10 Best Ways to Expand Your Facebook Network

We’ve been doing social media marketing for several companies over the years using network analysis and came up with these 10 advices to expand your Facebook reach. Please, let us know in comments below what you think and if you have any more tips.

 
 

1. Post Regularly

Establishing your own rhythm of posting will make your Facebook page look alive. It will also ensure you a place in a newsfeed and generate more engagement. The great thing is that you can schedule your posts, so do this every week (aiming at about 28 posts per week) and then add an odd one here and there.

 

2. Variability

Think of your posting as if you’re writing music. If there is a rhythm (see above) then there should also be a melody. The melody will be achieved through various content you post. Just like in music, if the sound is too monotonous, nobody’s going to like it. Alternatively, if you play “several instruments”, it’s going to be much more interesting. Practically that means choosing at least 3 or 4 types of content that is posted per day and posting it around the same time in the day, but not exactly the same time. It’s also good to think of dramaturgy.

 

3. Know Your Most Loyal Readers

It makes sense to learn are those people who are engaged with your posts the most – and starting to communicate with them directly. This can be done using some Facebook stats tools, for instance, netvizz, which can be used to build a bipartite network of your most recent posts and users who commented and liked them the most. Mention those users in your posts, so they can get even more engaged. Having a core of 20-30 users that you know and address personally is a good manageable thing for your Facebook page and it will be to everyone’s benefit also.

 

4. Create Another Facebook Profile

Having another Facebook profile can help you push some of your posts. For example, if you use the personal profile to friend the most engaged fans of your page, then when you like your page’s posts, they will be more likely to see them (because as their Facebook “friend” you liked those posts, so they get pushed up in the newsfeed).
Another cool thing about an extra Facebook profile that has the same friends as your page’s fans is that you can get a more personal impression of your users through that profile’s newsfeed.
It also makes it more likely that any two users will connect, which is a good thing, because you want your Facebook network to be as connected as possible (information propagates better this way).

 

5. Produce Engagement

People are much more interested in posts that that invite them to participate more than just giving a “Like”. So try to formulate posts as questions – those can be very engaging. Also, make all kinds of contests (e.g. “the user whose comment gets the most likes will get the present”) and post Offers.

 

Try InfraNodus Text Network Visualization Tool developed by Nodus Labs. You can use it to make sense of disjointed bits and pieces of information, get visual summaries for text documents, and generate insight for your research process: www.infranodus.com

6. Perform A/B Experiments

An A/B experiment is when you change one parameter while keeping the others intact, so you can observe the effect that change has on the whole thing. On Facebook you can do that by posting content in the morning and in the evening, observing which posts get the most engagement and response.

 

7. Keep Goals Visible

What’s your goal? Is it to get more likes? Website visits? Interesting conversations on your page? It’s good to keep that goal in mind and to always ensure that whatever actions you take feed into that goal.

 

8. Be More Visual

People respond much better to images and videos, so it’s good to have as many more of these as possible.

 

9. Use Hashtags and Mentions

Think of it as if you’re creating a network of people, ideas and content with each post. So the more interconnected and interesting this network is, the better.

 

10. Be the Medium for your Users

The ultimate goal of the medium is to connect. So connect your users together through your posts and pages. The easiest way to do that is to use Facebook ads as they have special settings that allow you to show your page ads to the friends of your fans. This creates a more interconnected graph of your Facebook page fans, which, in turn, means that they’re more likely to see your content in their newsfeed (that’s how Facebook algorithms work).

 
 
Contact us if you need any help with the technical aspects of what we’ve described above. We are happy to give you a free advice and to hear about your experience!

 
 

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