Want to increase the engagement on your Facebook business page?
It’s not easy right now.
You spend $$$’s and work hard to get people to like your Facebook business page and then you struggle to reach out to those people.
To help you, I asked the following question from the top Facebook marketing experts.
Q: What is your best tip to increase the reach of your Facebook page?
I’m so honored and thank full for all the experts who took the time to respond to my question.
Hope you’ll enjoy the post and don’t forget to add your experience regarding Facebook marketing in the comments section below.
#1 Guy Kawasaki
Guy is the author of eleven books including Enchantment, What the Plus!, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple.
Two things: always include a picture or embed a video and always include a link to the source. I’m presuming that the link or video is something that is interesting, so you are providing a valuable curation service to your followers/friends.
#2 Andrea Vahl
Andrea is a Social Media coach, strategist and speaker. She is also the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies book that came out in August 2011.
Facebook Reach numbers have been going down, there is no disputing it. Whether the decrease in Reach is due to a change in the algorithm or actual reach has been debated extensively. But what can you do to make sure you are benefiting your audience while getting more visibility?
My advice is to focus on creating the best, shareable content that you can. I like creating shareable images that either teach something, inspire your audience, or spark conversation.
I take an image from stock photos (I like www.123rf.com), then add a quote (humanize brand image). Or I use Snagit to do a screen capture and then add text to give people tips on how they can use social media. (Get Facebook Stats on any Page) When your images are being shared, you are increasing your visibility and helping your audience.
#3 Chris Treadaway
Chris is a Founder of Polygraph Media & Co-author of Facebook Marketing An Hour a Day with Mari Smith
I like the strategy of commenting as your page on other pages with a large audience. Some might call it a hack, but doing this regularly will promote your page for free and allow you to extend your brand in a friendly, engaging manner.
#4 Brian Carter
Brian is the Author of The Like Economy, Facebook Marketing, LinkedIn For Business. Search/social marketer, keynote speaker and trainer. Improv and stand-up comic.
#1 is use promoted posts or sponsored stories. That’s the fastest way.
#2 is post things that get more interaction. Use InfiniGraph, reddit, and other sources to see what kind of posts get the most interaction, and do likewise.
#5 Ekaterina Walter
Ekaterina is the Author of Think Like Zuck (Coming out soon), Social Innovator for Intel, Trendsetter, Speaker, Connector, Passionate Marketer & a Mom.
Don’t be afraid to go slightly off topic with your posts. Even if you have a very engaged audience on your page, you still probably have a lot of your customers who are silently watching your stream but not engaging.
The beauty of Facebook in its FOF effect (friends of fans). That means that when a person engages with a brand, his/her friends see that. That’s an amazing endorsement and opportunity for their friends to engage with you as well.
So try to get those silent types to engage with you buy varying your content, by trying to appeal to their passion points beyond just the topics your brand is comfortable with discussing.
For example, even though Intel is a technology company, we also talk about sports, music, games. We say happy holidays and offer interesting trivia beyond technology. We ask open-ended questions around people’s memories and experiences.
Just asking your fans what their favorite Olympic sport can inspire people to participate and root for the sport of their choice. Don’t be afraid to take some risks with your editorial calendar and content to get the conversation going on your page.
#6 Dennis Yu
Dennis is the CEO of BlitzLocal.com, an agency that does online advertising for big brands and yellow page category businesses.
My tip is to run page post ads to increase reach. Facebook claims the average is 16%. Without paid reach, organic engagement and EdgeRank suffers.
#7 Linda Bustos
Linda is the Director of Ecommerce Research with Elastic Path Software
Ask your email subscribers to like your page at the bottom of every email. If you’re sophisticated, segment out those that click on the Facebook button from the email and send them emails with a different call to action going forward. Segmenting them out also shows you, which of your email subscribers are true brand “fans” and who may be more likely to share your messages with their friends, etc.
#8 Debbie Hemley
Debbie is a social media blogger and writer, and consults with businesses on social media strategy. She has written countless articles about social media even before people were reading about the topic! She has a passion for words, research, writing and reading. When she first discovered blogging a number of years ago, she says she “found a voice and a short form that connects my personal and professional life in a way nothing else ever has before.” You can follow her on her blog DebbieHemley.com
My best tip…be a continuing student of Facebook, and stay as up-to-date as humanly possible. Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of Facebook they go and change something!
Tips that are relevant today may be old news by the time you go to implement them. That’s why I think if a business has identified Facebook as an integral part of their social media marketing strategy then the social media managers need to make a concerted effort to stay up-to-date on everything Facebook related.
One way many people accomplish this is by adding a few industry blogs to their reading list, making sure to catch all articles with updates and how-to tips on Facebook. (In fact, my colleagues who have contributed on this post are a great place to begin—they are excellent go-to-sources on Facebook, I know they’ve been mine for a long time!) Having a social media community where you can share and exchange ideas is what helps make it so effective and real-time.
“Like” the Facebook Marketing page on Facebook where you can follow updates that Facebook themselves makes to help businesses stay up-to-date. For example, some of their recent updates were a series of optimizing tips, and a link to how to show promoted posts to the friends of people who like your page.
You can also follow @Facebook on Twitter and monitor hashtags related to Facebook, e.g. #facebook, #facebookmarketing. There are a number of monitoring tools that make this an easy, manageable task, e.g. Hootsuite, Monitter, TweetChat, TweetGrid, to name a few.
Finally, try to remember, maintaining presences on social networks is really akin to gardening—where you need to plant and water regularly to help them live long healthy lives.
#9 Wong Ching Ya
Ching Ya is a social media enthusiast, freelancer and a Facebook fanatic on discovering ways to increase brand visibility. Heavy user of visual content in writing social media tutorials on her blog Social @ Blogging Tracker
It’s vital to understand your audience first by experimenting the type of postings that will get fans to respond.
In my case, I’m a heavy user of visual content on both my blog and Facebook Page. It’s recommended to create unique, branded images but do take into considerations on the time, budget and effort involved: is it worth the purpose or if you have a better way to deliver the message, say, a Video instead?
There are many ideas you can try for your page when it comes to visual content. Here’s a free resource if you’re interested. 20 Innovative Ways to Use Visual Content to Rock Your Facebook Page.
Don’t forget to experiment, measure and improvise.
#10 John Paul
John is an Internet Entrepreneur – Social Media Consultant and Experience Online Marketer.
For me, I much rather have people focus on expanding the reach of their blogs, since that is what they OWN. But if you are more focused on growing your FB page, then A few good ways to expand your reach are…
Add your FB url or button on your blog, in the header, footer and end of posts.
Add your FB url or button onto every social site you are on.
Add your FB url into all your outgoing emails, using a sig file works nicely.
Give something away Free, and ask people to like your page to receive the gift. Then promote this across your blog and social sites
I hope this post will help you to increase the reach of your Facebook business page.
Question: Have you tried any of the above tips to increase the reach of your Facebook page? Feel free add your Facebook marketing tips or experiences in the comments below.