When you’re trying to expand your business or reach out to more people as an influencer, it helps to have more Facebook followers. Whether your motives are personal or professional, growing your Facebook following offers a variety of benefits. These include more traffic to your page, expanded reach, higher levels of engagement, more brand awareness, a better conversion rate and more sales. To get more followers on Facebook, take advantage of these tips.
Focus on Real Followers
It’s a given. Internet users are drawn to social media pages with loads of followers. They’re also savvy enough to recognize when followers aren’t real. While it may be tempting to buy Facebook followers, doing so compromises your brand or business.
These followers almost always turn out to be bots, fake users or spam accounts. This means they will never read a thing you post, interact with you or buy your products. Also, if you have many, many followers but little interaction on your page, you stand to lose the trust of “real” people, and a Facebook shadowban will likely catch up with you too.
In 2015, the company updated its algorithm to recognize low user activity, which has resulted in the removal of millions of phony accounts. If you focus on real humans within your targeted audience, you’ll increase user engagement, conversions, sales and your follower count.
Be Informative
All social media users can benefit from being informative. While some people use their personal Facebook accounts to only talk about themselves, research from Rutgers University has shown that social media users are twice as likely to follow feeds that provide more information than “me” content.
If you have a professional Facebook feed, it doesn’t do any good to focus on a target audience if you’re not providing informative content. Make sure your posts offer catchy headlines, relevant information and eye-catching visuals like photos and infographics. For brands that want to further expand reach and increase authority, consider partnering with an influencer to help you create various types of content on Facebook.
Promote Your Facebook Page
People won’t follow your Facebook page if they don’t know about it. Make sure to share a link to your page on your other social media platforms and on your website. You can also add connect buttons to blog posts, email newsletters and other types of marketing communications.
If someone new likes, shares or comments on one of your posts, you can invite them to view more of your content by liking your Facebook business page. Bear in mind that you’ll have more success if you send an invite promptly. An accepted invite just may result in an active follower.
Stay Engaged
Social media users are more likely to follow feeds that are abuzz with activity. To encourage interaction, make sure to engage with your followers on Facebook regularly. Invite responses by asking fun or interesting questions, and always reply to comments promptly. When remarks are negative, always search for a polite resolution. To amass even more active users, make sure to hit your “like” button when someone shares your content and when you are mentioned in a comment or post.
Remember that you’ll get more followers by building relationships with the ones you already have. To get a fuller picture of which posts inspire user engagement and what times of day your followers are most active, make use of Facebook’s Insights tool.
Be Positive
If you want people to “like” your Facebook page, be aware of the tone you project. A secret experiment conducted by Facebook in 2012 showed that when exposed to positive content, Facebook users posted more positive content, and when exposed to negative content, the opposite was true.
As further proof that it’s wise to keep your posts positive, a study published in “PeerJ Computer Science” showed that negative social media content spreads quicker, but positive content spreads farther. This suggests that social media users are more apt to “like” and share positive posts. Therefore, if you want to expand your reach and attract more followers, keep your tone light and happy.
Post Various Types of Content
One sure way to attract Facebook followers is to keep your content interesting. Add a mix of humorous memes, inspiring quotes, memorable videos and fun, interactive content like quizzes, questions and polls.
To ensure a response on your personal Facebook page, tag special friends. To generate extra buzz on a business page, host a giveaway of one of your best products. Share the news on all your social platforms, on giveaway websites and in various Facebook groups within your niche. Point people to your Facebook page to enter your giveaway, and encourage them to spread the word.
Post Live Video
If you want to go viral, keep in mind that some live video spreads like wildfire on Facebook. Think dancing babies, funny animal tricks, crazy pranks, gaming videos and how-to tutorials. There are four great reasons to use Facebook live video on your personal or professional page:
- When you communicate through video, you become more relatable to your audience.
- You can provide valuable information to your audience in real-time.
- You can expand your reach.
- Video is more visually appealing and easier to process than written posts.
Incorporate Hashtags
Although hashtags are more widely used on Twitter and Instagram, they can be helpful on Facebook too. The handy crosshatch followed by a word or phrase helps categorize your content and get it in front of interested Facebook users. When incorporating hashtags, take advantage of these handy tips:
- Always start a hashtag with #, but avoid using other symbols, punctuation or spaces.
- Make sure hashtags relate to your business and/or your target audience.
- Limit the number of hashtags you use to one or two per Facebook post.
- Make hashtags easy to remember by keeping them somewhat short.
- Instead of placing #hashtags in the #middle of your post, always include them at the end.
Save Time With Automation Tools
If you’re like most people, you don’t have all the time in the world to spend on social media. Automation tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and Workflow can help. These tools allow you to schedule a series of Facebook posts in advance with written content, photos, videos and more. This way, you’re always posting regularly no matter how busy you get. And these tools aren’t just for Facebook. You can schedule posts in advance for all your social platforms, from Twitter to Pinterest.
Final Takeaways
Whether you have a personal or professional Facebook page, your follower count determines how far your message can travel. If you’re looking to get more followers on Facebook, attract them legitimately with good information. Promote your Facebook page, stay engaged with your audience and be positive. Don’t forget to incorporate interesting content, live video and hashtags. If you follow these tips consistently, you’re sure to boost your follower numbers.
