Cultivating a Following Fanbase on Facebook

There are those people who believe that Facebook is an amazing social media tool and those who just don’t understand its merits at all. Well, Facebook does have a lot of extremely useful features that can really help you to bring your business to the next level.

Things have changed over time

Earlier on in Facebook’s evolution, it was really no big deal to grow your following. At the time, the competition was not so stiff. However, things are different nowadays. At this point, there is a great deal of competition and if you don’t present your ideas in a way that really wows your prospective and existing clients, they won’t stick with you. They will go to someone else to get their content fix. You need to tell yourself that it is not an option to let that happen.

The reality is that you don’t just want to have a following with a large number of people in it. You want to have an amazing following and you want those people to share your vision and your passion about what you are trying to accomplish (and will succeed at accomplishing). Don’t worry. It is certainly not impossible to make that happen. It is just a matter of going about it in the right way.

It is very important for you to grasp how important a strong Facebook following is for your business. If you understand that, you will make every effort to give it your all. You can trust that the results will pay off for you and for your business. There are certain steps (in a certain order) that you should follow in order to grow your following. You will want to build it into your online marketing strategy and keep it there.

• Identify your target audience: It is critical that you address the appropriate audience for your particular business. Your target audience serves many different purposes, including using them as a source of information when it comes to giving them what they want and need. You should allow WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) to drive you. In other words, no matter how much you have to contribute as a business owner (or a business person), it won’t mean anything if you are not able to solve the other person’s problems. That also means that you are able to connect with the other person on an emotional/human level.

• Speak in a language that the other person understands: After you have identified exactly who your target audience members are, you need to begin the process of getting into their heads in a more profound way. In other words, you will need to get into their heads and learn how to think the way that they think and communicate the way that they communicate. If you can manage to accomplish that, if you can really manage to speak their language, you will find that they will start to trust you and to become loyal to your brand quite easily.

• Decide how you want to engage with other people: There are so many different ways in which you can engage with other people. You can have a combination of in-person and online engagements, which may work very well for you. Only you can decide what works most effectively for your particular business.

• Remember that you are in it for the long haul: Relationships are at the heart of your success when it comes to Facebook as well as all of the other social media channels. It is probably obvious that you can’t build a following without the people. That inherently means that you need to have a human connection between you. It is important to keep the journey in mind, not just the prize. That means that you are investing in relationships that will stand the test of time and that will be mutually beneficial.

• Work on the relationships: When it comes to relationships, you don’t want to overwhelm the other person or demand too much of his or her time. On the other hand, you want to make sure that whatever you communicate is relevant and valuable to the other person every time. After all, you are growing the relationship, not allowing it to stagnate and die. You worked hard to make it work in the beginning so it would not make any sense to let it go at this point.

• Make sure that your interactions and postings are consistent: You need to be committed to posting and engaging with other people on a very regular basis. That is very important for your relationships because other people will come to expect (and look forward to) your consistency. That is a very important building block of the relationship. It will not require a great deal of effort to maintain a schedule once you get used to it and the payoff is much greater than the effort that you will have to expand.

• Pay close attention to the results: Once you have done all of that work, it would be a real shame to just leave it alone. You will want to monitor whether your efforts are paying off or not. You can use an analytics tool, which will make it pretty easy for you. That will allow you to identify trends and patterns and it will let you see which of your efforts are paying off and which ones are not. If something isn’t working, you may want to consider abandoning it and trying something different.

Conclusion

The various social media channels are all extremely valuable for your business in their own way. Facebook can really be beneficial for your business but it is very important to keep in mind that you will not be able to accomplish anything with Facebook if you are not able to interact with other people. The following is critical to your success. Remember that the people who follow you are human beings and that means that you need to connect with them as such. If you make it a mix of personal and professional, with whatever percentages work for your business, it will probably turn out well. Whether you are just beginning to work with social media or you have acquired a lot of experience, your following on Facebook is a huge contributor to your success.

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