Thanks in large part to the near exponential growth of social media, the value of leveraging its power to help with your SEO efforts can’t be understated. Likes, +1s, Tweets, and general buzz about your brand all have the potential to not just help increase awareness of it, but also result in a bump in SERPs. Unfortunately, a lot of this requires a bit of human capital, as you’ll need users to help spread the word. So, how do you go about getting likes in the first place? Here are a few relatively easy and inexpensive ways of acquiring a social media presence.
Run contests
If there’s one thing we can definitively say about all people, it’s that we love things that are free. Just the potential to acquire goods free of cost, and not the actual promise, can be a huge call to action for many people. Think about it – when checking your Facebook News Feed at home, how often have you seen friends of yours with posts that say something along the lines of, “I just entered to win a free iPad 2!” or similar? Quite often, right?
In addition to gaining an easy like from every person who enters your contest, having that snippet of information show up in each entrant’s respective News Feeds means that much free word of mouth advertising for your brand. The great part about this is the fact that how much you spend on your giveaway depends entirely on you. I’ve personally seen companies gain upwards of 400 likes by offering a $25 gift card to Amazon. 16 likes for every dollar spent? Sign me up.
Get existing fans to tag pictures
What’s the first thing you do when you get a new friend on Facebook? You go to their profile page and look through their pictures. At least, that’s what I, and many, many other people do. Having fans tag themselves, or even friends in pictures on your page can be a fantastic way of increasing your brand’s visibility, and consequently, the chances that someone will like your page.
A great way of getting the people who have liked your page to do this is by combining it with those contests your running. As I’m sure you’re well aware, to tag an image on a Facebook page, you need to have liked it first. Let your user base know that, to enter your contest, all they have to do is simply tag themselves in a photo you’ve uploaded. From there, that photo will go both in their News Feed, as well as settle in among the rest of their images, and that’s it! Be aware, however, that Facebook restricts you to a limit of 50 tags per photo, so be sure that you have enough images for everyone to tag themselves in.
Use CPM campaigns
Assuming you’ve got a good idea of your target audience, CPM campaigns can be invaluable for building your presence on Facebook. Their paid advertising system allows you to target very specific niches that can be narrowed all the way down to things such as the pages people like and the city in which they live.
One particularly effective strategy involves targeting users who are already fans of other businesses or competitors in your industry. Because those people have already shown a willingness to not only like a page, but that of someone in their industry, there’s a greater chance that they’ll like your page as well. At least, assuming you have something of value to offer them, which I assume you do.
Though CPM is admittedly more costly than the first two options, what makes it viable is the fact that in the long run, it’s a more sustainable method of gaining new fans. Though running contests and having fans tag themselves in pictures can be great for huge bursts in new likes, they’ll generally be short term gains. Eventually, you’ll plateau as you reach the limits of your users and their friends who are willing to like your page. CPM, however, gives you a much greater network of people to reach out to, and it allows you to set how much you’re willing to pay as well.
Regardless of what you do, it’s important to remember that the ultimate goal is to provide valuable content to your users. Though the above techniques may help you gain many new fans short-term, it’s up to you to keep them through valuable insights or content that they won’t find anywhere else. After all, it’s no use gaining a bunch of new fans if you can’t keep them, right?
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