Every small business owner or social media marketing team wants to get more followers or fans to subscribe to their facebook page. The more people they have the greater the potential reach of their marketing messages. Did you know if you ask people to be your friend on facebook the wrong way you can get your company site banned? This happens time and time again to over enthusiastic page owners. What they do is use the search facility to find people interested in their products. As the owner of a fly fishing shop I would search for people interested in fly fishing. I would get a list of facebook users who have listed down in their profile that they enjoy fly fishing. It would not be healthy for my company's facebook page to send all these strangers a friend request. It only takes a couple of these people to report you as spamming them for commercial reasons and that they do not know you, to get you in trouble. Facebook will close your facebook account for breach of it's terms of service. Do not send strangers friend requests.

So what is the best way to get more followers without having to spend a lot of money on advertising? The answer is to use Facebook Groups. On the left hand side of the web version of Facebook you will see the heading "Groups". Click on it to go to the Groups page. I searched for "fly Fishing" and found many groups set up to talk about different aspects of the sport and in different locations around the world.

I look for groups that have a large membership and then ask to join. Once accepted I then post questions to the group and interesting articles. I will then follow selected group members who could be potential customers. This action can generate people following you back. Sometimes you have to start a conversation with them before they follow your newsfeeds. I usually ask their advice or opinion on a topic. People love being asked to express an opinion or show their knowledge. It feels like a compliment, that someone else values what they say online. I ask questions where the answers can provide me with good market research or content that I can use on my web page.

Another great way to get more subscribers to your pages is to run a competition. The above example is from a company called Friend in Iceland. They offered to put followers names into a competition draw for free tickets to Iceland once the facebook page reached 3000 followers. This is a sponsored post, a paid for advert and is very effective as it appears in the normal news feed rather than in the advert section side bar which most facebook users ignore. In the "power dashboard" you can tell facebook to submit your sponsored post to people who say they like travel in their profile. It would work better to narrow this down people who like whale watching, bird watching, Vikings, volcanoes, geysers or adventurous holidays to get a better return on your investment ROI.