How to obtain your First 10,000 Fans on Facebook (Case Study)

The 10 steps below demonstrate with a real example getting more than 10,000 fans on the Facebook business page.

Facebook will be the king of internet sites using more than 1.79 billion active users each month (Updated December 2016). It really is utilised by more than 60% of Web users Worldwide which is an excellent tool for promoting a product or service, finding new customers or gaining more loyal readers (followers).

To utilize this for business purposes, you’ll want lots of fans (followers) on the Facebook business page. Let’s see below why having many Facebook fans is vital.

What will be the need for having many Facebook fans on the business page?

It indicates popularity – It goes without saying that the variety of fans reveals how popular a website is. A cheap business page with 100,000 followers is a lot more popular than a page with 1,000 fans which results in a variety of other benefits (described below).

It indicates trust – In case you can’t understand the relationship between Facebook fans and business trust, consider that the US State Department spent $630,000 to improve their Facebook Fans from 100,000 to two million during the years 2011-2012 (See related post from marketingland).

Why did this is done? Because in today’s World an excellent business, blog or website will need lots of Facebook fans. Five Years ago this would not make a difference however in the Twenty-first century, social proof is vital.

More fans, more visits – Greater fans you might have, the greater will be the number of individuals that can see your posts of their timeline and possibly go to your website.

While this is correct, it needs to be noted that not all your fans will see your posts.

As already explained in the previous post, How to improve your Facebook Page Organic Reach, only a small percentage of your followers (at most 4 percent) will see your status updates.

This number can vary, but what is vital to understand now, is actually you might have 10,000 fans and also you post a new update, it’ll be seen organically with a max of 300-400 people.

It’s beneficial to SEO as well – Although officially Google does not admit that social networking can be a ranking factor, many studies show popular websites on Facebook may perform better in search, than not very popular websites (additional circumstances being equal).

How to look from 0 to 10,000 Facebook fans

Now that you’re convinced that developing a great deal of Facebook fans is vital on your website and business, let’s see step-by-step how to change from 0 to 10,000 fans.

Note: Necessities such as very same steps I followed to improve the facebook followers of my fitness blog’s facebook page. Currently the page has more than 100K fans plus it continous growing organically.

Step 1: First suggestion – you’ll want a Facebook business page

It sounds silly for your experienced but for beginners to social networking this might be new things: Your own Facebook page is different from a small business page.

If you need to have friends on Facebook to share with you your holiday photos you will want to create a personal page but if you want to have fans and followers on your website or business you will want to create a Facebook business page.

So, the first step is to just be sure you build a Facebook business page and the alternative is to ensure your page is properly optimized.

Step 2: Optimize your Facebook business page

When we mention Facebook business page optimization we mean choosing a friendly page title (username), writing an appealing description (within the short description field), providing accurate information for very long description, company overview, mission (see screenshot below) not to mention posting interesting content – this is actually the most important optimization tip of all.

The company’s content posted on the Facebook business page will likely determine it’s failure or success.

Having an optimized Facebook page makes it much easier to get new fans or maybe more likes from ads as we will see below.

Step 3: Take advantage of your individual Facebook account

I mentioned in the first step above you need to use a business page instead of a private page, however you still need come with an active personal facebook account.

Here is the reason:

After you post an update on the business page, one of the ways to improve exposure and likes, is to share that post on the personal page too.

People you might have as friends on the personal page may ‘like’ and ‘interact’ with the post shared from the business page which will improve the engagement factor of your posts.

As an effect, facebook will show your posts to more fans (organically).

So, one of the ways to improve the quantity of people who view your posts and go beyond the 4% people fan base is to share and promote the post on the personal page.

It is evident that the more variety of friends the bigger would be the visibility from the post.

Also, make sure that you invite all your existing friends (and brand new ones) to love your Facebook business page. Do that any time you obtain a new ‘friend’.

Step 4: Add the Facebook Like box on the website

This is again social media 101 however you must have the Facebook like box on the website for several reasons:

#1 – It’s a means to associate your site with the Facebook business page. Put simply this is a way to ‘tell’ search engines like yahoo that is the official Facebook business page.

#2 – When you get lots of fans, that is something must be proud off and another to exhibit on your users (as explained above therefore popularity, trust and social proof).

#3 – It’s the best way to improve your fan base organically. Readers can follow your site by clicking such button and never have to check out Facebook.

Hint: For maximum results, placed the LIKE box above fold (around the sidebar).

Hint 2: It’s also possible to popup etc box to new users (for example, as soon as they spend One minute with a page, as soon as they scroll down to the underside or as soon as they attempt to leave your page – even though this is effective in terms of getting new likes, you need to be careful not to help it become too distracting on your users.)

Step 5: Follow these suggestions to increase post engagement

So far, we’ve created an optimized Facebook business page, added friends to your personal Facebook page and placed etc box in the prominent position on our website.

The next natural step is to start sharing happy to keep the fans happy and perhaps manage to convert them from fans > internet site visitors > customers.

Some simple rules to follow along with that can improve the user engagement along with your facebook business page:

#1 – Share relevant content: Share content your fans anticipate seeing with your page. By way of example, should your web site is about Social websites, share content associated with social networking instead of about sports or another type you could possibly like. If the users desire to read sports news, they are fully aware finding them.

#2 – Don’t forget that they can follow your small business page to obtain updates concerning your website (and niche) instead of concerning your social gatherings: If you wish to get social, then takes place personal Facebook page, your small business page is about your site.

#3 – Generally thumb, I use my business page to share with you content from my niche only, if I have to share a thing that is not associated with my niche, I use the page.

#4 – Don’t be too promotional: Sharing promotional content (constantly) on the Facebook page will drive your fans away. For those who have an offer to share with you or something like that that might benefit your fans, that can be done but don’t add too much.

Try to publish interesting, shareable content which is associated with your niche, it sometimes will not come directly from your site. Have a balance between promotional and content your followers might choose to read.

Step 6: Share interesting and excellent content (not simply links)

I made some tests regarding the impact of descriptions when you are performing a Facebook update and discovered out that Facebook posts with ‘lists’ read more likes than posts with links. Allow me to give you a good example to understand I mean.

When you need to share content from the website on Facebook, you try to Facebook status updates and type in the webpage URL. It looks something similar to this:

You can share this article without adding the other information. If the title and pictures are perfect, you will definately get many likes depending on the time you make the post, variety of fans etc.

If one one other hand, you enrich your post by adding more info specifically a subscriber base, then other pursuits being equal, you happen to be very likely to gain more likes and shares.

For me this makes sense because people that visit a title and image of their timeline might not exactly ‘Like It’ because it provides no value for many years (don’t forget that the average user is offered a huge selection of postings of their timeline when they login to Facebook).

On one other hand when you let them have valuable, excellent and easy to read information (like a list), they’ll select the LIKE button simply because they read something helpful and never have to leave their timeline.

Note: It is a known undeniable fact that everyone has a tendency of LIKING content without reading it so let them have reasons to accomplish that; your site visits might not exactly increase though the engagement factor of your posts will rise.

Step 7: Share images, videos and emotions

If you’re taking a glance at many of the most popular Facebook pages, you will notice that they have a tendency to share with you images, videos, infographics, charts etc, with their usual text only postings.

This kind of content gets more likes and shares and thus the page gets more fans and followers.

In a recent study by Buzzsumo, they identified that the most shared and liked content on Facebook, gets the following characteristics:

Step 8: Provide incentives to get additional fans & followers

Why should someone follow your Facebook business page?

You have to give incentives to facebook users to follow along with your page. A couple of ideas to consider:

Quality updates – Here is the best incentive you are able to lengthy users. Before posting anything on the page, you have to ensure that it gives you value on your audience. With this option consistently, you existing followers will share it making use of their friends which will get more users.

Run a contest – Some websites run contests on Facebook and giveaway different gifts. The ‘price’ for joining this article is to Such as the page first. There are several tools to do this but consider that if you don’t use a known brand this many not be so successful.

Content upgrades – In case you have a blog, you should use ask users to love your page to get an updated version of your post. This requires extra tools but it’s something worth testing out.

Step 9: You’ll want to advertise your own content and page

When you develop your small business page don’t expect it will magically get a large number of fans. In addition to the tips outlined above, you might also need to advertise your small business page in places other than Facebook.

A few ideas to take into consideration that worked for my case:

Promote in other social networking networks – In case you have accounts along with other social networking channels e.g. Google+, Pinterest etc. you are able to periodically ask your followers to become listed on yourself on Facebook too. Be polite and tell them the advantages from doing so.

Promote in Twitter – Besides posting concerning your Facebook page on other social networking networks, you are able to make the most of twitter’s interactive features.

When you recruit a new twitter follower, send them a personal (personalized) message and enquire of these phones follow yourself on facebook (your business and personal pages).

This method although it ‘s time consuming, (Used to it manually instead of using any tools) it can produce fantastic results.

Promote with your newsletter – In case you have a newsletter or you talk with your readers via email, make sure that you keep these things follow your Facebook page.

Do not simply write the FB URL within your signature but Question them politely to love your small business page.

Step 10: Facebook ads can be a must

I have saved one of many easiest and most good ways to enhance your Facebook fans for last, because it is the only one that it’s not free.

Facebook supplies a self-service ad platform which you can use either to enhance your fan base (advertise your page), supercharge your posts, get more leads, increase conversions or perform variety of other actions (as shown within the image above).

The procedure is quite simple and straightforward. Basically you choose a website you use, select your goal (advertise your page), select your audience (depending on country, age, other demographics and interests) and then set your daily budget and duration.

The cost per campaign depends on many factors. The easiest method to assess if Facebook ads is a good solution to enhance your fan base, is to manage a pilot campaign for 2 days.

Spend $10-$20 dollars every day and run the campaigns for any fixed duration (a minimum of weekly). At the conclusion, you are able to evaluate if the fee per like is one thing you happen to be ready to buy.

I had great outcomes with Facebook ads for both my websites and then for client websites i run campaigns on a monthly basis (stay) to further improve my facebook likes.

It must be noted by investing in Facebook ads you don’t buy likes but views. Many individuals feel that that which you buy is Facebook likes but in reality you have to pay Facebook to exhibit your ad to more Facebook users.

If what you will be advertising is interesting, then lots more people will hit etc button so invest some time and think about the message you need to display with your ad and also the image to make use of.

Conclusion

Having a large variety of Facebook fans on the business pages is very important for credibility and social promotion purposes.

If this wasn’t crucial in the ultimate place, then nobody would care and the US State Department wouldn’t ought to spend $630 thousands for Facebook campaigns.

Once you do the required optimizations on your business page (steps 1 and two above), then the easiest method to get additional followers is by using Facebook ads. Along with some A/B testing you can find to 10,000 fans without having more than $1,000 (spread into a duration of months).

Once you do everything properly and so long as you do have a great service or product, you are able to improve your fans to 100,000+ like Used to with the Facebook Page of my fitness blog.