The 10 steps below demonstrate with a real example of how to get more than 10,000 fans on your Facebook business page.
Facebook is the king of social networks with more than 2.3 billion active users per month
It is used by more than 60% of Internet users worldwide and it is a great tool for promoting a product or service, finding new customers or gaining more loyal readers (followers).
To take advantage of this for business purposes, you need to have a lot of fans (followers) on your Facebook business page.
Let’s see below why having many Facebook fans is important.
What is the importance of having many Facebook fans on your business page?
It indicates popularity – It goes without saying that the number of fans reveals how popular a website is.
A Facebook business page with 100,000 followers is more popular than a page with 1,000 fans and this leads to a number of other benefits (described below).
It indicates trust – If you can’t understand the relationship between Facebook fans and business trust, have in mind that the US State Department spent $630,000 to increase their Facebook Fans from 100,000 to 2 million during the years 2011-2012 (See related post from marketingland).
Why did they do this?
Because in today’s World a successful business, website or blog needs to have a lot of Facebook fans. Five Years ago this did not make any difference but in the 21st century, social proof is important.
More fans, more visits – The more fans you have, the greater is the number of people that will see your posts in their timeline and possibly visit your website.
While this is true, it should be noted that not all your fans will see your posts.
With the recent changes to the Facebook algorithm, only a small percentage of your followers (no more than 4 %) will see your status updates.
This number can vary, but what is important to understand now, is that if you have 10,000 fans and you post a new update, it will be seen organically by a max of 300-400 people.
It’s good for SEO as well – Although officially Google does not admit that social media is a ranking factor, many studies show that popular websites on Facebook are more likely to perform better in search, than not so popular websites (other factors being equal).
How to go from 0 to 10,000 Facebook fans
Now that you are convinced that having a lot of Facebook fans is important for your website and business, let’s see step-by-step how to go from 0 to 10,000 fans.
Note: These are the exact same steps I followed to increase the facebook followers of my fitness blog’s facebook page. Currently the page has more than 130K fans and it continuous to grow organically.
Step 1: First things first – you need to have a Facebook business page
It may sound silly for the experienced but for beginners to social media this may be something new: A personal Facebook page is different from a business page.
If you want to have friends on Facebook to share your holiday photos then you need to create a personal page.
If you want to have fans and followers for your website or business then you need to create a Facebook business page.
So, the first step is to ensure that you create a Facebook business page and the second step is to make sure that your page is properly optimized.
Step 2: Optimize your Facebook business page
When we talk about Facebook business page optimization we mean choosing a friendly page title (username), writing a catchy description (in the short description field), providing accurate information for long description, company overview, mission (see screenshot below) and of course, posting interesting content – this is the most important optimization tip of all.
The quality of the content posted on your Facebook business page will also determine success or failure.
Having an optimized Facebook page makes it easier to attract new fans or more likes from ads as we will see below.
Step 3: Take advantage of your personal Facebook account
I mentioned in step 1 above that you need to have a business page and not a personal page, but you still need to have an active personal Facebook account.
Here is why:
After you post an update on your business page, one of the ways to increase exposure and likes is to share that post on your personal page as well.
People you have as friends on your personal page are more likely to ‘like’ and ‘interact’ with the post shared from your business page and this will increase the engagement factor of your posts.
As a result, Facebook will show your posts to more fans (organically).
So, one of the ways to increase the number of people that view your posts and go past the 4% of your fan base is to share and promote the post on your personal page.
It goes without saying that the greater the number of friends the bigger will be the visibility of the post.
Also, make sure that you invite all your existing friends (and new ones) to like your Facebook business page. Do that every time you gain a new ‘friend’.
Step 4: Add the Facebook Like box on your website
This is again social media marketing 101 but you need to have the Facebook like box on your website for 3 reasons:
#1 – It’s a way to associate your website with the Facebook business page. In other words, it is a way to ‘tell’ search engines that this is your official Facebook business page.
#2 – When you get a lot of fans, this is something you should be proud of and something to show to your users (as explained above this means popularity, trust, and social proof).
#3 – It’s a good way to grow your fan base organically. Your readers can follow your website by clicking the LIKE button without having to go to Facebook.
Hint: For optimum results, position the LIKE box above the fold (on the sidebar).
Hint 2: You can also popup the like box to new users (for example, after they spend 60 seconds on a page, after they scroll down to the bottom or after they try to leave your page – while this works well in terms of getting new likes, you should be careful not to make it too distracting for your users.)
Step 5: Follow these tips to increase post engagement
So far, we have created an optimized Facebook business page, added friends to our personal Facebook page and placed the like box in a prominent position on our website.
The next natural step is to start sharing content to keep your fans happy and maybe manage to convert them from fans > web site visitors > customers.
Some simple rules to follow that will increase the user engagement with your Facebook business page:
#1 – Share relevant content
Share content that your fans expect to see on your page.
For example, if your website is about Social media, share content related to social media and not about sports or anything else you might like.
If your users want to read sports news, they know where to find them.
#2 – Keep it business
Don’t forget that they follow your business page to get updates about your website (and niche) and not about your social gatherings.
If you want to get social, then use your personal Facebook page, your business page is about your website.
As a rule thumb, I use my business page to share content from my niche only, if I need to share something which is not related to my niche, I use my personal page.
#3 – Don’t be too promotional
Sharing promotional content (all the time) on your Facebook page will drive your fans away.
When you have a promotion to share or something that might benefit your fans, you can do so but don’t overdo it.
Try to post interesting, shareable content that is related to your niche, even if this does not come directly from your website. Keep a balance between promotional and content that your followers might want to read.
Step 6: Share interesting and high-quality content (not just links)
I made some tests regarding the impact of descriptions when doing a Facebook update and found out that Facebook posts with ‘lists’ get more likes than posts with just links.
Let me give you an example to understand what I mean.
When you want to share a post from your website on Facebook, you go to Facebook status updates and enter the webpage URL. It looks something like this:
You can share this post without adding any additional information. If your title and images are good, you will get a number of likes depending on the time you make the post, number of fans, etc.
If one the other hand, you enrich your post by adding more information and particularly a list, then other things being equal, you are more likely to gain more likes and shares.
For me, this makes sense because people that see a title and image in their timeline may not ‘Like It’ since it provides no value to them (don’t forget that the average user is presented with hundreds of postings in their timeline every time they log in to Facebook).
On the other hand, when you give them valuable, high quality and easy to read the information (like a list), they will click the LIKE button because they read something useful without having to leave their timeline.
Note: It is a known fact that people have a tendency of LIKING a post without reading it so give them reasons to do so; your website visits may not increase but the engagement factor of your posts will rise.
Step 7: Share images, videos, and emotions
If you take a look at some of the most popular Facebook pages, you will notice that they tend to share images, videos, infographics, charts, etc, along with their usual text-only postings.
This type of content gets more likes and shares and as a result, the page gets more fans and followers.
In a recent study by Buzzsumo, they identified that the most shared and liked content on Facebook, has the following characteristics:
Step 8: Provide incentives to get more fans & followers
Why should someone follow your Facebook business page?
You need to give incentives to Facebook users to follow your page. A few ideas to consider:
Quality updates
This is the best incentive you can give your users. Before posting anything on your page, you need to make sure that it provides value to your audience.
When you do this consistently, your existing followers will share it with their friends and this will attract more users.
Run a contest
Many websites run contests on Facebook and giveaway different gifts. The ‘price’ for joining the content is to LIKE the page first.
There are various tools to do that but have in mind that if you don’t have a known brand this may not be so successful.
Content upgrades
If you have a blog, you can use ask users to LIKE your page to get an updated version of your post.
This requires extra tools but it is something worth testing out.
Step 9: You need to promote your own content and page
When you create your business page don’t expect that it will magically get thousands of fans.
Besides the tips outlined above, you also have to promote your business page in places other than Facebook.
A few ideas to consider that worked for my case:
Promote in other social media networks
If you have accounts with other social media channels e.g. Pinterest etc. you can periodically ask your followers to join you on Facebook as well.
Be polite and explain to them the benefits of doing so.
Promote in Twitter
Besides posting about your Facebook page on other social media networks, you can take advantage of twitter’s interactive features.
When you get a new twitter follower, send them a private (personalized) message and ask them to follow you on Facebook (both your personal and business pages).
This method although it is time-consuming, (I did it manually and not using any tools) it can produce really good results.
Promote in your newsletter
If you have a newsletter or if you communicate with your readers via email, make sure that you ask them to follow your Facebook page.
Do not just write the FB URL below your signature but ASK them politely to LIKE your business page.
Step 10: Facebook ads are a must
This is the easiest and most effective way to increase your Facebook fans but it’s not free.
Facebook offers a self-service ad platform that you can use to either increase your fan base (promote your page), boost your posts, get more leads, increase conversions or perform a number of other actions (as shown in the image above).
The procedure is pretty simple and straightforward. Basically you select a page you own, select your goal (promote your page), select your audience (based on country, age, other demographics, and interests) and then set your daily budget and duration.
The cost per campaign depends on a number of factors. The best way to assess if Facebook ads is a good solution to increase your fan base is to run a pilot campaign for a couple of days.
Spend $10-$20 dollars per day and run the campaigns for a fixed duration (at least a week).
In the end, you can decide if the cost per like is something you are willing to pay for.
I had great results with Facebook ads both for my websites and for client websites and I run campaigns every month (for a few days) to boost my Facebook likes.
It should be noted that with Facebook ads you don’t buy likes but views. Many people believe that what you pay for is Facebook likes but in reality you pay Facebook to show your ad to more Facebook users.
If what you are advertising is interesting, then more people will hit the like button so spend some time and think about the message you want to display in your ad as well as the image to use.
Conclusion
Having a decent number of Facebook fans on your business page is very important for credibility and social promotion purposes.
If this wasn’t important in the first place, then nobody would care and the US State Department wouldn’t have to spend $630 thousand for Facebook campaigns.
Once you do the necessary optimizations to your business page (steps 1 and 2 above), then the easiest way to get more followers is to use Facebook ads.
With a bit of A/B testing, you can get to 10,000 fans with no more than $1,000 (spread into a period of months).
Once you do everything properly and provided that you have a great product or service, you can grow your fans to 100,000+ as I did with the Facebook Page of my fitness blog.
