How to Build a Facebook Following

Facebook. You know you need to be on it. You know it’s an effective marketing tool. You know your target audience is on there. You’ve even mentioned to your colleagues that your Facebook strategy is being developed. Or perhaps you’ve even created a page but it’s just not gaining traction.

Perhaps, however, you’re wondering if it is actually relevant for your business. If you traditionally consider most of your marketing efforts Business-to-Business (B2B) -not business-to-consumer- then you may be surprised to know Facebook is an efficient (and cost effective) way to grow your audience and brand awareness. We’ve worked with businesses to launch, grow and leverage their brand on Facebook, including growing Nutella Foodservice’s audience to over 18,000 in just four months. We therefore know the ‘ins and outs’ of using Facebook to effectively reach your target audiences.

Here are our no B.S hacks for how to reach more people on Facebook…

1. Give them what they want, not what you want them to want.

Social media marketing isn’t all about promoting your own products and services. To really grow your audience and become a thought leader in your market, you’ll need to share a wide variety of content that interests your followers – not just ram your products down their throat. Instead, create an online personality that your potential customers want to engage with.

And at the end of the day, Facebook itself reinforces this by over time not showing your audience your content if they are consistently scrolling past your overly promotional posts.

2. Don’t be a kill-joy

It’s really important to remember that Facebook is designed for entertainment and people don’t log on looking for dry, boring information. The best Facebook posts have some fun and aren’t be afraid to give brands or companies some personality. Treat your Facebook page like a dinner party – don’t be the boring guest who always talks about work.

3. Give something back – prizes, tips, value in general

We all love a good competition and it’s a great way for your brand to encourage engagement and grow following on social media. Here are a few tips:

• Keep the prizes ‘achievable’ –smaller prizes often generate many more entries than one grand prize.
• Keep the ‘barrier to entry’ low – the less people have to do to enter a competition the better (no 15-field entry forms).

4. Include Calls-to-Action

If you want your fans or followers to do something on social media, then just ask. We’ve found it can be as simple as using the words “share,” “comment” and “like” in your post graphics.

5. Incorporate video (It’s not as scary as it sounds)

Facebook is hell-bent on wiping YouTube off the face of the planet, and as a result just loves it when you upload your videos straight to their platform rather than share a YouTube link. We recommend adding more videos or slideshows to your Facebook page, even if they’re super simple and short.

6. Targeting is your friend (and no we don’t just mean 30 – 50-year-old males)

“Yeah I use targeting often. All my posts are targeted at 30 – 50 year old men in Australian capital cities.”

We hear this too often and are sorry to say: This isn’t targeting. It’s just a waste of money.

Facebook has quite granular targeting and it is getting more and more sophisticated every day. Yes, you can target by location, gender and age. But you can also target people by type of employment, level of employment, interests, time online and other page liking habits. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Use Facebook’s ‘Power Editor’ within your Facebook ‘Business Manager’ account. This allows you to measure, analyse and create more effective ads and target more specifically.

Targeting is however a very time-consuming task. If you find you just don’t have the time for it, it may be worthwhile outsourcing to an expert.

7. Schedule your posts

This one seems simple but it is one that so many people get wrong. It’s Thursday afternoon and you realise you haven’t done any posts on Facebook for the entire week, so you log on and in a flurry of activity share four posts at once. This is a mistake. Businesses should look to be consistent throughout the week and post at times they know their audience is online.

There are scheduling tools in Facebook (and more sophisticated third party tools) which allow you to schedule your posts for publication at optimum times and also assess how they perform to make future improvements.

8. Know your goal

All of these tips will go completely to waste if you don’t know what your end goal is.

If you are just launching a Facebook page ‘because everyone else is doing it’ then you’re already behind the eight-ball.

Facebook can be an incredibly powerful sales and engagement tool if used correctly, but if you aren’t going to take the time to know what you want to get out of it, then you won’t get anything out of it at all.

If you’re keen to learn more than just the basics, or want to know more specifics about how the above tips apply to your business please reach out and one of us friendly Mulberries will be in touch.

 

Sarah Park is the Digital Director at Mulberry Marketing Communications, an award-winning full-service B2B communications agency based in Chicago, London and Australia. She oversees the development of digital marketing strategies for clients to drive brand awareness, and ultimately sales.