Getting more fans on Facebook
-
Does anyone have any tips or experience on how they increased their Facebook fan base? I work in the oil/fuel industry and getting people to like your Facebook page is quite difficult because our customers are mostly middle-aged men, who if statistics are to be believed aren't the most active on social media anyway.
I've been doing regular posts for the past couple of weeks, liking other pages and joining conversations but don't seem to be getting any increase in followers.
Does anyone have any advice, ideas or examples of what you did that worked?
Thanks
-
I think this is exactly the point - no matter now boring you perceive it, now matter how niche the problem your business solves, then there is someone out there who needs that information.
Now, whether they will share it or not is another matter but if you answer those questions, they will certainly find you and then you can look at other ways of converting a percentage of those visitors in leads or prospects down the road.
-
Some industries just aren't suited to Facebook or Twitter, because people aren't interested in thinking about that niche in their free time, or because your target audience isn't active on social media. You should still have a presence there and occasionally participate, but don't expect amazing results.
Have you already captured your low-hanging fruit -- inviting your most faithful repeat customers to connect with you on social media? Every employee should have a link to your Facebook page in their e-mail signature. Then social media becomes a brand loyalty tool.
-
A thought for a content idea -- FAQs for someone who is new to oil heating. This comes from my own situation right now, as I sit in front of a wood-burning fireplace and I'm afraid to turn on our oil-burning furnace. We moved into this house a couple of months ago, and the neighbors told us that all of the walls were repainted because of the oil stains, and we're seeing stains by one vent near the carpet. We're using space heaters and the fireplace until we can get a gas line to the house and a gas furnace installed. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has relocated and found myself in this situation. It may not cause me to be a forever fan on your facebook page, but it might turn me into a heating oil customer if I were convinced there was a good way to get heat.
-
Hey Brian, if the only reason you are doing this is for an SEO benefit you would be better concentrating on the content, adding some social sharing buttons (like, tweet, +1, recommend) and then directing your efforts in other directions.
This is a good read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/do-improved-social-signals-cause-improved-rankings
-
One of my businesses is B2B and I have found that engaging people on LinkedIN is a good way to get people back to my FB page.
I join in a variety of groups on there and just talk to anybody in my market
-
The main reason we do social media is for SEO. I believe that the social triggers have an impact on SEO and that's why we want to be there.
At the moment, I'm putting up relevant news stories and because we supply oil, this time of year is when we sell a lot of home heating oil - so I'm trying to push that. I have come up with a few ideas like 10 ways to save on your heating bill but I don't want to put a lot of effort into something that won't work.
Contests are not really suitable for us because the vast majority of our business is from B2B sales. Unless someone has a good idea, I don't see the relevance.
I was thinking of giving away company stationery for likes, but I think the problem is directing people to the page in the first place.
There is an energy saving week coming up in just over a week, but it's a bit late for us to organise something and promote it properly.
-
The main reason we do social media is for SEO. I believe that the social triggers have an impact on SEO and that's why we want to be there.
At the moment, I'm putting up relevant news stories and because we supply oil, this time of year is when we sell a lot of home heating oil - so I'm trying to push that. I have come up with a few ideas like 10 ways to save on your heating bill but I don't want to put a lot of effort into something that won't work.
Contests are not really suitable for us because the vast majority of our business is from B2B sales. Unless someone has a good idea, I don't see the relevance.
I was thinking of giving away company stationery for likes, but I think the problem is directing people to the page in the first place.
There is an energy saving week coming up in just over a week, but it's a bit late for us to organise something and promote it properly.
-
Well, some niches just aren't meant for social activity.
However, you can still succeed with the right content. What exactly are you posting to your page? Try going with some creative content ideas or throwing some contests. If your business is a local company, partner up with some local businesses to give away gift cards and other prizes in exchange for likes. And then promote that contest through each site.
Try running community events and just stuff that will get people engaged. I know one company that runs a FB fantasy football league.
-
I guess the big question is whether facebook is a relevant platform for marketing this business. If your customers and prospects are not there, and the business has little to share in terms of interesting, shareable content, then... maybe you are barking up the wrong tree?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Facebook Share Percentage - On Blog Posts
Hi everyone, I'm trying to find a way to give each post we are creating a quality status. Since bounce rate on this case isn't really a viable option (Blog Behavior) since people could stay 10 mins reading it and then go elsewhere without interacting. I'm looking for a way to focus on facebook sharing, lets say something simple like "Facebook Shares / Sessions" per each blog post, while I can have an idea on my own data, lets say my highest is 4.1% of all people that go to that post end it up sharing it. But I wonder on average what would you consider a good engagement post, what would that percentage might be? Thanks in advance.
Social Media | | JoaoCJ0 -
Best tools to create facebook landing page
Hello Mooooooooooz fans ! Oye, does anyone recommend a tool that can easily create and integrate landing pages ? Tks a lot !
Social Media | | JoomGeek0 -
Facebook description - How it affects SEO
Hello MOZ community, Today my SEO team and I talked about the activities we do in the social media. And one of the things that we discussed is the post description/caption. We upload a lot of unique, fresh and high quality content to our website on daily base, so we want our customers to reach these articles by sharing it on our social media channels. My question is: what is the best way to share a post in Social Media Channels and specially on Facebook ? what description should we use ? is it better to use the article's title? or new text with CTA (call to action) and ask the users to click on the link to read the article in our website ? Another question: how can we use the keyword targeting in the Social Media ? Thanks 🙂
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Facebook Graph Search
Hi All. Just wondering what your experience is with using Facebook graph search? I have a site that ranks highly for a good number of keywords on google, yahoo etc, but when you use the facebook graph search, it either doesnt show up at all or is buried away in page 5 or something. I'm talking about the 'Web Search' bit where it returns web results rather than searching for pages likes by my friends etc. Any thoughts? Why is my site way behind the competition in Facebook? I'm a white hat kind of girl and can't think what I might have done to offend! Have you come across any good resources advising how to optimise for facebook graph search for web? Thanks Jo
Social Media | | littlesthobo1 -
Is Anybody Outside of SEO Industry Getting ROI from Google+ ?? Tell the truth!
I have been watching Google+ and see lots of SEOs sharing ideas and enjoying their circles. However, I have not seen anything outside of the webmaster community that I would hold up as an example of business engagement - and certainly nothing that seems to be producing a good ROI for a business. It seems to me that everyone outside of the webmaster community is on FaceBook and doesn't give a hoot about Google+. And, since FaceBook has the massive amount of people why should I open an outpost in the poorly populated Google+? I am not looking for Google+ evangelist answers. Just looking to hear if anybody anywhere has found Google+ to be a better use of their time than FaceBook and working on your website. I do believe that using Google+ as an author verification platform is a good use of your time if you have valuable content - mainly because it helps your visibility in the SERPs. Beyond that I am looking for validation. Anybody want to point to something good happening or telling a success story? Thanks!
Social Media | | EGOL8 -
What is the minimum photo size for Pinterest? Getting "No Large Images Found."
I can't find the answer to this by Googleing, and Pinterest doesn't seem to specify.
Social Media | | ebenthurston0 -
Facebook competition: what's the best way to do it
Taking some advice/ideas from this seomoz blog post http://www.seomoz.org/blog/99-ways-to-build-links-by-giving-stuff-away-and-improve-your-brand-too-14029 I decided to launch a facebook competition were you like/share the product you want to win. The question is should I be looking for share or likes? From what I have read Share are more valuable than likes, but Likes would be easier to get I think (ie we could get a lot more of them). Here is an example of one of our product pages: http://www.lovefurniture.ie/sofas-furniture/corner-sofas-l-shaped-sofas/rihanna-corner-suite-with-sofabed We already have a like, tweet +1 buttons, but not a facebook share, should it be there? Any feedback or advice would be appreciated
Social Media | | eunaneunan0 -
Promoting a Facebook Contest
Hi, Mozzers- I'm running a contest for a client of mine via Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/barrettmoving. The prizes are great an iPad2 and an iPod Touch! The contest is pretty cool too. Basically it's a papercraft / travel thing that appeals to a wide range of people. Anyway, here's my question - I've started promoting the contest via social media, the website, online contests...like to get to promoting it on relevant blogs too. I'm in the beginning stages. Any other ideas? Has anyone had luck with PPC or FB ads? Thanks in advance! LHC oVThP5PcRvo
Social Media | | lhc670