‘Rise through the Ranks: A Guide on How to Get Followers on Facebook’ is designed to get you started growing your Facebook presence.
Facebook.
Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the fact that it’s a huge platform. With around 2.4 billion facebook users, it’s by far the most popular social media site (take that, Twitter) – and it doesn’t look like that’s about to change anytime soon.
Every man and his dog are on Facebook these days, making it the perfect place for you to gain new followers and grow your business as a result. But… that isn’t always as easy as it sounds, so we’re here to help!
We’ve spoken previously about the steps you need to take to increase your amount of Twitter followers, but Facebook is a whole different ball game.
We completely understand that the idea of trying to gain hundreds, or even thousands, of new Facebook followers (we’re talking real followers, not bought ones!) can seem pretty daunting, especially if they’re lacking at the moment – but by putting these tips into action, you’ll be well on your way to being Facebook famous in no time!
For the time-conscious of you, these are the main points we’ll be covering:
- Facebook advertisements
- Inviting new people
- Influencer marketing
- Content, content, content
- Live videos and stories
- Taking advantage of analytics
- Email marketing
Why Facebook?
Before we jump into ‘the how’, we first need to address ‘the why’.
Now, we’ve already mentioned how massive Facebook is, but aside from that, why should it be part of your social media marketing strategy?
Well… let’s start by taking a look at the price. How much does it cost to set up a Facebook business page? Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. Of course, it’ll be in your favour to employ other strategies which will up your costs, but taking the initial leap onto Facebook is completely free, meaning you’ve got nothing to lose!
This aside, like all social networks, creating a Facebook page is an easy way of engaging and interacting with your target audience in real-time. It’s pretty common for different social networking platforms to have varying users, and therefore, different audiences; so it’s really important that you maximise your reach by using as many as possible!
Facebook Ads
It goes without saying that ads are an incredible way to garner support for your business, and advertising on social media is no different. By using Facebook ads, you’ve got yourself a relatively easy way of luring in potential new consumers.
In fact, the average Facebook user clicks on 12 ads on the site every single month… when you take into account the number of active users, that’s a lot of clicks.
But… people won’t click on just anything. In order to ensure you’re getting users to check out what you’re posting, and eventually press that follow button, you need to create high-quality ads aimed directly at your target audience.
The great thing about Facebook is that you can target your ads at a really specific group of people. As this Hubspot article states, why ‘settle for “women between ages 25 and 45” when you can target “women between 25 and 45 who like reading and whose favorite author is Suzanne Collins”?
Makes more sense, right?
Now, there are a whole host of ways to advertise on Facebook, for example:
- Video ads
- Dynamic ads
- Image ads
- Poll/vote ads
And that’s just to name a few!
Check out this take on an image ad campaign by Ben and Jerry’s (anyone else feeling hungry?)
This advert capitalises on ‘National Chocolate Ice Cream Day’, using it as a great persuasion tactic to entice people into buying the product. Fantastic techniques such as offering deals and giving away free gifts with purchases all help to increase engagement and followers, and drive conversions as a result!
However, weak ad campaigns have the power to completely turn someone off your brand within mere moments (less than a second, to be specific!), so make sure you’re putting in the effort for greater returns.
Invitations
When you want people to come to your party, what do you do? Invite them. Well, the same goes for Facebook. It sounds obvious, but inviting people to like your page is a quick and simple way of increasing awareness of your brand and gaining more followers.
So… how does it work? How do you know who to invite, and how to even invite people?
Luckily for you, it’s super easy, and can be done quicker than you can say ‘invitation’!
All you need to do is scroll down to some of your recent Facebook posts on your business’ news feed and check out who’s liked them! Here, Facebook will let you know those that are already following your page, and those that have only clicked the like button.
You’ll then be provided with the option to ‘invite’ all those people who aren’t already your Facebook fans – and… voila! Just like that you can up the number of people following you.
But, hold up! Not so fast…
Unfortunately, there’s a limit on the number of people each admin can invite per day, so you won’t be able to get carried away with invitations. However, you can get around this slightly by making more employees admins on your page. More admins = more invites!
The power of influencers
Ah, influencers. The kings and queens of social media at the moment, and a real asset to your Facebook marketing campaign.
I’m sure that a lot of people think that influencers are reserved strictly for Instagram, but that’s not the case. In actual fact, Facebook takes the crown for the most influential social media platform, influencing 19% of all purchasing decisions!
That’s why it’s so important to take advantage of influencer marketing to not only increase your social media presence, but to gain more Facebook page followers as a result.
Before you can even begin to start partnering with influencers, you’ll need to find out which ones will work best with you and your brand.
You can find suitable influencers by:
- Monitoring keywords related to your brand and discovering influencers who are already posting similar content
- Using social listening tools to find influencers in your industry
- Using an influencer discovery platform to search for influencers and understand their impact
Now, in the case of influencers, bigger isn’t always better…
Quuu has tackled the topic of micro-influencers before, and we’ve come to realise that they may be the key to upping your Facebook likes and follows.
According to Neil Patel, micro-influencers can be defined as ‘hyper-specific influencers who have lower follower counts in a given niche. They have intensely engaged audiences, yet a relatively low (below 25k) follower count’.
So, this means forgetting about your Kim Kardashians and Ariana Grandes and setting your sights on someone slightly lesser-known.
Take TravelFreak (@thetravelfreak) for example – he boasts over 18,000 followers on Facebook, and still manages to interact with a lot of them. In this post, he’s either liked or replied to all comments:
Interactions between influencers and their followers such as these, work to strengthen the trust followers have in them, which will in turn have a positive impact on the success of your partnership – anything they promote will be taken seriously by their followers.
Content is everything
When it comes to getting more followers, your content strategy needs to be tip-top. After all, if you’re creating great content, why wouldn’t people want to follow you?
However, in a world where social media dominates and content creation is on everyone’s agenda, how can you make yourself stand out and ensure you’re putting out creative content?
We’ve got two pieces of advice to keep your content up to speed with the competition:
- Keep it interesting
There are so many different kinds of content that can be created these days. That’s right, content creators are no longer strictly producing long-winded written pieces (yes, we see the irony), so you can ditch this and say hello to a world of creativity.
Here are some options for interesting, eye-catching content:
- Videos – everyone likes to get swept away watching a good video from time to time, and for good reason! Videos provide great opportunities to showcase your brand’s personality and win people over with some good old-fashioned humour (and there’s the chance they might go viral)! In fact, videos tend to perform best on Facebook, gaining 59% more engagement than other forms of content… impressive.
- Infographics – why stick to either graphics or words when you can combine the two? Infographics have proven to be a great visual to draw in followers, allowing you to put out valuable information that isn’t just a dense block of writing. Statistics show that infographics are 30x more likely to be read than normal text articles, meaning higher engagement rates, more shares and ultimately, more followers!
- Blog posts/articles – okay, we know we said too many words can get boring, but sometimes, they’re necessary, particularly if you’re trying to get across a lot of information. And, if you jazz up your writing with some fun graphics and throw in the odd GIF or two, you’ll be getting clicks in no time!
- Rule of thirds
We’ve stressed the importance of the rule of thirds before, but in case you’re clueless, we’re referring to this approach when it comes to content:
Want successful content which leads to more followers? This is the way to go. By using ⅓ of your content to engage with followers, you’re really working on fostering existing relationships, something which is so important if you’re looking to increase your following through recommendations.
Live videos and stories
I think we’ve all spent a fair amount of time scrolling endlessly through stories on Instagram (time flies when you’re having fun!), and gotten notification after notification telling us a celebrity is ‘going live’… but this isn’t just exclusive to our favourite photo sharing app anymore.
You guessed it! Facebook has jumped on the bandwagon too, now giving you the option to upload Facebook Stories and to create live videos (you can even link your account with Instagram for seamless integration between the two apps).
Both Facebook Stories and live videos create a fantastic space for you to nurture your relationships with existing followers, meaning discussion can flourish. In fact, going live on Facebook brings in around 10 times the amount of comments that a normal video does!
If you’re listening and responding to your current followers, they’re not only a lot more likely to recommend you to their pals, expanding your organic reach, but they’ll also get a say in how your brand can improve. This makes them active participants in the shaping of your brand, which is sure to increase their trust in you.
With that being said… you need to make sure your story or live video is worthwhile to your followers. Nobody wants to waste time watching something useless, and considering 25% of people watch Facebook live videos to stay informed, it’s probably a good idea to produce interesting and relatable content that will facilitate discussion.
Facebook analytics
It’s time to get technical! Well… sort of.
Facebook has many assets, but one that really stands out is its built-in analytics tool. Actually, scratch that, tools.
Correct, Facebook provides both Page Insights and Audience Insights to keep you up to speed with the metrics which will help you grasp the success of your business page.
Okay, let’s take it back a notch and walk you through the key differences between the tools.
In their Facebook guide, Hootsuite identified the following contrasts between the two:
- Page Insights – give you ‘detailed analytics for your Facebook Page, so you can track what works, learn how people interact with your content, and improve your results over time’.
- Audience Insights – help you ‘understand your Facebook audience so you can better target ads and create more relevant content’.
Okay, so now that we’ve established the basics, let’s discuss why these can be vital in helping you gain more followers.
By exploring both ‘Insights’ tools on your business page, you’re able to delve deeper into the analytics of your posts, and better discover how well each post is performing and, crucially, why.
Take a look at this for example…
You can get access to a lot more information than simply the number of likes and comments a post has received.
This will make it a lot easier to understand trends between posts, helping you figure out just what you need to include in order to both maximise your reach and increase engagement.
And speaking of this…
Facebook Insights also provides you with specifics about the reach and engagement of all your posts, again helping you to identify the commonalities between posts that are doing well… and not so well.
Email marketing
The feeling of frustration when you open your email inbox only to be spammed with hundreds of emails from various companies is something I think most people can attest to.
With that being said… whilst annoying, email marketing does work, hence why 9 out of 10 marketers are using it!
And… with email marketing comes a ready-made email list – there are so many people that may have signed up to your email list but aren’t actually following you on social media.
By integrating your email marketing campaign with your Facebook page, you’ve got yourself a foolproof plan for gaining more followers.
Check out this email I recently received from Mob Kitchen, for example. They’ve not only included an eye-catching graphic to entice their customers, but simple and discreet links to their social media pages (it doesn’t need to be in your face)!
If you like, though, you can go bigger with this! According to AdEspresso, ‘one way to get more users to like your Page is by featuring an email campaign purely to promote and encourage likes on Facebook’.
Go hard or go home, right?
So, if being inconspicuous isn’t your thing, link your Facebook page with a call to action that focuses on giving it a follow!
Conclusion
Well, it looks like we’ve reached the end, congratulations for making it this far! Hopefully, by now you’re fully equipped with all the knowledge you need to create a flawless strategy which will gain you Facebook followers in no time.
Before we say goodbye, let’s quickly recap our 7 tips to ensure they remain fresh in your memory:
- Get your Facebook ads out there for the world to see
- Send as many invitations as you can
- Take the time to develop a strong influencer marketing strategy
- Perfect your content
- Go live on Facebook and upload stories
- Use analytics to your advantage
- Integrate Facebook with email marketing
Once you’ve got to work on all of these, you’ll no longer have any excuses for why your Facebook page hasn’t taken off yet – what are you waiting for?!
