How to grow your Facebook page without ads
Yes, Facebook business pages are extremely challenging these days to grow given the changing Facebook algorithm however, it doesn’t mean you should give up on posting to your business page.
Many will hear that in order to get your Facebook page noticed by others you have to “pay to play” which means invest in Facebook advertising. While there may be some truth to that I can personally tell you that is not 100% true.
You can slowly grow your Facebook business page if you’re willing to put in the work and be consistent with showing up, delivering, and engaging!
I have grown my page organically up to just recently (September 15th, 2018) when I decided to test running a Facebook ad for my signature course, How to start a business in 5 easy steps and boosted a post for my Hey Ed membership — helping small businesses overcome their tech challenges and navigate their way through the online world.
Prior to this test though, I had no paid ads anywhere and as you can tell from the above my paid ads were not even directed towards growing my Facebook business page.
Ads or no ads you, the small business owner, are responsible for looking at your schedule, picking a time (show up consistently), and posting (delivering) your best content for engagement. Once you do your job — Showing up and Delivering — it’s out of your hands and you can check this task off your list for the day.
Now you just have to wait for the Facebook gods (the algorithm) to show you some mercy and once they allow someone to see your post and that person engages with it in some way — like, emotion, comment or share — then you need to jump in and engage with them!
Say…
- “Thank you!”
- “Hi, there!”
- “Thanks for checking out my post!”
- “What did you think about…”
- “Thank you so much for sharing!”
Remember, social media is all about “joining the conversation” not “Here’s my content. It’s the best you’ll find and you must share so I can make money.”
As a small business owner, you have to be ok with posting on your Facebook business page and getting little to no engagement — that’s the worse case scenario. The best case scenario is, your post gets seen by the RIGHT people at the RIGHT time who discover you’re the answer to their problems.
Noticed I didn’t say, “Your post gets seen by 1,000’s of people.”
The reason for that careful wording is to remind all of us that it’s not about how many people can we get in front of. Now I know that is what we think we need — the more people we can get in front of the better chances they will buy but that is simply not true.
You could have the best solution for someone’s problem but if the people you’re in front of don’t actually have that problem then they don’t care who you are or how good your solution is — they don’t need it.
We see this happening a lot with social media followers and Facebook business page likes.
Many small business owners think that if they could just get X amount of likes or follows then everything will be fine and somehow that will magically turn into money — I hate to break it to you but it doesn’t.
What we all need to focus on is simply showing up, delivering our best content — sharing what we know with the world — and engaging like nobodies business.
Think of your Facebook business page as a storefront window on say 5th Ave in New York City — if you’re not familiar with this reference read about 5th Ave here.
Here’s what I want you to do for your Facebook page
- Pick a day and time (once a week at minimum) you can commit to each week to post
- Pick 1 topic with up to 3 talking points to post on your business page — this can be:
- A regular text post
- Facebook live
3. Post your content
4. Share your business page post with others
5. Tag the appropriate people who might be interested (don’t spam people just to get attention)
6. Follow-up with anyone who comments or shares your post
If worse case scenario happens and no one engages with your post DO NOT give up. It happens and there’s nothing you can do about it but continue to do your part — post and keep on moving forward.
Yes, it’s disappointing when a post — especially a really good one — gets little to no reach which means no one saw it but you can’t control that. What you can control is you showing up consistently, delivering your best content where you provide value to help others and engage when others interact with your content — that’s your job.
Think outside the box: Get your Facebook posts seen
What I’ve found that really helps is going live on Facebook (Learn how to go live here) from your business page and if you want you can even review some of your recent posts that maybe did not get seen by others — make it a conversation, a roundup if you will. Learn more about getting your Facebook business page posts seen here.
Another tip: Engage as your page on other posts — Facebook has made this so much easier now.
Looking for more tips? Check out Neil Patel “The no B.S. guide to growing your Facebook reach organically.”
Remember, Facebook (and social media in general) are tools that help us get discovered and drive traffic back to OUR websites. We have to remember that especially when planning our content and sharing our awesome talents.
OUR websites are home base and where we need to direct traffic back to.
Let me know in the comments if this helps 🤓
Originally published at edtroxell.com on October 2, 2018.
