It’s not as hard as it looks to build a Facebook community.
I would know! In just one year at my corporate job I grew a community over 400% with some strategy, organization and a lot of listening. It does take time, but once you have some key pieces in place like content and an editorial calendar, your community will start to flourish!
Facebook is a vast market of untapped wealth (meaning sales and connections). Although, with new changes frequently happening to the social network, it’s getting harder and harder to ensure that all of your fans see your content.
This is the first post in a series where you’ll learn how to use Facebook organically (without spending much money) to grow fans. Part 2 will explain the different types of ads (including a handy glossary of terms) and go over suggested spending limits for small business and entrepreneurs.
The Way Around Facebook Timeline
Just because you have 743 Facebook fans doesn’t mean that all 743 see your updates. Facebook runs an algorithm to determine who should see that update based on the users previous behavior (likes, comments and shares) combined with the actual content of the update.
(Hint: It works in a drip flow where only some fans see your post and if those select few engage with it, Facebook will “drip” the update to more and more fans. This is why it’s super important to make sure your updates and posts are relevant, timely, and interesting.)
This is intentional on Facebook’s part, which they claim is to give users the best of the best content without clogging up timeline feeds. However, it’s really more of a business move because this encourages brands to buy ads with them in order to get more eyeballs on posts. Smart, but annoying for small businesses with small communities!
You can learn more about how Facebook releases content to your News Feed here.
To get the most of your existing fans and to grow more without spending a dime, check out these three tips:
Three Ways To Organically Grow Your Facebook Community
1. Explore what your fans really enjoy.
Test out different content. From news or industry articles to your own blog posts, images, relevant videos or slide decks, vary your posts. If it comes down to it, ask your fans what they would like to see! Really simple, just ask.
2. Discover WHEN your fans are most active.
This may take a little bit of testing. Try this experiment, over the course of two weeks split up your posts and schedule them in one of three time frames: 8am- 12 noon, 12noon-4 pm and 4pm-8pm. Keep track of which posts get the most views and then which ones get the most engagement (remember this means likes, comments or shares).
After a few weeks you should start to see a pattern and it will be very obvious how many people saw your post out of your total fan count. Use this as your benchmark moving forward. Facebook will tell you how many eyeballs saw each individual post, so write this down and pay attention to trends.
*Note this can be found under Facebook Insights, which is only for Facebook Pages, not personal Profiles.
3. Give fans what they want, WHEN they want it.
Create an editorial calendar, even if its something hand written on a post-it to remind yourself each week. To start, at minimum two posts a week would suffice to grow a Facebook Page community. For example, every Monday post a blog link and every Wednesday a relevant news article from your industry. Keep to the schedule so fans have a level of expectation around your content.
Once you have all that done, if you still aren’t seeing as much interaction as you would like, it means with your content isn’t something fans want or you’re missing them in their News Feed. Go back and try the experiment again, this time including twice as much content.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me!
If there is anything to take away from this post it’s that Facebook is really a numbers game, involving more probability and percentages than you might think. You won’t want to invest any funds into Facebook advertising until you have a good community base. Your goal is to get between 500-1000 fans into your community before spending money and this should be done organically, without spending any money or very little.
To get your fans to that level start ASKING people to like your page and promote it throughout all your marketing materials. Or, try some of these tricks:
- Facebook Like button. If you don’t have a Facebook Like button on your blog posts, add it. Install any of these WordPress plugins and viola!
- Add your page to your email signature. Come right out and ask people to like your page for the call to action.
- Host a contest. I once held a contest that I disguised as a “challenge” to see if I could get 50 new people to like my page in a day. It worked in three hours after I put it out on Twitter and asked friends and family via email. You never know who they may pass it along to. Who doesn’t like a good challenge from time to time?
- Offer an exclusive giveaway. For example, give away your product or service to fans when the page reaches a tipping point.
- Cross promote. Use other social channels to drive fans to your Facebook page. Instagram is a perfect example. Create a fun poster image or add text to a photo asking people to check out your activity on Facebook.
Once you have used some of these tricks to build up your community base, then you can move on to the Facebook Like ad. This is the simplest and most cost effective Facebook ad product. It doesn’t require any special content and its designed to help you grow your fan base.
In Part 2 of this series you’ll learn about the Facebook Like ad and more, including what you’ll need to get started. Look for this article next month!
This post was original published on Doniree.com. Head on over to read the full post.
Photo uploaded to Flickr Creative Commons by Simon Q
