most clever, funniest, ugliest, best idea with your product wins. Choose a monthly theme, a seasonal theme or one to go along with something fun. People can easily take pictures with their phones, so uploading photos to enter is easier than ever. Friends will check back to see if they are a winner, or even share the post with their friends, which enables you to have more friends in the long run. More friends translates into more business.
Interactive Posts
Interactive posts are ones that encourage participation from everyone who reads the posts. For example, write the beginning of a sentence and then enter a blank for the friends to fill in the rest. The sentence could be related to your business, or it could be relevant to a holiday or season coming up. A great sentence would incorporate both. For example, “This fall, my favorite product to use from X Store is going to be the _______.” Friends can comment with their favorite product or even suggest new ones that they would like your company to make. It’s a great invitation to get people to comment, when they normally just view a post and move on to the next post in their newsfeed.
Pictures
Adding pictures to a Facebook page can get a little dicey when caution is not used. The pictures should always be professional, not personal, in nature. Employees can certainly be included in any pictures, but have them taken at a meeting, during a conference or while producing a product. Skip any photos of the employees at the 5:01 party or when they are having a coffee break, discussing football. Getting to know the people behind the doors is a good thing, when it shows them actually working.
Structuring the Posts
It might seem like a good idea to schedule a post for the same time each and every day. It isn’t. You can schedule posts to come out on a certain day, but unless you have something vitally important, do you need to post every day? Just as not posting often enough can be damaging, over posting can be damaging as well.
Structure the posts so they come out every couple of days, at different times of the day. If every post is scheduled for 9 am, then friends won’t go out looking for it or want to like your page because it is predictable and they don’t have to in order to see the posts. Mix it up and make them search out your page and like it so they don’t want to miss out when you do post.
Posts can be scheduled ahead of time if you plan on being away when a post should be coming out. The calendar under the post allows a poster to pick the month, date and time that a post should be released to the public. Posts can be done hours, days and even weeks ahead of schedule so that they are consistently showing up on your Facebook page. Just remember that when you are scheduling posts, the topic you are posting needs to be relevant to that time. For instance, scheduling a post about Christmas sale items isn’t the best thing to do on a February day.
Include only relevant information or pictures with the post to make it interesting. Facts show that a post with a picture or an image gets almost twice as much attention as one with just text does. The picture could seem small, but if it is relevant to the text, include it and then the viewers are twice as likely to keep reading all of what needs to be said. Adding extra information about personal schedules, gossip amongst co-workers or your personal schedule has no place in the post, so keep it out. That type of information bores readers and they are less likely to engage in future posts from your page after it happens.
Getting More Fans
The point to setting up a business profile page on Facebook is to grow the number of people that have liked or chosen to follow the page. The more organic likes you have on the page, the more powerful the exponential views will be to the page when there are people liking the status updates, the pictures or commenting on the posts. Therefore, you always want to attract more followers to a page in order to get the best results.
To increase the number of people who have liked the page, there are a few tips one can enlist. First, encourage the friends you do have to share the page with their friends. Offer a drawing for all of the people who do share the page by a certain date so they can win a prize as an incentive for helping. When that date rolls around, take all of the names who have shared the page by clicking on the show shares button under the post. Pick one of the names and presto, there is a winner.
Second, one can enlist the support of other businesses who are trying to grow. One business can reach out to another if it is in the same town or with a service that compliments their own. A great example is a wedding photographer who wants to work with a florist. They both work with brides but are vastly different in what they can provide at a wedding. To work together, they can promote each other’s pages with a post that links to them. They should link with a post that is fun and with an image to generate the best response. A photographer could also work with a caterer, a wedding planner, a specific venue, a dress shop and so on. Think of all the business types that compliment what your business does and send them a message and ask if they are interested in cross promotion with your business. Most other businesses are receptive to the idea because it helps them out in the long run, too.
Third, there is an option on Facebook to boost a post with a small fee. The fee you pay is directly proportional to how many times the post is advertised to the friends of friends you have. The higher the fee that is paid will result in it being shared more often. When there is some room in the budget to spend on advertising this way, it is worth investigating to see if it works for your company. Make sure that when a post will be boosted it is one that contains fun information that will make the viewer want to click over and see more on the page. Don’t bother to boost boring posts as they won’t draw as much attention to the profile as you want, especially if you are spending money on it.