K atie c ouric

Three Ways to Generate a Following
There are three ways you can grow a following on Facebook. The first two
ways are by using the Facebook advertising platform, which enables you to
(1) 
make a piece of content go viral
to gain mass awareness with the
correlative effect of people following you based on this exposure or (2) 
use
a page likes ad unit
(any ad with the goal of creating more likes/followers
for your page) to target potential new followers. One of the simplest ways
to create this type of campaign is to access it through Ads Manager on the
Facebook ad platform and select Page Likes as your marketing
goal/objective. This isn’t the only way to use page likes ad units, however
—explaining the nuances of the Facebook ad platform could be an entire
book in and of itself.
For more resources to assist you in learning how to use the
Facebook ad platform, check out 
www.optin.tv/fbtutorials
.
Both tactics above are effective, and ultimately I recommend using a
combination of them. Knowing how to make a piece of content go viral is a
stronger long-term tactic. Start by testing the content you already have and
see if it results in a significant number of people sharing it. It’s always best

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to generate followers with great viral content because that will keep your
audience engaged. You may be asking yourself, “How do I go about
creating shareable or viral content on a consistent basis? What’s the
formula?” Glad you asked—
chapter five
 is entirely about this topic. But for
now, it’s still valuable to start by creating an ad with the marketing
objective of “page likes,” as I mentioned above, to test and learn what it
takes to get someone to follow you.
Because of Facebook’s algorithms, even after you hit a million
followers, the content that you post will only reach on average between 2
and 5 percent of your audience. Most people have liked hundreds, if not
thousands, of pages. When people look at their main feed, Facebook can
only show them so much content. The main feed needs to be limited to the
best-performing content from all the pages one has opted in to. And
Facebook also makes sure that users are getting content from their closest
friends. The algorithms weigh content to make sure that people’s social
feeds are filled with what interests them. If your content isn’t resonating, it
will only be shown to a small subset of your audience. On the other hand, if
the content performs well, it’ll reach a vast majority (if not all) of your
following base, giving you the potential to get that content shared and to
gain organic growth.
Keep this in mind if you choose to use the Facebook page like
objective. It was part of my strategy in building my following because it’s a
great tool that can scale and build your validation number to a credible
point. You gain real connections with real people, and your newfound
credibility can be leveraged to fuel organic growth, which is the third way
of gaining a following on Facebook. I’ll get deeper into achieving organic
growth in subsequent chapters—particularly through strategic alliances in
chapter six
—but you still need to build a solid content strategy via the first
two methods so you don’t limit yourself to only reaching 2 to 5 percent of
your audience per post.
For a more detailed explanation of how I used the page
objective to scale quickly, visit 
www.optin.tv/brendan
.

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