People are starting new businesses every day and with those new businesses comes new Facebook pages. Using paid ads to obtain new likes is one way to help the process, but you might not have a huge budget for advertising when you’re just starting out. Growing a Facebook page organically can be a challenge. I’m going to give you 4 ideas for growing your page organically.
1. Optimize your Facebook Page
What is meant by “optimize” the page? You want your page to look the best it possibly can before you start promoting it everywhere. You also want to make sure you have setup all of the fields so your perfect customer can find you online and know how to contact you.
Here are a few tips:
1. Upload a good quality cover photo sized 851 x 351 pixels. Include a tagline or a phone number. Facebook is rolling out a new feature allowing you to upload a video to the cover photo area. Facebook recommends a video of 820 x 312 pixels and cover videos can be anywhere from 20-90 seconds long and can loop in any way you want.
2. Make sure your “About” Page is complete. Use lots of keywords and descriptive text. The About Page is also indexed by Google!
3. Add at least 5 posts and 5 photos to get you started. If you’re not sure what to post, I’ve included some tips about the types of photos you could use here: An Image is Worth A Thousand Words.
2. Link Your Profile to Your Page
This is one of the easiest ways to provide a link to your Page if potential customers are searching for you on Facebook!
You want to list where you work on your profile, linking to your Business Page. Go to the About section of your profile and click on the Work and Education area.
Start typing the name of your Page in the dropdown box. If you see the suitcase icon, don’t click on that one, keep typing until you find your page. The suitcase icon indicates a “dummy” community page that was created by accident or prior to an official page for the business.
3. Invite your “Warm Audience” to Like your Page
Your warm audience are your friends and family you’ve already connected with through your personal profile. Even though they may never use your products or services, they may still be a good referral source. It’s easy to invite them, and if they don’t want to like your page, it’s really not a big deal. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a small business owner, it’s that you can never tell who might be your biggest client or your best cheerleader!
Here are 3 ways to invite people to like your page:
1. Use the “Invite friends to like this Page” link on the right side of your Page. A popup box will appear that shows your friends who have already liked your Page and who you’ve invited to Like your Page. You can only invite people one time. The invitation shows up in notifications, so it’s possible they may not see the invitation. You also can see all of the outstanding Invites you have at www.facebook.com/pages.
2. Post a status update on your profile asking people to like your Page. Include a link to your page. Tell them why they might want to like and follow your Page. Some of your friends may not even know you have a Page for your business. Or they might not know exactly what it is that your business does!
3. Post a link to your Page in Groups to which you are a member
Don’t be spammy! A lot of groups will designate a day when it’s appropriate to share a link to your page or your website.
4. Post Great Content That People Will Like and Share!
This is probably the most important tip for gaining new followers! With so much competition on Facebook these days, it’s more and more difficult to get people to react to your content and even more difficult to get them to share, unless they really love it. Strive to post content that your audience will love.
Great content can include sharing articles that will resonate with your fans, but I encourage you to post original content, photos and videos as much as possible. Experiment with humorous, inspirational, or informative posts to get an idea about the types of posts to which people will react. Use the “Insights” section of your Page to gather more information about what people want to see. I’ll write another post about what items to look for in Insights.
Once people start reacting and sharing your content, you can invite people to Like your Page who haven’t done so already. I created a video showing how to “Invite People Who Liked Your Post to Like Your Page”.
Just remember: Growing a Facebook Page organically will take some time and effort, but with patience and the right content, you’ll be able to do it! Share other ideas you might have in the Comments section below!
Miguel Angel says
Thank you very much for the article. About: “Invite friends to like this Page”. I have two recent facebook posts with 4,000 and 8,000 likes, when I usually have between 50 and 200. I’m not used to those figures. I have many doubts about how many people I can invite, Do you recommend a maximum number per day? Before I always invited a very few people, one or two a day … but I’m not used to having so many likes in a post. thank you very much, regards
Kelly Butcher says
There might be a limit to the number of new invites you can have per day. Facebook is always changing!