25 Ways To Get More Facebook Followers

As a business owner you can either reach an audience through paid advertising or by using social media.  Growing your social media audience is a free marking method that can be very effective to grow and reach your own audience. Below are a few ideas on how to get more people to like your facebook page. ​

The Basics

1) Create a Fan Page

Business owners often start their Facebook journey creating the wrong type of page. ​A personal profile is meant for human beings friending and connecting with others humans. These pages are restricted by privacy and often not sorted in Google searches because of this.  Groups are meant for a gathering of people where they can connect and communicate quick and effectively discussing related topics.  A business page is a public page meant for marketing your businesses. This type of page is accessed via your personal profile. People who are interested in your work can like this page to follow your posts and updates.  A Business page gives followers the ability to 'like' your business without feeling obligated to make 'friends' with you. This means that business pages do not violate the privacy of your followers since you do not have access to their personal information.  To create you business page, sign in on Facebook.com as a human being then go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php  ​

​2) Invite your friends

Humans have friends and Businesses have followers. To get more followers you can invite your human friends to follow your business page.  You can send friends a reminder to follow your page without forcing them to do so. Search for your business in the search bar or navigate via the hamburger menu to your page. Click on the 'Invite your Friends' option and manually select all the friends you would like to invite.  You only have access to your own friends, but when you add colleagues as admins you can pool your combined friends to help build an audience.

3) Claim your Facebook URL

Have you ever seen “Find us on Facebook” on business marketing material? What most people don't realize is that it can be tricky to find pages on Facebook especially if they are new.

Claiming your Facebook vanity URL can make it much easier for potential followers to find you.  This Facebook URL can be printed on your business cards and other promotional products right above your your website URL. For consistent NAP (name, address, phone) and to not wreck SEO havok try to claim the same vanity URL for all social accounts. So if you are serious about doing it right we suggest some one name research on all social platforms before you start claiming vanities.

4) Plug-in your Facebook Feed

On Facebook, humans make friends with other humans and then they go and 'like' business pages related and of interest to them. When you then press home is shows you a collection of posts from your friends and the pages you have likes.  This is what I call plugging in as a human being.

As a business page can also ‘Plug-in’ on Facebook. In the past to do this you  had to switch from the human to the business page with the 'wheel' top right. These days you can do it from your personal profile as long as you are an admin of the page. Search for pages that are related to your industry, in your local area and possibly brand or institutions serving your industry. These pages are all related to you. If you follow them on social media their combined posts would generate into a separate news feed for your  business page.

This feed is a resource and it also helps with search engine optimization programming the engine and sorting your in the same category in searches. When you build your own page feed, you are establishing commonality markers helping Facebook's sorting engine to better understand how you fit into the picture.  Find you pages feed in the right hand bar on your page. ​

5) Be Visible

Everyone has a business page, the difference is whether you are visible or not.  Becoming active on facebook as a business will give you a presence online as a business instead of as your human profile. You can comment and interact as your business via your business feed. Start by liking posts and adding your 5 cents to comments but try to keep it legit.  Share your thoughts where it is relative without looking 'spammy' or obnoxious. Your active online presence is a representation of your business online and should be professional. Arrogant, rude and obnoxious remarks could put your company and it's employees in a negative light online. In our research with Plugin Matter we have also found that online activity is a relevancy factor that helps to keep your page higher and more relevant in searches when done regularly.

If you are running into issues check your page settings. ​

6) Motivate Interaction

Motivating interaction from followers is something I personally find very hard. My approach to social media is more of a clinical one with an SEO incentive. Facebook is working on getting us all out of our comfort zones by adding new and fun ways to help motivate pages admins to interact. Interactions are valuable for growing your page. When a follower interacts on your business page, their comment also goes out in their personal newsfeed to their friends. This gives you instant viral marketing, reaching people you would never have reached otherwise who might also decide to follow your page based on that one interaction.

Interaction can be made easy by means of posting photos that evoke reaction.  Think of posts that could surprise, promote emotional reaction, disbelieve and so forth.  Try to stay away from shock, horror, disgrace, etc.

You can also have competitions and ask followers to interact by uploading their photos to your wall for say competitions. Be careful of asking followers to get their family and friends to vote for their images as this can become invasive and spammy to the family and friends.

7) Use Visual Elements

A busy and visual Facebook page has the ability to intrigue and communicate your services to prospective followers. Visual communications is a powerful tool to gain followers to take time to carefully evaluate how your post are displaying.

Note that when you post links to your website or blog without images the links then to look empty without any appeal. Adding images to your blogs would help links to pull these images on links.

When manually loading images Facebook has many different options to choose from.

I created a few visual using google drive slides and exported them as jpgs for my Facebook slideshow. These can then be added to create a pretty slideshow story adding a description to each photo that displays beautiful in your feed.

Think of other ways to add visual elements to your social media using albums to visually explain parts of your business. Clever promotional ideas with photo albums include online auctions where buyers bid in the comments part for products, fundraisers where participating groups can upload images of a project completed, and visual DIY explainers, or stories.

8) Facebook Reviews

Work of mouth is often times the most powerful form of marketing for small business owners.  Word of mouth however only goes as far as the next person… With a Facebook review box, your word of mouth becomes viral. When one person leave a review it goes out in their newsfeed to their friends enabling you to reach new potential followers with just one review.  A review on Facebook is also digitally imprinted for generations to come. ​

Reviews can also be embedded on a website page but they do seem to expire after some time so manually adding them might not be a bad idea. 

9) Facebook Offers

Facebook offers is an clever way to get your followers excited with discount offers for the Holidays.  As followers claim an offer it goes out in their news-feed to their friends and followers so it has nice viral marketing capabilities.  ​

10) VERIFY YOUR PAGE

Verified pages are more credible so they also show up higher in search results.

11) SHOWCASE YOUR SERVICES

12) ADD YOUR STORY

13) ADD A MILESTONE

14) SIMILAR PAGES

Ask Facebook to include you page in similar page suggestions to other companies. This would help other similar companies to find and follow you and your updates and give you the ability to become an influencer in your industry. ​

On Your Website

15) Connect your online pages

Creating multiple online backlinks helps followers to navigate from one social media network to another easily.  It also helps you to ‘puff out your feathers’ online looking bigger that what you actually are to online search engines.  Start by adding your social media icons to you website. We usually add social icons on the home page header.

We also add all social icons to a footer on every page:

You can also add your other social media page url's on your Facebook About Page. 

16) Facebook ‘Like’ Box

In the past we used to add a Facebook ‘like’ buttons to websites and / or blogs. When we moved to responsive design many of these buttons were discontinued as the online community figured out this new foundation. I have started to see like boxes popping up again on websites again as developers are figuring out new ways to make these widgets more functional on mobile. If you add them to your website try to add them to the bottom of a page as they might be hard to navigate past or scroll by on mobile.

Newer websites seem to be more geared towards interaction.  A Facebook page plugin can help show your current facebook activity and help potential followers to interact easier.  To generate your own Facebook like box or page plugin go to Facebook Developers Social Plugin’s ​

17) Facebook ‘Comments’ on Blogs

Adding a facebook comment widget to your blogs ads another layer to connecting with your followers. These widgets also makes it easy to comment without having to add your email and other details before commenting using the default. ​

Facebook comments also makes interactions more personal with a face added to the comment. Traditional comment often end up being predominantly spam with advertising sites trying to use your site for backlinks.  ​

To connect your Facebook with your Blog by adding the Facebook Comment plugin with instructions on Facebook Developers Social Plugin’s. ​

18) Share This

Paid Methods

19) Facebook Pixel

The Facebook Pixel is a tracking tool that you add to your website that works with your Facebook Advertising campaigns. Installed on your website it will help you to retarget your ads, and to track conversions or the results of your ad campaigns. It can also help to customize your audiences and to find lookalike audiences to help optimize your conversions.
Instructions for setting up your Facebook Pixel

Start in your Facebook backed Events Manager and go to the Pixels Tab. Create a pixel and get your tracking code to add to your website. If you already have tag manager setup for your website then just allow facebook to add the tag for you. 

20) FACEBOOK ADS

Online advertising is a way of reaching more people by paying for exposure to reach possible followers. Facebook ads can be fine-tunes to reach a specific demographic and geographic target.  It is affordable and you pay by click, thus it being referred to as PPC. To create a Facebook Ad for your Business go to your business page and press Ad Center at the top in the admin panel.

21) SPONSORED STORIES

Facebook Sponsored Stories are part of the Facebook Ads but easier as you boost already created posts. In addition to your Facebook Ads boosted posts can give you that extra reach to help gain followers for your page.  ​

Using Communities

22) Join Groups

Online communities in groups can help Small Business Owners connect with their specific audience better. Groups are also big giving you access to more people versus trying to make it on your own with your few page followers. When you search for groups try to join as a human as many groups do not allow people to join as businesses even when facebook gives you the option. Joining as a human gives you accountability and a face to others in the group.  

Find groups within your industry, local groups, and groups with specific target audiences you would like to reach. Many of these groups would have a questionaire to fill out, be truthful but remember that your main objective for joining is not to post your advertisements to this group. Rather see how can you learn from the group and it’s members and try to be part of the group building trust as a human with a similar interest.

Read the group rules and create a list of your groups that you can refer back too. Be aware of spammy groups with lots of advertising posts. Also see the admin profile and make sure the admin of a specific group has friends and that their photos are not stock photos. Sometimes organizations would create fake groups to service their own purpose using fake profiles, make sure you are joining quality groups. Introduce yourself to the groups and try to be a valuable team player adding comments and advice to the group. For first avoid posting business related content until you get a feel for the group.  Many groups have very specific audiences. Read the comments to get an idea of what goes and what does not.

23) Own Groups

Often times you might not be able to find groups for the specific purpose you have in mind. Creating your own groups is a way to overcome this obstacle.
First change your business page template to accommodate groups.

Then add the Groups tab to your page

Go to the front of your page and click on the groups tab on the left. Create a group of link an existing group to your page.

Go to your new group and on the right invite people who also like your business page to join the group. Also invite your friends to join. Keep in mind that groups need a lot of care and takes time to manage. For business groups add colleagues to help you manage as admins.

Groups can also be embedded on your website and in emails. See more on the Facebook Group Plugin page. ​

24) Share to Groups

Instead of paying for ads you can share posts to Groups to help increase their engagement. 

This is a helpful trick for also trying to get group members to follow your page as it shows not only your profile but also the icon of your business page with a direct link. 

25) Comment In Groups

Search for specific sentences your target market might have used on facebook. Change the search to include posts in groups your belong to. 

Find specific related posts and comment.