Social media pioneers made their debut on Facebook and created the best cover photo templates, a platform that allowed them to friend each other. Here, they created communities, poked their love interests (remember this?), and wrote mini-blogs on what was on their mind. The premise was quite simple: what’s on your mind?
People could write whatever they were going through: inspirational, creative, heartwarming, etc. That was the selling point of this platform, enabling it to grow into what became the foundation for other social platforms.
As it grew, friending was no longer effective, and following this became the norm, setting followers apart from friends. It was much easier to manage followings than having thousands or millions of friends on a page. Brands and influencers now focus on their following as it is through this audience that they can reach their target demographic. In this article, we’ll cover how you can grow your following with a few simple yet effective tips.
Mapping Your Content
Facebook is like any other social media platform. You must understand what you want to convey to your followers before introducing any content. Otherwise, you churn out mixed content, eliciting confusion and pushing people away. From the minute someone lands on your page, they should understand what you have to offer.
The only way to ensure this and increase Facebook followers is to:
- Understand what your target audience wants to see: You can achieve this by looking for gaps in your niche and filling them,
- Investigate what the competition is up to: Your account does not exist in a void. You must thus scope out the competition and figure out how you can beat them at their game.
- Narrow down on the best engagement methods: Depending on your demographic, this could be through polls, questions, stories, videos, or other types of content.
Once you understand these integral factors, it’s much easier to develop a content plan.
Being Consistent
Would you follow an account that posts once every week? How about once a month? People are spending a lot of time on social media nowadays. As a result, they tend to stick to accounts that post consistently as these have more content to offer. Of course, consistency can be quite hard to navigate. But you can do it using these tips.
Come up with a content calendar
Once you have your content strategy down to an art (as explained above), the next step lies in creating content that aligns with your goals. For example, if the best way to engage your audience is through infographics, you should decide how many of these you will offer. Suppose you want to post one infographic a day, then you should plan at least seven in advance. That allows you to have enough to post as you work on others, so you never have a gap in your posts.ž
Schedule your content
It’s hard to log onto Facebook each day to post. But guess what? You don’t need to do this yourself. There are many scheduling tools that you can use. All you do is create the posts and schedule when they will go up. That allows you to have a month’s worth of content in wait. Even if you suffer a system issue, the posts will still go up, and you can save yourself the hassle of posting.
Automating your content only takes away the posting job from you. It does not step in to engage with your followers. So, you must still log in and reply to comments, like what people have said about the post, and interact with people in your messages. Without such engagement, your content creation will not have much use for your brand.
Experimenting with Content
Facebook analytics enable you to assess just how well your content is doing. Sometimes, you may find that people are not engaging with you or following you because your message is plain and repetitive. For example, you can’t be a financial coach who always talks about how to budget for a home.
After a few images, videos, and infographics, people will already get the hang of what you have to offer. So, they might get bored with the content because they already know what to expect. The goal is to vary your content so it engages them differently each time. As you do so, keep an eye on the analytics to gauge just how well the content performs. Capitalize on what does best.
Giving Away Free Stuff
Freebies have become an easy way to gain followers on Facebook. After all, who will turn away a free product or service? But here’s the catch. You don’t give away the product or service for nothing. Instead, you make people work for it in a way that helps you gain more followers. Here’s an example. Offer goods worth $100 as part of a giveaway. In the participation requirements, state that each participant must follow you and tag three people in the comment section.
The tagged people who will likely also want the free stuff will follow you and tag more people. In the end, your page gets a lot of followers. Even after giving away the goods or services, people will likely keep following you if your content is valuable. But to ensure this, let them know that you have another giveaway in the offing, which will prompt them to stay put.
Promoting Your Page
How else can you get people to follow your page other than directing them to it?
Let’s review how you can do this:
- Run a paid ad, encouraging people to like and follow your page. This strategy enables you to decide who gets to see the ad, and if you play your cards right, you can gain more followers this way. Of course, you need to understand the 4Ps of marketing, more so the people. Who are your target clients?
- Promote your page on your website and blogs. If you have other social media platforms, use them to promote your page. Any time you have the chance to get more traffic to your website, jump on the opportunity.
It also helps to work with influencers as a mention from their works as social proof for your brand. Find influencers who align with your brand and engage them in working with you. All the best!