How to Grow Your Facebook Business Page in 2018

Don’t bother. Seriously. It will not give you the return on investment you seek.

Take a look at this:

 

At the time of this screenshot, Budget Travel Magazine had 263,382 likes. This was actually one of their best performing posts in a while, so I’m being a little generous here:

Likes + Comments = 40. That’s 0.00015% engagement.

If you give them credit for the shares too, it’s still under 0.00025% engagement.

 

Growing your Facebook audience is wasting your time.

Maybe you’re thinking, “that’s one example. That’s just one bad apple, right? Engagement can’t be that horrible across the board. Otherwise, nobody would be using it. Right?!”

You would think that would be the case, but it’s not. Which is why I’m having to write this blog post.

Apparently, many business owners still think learning how to grow your Facebook business page audience is worthwhile.

Example two is a page with a more realistically-achievable following: Noah Kagan’s OkDork.

He had 18,501 likes at the time of this screenshot. His post from 24 hours ago has… 5 likes. FIVE. Out of 18,501 fans! And Noah provides excellent insight.

Guess what? OkDork’s post has an engagement rate of 0.00027% – strikingly similar to the one above from Budget Travel.

Interesting. Seems there might be a trend, regardless of audience size.

Noah knows this. He talks about the terrible engagement on social in a YouTube video.

Instead of thinking how to grow your Facebook business page, think about how you can grow your audience in general.

 

Facebook makes you spend to reach your own audience.

That’s the biggest problem with spending time growing an audience on the platform. You spent money getting the audience, now you have to spend money for them to see your posts. It’s extortion!

I’m not saying Facebook is a digital mafia, but I’m also not not saying that is the case.

You have to “boost post” to be seen by more than 1-3% of your audience.

A well-written email can get a 30% (or more) open rate.

 

Achieve 10X the results by growing an email list.

You can spend on Facebook ads. You need to have a specific strategy for the ads though. One example of a good strategy would be to grow your email list.

Consider how much you spend growing that email list though. It might be worth it to leverage an audience that someone else has already built. You can pay them, which people with an audience tend to appreciate, and reach your niche for less.

 

Target micro-influencers with your time and money.

Instead of trying to grow an audience from scratch, use one that already exists. A micro-influencer can be an affordable way to reach your desired audience and immediately have the trust you want with those people.

Skip the hard part of growing your audience from 1 to 1000. Pay a micro-influencer to reach an audience of 10,000.

With micro-influencers, you’ll want to build a lasting relationship. It could be a very lucrative deal for both you and the influencer. Having a long-term partnership will increase the trust factor with their audience and you might be able to lock out your competition.

Offer the influencer’s audience something they want or need. Give first when you want to receive.

 

Provide excellent value first, and the fans will come.

Get die-hard fans. Engage them. Sell something. Provide more value than you ask in exchange.

If you do this for a while, you’ll end up with a large audience. Deal with that when you get there. Just don’t make having a large number of fans the goal.

You can provide excellent value on Facebook by providing amazing service. Be quick to respond to questions. Ask users what pain points they still have so you can address them.

 

Use Facebook for support and ads.

More important than how to grow your Facebook business page is how to use your Facebook business page for optimal results for your business.

With over 2 billion users on Facebook, your customers are likely on the platform. You can use this as a cost-effective customer support channel.

You don’t need a social media manager when you can hire customer support people for less and spend the extra cash on a micro-influencer or two.

 

Conclusion

Don’t bother learning how to grow your Facebook business page. It’s not worth your time.

Your time is valuable. If you need help achieving the marketing results you desire, I’d be happy to help.

Send me a message here if you’d like to talk about how to best spend your time to grow your business.