Generating a decent fan base on Facebook can seem like an endless, daunting task. There are, however, a few ways of making this effort a little easier. Here are ten of the most effective ways of generating Facebook followers.
Competitions!
Possibly the best way of gaining followers on Facebook is by running a competition. Even after the like-gate functionality has ended, we are still finding this a great way to boost page likes. We prefer to use 3rd party apps like Gleam.io, allowing us to collect email addresses and extra entry facility provides follows on other Social networks.
Asking Followers to Share
Ask existing followers to recommend your Facebook page to their friends. Many of them will do it, and it is quite amazing how rapidly your follower base can grow in this manner.
Sharing Fan Pages
Share details of your fan page to your profile page by using the ‘Share’ button (bottom left of the page). Basically placing a little ‘ad’ for your professional page onto your personal page, this lets everyone who can see this page know about your fan/ professional page, increasing your chances of getting more followers.
Facebook Fan Box
Visit http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/fanbox.php and create a fan box to place onto your Website to allow visitors to follow you straight from your site.
Page Badge
Create a page badge (http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/pagebadges.php) you can use to share your Facebook page on forums, other Websites, and so on, to increase your audience and attract new followers.
Updates
Make sure you post updates followers will find interesting enough to share. Once posts shared, your page is linked to their news stream and subsequently visible to all of their friends, again increasing your potential audience significantly.
Post Frequency
Ensure you regularly post new updates to keep followers interested. Obviously, you should avoid continual self promotion, as few people will want to follow endless sales talk. Post on a variety of interesting topics, add a little humour and watch your follower numbers grow.
Responding to Followers
Never give followers the impression that they are being ignored. Check your page frequently and make sure you respond to comments, questions, etc as soon as possible to let them know you care.
Tagging Followers
When posting updates, images or videos relevant to some or all of your followers, tag them to ensure they are alerted. In most cases, people tagged in posts, and so on, will comment and/ or share these posts, again increasing your chances of gathering followers from previously ‘untapped’ audiences.
Follower Posts
Do encourage followers to post things on your page, as this encourages loyalty and again increases your audience. You can keep follower posts separate or have them shown in your main ‘wall’ stream. The latter, by the way, gives a better overall picture of your page.
