Every business owner knows in their heads that Facebook is crucial for their online presence and to help grow their business. But in their hearts, they may sometimes feel quite frustrated about how much of a time trap it is. Many of them are unsure about how to use Facebook correctly, or are doing things that never yields any results and wonder what they are doing wrong. You need more likes for your Facebook business page right? It is time to make a start and get things right.
You really want to try and love Facebook and have those page likes that mean people are seeing what you post and are engaging with your content, but it can sometimes seem like an an impossible task to know exactly what to do. The good news is that there are ways to grow your Facebook business page likes and here are a few to inspire you.
Getting started
Before you start implementing strategies to grow your Facebook likes, spend a little time assessing the site and its potential benefits for your business. You will want to find your ideal customers on there, not try to reach every single one of the 1.2 billion users that visit the site. So instead of trying to get likes from everyone, focus your attention on finding ways to get likes from only those people who are interested in your product or service, your business or your brand.
Finding your demographic
An exercise such as building an ideal customer profile, perfect b2b customer or service user persona can be a good way to focus your attention – there are lots of templates available online to help with these. You may have enough existing customers to already have a good idea about who buys your product so you can use this data to target the right people on Facebook. Once you know who you are trying to reach, you can start working on different ways to reach them.
Make it easy to get Facebook likes
The first step is to make it easy for people to like your Facebook page. Do you have a Facebook widget on your website home page that has that little ‘like’ button on it? Does it appear on the sidebar of every page on your website, apart from landing pages? This is an easy and uncomplicated way to gain likes from people already on your website and therefore already interested in what you have to say. And then you can gain their Facebook attention, which is as valuable as it comes.
Add Facebook buttons to your header
In the same way as a sidebar widget, you can also add one of those little like buttons to the header of your website and that’s the area that definitely gets seen when anyone arrives at the home page of your site. These are easy to add and are unobtrusive but because people are used to seeing them, they are more likely to respond.
Add links to your email signature
Make sure you adapt the email signature for everyone in the business to include social media profile links that recipients can easily click. If they are reading your emails then they are interested in your business on some level and encouraging them to meet up on social media is a logical next step.
Content curation for sharing
Content curation is a fancy way of saying that you are sharing other people’s posts. This might seem strange as you are effectively advertising someone else on your page but Facebook doesn’t want your page to only feature your posts. Facebook is all about ‘caring and sharing’ after all. And there’s another advantage – your business name is shown as having shared that post so you are still getting your name out there and recognised. Look for relevant content that is interesting to your customers, add your own comment and share it to your page.
Facebook contests
Who doesn’t love a good competition with the chance to win a prize? It may seem strange to give away a prize that costs the business money just for a ‘like’ on a Facebook page and while the value of such a like has decreased, it still strongly exists and is very effective. And people who like your page are more likely to see your content and therefore interact with your brand. The best way to combine the two is to hold a competition and have a pop-up on the entry screen asking people to like the FB page. It isn’t compulsory or a condition of entry but if they are interested in your competition, they are more likely to ‘like’ your company.
Try Facebook Live
Video media is huge at the moment and any content including video generates more likes and attention than any other type of content. Whether you do it yourself or have someone in your business get involved in making some video clips for you, doing Facebook Live can add to the page likes and even win over potential customers. Host a Q&A, preview a new product or even do a workplace introduction but make sure you advertise it on your page first so people know what you are doing!
Conclusion
Facebook may be hard and confusing but there’s no doubt that it is worth it in the long run. And once you have a solid following you can gain insight into what works and what doesn’t and even enter the arena of paid advertising on the site.
