What methods have worked best for you in increasing your overall Facebook presence?

[Jason.Novatex]

I was just curious about what methods others have used to successfully build a larger following. Of course you can optimize your page, create polls, develop custom landing pages, etc... But I am talking about "reaching out" to promote. Have you found a successful way to reach out to people who may be interested in liking your Facebook page, but are not impacted by your viral sources?

[TWeber_TheSBA]

I'm starting to see more businesses offer a special deal or promotion only available if you "Like" them. Worked on me for a couple of local restaurants that I like to eat at. One listed a special code word that you had to mention to your server to get the discount.

[ilovemedia]

I second the idea of special deals and the like, I’ve found that method to be the most effective. I will sometimes run posts advertising a special deal or coupon code for Facebook fans only. I also will hold contests and have people “share” my page for a chance to win something; that defiantly gets people moving.

[Ted S]

Deals. Contests. These are is a common tactic but they make an assumption about what "working" is that's really worth discussing. Let's go...

Giving people a discount upfront sets the expectation that following you is about deals and that changes the equation from what social set out to be. It's not to say that it's a bad idea but you have to be aware of the implications... You can't lead in with "we give free stuff" and turn around and expect to have a great conversation, engagement, etc... Offers don't always matter and there's really not a lot to say about another $10 pizza coupon or request to share the page for a long shot chance at an iPad.

Facebook changed the game removing default tabs for a reason and I guarantee you "sales pages" came up many times in the internal debate to make the move. People now land on your posts... your photos... your fan's remarks... your story has to be based on more than deals to get a follow and keep people glued in for more.


I've certainly done offer based campaigns, have the conversation with brands all the time and frankly while I get the purpose and sometimes run those sorts of campaigns I'm very reluctant to make them the doorway in unless the message fits with the brand rather than the following. I also wouldn't consider offers/contrests/deals social. To me it's really bringing broadcast to a sharable platform.

If you are going to take the deal approach upfront or down the road think about the medium and purpose, not the offer book you made for your google ads. What's going to stand out. What relates to the value of your business. What will people want to share.

No matter what your campaign is you need to measure while beyond the like. Does the offer / following do anything for the business [and that's not necessarily sales... retention, learnings, discussion, all huge]? Do people who you pull in with an offer come back? For deal based campaigns, it's the "groupon" debate: you're trying to grow by giving away the shop to do it. If you aren't measuring that over the long haul you may be "growing" the number of followers and bargain seekers to the detriment of your business.

Thus we return to the basic question: what's the purpose of you being on social and how do you find success with that in mind.

[Thomas.H]

To improve your Facebook presence try to build links to your Facebook page to help increase its SEO power. The first way to build links is to increase your number of fans. The second way to build links to your Facebook page is to build links off-site. For example, it means linking to your Facebook profile from your Web site, from your blog, from your other social networking sites, and encouraging others to link to it as well. The more links you can build to your Facebook page, the more authority you’re going to give it and the better it will rank in the search results.

[Shyflower]

To improve your Facebook presence try to build links to your Facebook page to help increase its SEO power. The first way to build links is to increase your number of fans. The second way to build links to your Facebook page is to build links off-site. For example, it means linking to your Facebook profile from your Web site, from your blog, from your other social networking sites, and encouraging others to link to it as well. The more links you can build to your Facebook page, the more authority you’re going to give it and the better it will rank in the search results.

This forum isn't about search results or SEO. It's about building content for people. Please limit your SEO comments to the Internet Marketing Forum.

[ecom-host-guru]

The comment luv plugin for wordpress is a good way to increase likes as well. They have additional perks for commenters on a blog who like the facebook page, retweet, google+ it etc.

[GavsCoupons]

Getting all your friends and family to help promote you. When you speak to friends say Ive just been working on my page what you think? get them involved, ask them how to improve it. If they contribute to the page then they will tell their friends and families. Probably not a major power technique but a good one for people just starting out

[tsunamy1990]

i use facebook voucher , its working best than google adwords

[Shyflower]

i use facebook voucher , its working best than google adwords

And exactly how does a facebook voucher increase your overall Facebook Presence?

This forum is about Social Media Content, not about advertising, or Google. Please keep your posts on topic.

[GeraldNitram]

If I just created a new page, instead of using that page to leave wall posts on people who might be interested, I would use my personal account to promote that page. Well, this is the case for those Facebook pages for blog promotion and all that. Anyway, the reason why I would use my personal account is to take advantage of my first degree contacts. Man, why am I talking like I have a Facebook account? lol

[couponsitescript]

I was just curious about what methods others have used to successfully build a larger following. Of course you can optimize your page, create polls, develop custom landing pages, etc... But I am talking about "reaching out" to promote. Have you found a successful way to reach out to people who may be interested in liking your Facebook page, but are not impacted by your viral sources?

The best method for me was to add and approve the ones that want to be my friend ( this is for the business profile ). Also I update at 15 minutes my wall ( this is done automatically ).

[ari1985]

I make some of my friends admins and ask them to suggest friends to my page! Works great and its free!!

[Ted S]

I make some of my friends admins and ask them to suggest friends to my page! Works great and its free!!

Until they hit edit, delete or decide to remove you as an admin.

There's no need to give someone rights to your business page for them to pass it along.

[Shyflower]

Until they hit edit, delete or decide to remove you as an admin.

There's no need to give someone rights to your business page for them to pass it along.

That's exactly what I was thinking, but I couldn't put it so succinctly! I recently made another person a co-admin of a community page and that warning immediately popped up. At Facebook, you can't set privileges like you can on a lot of CMS's. Every person who is an admin can delete and add posts, likes and even other admins. Sure hope you never rub any of your friends the wrong way arl1985.

[samantha09]

Liking other people's pages and including your page while posting on their wall helps. You might also want to ask your friends to promote your site and include it on their activities.

[ari1985]

This has never happened to me before..If you have friends that you trust surely you can give them administrations privileges for a day max in order for them to invite their friends and give your page and initial boost, obviously you don't just make anyone an admin...in fact you don't even have to make them an admin for a day it could be for literally 5 minutes..You could use the "facebook select all" google chrome plugin which basically speeds up the process of selecting all your friends from your list with one click, you could even be present at the time to make sure nothing happens if you are too paranoid:-)

Until they hit edit, delete or decide to remove you as an admin.

There's no need to give someone rights to your business page for them to pass it along.

[morellhenrik]

I think that getting more and more fan base by people liking your page, even promoting some event which can make you famous. Keep posting on daily basis.

[ilovemedia]

Keeping your Facebook updated with fresh content is important. Branching out to friends and relatives is also a good way to start spreading the word about your business especially on Facebook.

[GlobalMoma]

Social ads on Facebook can be a way to rapidly increase your fan base, even if it comes at a cost. I posted about this here:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...t=facebook+ads

[GavsCoupons]

Competitions are best as people love something for nothing, however i think there are some serious rules on facebook about running competitions so I highly recommend checking rules first before diving in.

[sibz]

You can create Facebook Friend Lists and browse updates from contacts you target in your industry / sector.

[slucker]

Create Facebook ad and get more fans in your Facebook profile after that create polls, share news, share images and videos related to your products and service then you will get more visitors from your Facebook. I am maintaining my client facebook profile he having 1700 likes and he get monthly 600 visits ..-

-slucker

[kurti]

i use invite friends app tab which is free with ads and you can buy and customize it also. it gave me a good increase.

[Sega]

Give what people want and are interested in, some good ground rules here:

1. Have your Facebook Business as a Facebook Fan Page (people can only have 5,000 friends, whereas pages you're unlimited), another benefit is that you can advertise your page.
2. Post Daily. I like to recommend linking your Twitter and Facebook, so tweets are automatically synchronized.
3. I ask them to post 3/5 topics per day they find useful. Excellent way to find topics is to go on Google News and search for your field of interest.
4. Follow for the sake of following. Normally discouraged, but it's known to get your followers up. Later use twitter justunfollow.com to remove people who aren't active or who've not following you.
5. Create compelling content on your blog, then tweet about it. There are automated plug-ins in WordPress which can do this automation for you, so you're even able to sit back and relax on that one. For topics on writing you have Google Keyword tool, and Twitter trends. I am sure there are other tools out there, but those are the main free ones. A great premium one Market Samurai.
6. In addition to this, ask open-ended questions, simply ask "So who wants to code?" By doing so you increase your influences.
7. Post Videos! I hate to say this, but not enough people are doing this. Video's on FB work really well. You can harness the power of YT and FB, but tweeting your youtube videos. From this tweet you will automatically be synchronized to Facebook. You'd be hitting YouTube -> Twitter -> Facebook all at the same time.
8. Give our coupons, special offers, free guides, something that people would want. You can easily find what people want from taking a look at your competition, or by simply seeing what people search for. In today's age guides and tutorials seam to work really well. So you can give a free guide every week to a top commenter.
9. Coupons work very well. But not that well through FB it's self. You can use coupon websites to publish this, then tweet it, then synchronize your Facebook. KaBOOM! You've hit 3 social media websites in one!
10. Advertise your Facebook page, and keep a close eye on your campaign. Facebook often reduces your exposure based on your budget. Don't be too tight, as especially if you want to increase your Facebook followers quickly. Once posting you will get many that will unlike you, but guess that's the name of the game.

We have to stop thinking of Facebook as a single entity. I remember once when Mark Z. mentioned his goal is not to replace the web, but to build onto it with existing social media websites. Facebook works with Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest, so let's use it in combination and get the benefit of all social media channels without the leg work.