Building Your Facebook Page Following

For a Facebook Page to be an effective marketing tool, you need to cultivate an online community consisting of an engaged following. That means the people who follow you pay attention and interact with you as well as with one another.

A Facebook Page is typically visible to the general public, and people have the option to like or follow it. When a person likes a page, they are showing support for a Page. In order to see your Page’s content, they need to follow your Page.

There are organic ways to build a following for your Facebook Page as well as paid methods. Here are some tactics you can use to try to increase your follower numbers on your Facebook Page.

Note that none of these tactics are guaranteed to produce consistent results. The company that owns Facebook (Meta), deliberately limits the visibility of your Page and posts in order to encourage you to pay to advertise.

Follower Tactics Off Facebook

While it may sound counterintuitive, some of the best ways to build a following for your Facebook Page is to invite people to follow it using tools that are not on Facebook.

Reach out to Personal Contacts. Reach out to your current contacts through personal emails and through your email list and invite them to follow your Facebook Page. This is the most direct way to get people who are already interested in what you do to connect with you through your Page. If they are not already a Facebook member, they will have to become one in order to follow. Remember to put a link to your Facebook Page in your email signature.

Web-based Promotions. Install a Facebook Page plug-in into your company website home page to display a graphic with a button so people can click to like your Page. Facebook gives you several versions of the plug-in, from one that embeds your Facebook cover image to more detailed ones that include photos of some of your followers. Installing it requires some basic knowledge of HTML and access to your website’s code. It is also standard to include small social media icons across the top or bottom of your website linking to your accounts including your Facebook Page.

Offline References. Look for other places where you can place a Facebook icon such as your print materials, from business cards to brochures, as well as product packaging. Wherever you can, include your direct Facebook web address to help people find you such as facebook.com/yourcompanyname or your handle such as @yourcompanyname.

Follower Tactics on Facebook

Invite to Follow. On your Facebook Page, click on the Likes icon on each individual post to see the list of people who have liked that particular post. If the person is not already following your Page, you will see a button beside their username to invite them to do so. This is an easy way to get people who have demonstrated interest in your content to take the next step of following you.

Promote Your Page Through Paid Ads - If you’re ready to advertise on Facebook to get more Followers, click the Promote button toward the top of your Page. There you can create a new ad specifically tailored to get more likes or start with Automated Ads that customize over time based on Facebook’s vast user data.

You can boost individual posts on Facebook, Events, and posts on your linked Instagram account. You can also import your email lists to your Facebook page when creating a "Custom Audience" in the Facebook Ads Manager to target Facebook ads to your email subscribers.

There is nothing wrong with occasionally posting a status update on your Page that asks your current followers to share your content with others or to ask them to invite their Facebook friends to Follow your Page.

Likewise, you can do similar invitations on Instagram and Threads, both of which are owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta. Be careful about promoting your Facebook Page on other social networks. Some, like X, may penalize you by banning you from their network.

You never know where you’ll find best and most active followers for your Page. Cast a wide net to gain more followers, using a variety of tactics, but also zero in on people who are most likely to be interested in connecting with you specifically on Facebook.