How to Get More Followers on Facebook

Is Facebook dead? Far from it. A recent study showed that Facebook is still one of the most popular networks for business owners.

In 2019, Facebook is STILL a great source of traffic, even if people have said that organic page reach has been killed.

Even if page reach might not be the same as it used to be, Facebook groups are still extremely powerful, and you can still get amazing reach on your page if you know what you’re doing.

But, because Facebook is getting more competitive, you now have to put MORE effort into your posts.

This also means that certain post types (entertaining videos, memes, and photos) are always going to do better.

The cream will still rise to the top!

In this article, I’m going to share some hacks that hopefully you’ve never heard of before. In 10 minutes, you’ll learn how to get more business on Facebook by leveraging your current audience.

Introduction: Why is it so important to build a social following?

Nowadays, building a social media following is no longer an option, but a necessity for any forward-thinking business. Businesses that are able to harness the power of social media will stand out and do much better than their competitors in several ways:

Building Brand Awareness

I hear a lot of people complain that brand awareness doesn’t provide true ROI.

Well, the execs at Nike, McDonald’s, and nearly every multi-billion dollar company disagree.

Brand awareness and brand affinity are MAJOR drivers of sales decisions. The more well-known your brand is, the easier it becomes for a customer to convert off one of your ads or social media posts.

Most people spend a lot of time on social media (especially Facebook) every day (58 minutes on average).

Having a social media following of people interested in your brand will give you an opportunity to engage with them regularly.

Posting interesting, helpful content is one of the best ways to increase Facebook Page likes for free of charge.

Even if you’re in the boring B2B space, having a prominent social media profile truly helps.

Just look at SnackNation, a B2B company selling snack boxes to companies. They send informative, educational, and fun content through social media — connecting with their audience.

Remember, just because you’re B2B, doesn’t mean you’re selling to a nameless corporation. You’re actually selling to a decision maker in the company. And a fun, educational social media presence helps you do all that.

But keep in mind, the whitepapers and long-form content may not work anymore. The masses have shorter attention spans, which means video, memes, and entertainment will take precedent over other forms of content.

That means if you’re a B2B company, your content needs to BE funny and educational at the same time. AND you also have to draw the user’s attention.

Your followers will naturally share that content with their own network, helping you become more popular and reach even more potential customers.

The people you reach through viral content are your “top funnel” — essentially potential customers that are just getting used to your brand. It’s important to segment your marketing efforts into top and bottom of the funnel (people who are closer to buying).

The more people entering the top, the more you can convert at the bottom.

Viral video is a great way to get more shares. Create compelling videos that are funny and shareable. (We’ll be touching more upon viral video creation later in this guide!)

Dollar Beard Club does this a LOT on their Facebook page, generating a lot of shares and comments.

Boost in Sales

Several studies, including this one by McKinsey, have shown that social media activity is a crucial factor in customer purchase decisions.

The principle behind “social proof” demonstrates that people tend to choose products and services which are popular because we associate a large following with credibility. If so many people follow a brand, they must be doing something right, right?

The effect is multiplied if a person’s friends are among the followers. So, by having a large following, you’ll be more likely to get more followers and to make more sales.

If you look at this ad, several of my friends liked the page, this means I’ll be more likely to buy their offer since I know my friends have probably also purchased from them.

Feedback

One less obvious benefit of having a social media following is the opportunity it gives you to get direct actionable feedback from your customers.

By sifting through the comments and reactions to your posts, you’ll be able to deduce what your customers think, regarding any particular issue.

You can then implement their suggestions and optimize your products or services accordingly. Apart from boosting your sales, you’ll also begin to build a reputation as a responsive brand.

Now that you know why it’s important to build a Facebook following, here’s all you need to know on how to get more likes on Facebook.

We use feedback a lot, especially in our Facebook group.

Growth Tip #1: Run Paid Ads (here’s how to do it effectively)

Facebook has an extensive advertising platform that makes it easy to get your message in front of your target audience (and get them to LIKE your page).

It’s a great way to get your initial set of followers if you’re willing to shell out the money.

BUT!

It’s also a great way to lose a ton of money getting crappy likes from 3rd world countries that will never look at your product.

Facebook’s ability to target a very specific audience (even if you’re in a small niche) is the major reason why the ads work. ‘Like’ ads work especially well because they use social proof by showing the number of followers you currently have as well as any friends of the viewer who have liked your page.

Plus, it’s very convenient for users to just click a button and be able to see your posts in their feeds.

Make sure you also try using the targeting option of, “friends of people who like your page”. This is a great way to attract similar people to the ones already in your audience.

They will also see their friend’s name in your ad.

Here’s an engagement-focused ad with a like button and another for lead capture.

How to get more followers on Facebook by using optimized ad campaigns.

To make your ads effective, begin by optimizing your page:

1. Fill out all the information and images and add enough content to make it worth following.
2. When creating the ad, be sure to choose the audience carefully, whether you’re using location, interests, or any other parameter.
3. Use a great image – a dull, unattractive image won’t catch people’s attention and they likely won’t engage when they do notice it. Take the time to make a great design that shows what your page is about and captures your audience’s interest.

Growth Tip #2: Post Interesting Visual Content

Already touched upon above, but VISUAL CONTENT is key.

That means videos, funny pictures, memes, etc.

You can be in a boring B2B space like us at VYPER, but you can find funny ways to engage with your audience.

Whether you run ads or not, people who come across your page will expect you to post regular content that’ll justify their decision to follow you.

If you don’t post often, your brand simply won’t stick in your audience’s mind.

Or if you post too much boring stuff, your audience will glaze over it.

Apart from how often you post, what you post is also crucial. Text-only posts are not ideal. People don’t have the attention spans to read long text, especially when it’s from an up and coming brand.

(Unless you’re Josh Fechter, and you’ve perfected your broetry.)

Thankfully, there’s a solution that solves both problems conveniently – visual content in the form of pictures, GIFs, and videos.

Creating Viral Videos

And if you wanna do videos, Lumen5 is a BRILLIANT app, almost like Canva but for video. They help you create viral video content for Facebook by putting your text on top of the video (including stock footage).

This is the app that lets you easily create shareable, viral videos. It’s especially helpful for B2B companies since you can make your text content WAY more interesting.

Creating Photo Content

You can create stunning designs in a short time using tools such as Canva or Snappa (run by one of our friends, yay!)

Even if you have a long message, incorporating it into a beautiful graphic design will make more people stop to read it.

When done properly, posts with interesting pictures, GIFs, or videos will get a ton of shares and may even go viral.

That’d be a massive boost to your marketing efforts, but even if it doesn’t happen, posting consistently will help you grow a large, loyal audience over time.

Infographics

Infographics are another way to get tons of shares. However, it’s tough to create them. You can use Canva, or you can find an infographic creator on the web.

It’s clear that the posts which are funny, inspirational, or cute tend to get the most engagement.

Source: Buffer

Remember this for all your marketing campaigns, it can be applied when you are trying to collect followers, sales or brand ambassadors.

Growth Tip #3: Run a Facebook Giveaway

Speaking of going viral, one of the most reliable ways to get a lot of engagement and more Facebook followers quickly is to run a giveaway or contest.

Companies like Foundr use this strategy well, achieving not only more likes but also massive amounts of email leads.

Giveaways and contests attract people at a higher rate than any other method because they offer a reward for participation.

The bigger the reward, the more people will participate, but even small rewards (weekly or monthly giveaways) get a lot of participation.

Incentivization goes a long way!

Tips for choosing a prize

• It’s important to keep in mind that your prizes should be relevant to your target audience.
• Using a prize that’s relevant to your customers will ensure that only high-quality leads who are genuinely interested in your products and services will enter.
• In addition, package prizes (multiple prizes) work better because they attract people who might have one of the prizes but want the others. If you have just one prize, then people who don’t need it won’t enter.

You can use giveaways to get email leads by asking people to sign up to participate, increase your brand exposure by asking people to like or comment on your page or to get user-generated content you can then share to boost your credibility.

The options are limitless, but running a contest can be quite involved. From choosing the prize, setting the rules, to monitoring participation all while making sure you adhere to Facebook’s guidelines.

One big tip — Create evergreen campaigns by doing an ongoing weekly or monthly contest. The prize value is usually in the hundreds.

However, if you want a 1 time big bang/lift, run a high-value, one-off contest like the example below. The prize value is usually in the thousands.

That’s where the VYPER contest software comes in – your solution for hassle-free Facebook contests, giveaways, and rewards management.

This VYPER video shows you how to hack Facebook likes by using our suite of giveaway contest management tools.

Create a free account and immediately have access to free conference recordings here, which will teach you the latest marketing tactics (ads, contests, emails, and social media marketing).

Upgrade to a paid account and you’ll be able to manage all your giveaways, contests, and reward programs from a single dashboard.

Growth Tip #4: Use Influencers to Promote Your Giveaway & Content

Influencer marketing blew up in the past couple of years and for good reason. It’s an excellent way to reach a niche audience and attain instant credibility (and a lot of Facebook Page likes and followers) simply by having an already established person or brand endorse you.

The first thing to do is to find an influencer that aligns with your brand. You can use something like OpenInfluence or Upfluence.

Beyond being a popular figure in your niche, you should find someone who has similar values with your business. That way, your sponsored posts will blend into their usual messaging seamlessly.

Beware of shady practices too. Some influencers buy Facebook followers and even likes/comments.

Go through a prospective influencer partner’s page thoroughly and be sure that nothing strikes you as suspicious.

Check their engagement rate, the type of comments they get and look at all their old posts.

Did they gradually build their account or did they go from 100 likes per photo to suddenly get 5,000 like per photo?

(SocialBlade.com is a great resource for this.)

Also, keep in mind that the largest influencer is not always the best one for you.

Smaller influencers often have more personal relationships with their audiences, which can make their recommendations more effective (and they’re usually cheaper!)

Prices can vary widely. Focus on value instead.

Source: Bloglovin

You can use influencers work extremely well for promoting contests and giveaways.

It’s a much higher value-add to run an influencer giveaway than simply pushing sales onto a cold audience.

Influencers are also particularly helpful in giveaways/contests that include a leaderboard. Once you get a few influencers competing for that top spot, there’s no stopping how many people they will refer to win.

When combined well (influencers who are relevant to your brand promoting a contest with a prize relevant to your audience), you’ll be able to capture quality leads at exponential rates.

If you do not want to use a giveaway with your influencer campaigns make sure you have some sort of page that can capture their traffic as leads. Here’s an in-depth guide that will help you optimize landing pages that capture leads.

Growth Tip #5: Use Automation Tools

We’ve established that posting regularly is essential to building your following on Facebook. It can be a hassle for small businesses though, since there’s so much else to focus on and it might not seem like social media is a priority.

What if you could automate the process?

There are a number of tools that allow you to create and set your Facebook posts to go live automatically at regular intervals.

You could have one employee just set up all your posts for the week instead of making them post on the hour every day.

You can schedule text posts or media so the only limit is your creativity.

Tools include: HootSuite, Buffer, MeetEdgar, RecurPost, and more.

For Instagram, there’s Grum.

Although studies have gotten different results, one post per day is generally considered ideal as you grow your following.

It’s important to maintain a level of consistency in the content and style of your posts so that your fans would be able to instantly identify your posts.

That’ll serve to reinforce the brand relationship and keep your messaging fresh in their minds.

As you post, be sure to track your activities and results extensively.

Identify the posts that do well and replicate them while tweaking the ones that don’t.

Timing is one factor that can affect the engagement your posts get.

Be sure that your posts go out at the optimal times. The conventional wisdom is between 1 pm to 4 pm local time, but you should continue testing until you find your brand’s sweet spot.

Growth Tip #6: Engage Your Target Audience

Once you have a steady stream of posts, you’ll need to back it up with audience engagement to truly make your page come alive.

The Foundr Magazine group only has about 6k members but it super engaging and usually gets hundreds of engagements per post.

Source: Foundr magazine

People will comment on your posts, especially if you are running giveaway or contest that piqued the interest of your audience.

Running a giveaway can not only get you followers, but with the power of bonus actions, they can also incentivize commenting and sharing of your Facebook posts.

You should reply to every post and comment to keep the conversation going.

It might seem like a simple thing, but most business pages don’t do it, so you’ll stand out and begin instilling more brand loyalty in your customers.

As you engage on your page, you should also join relevant groups and participate in conversations there.

It’s not the frequency that matters though – the quality of your posts is much more important.

Post helpful insights and people will naturally begin to recognize your expertise, check out your page, and follow you.

If you just post random stuff, however, people are likely to associate your brand with spam and you’ll miss the chance to get free followers.

If you ran a contest and made a bonus action for (upload an image or a video of you using our product) user-generated content, you can also incorporate it into your engagement in the form of reviews and testimonials.

You can also add bonus actions like comment on a Facebook post, blog post etc.

Source: VYPER

This showcases what your customers have said about you or them using your products or services.

Sort of like mini case studies that you can use to support your points in discussions.

The TL;DR

Now that we’ve gone over how to get more followers on Facebook, it’s clear that you have quite a few options to choose from in achieving that goal.

All of them have their merits and the ideal one for your business will depend on your industry, target audience, and overall business strategy.

It’s great that you can even combine two or more into your marketing plan. Giveaways, for instance, are the most versatile since you can use them alone or to enhance any of the other strategies.

Ultimately, remember that how to get more followers on Facebook is by prioritizing quality over quantity.

Soon, you’ll get tons of Facebook followers engaging with your brand, purchasing from you, and spreading the word about you in their networks.

If you want to learn more about marketing effectively on Facebook, check out these two posts:

• How to Improve Your Facebook Engagement Rate
• 10 B2C Facebook Ads Deconstructed