[How to grow Facebook page organically – Digital Marketing – Part 7]
This is for your first 100 followers who aren’t “invited” but earned!
I am pretty sure that in at least one of the articles you read earlier on the same topic, talked about inviting your friends to like the page you created. And why not, if you have 500 friends, at least 50 people should agree to accept your invite right?
Maybe.
Facebook is not new. There are hundreds of pages which are ‘liked’ by your friends already, a few are now their favorites. Moreover, Facebook feed is constantly getting more personalized. How do you compete in an already noisy platform? Let’s find out!
# 1 Do the basic page hygiene
Creating a Facebook page comes with tasks. Before you promote your page, organically or through ads, ensure that basic details about your page are in place. Never serve half-cooked FB posts or half-baked FB pages to your potential audience.
This leaves an impression of carelessness. If you are not serious, why should they?
Ensure the following are done before you share an FB post:
1.1 Optimized display-picture
Display-pictures appear in circles; they own a very small pixel area, and attention on the device, more so on desktops. As such, it becomes important that these limited pixels are either familiar or intriguing.
Choose something that shows your brand icon, or something suitably related which sits well with your Facebook page’s name, and it’s easily identifiable.
1.2 Well-designed cover-picture
Cover pictures are public, and they are the first visual component to be noticed by your potential followers. Use this area wisely. Design your images and videos to cover your tagline, your other social media presence, or any other short but relevant piece of information you can convey.
Few brands do this job really well. Check out the cover pictures of Durex, Google, and Netflix. There’s a lot to learn there.
1.3 Proper contact details
Add all the ways your potential followers can reach you. This includes physical address, websites, business phone numbers to start with.
Facebook also supports auto-reply when your page gets messages from its followers, but for starters, this may not be a need. Try replying to those messages, as often as you can. Machines can’t beat human touch!
You can also choose to link to your other social media handles like Instagram or Youtube.
#2 Make it OPTIONAL for your friends to like your Facebook page
Often the first approach to tackle the ‘how to grow Facebook page’ query is through inviting family and friends to like the page you have created. By all means, do it.
While this activity is supportive, you also need them, and the new followers to be willing to engage with your FB posts. Making it optional to follow your page doesn’t make the process forceful, and gives a strong message that you are here to earn them.
When you give people the power to choose, they are more likely to stay and engage.
#3 Focus on FB post quality
Let me repeat, a picture speaks a thousand words. Platforms like Instagram thrive solely on visual communication.
Facebook is tricky that way. It lets you post almost all kinds of content – pure text, audio, video or mixed. The most engaging posts are often from a mixed bag. You can say only so much with one communication format.
As long as you focus on quality on your posts, audiences will come, and audiences will stay.
Here are some tips to follow:
3.1 Text-based FB post
Keep it short and simple. Add relevant or trending hashtags in accordance with your content. No one is going to read an essay on their FB feed unless they worship the page owner.
3.2 Image-based FB post
This format works best for engagement. It grabs attention, there’s not much to read, and yet it conveys your message to your followers.
Combine it with short texts and hashtags to make the experience complete.
3.3 Video-based FB post
Video engagement is big, so much so that Facebook wants your video posts to stay on the platform.
Facebook notifies followers when a certain page is about to go Live or is Live. People are hosting “Watch Parties” to view particular content with their friends. All of it makes the audience stay and not drift away to other platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. Make use of these features.
#4 Leverage groups about your niche
Facebook groups have a strong sentiment of “community”. There is a group for everything – from arts to jobs, to lifestyle and whatnot. Some of them are solely built to promote your niche.
Many of these groups are public while others are well moderated. The moderated groups are the ones where you have serious followers. These groups lay down certain rules for everyone thereby ensuring that the value of the group engagement is not lost.
Join these groups, and share your page’s posts there. You can also choose to create a community around your page, but this mostly works when your follower count is in thousands.
#5 Post consistently
As per Zephoria, 16 Million local business pages were created as of May 2013, this is 2020. Imagine, how many more pages are already added by the time you are done reading this blog post. Moreover, on average, 1500 stories can reach an average user in their news feed.
In other words, your FB posts are competing with pre-established and thriving pages in addition to at least 1000 other stories.
Posting consistently increases the chances for your post to reach your followers organically. However, try to avoid oversharing to avoid your FB posts looking like spam.
When you follow the above mentioned basic but necessary steps, that’s how you grow your Facebook page, organically.
This exercise also gives you basic hints on your audience demography and other insights that are vital for post promotions.
At the core, stick to your brand and value system and be absolutely non-negotiable with your FB posts. None of the above will work if this is compromised!
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Got questions or feedback? Do let me know in the comments. 🙂
Older posts in Digital Marketing series
Digital Marketing – Part 1 – Digital Marketing for Artists
Digital Marketing – Part 2.1 – Blog – Everything to know before starting one
Digital Marketing – Part 2.2 – How to make money from blogging
Digital Marketing – Part 3 – 3 Basic SEO tips for beginners
Digital Marketing – Part 4 – Blog post action plan
Digital Marketing – Part 5 – AdSense approval for your blog in the first attempt
Digital Marketing – Part 6 – Use of social media in 2020, some insights