Social media is a powerful tool, and not just for connecting with old high school friends or staying connected with your family who live far away. It can also be used as a marketing tool for small and large businesses alike. While the goal is to build a social media page that is followed by and engaged with many users, it’s important to remember that quality is more important than quantity, both in terms of fans and posts. Having the highest number of followers may temporarily increase social media credibility, but quality content is what will make people stick around as fans and followers in the long run.
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Building a Following
Many online vendors offer to sell fans for a fee. However, these fans aren’t real people, but rather fake accounts that are set up just to follow a page. This means that purchased followers won’t alwasy engage with the page’s posts, and if they do it’s not out of actual interest. The same is true for purchased Twitter followers. So, while purchasing fans may seem like a good idea because it builds up a quick fan base, it’s actually no good in the long run. Any engagement statistics become skewed and these fake followers sometimes introduce spam posts to the page. Instead, a business needs to build up a following of people who are actually interested in their product or company.
Creating Posts
One of the most important aspects of building up a good fan following is to post useful and informative content that is also engaging. Instead of flooding fans’ news feeds with lots and lots of posts, it’s more important to cultivate posts that will be liked and shared by the fans. This in turn breeds new followers who see the stories created by an existing follower’s like, comment, or share on Facebook, or retweet on Twitter. Posting too many items per day may actually have a negative impact on a Facebook page’s following. When a page posts an overwhelming number of items, a user is more likely to hide the page from her news feed. On Twitter, a follower may stop following a page that continues to post the same content over and over or floods his feed.
Special Tabs
Facebook allows all users to create new tabs at the top of the page, just under the cover photo. These sections are useful for creating a space dedicated to upcoming events, videos, or other content that will provide a value to the followers. In order to make these tabs easy to navigate, its best to create no more than a handful of tabs. Too many tabs can just confuse a user, making it difficult for her to find what she’s looking for, and she won’t be enticed to click on the tabs. Instead, create meaningful tabs that showcase a business’s work, promote new products, or serve a clear purpose rather than appear as though they are simply filling space.