We’ve all read the case studies, right?
Those wonderfully positive breakdowns of how this commerce company or that new merchant took to Facebook and made $20,000 in their first week, $150,000 within a month, or are generating $10,000 per day.
I love these stories as much as the next marketer, but I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s never as easy as it seems.
If there’s one these success stories have in common it’s that they all often have, at the very least, a seed audience.
A small number of interested people who aren’t just repeat buyers, but are power fans. They’re the first people to see your post and share it.
They give each organic post the initial rocket boost it needs to reach more people. Their comments, shares, and likes add social proof drawing in even more users.
The problem a lot of growing stores have is building that interested seed audience.
We know it can be tough, so we’ve reached out to and researched some of the best Facebook marketers for their single best tip on growing your Facebook audience.
Pick one of the big players in your industry and head over to their Facebook page, and scan through their recent posts. At first, you’ll want to get a feel for the sort of engagement their posts receive on average. Look for posts with engagement that surpasses there averages – those are the topics that are really resonating with the industry. I recommend publishing similar content that will resonate within the industry and in turn grow your audience on Facebook.
The quickest way on growing a Facebook audience is going live and then promoting the live videos. And doing it consistently. I’ve seen it work time and time again with people that have no audience.
Be Consistent, Be Authentic, Be Real
If you’re trying to grow a Facebook audience, you really have to be consistent. Give people something to come back to over and over. You have to be authentic to build trust. Once you have someone’s trust they will keep coming back over and over and purchase whatever you put in front of them. Next, be real. This includes telling them the negative things and being real about what’s going on. If your server is down, be real with them and tell them what’s going on. You’d be surprised what customers are willing to deal with if you’re 100% real with them.
A surefire way to build an engaged and trusting audience on Facebook is by getting on a Facebook live. It’s definitely scary when you first start out, especially when you think folks might not be watching, but getting your face out there and talking directly to your audience is necessary for building your brand. When your audience can hear your message and your words directly from your mouth, it helps build trust and likeability in a way nothing else can—and if people like you and trust you, they WILL buy from you.
Facebook Insights is an underutilized feature which can provide a brand with tons of useful information to help them improve your Facebook marketing, and boost their following.
Once in the insights tab, locate your posts > all posts published and pay special attention to the reach and engagement columns. The posts with the largest orange bar are your top performing posts, and you’ll want to post more like content.
Be sure to take note of things like:
The time posted
The type of content shared
The level of engagement receivedArmed with the new knowledge, you can create similar content of interest to share, and therefore organically boost engagement, and grow your Facebook audience.
Advertise on Facebook to get more “likes”. This is the quickest way to grow your fan base. But also be sure to rotate your ads “DAILY” . People get tired of hearing the same thing in conversation so change your ad! Conversion (CTR) rates can drop by 50% after the first 24 hours. Do not “set and forget”
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Track your closest competitors’ weekly engagement through the insights tab on your Facebook page. When they see boosts in growth, head to their page and see what posts have been increasing engagement. Share those posts to your page and, once your fan base has grown, start sharing your own content to move this bigger base back to your website.
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Contests and giveaways are the perfect incentivizing tools for growing an audience. Give entrants a prize/reward/service as an incentive to engage, and gamify the lead generation experience to make it fun. In return, you receive beneficial information from them like an email address. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to collect emails, followers, and more when compared to running generic lead ads (usually $3-5 an email), or organically building a list (which can take months, if not years)
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Video continues to hold sway on Facebook with triple the engagement and 1200% more shares than text and image posts combined. In addition, when compared to YouTube video shared on Facebook, native video uploaded to Facebook has 10 times the reach.
And because Facebook’s algorithm factors in the time spent on a video, as well as the shares it generates, you can use video to gain more visibility and reach on the platform.
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The absolute best way to get likes for your page without spending a penny is to post content that your fans will LOVE. When your current fans love your posts, they are more likely to like, share and comment on them.
However, if you want to see CONSISTENT growth in terms of likes, you’ll need to make sure you post on a regular basis. Your Facebook Insights will be your secret weapon here. Try posting 5x a day and monitor how much engagement you’re getting (overall, not for each individual post).
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You want to use one-minute videos to tell your stories, the things that made you who you are, and to drive interaction. All it takes is one minute to share your stories or even some tips and knowledge you are taking in your daily life. You do not need a fancy camera, or editing skills. Right then and there wherever you are, take your iPhone out and start recording your videos. People want to hear from you. They want to hear what you want to say, and what you can teach them.
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Facebook Messenger gets extremely high open rates of 80%.
With those messages come responses, and with those responses comes a healthy, growing contact list.
You can also grow your contacts and leads as your number of conversations rise, thanks to your 24/7 chatbot availability.
Content delivered in Facebook Messenger gets record-levels of engagement and visibility.
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Right now, the opportunity to grow a large, engaged community on Facebook is found in creating and nurturing a Facebook group and your personal profile. Pages have decreased drastically in reach, so are not worth the effort anymore. A group is better than your personal profile because the reach is similar, and you can have many more people in a group (unlimited) than on your personal page which Facebook limits to 5,000 people. Create your group and start posting valuable story-based posts in groups with similar audiences to your target audience. This is a great way to start growing your own, which will eventually be a powerful marketing tool you can start to use.
Brandon Fargo
Founder – brahvia.com
We use our 10 x 4 x 1 strategy to increase our reach and grow our audience. What that means is 10 engagement posts a week, which can be inspirational quotes, cartoons, funny videos, cool pictures that will provoke a like or a share. Then we do 4 informational posts, something that is nonpromotional but going to give value to your audience. Tips and tricks, stories about clients are good for this. And then the last post of the week is promotional, meaning it has an objective for someone to buy something or go to your website.
My tip to grow your audience on Facebook is to create a blog page on your website. You can then set up a Facebook Like popup window that appears anytime a user visits your blog. If you use a CMS like WordPress, there are many Facebook popup plugins that you can use.
Once you’re done, try joining as many Facebook groups as possible that are related to your business. Of course, these groups should have thousands of members.
Your goal is to share your blog posts in these groups once in a while, which will send hundreds of new visitors to your blog page. If they like your blog, some of these Facebook users will then click on your blog’s Facebook popup button to follow your Facebook page.
Using a Facebook Like popup window and leveraging other Facebook groups is a great way to grow your own community.
I’ve had the most success in using ads/Facebook content that is interactive, especially quizzes. Audiences generally love quizzes because it makes them feel listened to by the company and better understood. From a marketing perspective, this is gold because you can slowly start to collect key data about your audience to market to them better and cater to their needs.
One single tip for expanding communities and boosting engagement on Facebook is posting engaging video content.
Since Facebook has shifted from images to videos, the platform has become more interactive. Earlier when brands had options to simply post images, it was tough for users to remember and recall the brands. This was because audience scroll Facebook very quickly and didn’t bother to read the brand name.
But now users stick to watch videos and that is where they engage with brands. Thus, posting creative, unique, and interactive videos yields bright opportunity for businesses, who leverage Facebook as a platform to connect with their target audience.
Do not make general content. Facebook is overflowing with general and non-actionable information about business success, relationship advice, and everything in between. Be specific. Focus on a single pain point and all the solutions that alleviate this pain point. Many social media marketers fail because they try to make content that appeals to everyone.
The most important thing a person or brand can do on Facebook to get started with building an audience and generating engagement is to use simple Facebook Brand Awareness ads to promote pillar content to their target market.
In other words, create engaging content that your target market will find helpful or entertaining (or both) and then use Facebook’s brand awareness ads to put that content in front of thousands of the right people very inexpensively.
If you want to capture as many of those people as possible to an email list, Facebook group, or Brand Page, a simple retargeting ad aimed at everyone who engaged with that initial piece of content will easily do the trick.
David Alvarez
Search Engine Marketing Manager – carbrain.com
Asides from the usual: create engaging content, be unique, post regularly,
etc. Our main tip would be – create a unique identity. People like to be part of a community, and communities often have their own jokes, anecdotes, lingo, and identity. Create an identity by leveraging these elements in posts, shares, statuses, pictures, videos, etc and your audience will feel like they belong to an actual community.