How to build engaged followers on your Businesses Facebook page

There is no escaping the fact that people are addicted to Facebook. The average person checks their Facebook 14 times a day (read report here).

What is everyone doing when on Facebook? Well, for about half of that daily 30-minutes on the social media, they are simply browsing their News Feed. The rest of the time is divided fairly evenly between Facebook messaging and posting updates. Half of Facebook users play games via the service on their phone a few times a day.

What this means as a business owner is that you should be active on Facebook and much of which can be done for free by using your own Facebook page.

But do take note, whatever your follower number then when you make a post only expect between 5% – 10% of these followers to see your post. Facebook restricts the number that will see it as they would prefer that you pay some money to boost the post so it gets seen by all your followers or new users.

Spending some money on boosting your posts can be money well spent by the way too, so don’t discount spending a little amount a couple of times a month.

1. Don’t pay for new followers

One thing you should resist is paying to acquire new followers as many times you get users who are not really that interesting in your product and so will never engage with your posts – such as a comment, like of share. Engagement is everything as it tells Facebook that your followers like your posts. Knowing you have an engaged follower, they will increase the percentage of followers who will see future posts.

When users engage, often it opens up that post to their friends who can then read the post too. This means your message is organically spreading.

It is vital you only have followers that like your business. When you add uninterested followers that pulls your engagement down and wastes your exposure.

What do we mean by this? It means when you make a post and share it with your followers, knowing Facebook restricts the percentage of your followers that see it, you don’t want to waste that connection with a user who does not care.

It is better to have 50 followers than 300 followers who couldn’t care less. It also stops your page growing as a large proportion then never engage and help the viral potential of the post.

2. Have a strategy for what you post

There is a bit of a system when it comes to posting on Facebook and you need to get the balance right.

When you post a business specific message or maybe link back to your website, this is when you are trying to convert your followers into a paying customer. The down side is you tend to get poor engagement with such posts, so if you only post this type of content the page strength falls.

It means you need to mix what you post with content you know won’t get you a sale, but will get lots of engagement. This in turn keeps the strength of your page high and ensures when you send your more sales orientated post, it gets seen by more followers.

Take this example below. Rather than look to push traffic to a website, the post is just some text and photos. The page (Dan about Thailand) knows its followers have an interest in Thailand and so shares photos of a popular city.

From 16,000 followers, the post received over 300 likes, 150 comments and 57 shares. It is a post like this that drives new followers to a page as the post becomes somewhat viral. This post above was seen by over 27,000 people, 11,000 people more than the total followers the page has – that’s the value of making such a post.

Getting confused? Don’t, it is actually quite simple. Mix up your post content. Sometimes a sales message, sometimes a photo and, if you are really confident, do a video message for your customer to watch.

3. Invite users who have shown an interest in your page

Inviting users who have been somewhat pre-qualified is infinitely a better strategy than paying for likes. Most businesses have no idea how to do this, but if you read on, you will not be one of them.

It is an awesome piece of information to grow your followers fast.

When you make a post and it gets likes, some of these users will not be followers to your page. They would have found it from another user sharing the post on their own social news feed for example.

Click on the likes section and it will show you the names of those who have liked the post. More importantly it will show you if they are followers already. The ones that are not you can invite to join your page.

This strategy can grow your page extremely fast and you should invite new users and check on every post you make.

4. Engage with your followers

When a follower adds a comment to your post you should always reply back to them – and keep it positive.

Encourage engagement by posing questions. You can use it to get valuable customer feedback. For example, if you are a restaurant you could ask for suggestions on any new dish to put on your menu.

The more engagement you can build on your Facebook page with your customers, the more likely they will use your business and become more loyal too.