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

The 10 steps below demonstrate using a real example getting more than 10,000 fans on your Facebook business page.

Facebook may be the king of social networks with over 1.79 billion active users each month (Updated December 2016). It can be utilised by more than 60% of Web users Worldwide and it is a fantastic tool for promoting services or products, finding customers or gaining more loyal readers (followers).

To use this for business purposes, you need to have plenty of fans (followers) on your Facebook business page. Let’s see below why having many Facebook fans is vital.

What may be the significance about having many Facebook fans on your business page?

It indicates popularity – It’s obvious that the variety of fans reveals how popular an internet site is. A cheap business page with 100,000 followers is more popular compared to a page with 1,000 fans and this creates a variety of other benefits (described below).

It indicates trust – Should you can’t comprehend the relationship between Facebook fans and business trust, are thinking about that the US State Department spent $630,000 to raise their Facebook Fans from 100,000 to 2 million throughout the years 2011-2012 (See related post from marketingland).

Why did money? Because in today’s World an effective business, website needs to have plenty of Facebook fans. 5 years ago this failed to issue but also in the 21st century, social proof is vital.

More fans, more visits – The harder fans you’ve, the higher may be the amount of people which will see your posts of their timeline and possibly call at your website.

While this is correct, it must be noted that not your fans might find your site content.

As already explained within a previous post, How to raise your Facebook Page Organic Reach, just a small portion of your respective followers (only Four percent) might find your status updates.

This number may differ, but what is vital to know now, happens when you’ve 10,000 fans so you post a new update, it’s going to be seen organically with a max of 300-400 people.

It’s best for SEO as well – Although officially The search engines do not admit that social websites can be a ranking factor, numerous studies show that popular websites on Facebook are more inclined to perform better in search, these days quite popular websites (other factors being equal).

How to travel from 0 to 10,000 Facebook fans

Now that you will be believing that using a great deal of Facebook fans is vital to your website and business, let’s see step-by-step the way 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. Currently the page has more than 100K fans also it continous to develop organically.

Step 1: First suggestion – you need to have a Facebook business page

It may appear silly for that experienced but also for beginners to social websites this might be something new: Your own Facebook page differs from a company page.

If you want to have friends on Facebook to talk about your holiday photos you will want to create a personal page however if you want to have fans and followers to your website or business you will want to create a Facebook business page.

So, step one is always to just be sure you create a Facebook business page and the alternative is always to make sure that your page is properly 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 long description, company overview, mission (see screenshot below) and naturally posting interesting content – this is the most crucial optimization tip of all.

The excellence of the content posted on your Facebook business page will even determine it’s success or failure.

Having an optimized Facebook page makes it much simpler to attract new fans or even more likes from ads once we might find below.

Step 3: Benefit from your personal Facebook account

I mentioned in 1 above you’ll want to have a very business page rather than your own page, however, you still need to have an active personal facebook account.

Here is why:

After you post an update on your business page, one way to raise exposure and likes, is always to share that post on your personal page at the same time.

People you’ve as friends on your personal page are more inclined to ‘like’ and ‘interact’ together with the post shared out of your business page and will also increase the engagement factor of your respective posts.

As a result, facebook can have your site content to more fans (organically).

So, one way to raise the volume of people who view your site content and go beyond the 4% individuals fan base is always to share and promote the post on your personal page.

It is evident that the more variety of friends the larger will be the visibility in the post.

Also, make certain you invite your existing friends (and a new one) to like your Facebook business page. Do this when you acquire a new ‘friend’.

Step 4: Add some Facebook Like box on your website

This is again social media marketing 101 however, you require the Facebook like box on your website for several reasons:

#1 – It’s a method to associate your web site together with the Facebook business page. Quite simply this is a approach to ‘tell’ search engines that this will be your official Facebook business page.

#2 – When you get plenty of fans, that is something should be proud off and something to show in your users (as explained above what this means is popularity, trust and social proof).

#3 – It’s a good way to grow your fan base organically. The future prospect can follow your web site by clicking such button while not having to visit Facebook.

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

Hint 2: You can even popup so on box to new users (by way of example, as soon as they spend 60 seconds on the page, as soon as they scroll right down to the bottom or as soon as they try to leave your page – although this is successful with regards to getting new likes, you need to be careful never to make it too distracting to your users.)

Step 5: Follow these tips to increase post engagement

So far, we’ve got created an optimized Facebook business page, added friends to your personal Facebook page and placed so on box within a prominent position on the website.

The next natural step is always to start sharing content to maintain your fans happy and possibly have the ability to convert them from fans > internet site visitors > customers.

Some simple rules to follow which will increase the user engagement together with your facebook business page:

#1 – Share relevant content: Share content that the fans expect to see within your page. For example, if the website is about Social websites, share content associated with social websites rather than about sports or anything else you could like. In case your users need to read sports news, they do know how to locate them.

#2 – Don’t forget they follow your business page to have updates relating to your website (and niche) rather than relating to your social gatherings: In order to get social, then make use of personal Facebook page, your business page is approximately your web site.

#3 – Generally thumb, I take advantage of my opportunity page to talk about content from my niche only, only should share something is not associated with my niche, I take advantage of our page.

#4 – Don’t be too promotional: Sharing promotional content (continuously) on your Facebook page will drive your fans away. For those who have a campaign to talk about as well that could benefit your fans, you can do so but don’t go crazy.

Try to write interesting, shareable content that is associated with your niche, it sometimes won’t come completely from your web site. Have a balance between promotional and content that the followers may want to read.

Step 6: Share intriguing and good quality content (not just links)

I made some tests about the impact of descriptions when doing a Facebook update determined out that Facebook posts with ‘lists’ acquire more likes than posts with links. I want to present you with a good example to understand After all.

When you want to share content out of your website on Facebook, you try to Facebook status updates and go into the webpage URL. It looks something such as this:

You can share this informative article without adding any other information. In case your title and pictures are good, you will definately get many likes with regards to the time you make the post, variety of fans etc.

If one another hand, you enrich your post with the addition of additional information and particularly a subscriber base, then other pursuits being equal, you are more prone to gain more likes and shares.

For me this may cause sense since people that see a title and image of their timeline might not ‘Like It’ since it provides no value to them (don’t forget that the average user is presented with countless postings of their timeline if he or she login to Facebook).

On another hand once you allow them to have valuable, good quality and straightforward to learn information (being a list), they’re going to go through the LIKE button because they read something useful while not having to leave their timeline.

Note: It is a known indisputable fact that people have a propensity of LIKING content without reading it so allow them to have why you should do so; your web site visits might not increase nevertheless the engagement factor of your respective posts will rise.

Step 7: Share images, videos and emotions

If you adopt a peek at probably the most popular Facebook pages, so as to they have an inclination to talk about images, videos, infographics, charts etc, and their usual text only postings.

This kind of content gets more likes and shares and thus the page gets more fans and followers.

In a recent study by Buzzsumo, they identified that the most shared and liked content on Facebook, gets the following characteristics:

Step 8: Provide incentives to get additional fans & followers

Why should someone follow your Facebook business page?

You should give incentives to facebook users to follow your page. Several suggestions to consider:

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

Run a competition – Some websites run contests on Facebook and giveaway different gifts. The ‘price’ for joining the content is always to Much like the page first. There are many tools to accomplish this but are thinking about when you don’t have a very known brand this many not be so successful.

Content upgrades – When you have a blog, you need to use ask users to enjoy your page to have new version of your respective post. This calls for extra tools but it is something worth testing.

Step 9: You should promote your own content and page

When you create your business page don’t expect that it’ll magically get thousands of fans. Apart from the tips outlined above, you also have to market your business page in places apart from Facebook.

A few suggestions to take into consideration that worked for my case:

Promote in other social websites networks – When you have accounts with other social websites channels e.g. Google+, Pinterest etc. you are able to periodically ask your followers to join yourself on Facebook at the same time. Be polite and reveal to them the advantages from doing so.

Promote in Twitter – Besides posting relating to your Facebook page on other social websites networks, you are able to take advantage of twitter’s interactive features.

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

This method although it is time consuming, (Used to it manually rather than using any tools) it could produce fantastic results.

Promote within your newsletter – When you have a newsletter or if you engage with your readers via email, make certain you you can keep them follow your Facebook page.

Do not just write the FB URL within your signature but Inquire further politely to enjoy your business page.

Step 10: Facebook ads can be a must

I have saved one of many easiest and many effective ways to improve your Facebook fans for last, because it is alone that it’s not free.

Facebook comes with a self-service ad platform which you can use to either improve your fan base (promote your page), supercharge your posts, get more leads, increase conversions or perform a variety of other actions (as shown from the image above).

The procedure is pretty easy and straightforward. Basically you choose a page you have, select your ultimate goal (promote your page), select your audience (according to country, age, other demographics and interests) and after that set your everyday budget and duration.

The cost per campaign depends on many factors. The easiest method to assess if Facebook ads is a great treatment for improve your fan base, is always to operate a pilot campaign for a couple of days.

Spend $10-$20 dollars per day and run the campaigns for any fixed duration (at the very least every week). Towards the end, you are able to determine if the cost per like is one thing you are ready to purchase.

I had great results with Facebook ads for both my websites and then for client websites and I run campaigns monthly (during their visit) to boost my facebook likes.

It should be noted by purchasing Facebook ads you don’t buy likes but views. Many people believe everything you purchase is Facebook likes but in reality you spend Facebook to show your ad to more Facebook users.

If what you really are advertising is interesting, then the best way to will hit so on button so invest some time and think about the message you want to display within your ad plus the image to utilize.

Conclusion

Having a large variety of Facebook fans on your business pages is very important for credibility and social promotion purposes.

If this wasn’t essential in the first place, then nobody would care and the US State Department wouldn’t need to spend $630 thousands for Facebook campaigns.

Once you are doing the required optimizations in your business page (steps 1 and 2 above), then your easiest way to get additional followers is with Facebook ads. With a bit of A/B testing you can get to 10,000 fans without having more than $1,000 (spread in a period of months).

Once you are doing everything properly and given that there is a great products or services, you are able to grow your fans to 100,000+ like Used to together with the Facebook Page of my fitness blog.