Before we get to some tips on growing your audience, lets quickly look at the difference between a Facebook ‘Profile’ and a Facebook ‘Page’.
Profile
this is YOU as an individual
for non-commercial use and represent individual people (From Facebook’s help center)
You need a profile in order to manage and create a page
Your profile interacts with other profiles much like a person to person conversation. You can message other people and post to their timelines
you can share info from your page to your profile, but you cannot create ads or boosted posts from a personal profile
Page
Pages look similar to personal profiles, but they offer unique tools for businesses, brands and organizations.
Pages are managed by people who have personal profiles.
You can like a Page to see updates in News Feed
Think of this as your storefront. You cannot initiate a message conversation FROM your page, but if someone sends a message TO your page you can then message them back
You can run ads and ‘boosted posts’ from a page
For more info from Facebook’s help center on pages: https://www.facebook.com/help/217671661585622
Now that we know the difference between the two, lets look at how you can grow your audience. We have clients that come to us to manage their social media who already have an established client/audience reach, and then we have clients that we are starting completely from scratch. The ones we start from scratch are much more time consuming, but very rewarding when you have a hand in growing their audience which ultimately assists in increasing their market share in their respective industries.
It can take upwards of six months to get a solid base for audience and followers (each social platform has their unique advertising and reach tools). Today in part 1 of our 4 part series, lets look at Facebook on it’s own.
When using your personal profile (which is great for keeping in touch with past clients), you can simply add friends and search them by name or location. Facebook has a suggested friends option so you can see people that are connected to you and you can add them as you go. Facebook’s help center on adding friends also shows you how you can import your contacts to send automatic friend requests – this would be ideal for that past client database that you want to connect with via your personal profile: https://www.facebook.com/help/146466588759199
Now on to your Facebook ‘Page’ (aka your storefront or business persona)
The one thing we would like to lead with is that if you are going to create a paid ‘likes’ campaign, it is absolutely essential to make sure you are targeting the ad to an audience that is relevant for you. You should be making sure your audience is within a certain geographical location, and furthermore, you can target to specific interests and behaviors. It’s less about the quantity of likes or followers and more about the quality of likes and followers. There’s no sense in having 5,000 likes on a page if none of those people are a fit for your service. It’s better to have a smaller audience of people that are more likely to connect with your content and you as an individual or business.
One other very important note to make is HOW you will measure the success of your reach on Facebook. With Facebook’s ever changing algorithm determining who sees what and when, it’s important to keep an eye on the stats that matter to your business or the business ‘goals’ you set up as part of your social media marketing campaign. IE. website traffic, connecting with past clients, brand building with advertising etc. Determining these goals up front is paramount to ensuring you consistently improve on your social marketing. Review them often to stay on track. More on this later in this blog series
Your Facebook reach on each post is a totally different topic which we will also cover later in this blog series. In the meantime, lets take a look at 10 things you can do to increase the sheer amount of likes on your page (growing your audience):
Use appropriate hashtags. Yes, hashtags are for more than just twitter. They are a way to categorize posts and you can search Facebook for posts with a certain hashtag. Example, if you are a realtor, you may wish to use your location and real estate after your post, like this; “Property values on the rise again in #Calgary #realestate”.
Boost posts to create sponsored stories
Boost your page to create a paid likes campaign (remember, be specific!)
Make sure your content is high quality. If it’s spammy in nature, people will flag it and your page will appear less frequently (your posts will not show often either)
Use your page as a customer service mechanism – do you clearly display your contact details and have a ‘message page’ option
Use rich media – mix up your content and add in photos, video etc rather than just plain text content
Link to your page from any existing marketing (website, email signature, business cards)
Run a contest
Let you customers know you have a page (seems pretty simple but you would be amazed how many business have a page but dont tell anyone about it)
Comment, like, and share content from people/pages that you wish to acquire likes from. If they see a notification that your business page ‘liked’ their status, they just might check out your page and give it a like to!
Questions? Comments? Email us anytime! team@emptydesk.ca
If you are interested in Empty Desk Solutions Social Media Marketing Plans, please drop us a line and we will send you your customized proposal all in less than 3 business days #EDSguarantee #happymarketing