How to really get your First 10,000 Fans on Facebook (Case Study)

The 10 steps below demonstrate with a real example the way to get more than 10,000 fans on the Facebook business page.

Facebook will be the king of social networks exceeding 1.79 billion active users a month (Updated December 2016). It is utilised by more than 60% of Internet users Worldwide in fact it is an excellent tool for promoting services or products, finding new clients or gaining more loyal readers (followers).

To take advantage of this for business purposes, you’ll want plenty of fans (followers) on the Facebook business page. Let’s see below why having many Facebook fans is very important.

What will be the significance of having many Facebook fans on the business page?

It indicates popularity – It goes without saying the variety of fans reveals how popular an online site is. A grow business page with 100,000 followers is more popular than the usual page with 1,000 fans and this results in a variety of other benefits (described below).

It indicates trust – In case you can’t understand the relationship between Facebook fans and business trust, have in mind the US State Department spent $630,000 to raise their Facebook Fans from 100,000 to two million through the years 2011-2012 (See related post from marketingland).

Why did they do this? Because in today’s World a successful business, blog or website will need plenty of Facebook fans. 5 years ago this didn’t subject in the Modern, social proof is very important.

More fans, more visits – Greater fans you’ve, the higher will be the amount of people which will see your posts of their timeline and maybe visit your website.

While this is true, it must be noted that does not all your fans will see your content.

As already explained inside a previous post, How to raise your Facebook Page Organic Reach, just a small portion of the followers (no more than 4 percent) will see your status updates.

This number may differ, but what is very important to be aware of now, is actually you’ve 10,000 fans so you post a brand new update, it’ll be seen organically by way of a max of 300-400 people.

It’s best for SEO as well – Although officially Google does not admit that social media marketing is really a ranking factor, many studies show popular websites on Facebook may perform better in search, these days quite popular websites (additional circumstances being equal).

How to travel from 0 to 10,000 Facebook fans

Now that you’re believing that using a lots of Facebook fans is very important on your website and business, let’s see step-by-step how to go from 0 to 10,000 fans.

Note: Necessities such as similar steps I followed to raise the facebook followers of my fitness blog’s facebook page. Typically the page has more than 100K fans and yes it continous to cultivate organically.

Step 1: First things first – you’ll want a Facebook business page

It sounds silly for your experienced however for beginners to social media marketing this can be something totally new: A private Facebook page differs from an enterprise page.

If you need to have friends on Facebook to share your holiday photos then you need to create a personal page however if you simply want to have fans and followers on your website or business then you need to create a Facebook business page.

So, the first step would be to just be sure you produce a Facebook business page along with the next step would be to ensure your page is correctly optimized.

Step 2: Optimize your Facebook business page

When we mention Facebook business page optimization we mean choosing a friendly page title (username), writing a catchy description (from the short description field), providing accurate information for too long description, company overview, mission (see screenshot below) and naturally posting interesting content – this is actually the most critical optimization tip coming from all.

The company’s content posted on the Facebook business page may also determine it’s failure or success.

Having an optimized Facebook page makes it simpler to draw new fans or higher likes from ads as we will see below.

Step 3: Take advantage of your own Facebook account

I mentioned in step one above you will want to use a business page instead of a private page, however you still need to have an active personal facebook account.

Here means that:

After you post an update on the business page, one of the ways to raise exposure and likes, would be to share that post on the personal page also.

People you’ve as friends on the personal page may ‘like’ and ‘interact’ together with the post shared from the business page and will also improve the engagement factor of the posts.

As an outcome, facebook will show your content to more fans (organically).

So, one of the ways to raise the volume of people who view your content and go after dark 4% of you fan base would be to share and promote the post on the personal page.

It is obvious the more variety of friends the greater could be the visibility in the post.

Also, just be sure you invite all your existing friends (and a new one) to like your Facebook business page. Do this any time you acquire a new ‘friend’.

Step 4: Add the Facebook Like box on the website

This is again social media 101 however you have to have the Facebook like box on the website for 3 reasons:

#1 – It’s a means to associate your internet site together with the Facebook business page. To put it differently it is just a approach to ‘tell’ search engines like yahoo until this is the official Facebook business page.

#2 – When you get plenty of fans, this can be something you should be proud off and another to exhibit in your users (as explained above therefore popularity, trust and social proof).

#3 – It’s a sensible way to increase your fan base organically. The future prospect can follow your internet site by clicking so on button without needing to check out Facebook.

Hint: For max results, squeeze LIKE box above fold (for the sidebar).

Hint 2: You can also popup such box to new users (by way of example, when they spend 60 seconds on the page, when they scroll right down to the lower or when they try to leave your page – while this is effective in terms of getting new likes, you need to be careful to never allow it to be too distracting on your users.)

Step 5: Follow these suggestions to increase post engagement

So far, we have created an optimized Facebook business page, added friends to your personal Facebook page and placed such box inside a prominent position on the website.

The next natural step would be to start sharing happy to maintain fans happy as well as perhaps manage to convert them from fans > internet site visitors > customers.

Some simple rules to adhere to which will improve the user engagement using your facebook business page:

#1 – Share relevant content: Share content that your fans anticipate seeing inside your page. For instance, if the website is about Social networking, share content in connection with social media marketing instead of about sports or another type you might like. If your users desire to read sports news, they do know how to locate them.

#2 – Don’t forget which they follow your business page to acquire updates about your website (and niche) instead of about your social gatherings: If you want to get social, then make use of personal Facebook page, your business page is about your internet site.

#3 – Usually thumb, I personally use my offer page to share content from my niche only, if I need to share a thing that just isn’t in connection with my niche, I personally use my personal page.

#4 – Don’t be too promotional: Sharing promotional content (all the time) on the Facebook page will drive your fans away. When you’ve got a promotion to share or something that may benefit your fans, you can do so but don’t drink too much.

Try to publish interesting, shareable content that is certainly in connection with your niche, evidently this does not come straight from your internet site. Maintain a balance between promotional and content that your followers might choose to read.

Step 6: Share intriguing and high quality content (not only links)

I made some tests in connection with impact of descriptions when you are performing a Facebook update and found out that Facebook posts with ‘lists’ acquire more likes than posts with just links. Permit me to provide you with one example to understand What i’m saying is.

When you need to share a post from the website on Facebook, you want to Facebook status updates and enter the webpage URL. It looks something such as this:

You can share this text without adding any other information. If your title and pictures are great, you’re going to get many likes based on the time you’re making the post, variety of fans etc.

If one another hand, you enrich this post with the help of additional information and also a list, then other things being equal, you’re very likely to get more likes and shares.

For me as a result sense since people that see a title and image of their timeline may not ‘Like It’ as it provides no value for them (don’t forget the average user is assigned a huge selection of postings of their timeline if he or she login to Facebook).

On another hand when you let them have valuable, high quality and easy you just read information (being a list), they will go through the LIKE button given that they read something useful without needing to leave their timeline.

Note: It is just a known indisputable fact that people have a bent of LIKING a post without reading it so let them have reasons to accomplish that; your internet site visits may not increase however the engagement factor of the posts will rise.

Step 7: Share images, videos and emotions

If you take a glance at one of the most popular Facebook pages, you will see that they tend to share images, videos, infographics, charts etc, with their usual text only postings.

This sort of content gets more likes and shares and as a result the page gets more fans and followers.

In legally to have by Buzzsumo, they identified the most shared and liked content on Facebook, has the following characteristics:

Step 8: Provide incentives to obtain additional fans & followers

Why should someone follow your Facebook business page?

You need to give incentives to facebook users to adhere to your page. Several suggestions to consider:

Quality updates – This can be the best incentive you’ll be able to provide your users. Before posting anything on the page, you have to be sure that it offers value in your audience. If you do this consistently, you existing followers will share it using friends and will also attract more users.

Run a competitive sport – Some websites run contests on Facebook and giveaway different gifts. The ‘price’ for joining the information would be to Much like the page first. There are various tools to do that but have in mind that when you don’t use a known brand this many not so successful.

Content upgrades – If you have your blog, you need to use ask users to adore your page to get an new version of the post. This calls for extra tools however it is something worth checking out.

Step 9: You have to market your own content and page

When you create your business page don’t expect that it’ll magically get 1000s of fans. Aside from the tips outlined above, you also have to market your business page in places other than Facebook.

A few suggestions to take into consideration that helped my case:

Promote in other social media marketing networks – If you have accounts to social media marketing channels e.g. Google+, Pinterest etc. you’ll be able to periodically ask your followers to join your self on Facebook also. Be polite and reveal to them the advantages from the process.

Promote in Twitter – Besides posting about your Facebook page on other social media marketing networks, you’ll be able to benefit from twitter’s interactive features.

When you get a new twitter follower, send them an individual (personalized) message and get these to follow your self on facebook (your business and personal pages).

This method although it is time consuming, (Used to do it manually instead of using any tools) it could produce excellent results.

Promote inside your newsletter – If you have a newsletter or you talk with your readers via email, just be sure you you can keep them follow your Facebook page.

Do not only write the FB URL using your signature but ASK them politely to adore your business page.

Step 10: Facebook ads is really a must

I have saved one of the easiest and most great ways to raise your Facebook fans for last, since it is the only person that it’s not free.

Facebook provides a self-service ad platform which you can use with the idea to raise your fan base (market your page), boost your posts, get more leads, increase conversions or execute a variety of other actions (as shown from the image above).

The procedure is actually comparatively simple and easy straightforward. Basically you choose a webpage you have, select your goal (market your page), select your audience (determined by country, age, other demographics and interests) after which set your evryday budget and duration.

The cost per campaign depends on many factors. The ultimate way to assess if Facebook ads is an excellent strategy to raise your fan base, would be to operate a pilot campaign for two days.

Spend $10-$20 dollars per day and run the campaigns for any fixed duration (at least per week). At the conclusion, you’ll be able to evaluate if the price per like is something you’re happy to buy.

I had great results with Facebook ads both for my websites as well as for client websites i run campaigns on a monthly basis (for a few days) to enhance my facebook likes.

It should be noted by investing in Facebook ads you don’t buy likes but views. Lots of people think that that which you buy is Facebook likes but usually you pay Facebook to exhibit your ad to more Facebook users.

If what you are advertising is interesting, then lots more people will hit such button so spend an afternoon and take into account the message you need to display inside your ad plus the image to use.

Conclusion

Having a big variety of Facebook fans on the business pages is essential for credibility and social promotion purposes.

If this wasn’t crucial in consumers, then nobody would care along with the US State Department wouldn’t must spend $630 thousands for Facebook campaigns.

Once you do the essential optimizations in your business page (steps 1 and 2 above), then your fastest way to obtain additional followers is to apply Facebook ads. With a bit of A/B testing you can find to 10,000 fans without more than $1,000 (spread in a duration of months).

Once you do everything properly and provided that you’ve got a great service or product, you’ll be able to increase your fans to 100,000+ like Used to do together with the Facebook Page of my fitness blog.