How to increase Twitter followers and increase Facebook page likes

You’ve just launched your Twitter and
Facebook page. You’re excited to engage with
thousands of fans and followers and possibly
get a customer or two.
Fast forward two months. You have 20
Facebook fans and 30 Twitter followers. Half
of them are spam. You realize no one notices
or cares that you’re on social media.
What do you do?
In this blog post I’ll break down some tactics
you can try to build a stronger social media
impact and a bigger following. These tactics
can work for almost any business, whether it’s
a SaaS (Software as a Service), ecommerce, or
any brick-and-mortar store.
First, let’s cover the different types of
followings you can get.
The Difference Between a Random
Follower and an Engaged Follower
There are some who say 50 engaged followers
is better than 500 unengaged followers.
Some of your followers will be engaged,
reading and valuing your updates,
occasionally replying, retweeting, commenting
and Liking. Others will just skim through your
updates as they appear in their feed.
There is no way to avoid an unengaged
follower (not that you should). Specifically on
Twitter, there are people who will blindly
follow thousands of people all in the hopes for
a follow back.
The good news is you can convert an
unengaged follower (or fan) into an engaged
follower (or fan) by updating valuable
information. We’ll get into that a little later.
Your Twitter Bio
Your Twitter bio can be used to explain what
your business is and what you’ll be tweeting
about. One of my favorite Twitter bio’s is from
Rand Fishkin:
The key part here is how often he tweets and
what he tweets about. By writing this, people
know what to expect from his Twitter feed and
can judge if this is an account they’d like to
follow.
Your Twitter bio should say:
A) What you do and
B) What you tweet about
Here would be a template to follow:
[Enter business name] provides [enter about
and unique value prop]. Tweets [enter amount]
per week about [what you tweet about].
Bios are limited to 160 characters, so it’s
important to keep it short and sweet.
Let’s move on to a less common but effective
way to gain Twitter followers or Facebook
fans.
Guest Blog
Not only can guest blogging be a great way to
get your company exposure, but it can also
increase your social media impact.
When guest blogging, it’s important to find a
blog that is relevant to your industry. You
want to get relevant followers who would be
interested in your products or services, so it’s
important to write in your area of expertise.
If you guest blog, you can put in your byline
something like:
“(Your name) is the (enter position) of (enter
company). You can follow his (or her)
company on Twitter (link) or ‘Like’ them on
Facebook (link).”
Not only does this expose your brand name,
but it also helps your social media efforts.
People will follow you the more you expose
your Twitter and Facebook pages, and guest
blogging is a great way to get that kind of
exposure.
On a personal note, I’ve been blogging with
KISSmetrics for a little under 4 months. My
Twitter followers (while still small) have about
quadrupled during this time.
So find a popular blog that’s relevant to your
business, ask them to guest blog (even if it’s
for free) and take advantage of your byline.
Have A Blog
Having a well-maintained blog can be time-
consuming, but the payoff can be significant.
Only start one if you know it can be given the
proper time and attention.
Your blog can be a great way to generate
traffic to your website and increase fans and
followers.
After writing a blog post, you can ask people
who you linked to in that blog post for a
tweet. Additionally, the message when
someone clicks the tweet button can link to
your Twitter account. For example, if I click
the Tweet button:
It brings me to a window with a preset
message:
The message contains the link back to Buffer’s
Twitter page. Judging by the results, it has
given Buffer a lot of attention.
Another popular way to gain fans and
followers is by running contests.
Run Contests
Running contests are effective in getting
attention for your brand while also increasing
your social media presence. Let’s look into
how you can legally run some contests.
Facebook:
It’s important to first read Facebook’s contest
rules. Facebook is very strict about all the
things that you cannot do. If you’re looking to
run contests on Facebook, check out a
program like Promotion Builder.
Twitter:
It’s important to first read the Twitter contest
rules before you start anything.
One contest to try is the “creative answer”
contest. It runs as follows:
A) Company tweets a message (at least one)
with a question.
B) Users must respond to the question using a
hashtag.
C) The top 3 most creative answers get a gift
card from your company.
Now let’s take a look at how adding Facebook
and Twitter widgets can affect your social
media.
Add Facebook And Twitter Widgets To
Your Site
You’ve seen the social media widgets on
almost every site you go to. All of them ask
you for a Like, Tweet or a Follow. They appear
like this:
This allows users to Like a page without ever
having to access Facebook and search for
you. There are also sharing functions available
on many sites, with the option to Like or
Tweet specific pages.
If you’re interested in adding social buttons to
your site, you can go to Facebook’s plugin
page or Twitter’s buttons and resources page .
One of the cornerstones of Twitter is the use of
the hashtag. Let’s see how you can integrate
this with your business.
Use The Hashtag
What are some hashtags that people in your
industry use? Oftentimes people use hashtags
for a specific conference or for generalities in
that industry. For example, one hashtag
KISSmetrics uses is #measure. If you don’t
know what ones are used in your industry,
check out what hashtags your competitors
use.
Next we’ll examine the importance of
including your social links in your email
signatures.
Email Signatures
Your business probably has hundreds if not
thousands of emails daily. The email
signatures you use are not something to take
lightly. These generally include your contact
information, but many companies now include
links to their Facebook and Twitter pages.
There are a few tools you can use to elegantly
link to your pages in your signature.
If you use web-based email, check out
WiseStamp.
Now we’ll move in to the importance of who to
follow and why you should follow back.
Follow And Follow Back
Whether you like their politics or not, you
must admit the Obama campaign is incredibly
efficient on technology. At the time of this
writing, they had a little over 17 million
Twitter followers and over 27 million Facebook
fans.
What might be more intriguing than the
number of followers they have is the number of
people they follow. As of June 2012, they were
following a little over 675,000 people. There
aren’t many other accounts that have that
many followers yet also follow that many
people.
Following back adds a personal touch, no
matter how popular you are on Twitter. It
shows that you noticed someone followed you
and took the time to follow them back. People
like to be followed ; so take the time to follow
and follow back.
If you don’t know who to follow, go to your
competitors Twitter pages and see the people
they follow and the ones who follow them.
These will usually be people who are in the
same industry. Follow those people. Some
may follow you back. If nothing else, they’ll
notice that your company followed them which
will get your brand name just a little bit more
exposure.
You can also use Twitters own suggestions for
who to follow.
Social media is nothing if people don’t engage
with one another. Let’s get in to why it’s
important for you and your brand to engage
with current and potential customers.
Engagement
“The biggest part of engaging is just making
sure that you’re talking to people.”
-Jen Lopez, discussing social media at
SEOmoz
Twitter and Facebook should be looked at as
a place to engage and communicate with
people, not as a place to give non-stop
promotion to your brand.
When someone tweets or posts something to
your account, whether it’s good, bad, or
neutral, you need to respond. Ignoring
feedback is leaving engagement on the table,
which means losing out on customers. A
business should be more than thrilled that
someone wants to talk to them, yet so few
even bother responding.
Beyond responding to people who tweet and
post to you, you also need to go out and find
people. That’s where a tool like Twitter search
comes in.
Twitter Search
Twitter search is a great way to find the
people in your industry and the folks who are
talking about your company.
What are some of the keywords in your
company and industry? These, along with your
company name, are things you should be
searching for and keeping an eye on every
day. Find the people who are talking and,
when possible, engage in the conversation.
This is especially important when someone
has a question. Be there to help the people
who need help.
Here’s a question that someone asked on
Twitter that has gone unanswered.
Wouldn’t it be great if Mozilla answered this
question? It’s not the content of the tweet or
the company involved that’s important.
What’s important is that a user of a product
was having issues – and the company was
nowhere to be found.
The scary thing is this could be your company.
You could have a customer or potential
customer asking questions about your product
with no one there to answer it. Or worse,
someone could be giving out misinformation
about your product.
Companies need to go to where there users
are, not having users go to where they are. If
thousands of customers on Twitter need
assistance, it should be a good indication
that the company be active with heavy use of
Twitter search and replying to every tweet. Go
where your customers are – you serve them.
And if you thought customer service on social
media was insignificant, think again. A recent
study showed that only 44% of customer
questions on Twitter are answered within 24
hours. The same study also found that 56% of
customer tweets were being ignored. Another
study showed that 36% of UK customers use
social media to speak with brands. What
might even be more surprising is that number
has doubled in eight months.
Not only can Twitter search be used for
customer service, but can also be used for
seeing discussions from people in your
industry. Enter some of the keywords into
Twitter search and find what people are
talking about. It might be about a conference,
some latest news, or what a competitor is
doing. Add your voice when it’s appropriate.
Make insightful comments, don’t reply just for
the sake of replying. For example, saying
“cool” or “wow” or “interesting” is not useful
and doesn’t add and build the conversation.
Be thoughtful and people will look at your
brand with respect.
Once we understand engagement and finding
people on Twitter we can then move on to
promoting your social media presence. There
are multiple avenues we can go down with
promoting your Facebook and Twitter pages.
Let’s explore some of these.
Facebook And Twitter Only
Promotions
Not everyone will be quick to ‘Like’ or Follow
your page. Some may need an incentive. This
explains why many brands offer Facebook fan
only specials. These offers go out to fans who
currently ‘Like’ the page. The trouble is,
someone can ‘Like’ a page only for a deal,
then ‘UnLike’ after the deal is obtained.
It may be frustrating, but here’s the thing: It
still gets you an order and people still give
you money .
If the end goal of increasing Facebook fans
and Twitter followers is to get more orders,
then people Liking and Unliking your page
should be just fine with you – as long as
they’re ordering.
Obviously you should not encouraging people
to ‘Like’ your page for a promotion, then
Unlike it once it’s over. You should still
encourage people to ‘Like’ your page for
Facebook only offers. But don’t make big
efforts to try and stop people from Liking and
Unliking your page. You’ve still reached the
ultimate goal of getting an order; just not the
optimal way.
Everlane is a company that encourages people
to Like their Facebook page:
Clearly, this incentive is working. They
launched a little under a year ago and already
have over 14,000 Likes.
On your Facebook page, you can use Facebook
offers. See this example:
I don’t have to Like this page to claim the
deal. However, you can use Facebook Offers
and encourage users to Like your page to stay
tuned for future deals.
Twitter only deals may be a little more
difficult. One thing to try is tweeting out a
special link. Once a user clicks the link, your
site will see that Twitter was the referring link
and the promotion will be activated.
Discover Card is a company that does
something similar. Cardholders get a certain
percentage off only when they go from the
Shop Discover site to an online retailer. This
way the retailer can see that they got a
customer from Shop Discover and Discover
activates the cash back.
Another way to advertise Facebook only
promotions is to place an ad on the Facebook
website. Let’s explore this next.
Facebook Ads
When you advertise on Facebook, you have the
option for people to Like your page without
ever having to actually go to your page. See
these examples:
These allow people to Like your page while
they are already in the Facebook website. It
makes it painless.
Photo Tagging on Facebook
Here’s an unconventional way:
When you host events, whether it’s a grand
opening, a member appreciation day or any
other celebration, take lots of photos.
Encourage your fans at the event to check out
your Facebook page and see when the photos
are uploaded. They can then tag themselves in
the photo. Their friends will see the photo,
and thus your business gets exposure.
It’s possible that you’re on a tight budget and
don’t want to spend money on Facebook ads
or don’t host a lot of events. In this case, you
can make decals for your storefront window.
However, simply asking users to Like or
Follow you may not be enough.
Rethinking the Social Media Window
Decals
How many stores have you seen with one of
these on a window?
Or
They’re a great idea, but do they really do
anything? Does it increase your number of
Likes or Followers? Do people know what
they’ll get if they Follow or ‘Like’ you?
What if you had an “Engage with us on
Facebook” or “Engage with us on Twitter”
decal? This invites the person to ask
questions on the businesses social media
page.
You can also propose benefits that people will
get by Liking or Following your page. Here are
a few ideas:
“Get expert tips everyday on _____ by following
us on Facebook or Twitter pages.
‘Like’ us – [enter url]
Follow us – [enter url]”
This one projects your business as a thought
leader. For example, if you sell clothes and
purses, you can have your sign say:
“Get expert tips everyday on fashion and
design by following our Facebook or Twitter
pages.
‘Like’ us – facebook.com/_____
Follow us – twitter.com/_____”
“See what today-only deals we’re offering for
our Facebook fans and Twitter followers only!
Follow us – [enter URL]”
“Find out about our special offers before
anyone else! ‘Like’ our page and you’ll have
access to our calendar of special offers!
[enter url]”
There are two ways to go with this. Either A)
you have an actual calendar that displays on
your Facebook page once someone Likes your
page. This shows all the future coupons you’ll
be offering. Or B) Have limited quantity
specials that offer products you sell at big
discounts. For the first hour, Facebook fans
and Twitter followers find out about the deal
and are allowed to buy. This can be viewed as
the equivalent of the Groupon VIP.
“Get your ___ questions answered by Liking us
on Facebook or Following us on Twitter.
Follow us – [enter url]”
This is another one that shows you’re the
thought leader and the go to place for
whatever industry or niche you serve. Answer
everyone’s questions, even people who are not
your customers; because if those people are
ever in the market for what you’re selling,
you’ll probably be the first place they think of.
“Get our take and join the conversation on the
latest ___ trends [or news]
Follow us – [enter url]”
This decal portrays your business as a
something of a thought leader, a business that
is plugged into the latest news in a niche
industry. If you’re in the eye exam business,
your decal may read ‘Like’ this:
“Get our take and join the conversation on the
latest eye health news…
‘Like’ us – facebook.com/____
Follow us – twitter.com/____”
Your Facebook and Twitter feeds would
comprise of links to studies on eye health and
your opinion of them (preferably from an
optometrist). Along with your posts and
tweets about studies, you can remind fans and
followers of your business.
You don’t just want to be viewed as a place to
read opinions on eye health, you need to
capitalize on it. For example, you post a study
about family eye health history. Share the
opinion and remind people if they have any
concerns or know a family member with an
eye disease to let the optometrist know. This
keeps the customer in touch with the business
and strengthens the relationship between the
business and customer.
“Give us feedback on how we’re doing. ‘Like’
or Follow us!
[enter url]”
Here you encourage followers to send feedback
to you—which requires either a ‘Like’ or a
Follow. Your social media platforms are used
as a place to gather public opinion on your
business. It can either sink or swim from this
type of approach. If feedback is ignored by the
business, it’s going to reflect poorly on the
company. If businesses respond to every
comment, it will look quite well. You have the
opportunity to showcase your customer
service – make it great!
“See our conversation with ____. Only for
people who ‘Like’ our page!
[enter url]”
Here you would have a video interview with an
important figure in your industry discussing
relevant, topical information that your fans
would enjoy. This can get some people in to
‘Like’ your page, and then it’s up to you to
keep them from ‘Unliking’. Telling of future
interviews or future content only on your
Facebook page would be a good idea.
Beyond windows, you can post your Facebook
promo on your menu, inside your store, or
wherever else customers frequently put their
eyes on.
Now we understand signage for storefronts.
Let’s move on to another place where signs
and banners are frequently used: conferences.
Attending Conferences
Going to conferences can be a great way to
network and get your brand exposed. It can
also be used to connect on social media,
which can form a long term connection and
possibly a customer or partnership.
At a conference, you can have a sign that says
“‘Like’ our Facebook page to see a recap of
the conference”. The recap would feature
photos, and video interviews with speakers
only for people who ‘Like’ your page.
On business cards, it’s wise to leave a link to
your Facebook and Twitter pages.
Conferences are not for every business. They
can be expensive, especially when on a limited
budget. Let’s look into a less costly way to
get Fans and Followers.
Getting Retweets And Shares
To get retweets you will need a Twitter
following of at least a few hundred people.
Most people who get retweets do so in one of
the following ways:
A) Post something really valuable or clever
B) Ask people to retweet
C) Pay someone to retweet your content.
A or B are probably your best bet.
As far as posting valuable content, it’s
important to make the content relevant. Your
followers are likely people in your industry, so
posting something totally off topic is not
optimal.