How I Grew My Facebook Page to 48,000+ Fans Without Spending a Penny

I’m a huge fan of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Besides being an avid fan, I used to work there as a national host and producer for its CBC Radio One network. So it came sort of naturally that I started a fan page on Facebook for it. Not even two years later, and the Page now has 48,000 very engaged fans — far more than any other CBC page (official or not). Sometimes it’s so busy that within 15 minutes of posting something on the page, more than a hundred people have commented on it.

If you’d like to grow your page zero to 48,000 fans, here are some tips I recommend:

Set Up an Auto-Publishing Twitter Account

Facebook lets you automatically tweet out page updates onto a Twitter account, so I established @aboutcbc on Twitter and it serves as a promotional channel — whenever I post something on the Page, this account tweets out the post with a direct link to the post. This reminds people to check the Page and, if they’re not already following the page, to Like it.

Follow Lots of Obscure Content Sources

In my feed reader, I have a tonne of sources that publish content about the CBC — sources like the CBC’s official news web site and some program web sites. But I find the links that generate the most engagement come from sort of obscure sources. For instance, I follow this great (but horribly designed) blog about the Canadian radio industry, this blog for a band called Peter Mansbridge and the CBCs (totally unrelated to the CBC), and follow an RSS search for CBC on eBay. I find the more random and offbeat the content, the more engagement happens.

Here’s an example of a recent eBay find:

I wish eBay had an affiliate program — usually things I post from eBay on the Page sell within minutes. Here’s another example: Note the last comment of someone telling everyone they’d bought it:

Actively Engage

A few hours after I post something on the page, I usually try to go back and engage in a little conversation with some of the commenters. This, of course, drives more comments and the engagement loop remains solid. Putting a little bit of you in the page goes a long way to humanizing the content.

Actively Moderate

While 99.9% of the people who comment on the page are respectful and have thoughtful opinions, every so often someone will post a totally off-topic, promotional comment or link. Facebook lets page administrators remove the content and, if they keep doing it, I ban them from commenting further. It helps keep the signal-to-noise ratio in check. For instance, here’s a comment that just landed on one of my posts:

I get this periodically — people posting links that have nothing to do with the CBC. Even if I might agree with the sentiment posted (in this case, how could you not oppose a page about killing Jews), people who post off-topic links or comments are immediately banned.

Create “Columns”

Just as how a newspaper or magazine has regular columns in each issue, I’ve created columns of sorts — “Cool eBay Find” is a regular feature, for instance, as is “InfoPr0n” (occasional posts about the demographics/stats of fans on the page), and the self-explanatory “Breaking News.” To indicate it as a column post, I simply type that column name in caps, like this:

Over time, your fans will recognize the column names in their News Feed and dive into reading it. Which brings me to…

Pay Attention to Your Insights

Every Page administrator gets access to basic statistics about their page’s fans and interactions. By looking at the stats periodically, you can make sure your content is in alignment with who’s on your Page. The Insights tool also lets you see which posts got the most engagement (likes and comments) — all good data to have that should inform what you produce. If you’re a Page administrator, you can see your Insights here.

Don’t Be Afraid to Post Marginally Related Content

When you’ve got a good sense of your audience, sometimes you’re able to make an educated guess as to the kind of content they may like — even if it’s not directly related to your Page’s topic. For instance, I know that many CBC Radio fans consider themselves grammar aficionados — so I posted this short poll, which generated a lot of engagement and comments (the semi-colon won by a landslide, btw):

Things I Plan to Still Do

1. Use a Custom Landing Page: Right now, when you land on the page for the first time, you hit the Wall page. In theory, if you wanted to just follow along, you wouldn’t have to Like the page at all — you could just visit it (you wouldn’t be able to comment until you Liked it, mind you). But by creating a custom tab that welcomes people to the page and encourages them to Like it, you’ll drive up the number of followers. Here’s an example.
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   UPDATE: I’ve now added a landing page. My favourite tactic, which I’ve employed, shows a blurred-out version of the Wall (it’s a static image, not live), with a note to Like the page. Here’s what it looks like to non-fans:
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   The FBML code to make that work, in case you’re curious, looks like this (note that you have to off-set the top margin of the non-fan content the same number of pixels as the height of the fan content):
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   <fb:visible-to-connection>
   <img src=”http://www.todmaffin.com/uploads/landingtab_2.jpg”>
   <fb:else>
   <p style=”margin-top:-1000px;”><img src=”http://www.todmaffin.com/uploads/landingtab_1.jpg”></p>
   </fb:else>
   </fb:visible-to-connection>
   .
2. .Send More Messages: Facebook lets you send messages to all the followers of your page. Unlike friend-to-friend messages, these Page messages drop into a separate “Other” Facebook inbox. But still, with 48,000 fans, a few will read it and, with some creative copy they’ll be driven back to the Page.
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3. Use Polls More Frequently: Polls are a great way to get quick engagement. I’ve only used polls a few times because I can’t find a poll application that doesn’t make users approve adding another application — this tends to confuse a lot of people and drives down the number of people who take part in the polling. .

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