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 Like button and Google plus
I can't believe that I still did not figure out what would be the best way to have facebook like button and google plus on the home page. I have tried several options but I was always receiving errors in W3 validator. Can somebody help please? Thank you Iris
Social Media | | Rebeca10 -
Facebook Like Button vs Like Box
We want to add the Facebook Like and Google Plus One functionality to our website but had a question. Is it better for SEO and usability to use a global Facebook Like Button for people to Like the home page of our website or a Facebook Like Box to Like our Facebook page from our website? I know that we can specify the URL in the Like Button but I wanted to get some feedback. Thanks!
Social Media | | Prager0 -
Blog posts copied to Facebook or Linked? Any Duplicate Content Issues?
I wasnt able to find any good answers on this. I have two separate ecommerce websites, one with a top level blog. (www.xyz.com/blog) and different website with a subdomain blog (blog.xyz.com)***note on the subdomain blog, although it links to our website. You cannot directly shop from it. Until i can make some sort of scraper, its what I have to work with. For quite some time now I have been copying the blog posts and re-creating them on facebook as a Note. Using the same anchor text/links on facebook as my blog post. Part of the issue is that I want the facebook pages to have some content and not just links. Both get 2-3 updates per week, 1 of those being a blog re-post. Does anyone know if google or bing considers this duplicate content? Should I simply link directly to the blog everytime, as a best practice? Any insight on this would be great. Thanks!
Social Media | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Is it possible to get high page ranking with no social media activity?
I'm curious to know how much social media effects the chances of being more highly ranked on Google. I appreciate it's important to 'be seen' by Google, but if articles/newsletters are being written, does it really matter if a business isn't using Twitter or Facebook, etc?
Social Media | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Friends who like same Facebook page not showing correctly
I have a strange thing going on with my Facebook pages. The "friends who also like this page" is showing wrong numbers, just 1 respectively 5. In reality this number must be much higher. When I saw a profile of someone who coincidentally liked both pages, the numbers of friends who also liked those pages said 30 respectively 48. I remembered that a while ago I changed categories of at least one of those pages. So now I just checked that theory and changed the category of one of those pages back: The 1 went up to 26. When going back to the category I have right now, it's back to 1. Does anyone have an idea of how to fix this, kind of merge those numbers?
Social Media | | codebalancer0 -
Best Practices for apps.facebook.com pages
A client of ours has experienced a large drop in traffic (per GA) from apps.facebook.com referral source in the last 30 days. After a lot of searching, its apparent that there is not a lot of chatter on this topic. So this is a twofold topic..... 1. has anyone observed a drop in apps.facebook.com referrals lately as well? 2. does anyone have any best practices learning on optimizing these pages? Facebook guidance and content in general on the topic is virtually not existent. Google is still clearly indexing the url structure so its visible in search at least. https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22apps.facebook.com
Social Media | | SWKurt0 -
How Do I get Content & Pictures into Thoora Results?
Wondering if any one is having success with getting their content and pictures into Thoora.
Social Media | | bozzie3110 -
Roundup of Facebook Share & Facebook Like. Which one is better for SEO?
There doesn't seem to be clear cut advice / data on whether Facebook Share or Facebook Like is more valuable from an SEO standpoint. So I'm asking you SEOmoz fans have you come across conclusive evidence or have your own sites / testes proven that one is stronger than the other.
Social Media | | walidalsaqqaf0