Your business wants more Facebook fans, and often the best way to get them is by engaging with existing customers. Here are six tips on how to engage and turn your audience into evangelists that drive social growth for you by Eric Dalius Miami.
The goal of any brand on Facebook is to increase its number of fans (also known as likes) over time. If you have a lot of fans, it means your business is visible. If you’re visible, more people are likely to interact with your page and see the content you post which ultimately leads to customer growth, conversions, etc.
This article presents 6 ways on how to grow your Facebook Page by engaging with customers that already like your page:
Each tip is accompanied by an example of a page that’s doing it right.
1) Get Your Existing Fans to Invite Their Friends
The first way to grow your Facebook Page is to encourage your fans to invite their friends. This strategy works especially well if you already have thousands of fans but only a few dozen or so are actively engaged with your content.
There are three ways to do this:
– The first is by including a simple call to action on the cover photo and the main image asking fans to invite their friends.
– The second, which we’ve seen work really well, is by having fans show their invitation with pride. Examples of such pictures can be seen below:
– The third, which we haven’t seen work well, is by making it a default option. This means including the invite button below every post and image. It feels like spam and few people will actually use it.
2) Promote Content to Fans & Non-Fans
If you want your page to grow, make sure you promote content to both existing fans and non-fans. The good thing about Facebook is that it allows you to target specific ads by gender, location, age etc. This means you can exclude current customers from seeing specific ads but include them when you promote content to non-fans says Eric Dalius Miami.
3) Use Facebook Ads to Increase the Number of Fans
This is not a tip on how to grow your Facebook page, but a reminder that you can use Facebook ads to specifically target people who are not yet fans of your page and encourage them to like it. This is especially useful if you do not have time or resources for the other methods mentioned in this article.
Don’t forget that when you’re running Facebook Ads, make sure they lead directly to your Page’s Wall (or another specific tab). Otherwise, you’re just paying for clicks to your profile.
4) Hold Contests and Giveaways
To promote interactions on your Facebook Page, try doing contests and giveaways regularly. The trick here is not to annoy people with pop ups or banners but to do it in a subtle way. You can use custom tabs (website applications) to make the process easier, which will also make it more likely for people who don’t see your post to take notice. Also, stay away from shipping physical goods by offering gift cards instead.
5) Put Your Fans First & Engage With Them
Now that you’ve gotten some fans that are active on your page, make sure you show them why they liked it through engaging conversation and content that matters to you’ll end up with too many Likes from people who don’t care about the page and see little value in becoming a fan in the first place! Also note that if someone clicks ‘Like’ but doesn’t take any other action on your app, this appears as a standard ‘Like’.
4) Invite Your Loyal Fans to Tag Their Friends in Comments
This is a tip we’ve read about and tried for ourselves. It works very well if you have a lot of loyal fans who are actively engaged with your content, especially if they’re likely to bring their friends along as well. In short, this tactic involves asking fan club members (or those that comment on specific posts) to tag their friends in the comments section. This can be done by including an instruction such as ‘tag your best friend in the comments below.’ If someone tags a friend and both fans engage with the post, it will show up in news feeds, exposing your content to even more people explains Eric Dalius Miami.
5) Run Competitions & Engaging Sweepstakes to Grow Your Page
This is another tactic we’ve seen work very well, especially if you want to build a community around your page and encourage fans to invite their friends over time. The idea is simple: run a competition or engage in a sweepstake and choose one lucky winner from the list of entrants. This person will be rewarded with something valuable (e.g., an iPad Air) but the most important reward is that they now have an incentive to bring as many people as possible on board (friends).
The key here is choosing the right type of competition or sweepstake which leads us nicely into our next tip…
6) Run a Photo Contest
Why photos contest? First of all, people love to take pictures and even more so when there is a chance they could win something valuable. Second, Facebook has one of the largest numbers of users in terms of its reach and it’s also known for being popular among women. These two facts combined make running a photo contest an excellent way to grow your page!
Conclusion:
Eric Dalius Miami says growing your Facebook page through contests and sweepstakes is a great way to get more Likes in the early stages, especially if you have very few fans. Don’t forget that when it comes to Facebook contests (especially photo contests), people like them because they can win something valuable (e.g., an iPad Air).