In the current state of business where technology is gradually taking over various aspects of the sales funnel, digital marketing has become a major part of marketing, if not all.

With that, social media now plays a much bigger role than before and is more of a need than a want for businesses now. Even schools that have digital marketing courses have turned their focus to concentrate more on social media marketing in their curriculum than before.

Social media, especially Facebook, presents a golden opportunity to bolster your brand at a low to possibly zero cost. Approximately over 90 million small businesses are connecting with customers and promoting their brands using Facebook, and it is increasing by the day.

As the social media landscape for businesses gets more competitive, getting more followers and likes has become a challenge for business owners that are just starting.

Why a Facebook Business Page is Important for Businesses

A Facebook business page not only provides information about your brand, but it also presents a way for customers to contact you. This is especially important as you will want them to reach out to you first if they have any unhappiness about your products/services, instead of ranting about it on their account to their friends. This will give you a chance to make amends and keep a customer happy and returning.

A well-optimized business page also increases your website traffic and attracts more potential businesses. If you are a new business starting to create your online presence, getting indexed (discovered) by Google search engine is something that is not going to happen overnight. With a Facebook business page, the link to your Facebook page will most probably show up very quickly on any brand-related searches on Google. This will help push potential customers that are looking for your company to be able to reach you efficiently.

A Facebook business page also allows you to run advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and their affiliated partners. With a reach of 2.5 billion active users on Facebook and more than 500 million active users on Instagram monthly, placing an ad on Facebook for your business is almost a no-brainer.

To make a business look credible and popular, the number of followers sometimes plays a part too. As such, many businesses are wondering how to get more followers and likes on Facebook quickly. The following tips are going to tell you just that.

1. Invite Friends to Like your Page

The first thing after creating a Facebook page is to get the first 20 followers quickly. This is an important milestone as Facebook will start showing your page to more people after this particular milestone is reached.

The easiest way will be to ask your friends and family members to like your page. Send an invitation request to them, write a post on your account on why the page is useful to them, etc.

But do take note that Facebook may block you if you are to send invitation requests to too many people within a short time. You may want to spread that out by inviting our friends and relatives over a couple of days than to do it all within a single day.

2. Create Content about Trending Topics

Social media users are simple; they want to consume content. Good content.

One sure-fire way to increase Facebook followers and likes is to publish links and videos that provide value to the viewer.

You can consider posting about trending topics, relevant to your businesses, that people are talking about. There are lots of free tools that help you find trending topics with one of them being Google Trends. This tool allows you to find out about the most search topics of the day and allows you to curate content around these topics that people are constantly searching for.

3. Use Hashtags in Your Facebook Posts

Hashtags are tags (#) you see in many posts that tell people what possible group your posts belong in. It helps the social media platform group and shows these posts into meaningful searches when a user clicks on the hashtags.

Think of different posts in social media as different places in a city, hashtags are the pathways that connect all these places. E.g. if you are posting something about food in Tokyo, a hashtag with #tokyofood will help users find all the recent photos and posts that are relevant to food available in Tokyo.

In this way, hashtags connect your posts to other relevant more popular posts and help to reach out to people who may be interested in your page who may, in turn, create more followers to your page. But try not to use too many hashtags and limit only a few relevant ones to every post.

4. Add Social Media Buttons

Social media buttons are the gateways for bringing visitors to your Facebook page. Add them to every blog post, on your website pages, and anywhere you can to encourage visitors to follow you on your Facebook page.

Google is also known to give you some brownie SEO points for the use of social media share buttons on your page.

5. Run a Facebook Ad

One of the main reasons why businesses are on Facebook is the ability to run advertising campaigns on Facebook and Instagram to reach out to their huge user base.

Similarly, you can run an ad on Facebook to get more people to know about you. Target people who have interests and hobbies that are relevant to what you are selling and that will increase the chances of them wanting to follow your page after seeing your ad. For example, if your page is about selling snacks from South Korea, you may want to target people who are searching for Korean food, likes Korean drama, or even were originally from South Korea.

6. Buy Followers

Something we definitely are not advocating for but is nonetheless a way of getting things done quickly.

Getting new followers for a new page can take a long time, especially when you are doing it all by yourself. However, as mentioned earlier, there is a follower milestone you will need to cross before Facebook will show your page organically to more people.

Also, there is the herd mentality. When someone chanced upon your page and see that you have a high amount of followers, chances are they may follow too. A bigger number of followers may give your Facebook page, and business, a little more credibility too. (Disclaimer: MAD School does not buy nor encourage the buying of followers.)

7. Have a Good User Experience

Among all things, your page should provide your follower with good user experience.

The user interface of Facebook is fixed and there is almost nothing much you can do about it, but not the user experience.

By saying that, we meant the content that you will be curating for your users. It can be the colour scheme used for your pictures, the type of information shared, etc. Coming up with good user experience (UX) design plan for content may be a good idea before you even publish your first post.

8. Creating Viral Content

A piece of content going viral is something that most businesses will like to have but have no idea how to go about doing it. Although a viral post can help to boost the recognition of the brand with little or no advertising dollar spent, do note that it can go either way. Positive or negative.

To err on the side of safety, instead of thinking how to create an “ultra viral” content, perhaps think about what kind of post can make more people want to comment or share it with their friends. It can be useful content that will help others achieve an objective, gain knowledge, or a simple post that asks questions for its followers to answer.

9. Sharing of Popular Content

Content creation can be time consuming and expensive. Instead of always coming out with original content, one can consider sharing popular content that is relevant to its followers.

As not all your posts will be shown to your followers due to the dense competition for eyeballs on Facebook and the way its algorithm is set, sharing interesting content from other sites once in a while may make more sense.

Do remember to tag the original content creator when you are doing that though so as to give credit back to the one who spent time and effort to create it.

@directormesut

10. Post Regularly

By posting consistently, not only are you showing a prospective user that your page is still active, you give your followers reason to want to continue following your page. A user who chanced upon your page will most likely not consider following you if your last post was created a year ago.

Nonetheless try not to post too often, especially when you are unable to create solid content constantly, as repeated posts with similar messages may turn out as “spams” to your followers, making them hiding your posts to unfollow you.

11. Get Tagged by Other Facebook Pages

Getting mentioned by other Facebook pages allows your page to be exposed to these pages’ followers. The chances of these followers following you, as a result, will be made higher if the page is similar to what your brand does.

Creating content that makes sense for other pages to share your post to their followers and tagging them in your post will make these pages consider reposting your post. Having said that, think along the line of what kind of content will make yourself want to share on your page from other pages.

For example, if you run a shoe repair business, you can post an article of the top 5 shoe brands with the most durable soles you have encountered and tag these brands. In return, the brands may tag you back and share your review to show their followers the strength of their products.

12. Email Your Past Customers

You may be running your business some time already and have a database of past clients you can tap on. Using your existing email list and letting know about your new Facebook page is an excellent way to increase your Facebook followers.

If you have not been collecting emails from your customers, you can text your customers to get their email or to send them a link to your Facebook page to ask them to like the page directly. Add in some good reasons for them to want to follow like promising the posting of promotion or new product releases on Facebook.

Original article from MAD School