How To Get More Likes On Facebook

Social media is a big deal right now, even David Koch says so. I was watching his show “Kochie’s Business Builders” a couple of weeks ago and he said that 2013 was the year you had to get social or your business would fail and we all know that whatever Kochie says is right. Okay so maybe not always but he's usually right about marketing and financial matters. Anyway we thought we would show you, our clients, friends and colleagues our opinion on how to get more likes on Facebook.

Facebook is a lot like Google in that they constantly update everything about their algorithm and layout, not only to remain relevant but to remain one step ahead of people capable of taking advantage of them. Getting likes for Facebook fan and business pages used to be a rather simple process of copy-pasting a code into your address bar with your “invite friends” window open. It would auto select every friend you had and then you could hit send, saving you an hour clicking every single window. The real benefit to this was that you could convince other people to do it for you because of how simple it is. This meant that you could invite thousands upon thousands of people just by hassling your mates. It’s not so easy to convince other people to do it when they have to tick off every single person one by one. Unfortunately Facebook canned this by making fans unable to invite friends to a business or fan page leaving it all for managers. At least at the moment there is a Google Chrome and Mozila Firefox extension that allows page managers to select all, or to select all for an event you've been invited to but short of making every fan you have a manager and risking it all, it is a short term solution at best. You can find it here.

We believe we've got a pretty good plan of attack to help you generate more real likes, and I say real because let’s face it, what point is there to buying likes from one thousand people from a third world Asian country? The only companies that could benefit from having international scope are multi-nationals and they don't need to buy likers.  A plumber from Drummoyne does not need to rank in Google India. Here are some tips to help you get more likes on Facebook the right way.

Be Interesting

This is key. The most populated Facebook pages that aren't household names are those that do great content, specifically targeted at those that are on their page. This creates huge interactions, subsequently huge impressions and hugely improves their Edgerank. This is the way that Facebook operates. If someone likes, shares or comments on a post you make, it increases the power and scope of the post, Facebook will then weigh up your power (Edgerank) and potentially distribute it into the news feeds of their friends. If you have a greater Edgerank, which based on interactions, you will be seen in more news feeds because Facebook knows that your content is interesting.

The more reach you get, the more chance of having someone click like on your page when they enjoy what you’re offering. One post with ten thousand likes will encourage a huge number of people to like your page. For more information on how Facebook decides what to put in your news feed check out this website.

Get All Your Contacts In

You should treat your Facebook like less of a tool to sell your product and more of a tool to back up the strength of your actual website by increasing social signals. The people who like your Facebook page don’t have to be consumers of your product just as long as they are connected to potential consumers of your product. The way that Google and other search engines operate semantically to produce search engine results tailored to a location means that as long as you have likers that are local then you are maintaining relevance locally. So don't worry if you are importing contacts of current clients, former colleagues or friends who know nothing of your work because the more people that like your page, the more chance of getting some sweet, sweet interaction. So use the “Build Audience” tool by uploading contacts from Microsoft Outlook etc. If you use Gmail you can download your contacts from Gmail into .CSV format and upload them by going into “Invite Email Contacts” and “Other tools.” You can upload any database of contacts in .CSV format by using this feature.

Link Your Facebook From Everywhere

This means first and foremost your website, and prominently. Link your Facebook from everywhere that you get traffic. Link it from other social media profiles such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and even from guest posts and outreach. Doing link building for your Facebook is okay. It's just one more way to take a search engine results position.

These links will supply link juice to your Facebook, helping it rank, like the McDonald's Facebook and Twitter in the above image. Not only this but the actual traffic that comes direct from these kinds of links are generally good leads. They are people who are likely to at least consider buying whatever you are offering and it's definitely good to have some of these on your Facebook.

And don't just link your Facebook from outside of Facebook. Share your best posts on other Facebook pages in and around your niche. Get it seen by highly influential page managers and even consider building relationships with other pages, so that they are then more likely to share your posts on pages that already have a high number of likers.

Paid Advertising

You can use Facebook paid advertising in the early life of your page, to build up an interim user base. No matter how good your content is, if you don't have at least some likers interacting with it, it won't be effective in getting your page out there. It is not cheap to do this though, so unless you have a reasonably significant marketing budget, I would advise spending more on SEO or inbound marketing.

Competitions

People love free stuff. Everyone. So if you can offer some free stuff you will get attention. You have to make sure it's worthwhile though. So put a price on a liker first. Work out what kind of value you place on your Facebook page and divide that number by each liker, because effectively they are the value of your Facebook page. Set a number of likers that you anticipate the competition may generate and make the prize equivalent to that. Make sure all your settings are set so that your competition is maximised to generate likers. So for instance if your competition involves people having to post something to your wall, make sure that they have to like the page to do so. Don't overdo it though and set your settings so tight that your competition post doesn't get distributed freely. You can't directly say that they must like or share to enter, but if you set your page settings to ensure they have to like the page to get the necessary interaction then you can get around the terms and conditions.

And Why Am I Doing This?

SEO's say that if you aren't in Google you basically don't exist, which is true. It's not quite as drastic with Facebook but if you aren't on Facebook you are missing out on the benefits of being able to have a direct line to clients, stakeholders, leads and members of your community that will help your business grow. To be able to maintain a constant dialogue with those who are most important to your business.