Why Can’t I Grow My Facebook Page?

Ah, Facebook.

For most businesses trying to pull off their respective digital marketing strategies, it's often a necessary evil. At the same time, many of those same businesses struggle to see results from any of their efforts on Facebook.

Why can’t I grow my Facebook page? ... It's a question you lament and toil over month-over-month. After consistently posting and trying everything you know, still, nothing seems to work.

Relax. You’re not alone.

Which is why I put this post together...

 

Two Main Challenges Facing Facebook Pages

Over the past few years, the proverbial face of Facebook has faced many changes. (I'll see myself out, but first ...)

You’ve noticed them. If you've been using Facebook this whole time, you’ve undoubtedly struggled to adjust.

Countless business owners and their marketing teams have attempted to overcome or circumvent the obstacles created by alterations to Facebook's organic reach algorithm. Almost overnight, accounts that used to receive a large amount of organic reach for everything from photos to content sharing couldn’t get anyone to Like (let alone see) their updates.

In the midst of a barrage of changes, two main challenges have come to the forefront:

 

1. An Increasing Pressure to “Pay-to-Play” On and From Facebook

Because of the decrease in organic reach, businesses are feeling an immense pressure to Pay-to-Play. What does that mean, you ask?

Simply put, you have to purchase paid advertising spots to reach your audience.

This is frustrating because you’re not just paying to just reach new people. Instead, businesses are having to purchase ads to reach their existing audience.

 

2. New Facebook Features Help Big Brands More Than Small Businesses

You may have heard about a new feature call the See First option.

It’s essentially an opportunity for your audience to opt-in to seeing the posts your page publishes at the top of their news feed.

While features like this are great, bigger brands have a better chance of catching these opportunities than smaller brands.

This feature and ones just like it pose a struggle for those with smaller audiences. The Buzzfeeds and ESPNs of the world have enormous, loyal followings already. Ensuring their content makes it into their fans’ newsfeeds isn’t going to be a problem for the ‘big dogs’.

By limiting the visibility of smaller brands’ messages, Facebook is opening the door for larger, financially-backed brands to dominate the bulk of opportunity on their channel.

Long gone are what we in the digital marketing world refer to as the Wild West Days of Facebook, when a company had a real chance to build engaged audiences and engage in daily, meaninful discourse FOR FREE. Alas, nothing gold can stay.

But all this negativity in no way means businesses can’t gain traction on Facebook. You just need to get a bit creative in your approach.

 

Proven Methods for Gaining Traction on Facebook

Gaining social media traction doesn’t happen overnight. It’s requires a continual effort to build meaningful momentum and rapport with your audience.

These five strategies work well for smaller businesses trying to get their Facebook page off the ground.

 

#1: Leverage Your Existing Website to Continually Build an Audience

Your website is the perfect place to continually build a Facebook audience. Take an active approach to promoting your page using a few, key spots on your website. Including:

• Social Buttons in your Header and/or Footer.
• CTAs on your landing pages.
• Blog post CTAs – be sure to tell your users you’ll be serving up new posts via your Facebook page.
• Your blog sidebar – users are already there to interact with you, so encouraging them to follow you is a logial next step.
• Bonus Tip: Embed social follow icons in your official email signature.

 

#2: Interact With Your Audience to Encourage Repeat Engagement

Interaction.

It’s an important step a lot of us underemphasize or ignore altogether.

Just like Twitter and Instagram, engagement will help you find more followers and make a greater impact with each platform. You can’t just post things and ignore the few interactions you receive. That’s a sure-fire way to ensure people never engage with you again.

 

#3: Create Partnerships With Others for Cross-Promotion

I think complementary business partnerships are one of the biggest missed opportunities small business owners have on social media today.

Find other business owners running companies that complement your own. Let’s say you own a flower shop. A good complementary business would be the chocolate shop in your same town.

But don't go overboard. If you run a local gym, that same chocolate shop might not make sense for you to partner up with. Keep your target personas in mind!

Cross-promotion can be applied at the regional or national level; it just depends where your target market is.

Sharing content and promotions can create unique opportunities for you to reach new members of your community by engaging your partners' audiences.

 

#4: Craft High-Quality Content for Your Target Audience

If you’ve nailed down your target persona(s), it's time to start building out your content process. Provide your audience with amazing, high-quality content to keep them engaged and coming back for more.

When you're just getting started, a continuous stream of great content is important to get the ball rolling.

Traction may be a bit slower at first than 5 years ago, but look on the bright side: quality interactions over quantity is always preferable.

 

#5: Test Some Paid Advertising Opportunities

In an earlier portion of this post, I mentioned Facebook's increased pressure on small brands to pay for advertising as a challenge. Yeah, I personally think it's a bummer, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn't test the waters!

Don’t be afraid to try some paid promotion.

Start by showing your most important messages to your followers. Then build another campaign designed to find new ones.

Whatever you do, just remember: 

A Facebook follower is only worth as much as your ability to turn them into a happy customer.

Pro Tip: Remember! You want to start a conversation. The hard sell might work sometimes, but it’s not the way Facebook wants to be leveraged by brands, which is why they implemented all these changes in the first place.

 

Looking Forward: The Future of Facebook for Small Business

As we look into the future of Facebook, the waters are, at times … murky.

How small business owners choose to adapt to the shifting sands of decreasing organic exposure will dictate whether they'll see continued success on Facebook. Many may simply leave Facebook behind. Some already have.

But if you choose to stay, don’t fear. There are still powerful ways to reach your audience — some of them we've already mentioned — but all of them require a little bit of elbow grease.

The Emergence of New Social Networks

Thankfully, there’s good news for those that have tried everything and can’t seem to get anything to work: there are other fish in the sea.

Facebook isn’t the only network capable of bringing success for small business owners. In fact, the emergence of platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and Pinterest means you have more opportunities than ever to reach your audience where they spend their free time.

A More Content-Oriented Strategy

But, ultimately, it all comes down to your ability to publish quality content that your audience, loves, anticipates and shares.

Being social with your audience is great, but people are looking for deeper connections. It’s not enough to just post memes a few times a day.

Shifting your focus from being a social butterfly to becoming a trusted industry authority may be the secret sauce your digital marketing strategy is missing. And once you’ve got some engaging content to offer your audience, gaining traction on social will be a lot easier.

 

Are You Willing to Make the Investment?

It’s no secret that building an organic Facebook presence is hard, and your inevitable conclusion may simply be that you’re not willing to make the investment.

You may end up needing to find a new network if you’re not willing to invest in the advertising budget required to build large audience numbers. But if you are going to grow your page on Facebook, understand your decision and ask yourself one question:

Am I willing to do the work?

{This article originally appeared on RedstitchDigital.com on 9/10/15.}