If your goal is to have your business or brand name show up on page #1 of search engine and be trusted as an industry leader, you can’t skip having a thriving social media presence.

Google thinks you’re relevant when you’re on Facebook and other social channels, and even more so if you have reviews.

If you landed here you might be a beginner, or want to refresh your skills on how to grow your social media following.

I’m going to share a few tips and tricks you can implement right away to start noticing more followers and exposure to your brand.

Sign up for alerts on my new blogs as I cover a series of how to do business with social media channels, one at a time, starting with Facebook.

Do you have a dedicated business page for your business? Why is it important to have one?

It’s free.

To start a page for your business, one of the ways would be to simply go to any website browser and type in facebook.com.

Below the “create account” button you will see wording that says “create an account for a celebrity, band or business”. That is what you’ll want to click on.

The next part of the set up will allow you to choose the type of page you want based on the kind of business you are. Functions on the pages are set up a little differently depending on this.

Next, you’ll want to enter all your information.

Pro Tip #1: Do: Enter your businesses information the same across all your social media channels if you can. Try to avoid vary spellings: Road, Rd. etc.

Pro tip #2: Complete every field as fully with interesting information about your company, awards, your values, services, etc.

Pro tip #3: when finished setting your profiles up, link them all together by posting links to your other social media profiles and your website.

Pro tip #4:  Photos of people, facing square to the camera with space above your head will help you get better engagement.

Pro tip #5: Use canva.com to create a professional looking cover image for your pages. When finished, be sure to look at your facebook page from desktop, phone and tablet to be sure the images are not cut off.

Like my facebook page

Once you have your page setup it’s time to start getting social to grow your following by creating content and interacting with people.

The frequency of posting shouldn’t be so much that people tune you out.

You’ll want to research what your target audience likes and dislikes if you don’t already know this.

Look at pages that are similar to your business and look at who is following them. What are they sharing? Share similar content on your page.

If you need help finding content to post, you can check out facebook trends or google trends to see what kind of things people are talking about right now. Design your posts around something that will spark a conversation about this.

You will want to post a variety of content to your page that is educational, engaging and entertaining.

To get people to interact with your post you must have some form of emotion or feelings attached to it. Will it make them happy, proud, sad, mad? Great! Other people are going to think so too, and you will start to see a reaction.

Once people start liking or loving a post facebook thinks this is the sort of post that needs to be shared with more people, giving you a much bigger reach. Once someone has interacted by liking your posts, you can go into the post, click on the names, and invite these people to like your page if they have not already done so. This is how you can grow your audience organically.

Also look at other posts from your competition pages or target audiences facebook pages. If you see a post getting good engagement, share this on your page. These are more likely to work well for you too.

If you have a personal facebook page attached to your business page you can invite your friends from your personal page to also like your page.

It’s very important to interact with people that leave comments on your posts and answer messages right away, Facebook shows your response rate and if you have a fast response rate,  you will be more trusted.

Join groups that your target audience hang out in, and start one for yourself too that is a place to gather your tribe and become known as the expert. Don’t go into the group trying to sell right away, hang out and listen for a while and get the feel of the group. Add as much value as you can and you will start to see more engagement to your brand.

Let me know if you have a specific facebook business page question! Stay tuned for more info on how to grow your social media as I dive into each social channel.