If you’ve been on Facebook for a while, you’ve probably gotten used to (or have begun to ignore) the constant stream of requests to like the pages of your friends. These are the friends who own their own businesses, make art, or play in bands, and want to share the latest updates with you. And in case you haven’t noticed – there’s a lot of them. And they know that social media channels are a great way to promote their wares.
This goes hand in hand with the one question from clients that prevails over all others, “How can we get more ‘likes’ for our page?”
It’s an important question. The more people who like your page, the better chance you have of reaching a greater audience. Often, when clients want to increase their Facebook fanbase, one of the first things they think of is asking their friends/family and asking their co-workers/employees to ask their friends and family. But, think about all of the Facebook pages that you’ve liked out of a friendly gesture to support a friend. Now how many of those pages do you actually engage with regularly? Meaning, how many posts do you like, comment on, share, or tag someone in? I just took a personal inventory and I’m going to guess that I engage with less than 10% of the pages that I follow.
That becomes a problem, since our goal on social media is to (say it with me) build an engaged audience. That should be the main mantra in your social media endeavors. Chances are good that you won’t be able to achieve this by just sending out a weekly or monthly request to all of your friends saying “PLZ LIKE MY PAGE”. Or by asking other employees to do the same. The friends who want to support you will do so the first or second time you ask, but they won’t be your ideal audience because they may not need your services, or listen to your band, or care to buy your stuff.
At some point we will discuss ideas for attracting more fans to your page. In the meantime, you can still learn how to take advantage of your friends and family (and I mean that in the nicest buttttt most opportunistic way). Posting a good variety of content is KEY to appealing to (and engaging) each member of your audience. For friends/family, the draw tends to be the “behind-the-scenes” look: employee spotlights, humor, photos from around the office/studio. These fans like your page because they support the people that make up the company, so show them what they want! Create a short video showing what it’s like to try to work with a cat on your keyboard, take a photo of the packages that you’re getting ready to send out to your customers, or manage up an employee on their birthday.
Honestly, sometimes it just takes a little bit of experimenting. But, if you invest the time and effort it requires to figure out who your audience is and what they would like to see, you’ll begin to see your engagement numbers rising!