7 Ways To Grow Your Facebook Page

Nancy Author

"Ideally, the long-term objective of a professional page should be to connect with your audience, add value and build brand awareness. Not to collect followers like stamps." - Nancy 

According to Statista.com, during the fourth quarter of 2021, an estimated 1.93 billion people logged into Facebook daily! It is currently the most popular social networking website, making it a strategic place to attract your audience and advertise your business.

There are people who make sales doing business on their personal profiles, but this is a bad idea because it's against Facebook's terms and conditions. While some get away with it, many a user has woken up and found their account shut down. If you want to use Facebook for business, creating a fan page is the best way to gain exposure for our brand.

However, once it is set up, many people find it challenging to promote and grow their page without spending on ads. In this post, you'll discover simple visibility tactics to attract new followers, grow your audience and build awareness for your brand.

Here are seven tactics to grow a Facebook business page organically.

1. Invite Friends And Customers To Like The Page

Once you create your business page, there is a function that lets you invite people you already know to like your page. Email your customers inviting them to connect with you on social. It's a good idea to tell people what benefit they'll get by following your page. Because social media is about being social, be sure to like other companies' or people's pages when they invite you. 

Too many people ignore the law of reciprocity in life. Support others, and others may support you.

2. Link The Page To A Personal Profile

We humans are curious by nature, and we often check out each other's personal profiles on social media. Linking a professional page to a profile in the bio section is like a virtual business card. It tells profile visitors about your professional presence on Facebook. Yet I see many people not doing make this and missing a good opportunity to grow their fan page passively. Your social media manager or virtual assistant can link the business page to her profile and attract new audiences that way. Use this simple tactic, and strangers who want to "friend" you or check out your profile can connect with your brand effortlessly without you having to do anything.

3. Post Consistently

Depending on the needs of your audience, be sure to post created or curated content regularly. Consistently sharing content can help your algorithms and keep your followers interested and engaged. You don't have to spam their timelines with multiple daily sales posts. But update your professional page with relevant content two to five times a week. If people visit your page and see the last post was shared in 2020, they will unfollow or wonder if you're still in business. Although Facebook algorithms don't always favor scheduled posts, you can use social media management tools to schedule posts in bulk. That way, you don't always have to be logged in to share fresh content.

4. Use Variety 

Reward your followers by sharing a variety of interesting content. Facebook favors video and visuals over text only. Test different formats, then use the data and insights to see what kind of content performs best. Some ideas are infographics, open questions, eye-catching visuals, engaging polls, or contests. An occasional controversial perspective is an excellent way to be authentic on social media. As long as it is not offensive, if you are comfortable with it, a polarizing post will not harm your brand. People will enjoy content that is inspiring, informative, entertaining, or educative. Remember to add a CTA - ask for likes, shares, or comments.

5. Connect To Your Site(s)

Some people try to build and run a business solely on social media. Huge mistake. It's like building a home on someone's property. Zuckerberg can decide to evict us at any time. A better strategy is to link the fan page to your website which is your virtual real estate and execution hub. Ideally, all digital marketing systems and strategies should lead back to your site. Because a consumer will have multiple touchpoints with your brand in the buyer journey, give them the option to connect with you on Facebook. A Like Box with a header and faces is social proof that lets people quickly see who else likes your page. See *PRO TIP* below.

6. Hold Contests And Giveaways

These are fun ways to gain new followers and boost engagement. For example, you can ask your fans to like, share and comment on your content to enter a contest. Then use software like Pagemodo to pick a winner randomly. Prizes can be coupons, services, or products. Another way to have giveaways is to let your fans be part of special milestones. For example, announce that when you hit 3000 followers, there will be prizes for followers who also share your page. Ask those who share to tag you, so their names are added to the giveaway. Some prize-winner software requires the contestants to comment, so be sure to explain the conditions clearly.

7. Slow But Steady

Building an audience takes dedication, time, and patience. The goal is not to collect a bunch of people but to connect with your ideal target followers. And while sometimes a smaller engaged community is better than a huge fan base, gaining loyal followers and customers requires authenticity, consistency, and value-adding content. 

Apply these seven steps, and you will gradually attract new audiences to your brand or business fan page without spending any money on ads.

*PRO-TIP* 

To mitigate bounce rates and visitor distractions, personally, I don't link any social links on my core website or landing pages. Instead, I invite connections via my newsletters or on purchases Thank You pages.

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