5 Engaging Ways to Increase Your Likes on Facebook

November 10, 2010|In Business|By Kyle Lacy

Almost every day I see at least one tweet along these lines:

“Do you enjoy our tweets? Why not ‘like’ us on Facebook too?”

As an online marketer who lives in the social media world, nothing could be more frustrating. This type of meaningless tweet is one of the reasons why those outside of the marketing world think social media can be run by inexperienced interns or even worse, automated.

While I could probably come up with 10 reasons why I hate seeing tweets like the above, there are two fundamental things wrong with it:

  1. You’re not address what the value of liking you on Facebook is when I’m already enjoying your tweets. What will be different?
  2. You call yourself a marketer, and this is the best you can do to move me to your Facebook page? Yikes.

If you’ve sent out a tweet like the above before, the good news is it’s not too late to make a change!
Here are 5 engaging ways to increase your “likes” on Facebook:

  • Write an interesting blog post, and tell visitors they can learn more by visiting your Facebook page. Once there provide them with compelling Facebook-only content that makes them want to stick around.
  • Provide Facebook-specific promotions. This is the top reason consumers tend to “like” a page.
  • Offer daily Facebook-only tips that users will want to see in their stream every morning.
  • Provide short videos on your Facebook page that customers can watch and engage with through comments. These videos could be fun, funny, promotional, or educational. They could also just be short video blog posts that discuss some relevant topic in your industry.
  • Just simply provide some value on your Facebook page that you aren’t providing on Twitter (or elsewhere)
    • Simply linking your Twitter, RSS Feed, and Facebook accounts together and showing visitors the same information over and over will not win you very many likes. Give visitors something worthwhile.

A final word about those damn DMs:

In addition to not sending out tweets like the above, don’t DM it either!

If you’re currently sending out auto DMs to new followers saying “why not ‘like’ us on Facebook too?” please consider this: asking me to ‘like’ you on Facebook when I’ve just started following you is like asking me to jump into bed with you when we’re on our first date. Facebook is viewed as a place for personal connections (Forrester)– either connections with real life friends or brands that are highly embedded into our lives. Are you that brand? If not, cool yourself off, and let’s take this one tweet at a time.

Whichever tactics you go with, always think, how am I providing value in doing this? If you can’t clearly answer this question, it may be time to go back to the drawing board. Social platforms aren’t shouting boards, they’re a place for conversation.

How are you engaging your audience in conversation today?

——

Kristina Allen (@allenkristina) is the online marketing manager for @ioninteractive where she handles social media and PR initiatives. ion interactive is home to the LiveBall software platform the helps marketers create and test landing pages.

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