I added ‘in a week’ to make you click the title to be honest with you.
It took me a little over two weeks to get about 700 fans without spending a dime in times FB pages are a little too many, meaning getting likes for free could be quite a challenge (don’t worry, I got you back)
I don’t care about FB that much, I personally think time killers (and/or marketers) use it and they are not the best audience for me (you will get me only if you are after millions), however, I wanted to test and see how a tool would perform, turned out it was killing it… will tell you about it in a sec.
I think Facebook was easy and worth it in 2005, now everybody is an ‘entrepreneur’, or a ‘best selling author’ or whatever they could think of to fake it till they make it… and all this craziness makes pages useless as people get tired of all he same crap getting published on different pages.
You could still build a page fast and for free though, but to really make it work you have to run paid ads.
Let me show you how to get fans for free, then I’ll tell you what to do with paid ads and you will decide for yourself whether to run them or not.
I say rum em, but I get you if you don’t have cash, I had nothing when I started online and totally understand why you’d want to get there for free.
Posting a widget in you sidebar is not enough any more, you have to get creative… and more specifically use exit intent technology to get fans.
I have no idea why, but people would rather like your page on their way out (if you catch them LOL) rather than while reading or doing anything else on your site, maybe everybody is tired of page widgets and other regular stuff, and just don’t care about them.
Exit page takeovers, or popups if you will, are the bomb, some don’t like them, but they work really really well.
Fortunately, there is a free service that works just as well as paid such, and even better, it’s called Hellobar and although the free version is supposed to show ads to every tenth visitor, I haven’t seen any ads since I’ve been using it… I think it’s just an upselling trick, though the traffic limitations are real.
Update: I’ve been using the plugin for a little over a month now and there are ads popping up every once in a while, they are shown to every 5-th visitor to be more specific (unlike what they claim), you need the paid version to get rid of the advertising…
…the free version still works great and will build your page as quick as you wouldn’t believe, take a look at this pic:
Every 100 visits get you a like and if you are promoting a more generic page, and/or put some more thought into the copy, you can get more than that, but 1 like per every 100 visits is pretty much what you are supposed to get.
I used to hate Hellobar, which is why I’d never used it (it sucked before, the browsers blocked it and support said it was me who had enabled some blocking LOL), but now it’s a top notch tool, I guess Neil (the owner) has invested enough to make it this good.
I get the most likes on Saturdays and Sundays and show the popup to everyone.
Some people get annoyed, especially those who have already liked the page, but I think showing it to everybody is awesome for branding.
If you are good at writing copy, you’ll be fine, if not, you should read the blog and get good… or maybe go straight to Amazon and download my book.
That’s how you get free likes.
You can also shoot viral uplifting videos, you know, like those that show famous people and share their stories with one sentence, people love them…
…let me give you an example:
Create a slide show video with some uplifting background music and share how those famous people on the photos have become who they are with one short and to the point sentence. These types of videos tend to get shared a lot.
That’s how you get boatloads of free likes.
A friend of mine got 50K likes in a few days (that’s right, in a few days) with such videos, and the page was brand new.
To really get things going fast you need paid ads, and they are not expensive at all.
You don’t need any tutorials or courses how to run paid FB ads, just login to the ads manager and try to make them as cheap as possible, and that happens when your ads are interesting enough for more people to engage with them.
Another thing I’ve tested to work awesome is three step giveaway campaigns, they work like this:
Set up a contest page and paste this:
to win this prize (something you are willing to giveaway) do this:
1 Answer some dumb question
2 Like my page to get notified about something or share this campaign with your friends (give them a unique referral link) to help them win the prize
3 whatever you want them to do
Set up some timer when the contest will end and choose a winner on that date.
Announce the winner publicly on your page to get even more social interaction and post a million pics of the winner with the prize.
You can even choose someone to pretend they are the winner like most do (something I do NOT approve) and still get likes and shares, though the latter would make you a huge douche, I’d suggest do it right with a real winner and a real prize…
…you know douche bags never succeed in life, they get away with schemes every now and then but at the end they are still douches.
If you don’t know how to setup your campaign, you can use Upviral, they have ready to use templates, contests, integrate with everything and are the best way to go if you are a non tech savvy… the tool is actually good for any type of referral traffic campaigns.
That’s how you build a Facebook page for free or with paid marketing… or with both, it’s not that difficult, not that expensive, just do as told in this article and you will be famous soon… and you and me both know popularity is the name of the game in the world we live in.
let me know if you liked this article and keep being awesome.
Vladi
