Facebook is the number one social media site. You can get exposure, build your brand, connect with your people, drive traffic, and sell directly. The more fans you have there, the better.

There’s one quick and easy way to grow your fans but I don’t recommend it. That’s by buying them. You can go to Fiverr or another freelance site and pay for a bunch of people to become friends with you. The main problem with this, though, is that other than looking like you’re popular, it achieves nothing. These aren’t buyers and they won’t interact on your wall. Another problem is that Facebook will close your account if it finds out.

It’s much better to grow your fan base honestly and here are a few ways to do it.

Put Your Page Everywhere

Include your Facebook page on all of your marketing materials both online and off. Your website, blog, YouTube channel, email signature, other social media profiles, and everything else you do online should have a link. If you have email or newsletter subscribers, invite them to join you on Facebook. Your print brochures, store signs, menus, promotional items, catalogues, cards and everything else offline should have it as well. Your offline customers may not even know you’re there.

Facebook Ads

Facebook has its own ad network similar to Google AdSense and other ad networks. You can see people debating whether Facebook Ads are effective or not on webmaster forums, but there’s no debate about the fact that they can grow your fan base quickly. This is one of the best uses for the program. Run a few ads and if you don’t get a response, tweak them until you do. Once you get the fans you want, stop running the ads.

For a small business on a budget, investing in any type of ads may seem like too much. After all, you can increase brand awareness through SEO and other free methods. But Facebook ads are cheap and they’re powerful. You can target very specific demographics to make sure your ads get seen by just the right people.

Exclusive Content

People need a reason to join you on Facebook. Actually, many of them will friend or like you just because it’s easy – it only takes the click of a button. But what you really need are active followers that will participate in your page. The best way to do this is to offer exclusive content that’s only available to Facebook fans. You’ve got regular content updates on your blog or email list, so do the same with Facebook. Save some good stuff for it.

Tagging

Take advantage of Facebook tagging. When you have a picture of a group of people, you can tag each individual person in the photo. It then appears on their news feed and others can see it. This is a good way to increase your exposure.

Join Groups

There are tons of groups on Facebook that you can join. These are groups based around common interests or hobbies. Take a look at your customers (or ideal customers) and ask yourself, ‘What groups are they likely to be in?’ Join groups and participate in them by offering help, answering questions, sharing content and making friends.

Don’t stress over it. The last thing you should do is obsess over the number of fans you have. It works like a snowball effect – at first it’s tough to get fans, but the more you have, the more you’ll get. Facebook Ads can help to give it a boost.

Tony 

PS I’ll be updating information on Facebook especially their advertising platform very soon