With the millions of people who connect to Facebook every day, there are few who can afford to turn your back (according to a recent study by TechCrunch, 63% of French Internet users are now on Facebook, and 69% of them use it daily). In the present context, the legitimate question to ask is how to maximize your presence on Facebook to generate more leads.

More fans = more leads = more customers

One of the most frequently cited ways to generate quality leads who are interested in the products and services of the company is to increase the number of fans on your Facebook page. In fact, getting a larger community of fans is not just good for your ego, it’s also beneficial for your business! How should therefore go about building your fan base on Facebook to get targeted and qualified audience? Here are some tips:

Facebook Ads: become indispensable?

This is by far the easiest and quickest way to get fans… But it is not free! Facebook advertising is an excellent opportunity to connect with users who have socio-demographic characteristics of interest. To target the right people, it is essential to know your audience, tastes and needs by establishing a standard profile called Buyer Persona. Characteristics from which you can segment Facebook Ads are:

• Age
• Education
• Interests and hobbies
• Location

Once you defined profile, you will be able to find a receptive audience that is interested in your content, and thus develop an effective campaign that will best serve your marketing objectives.

Competitions

Many brands use contests to attract new fans on their Facebook page, and often the results are rather mixed. While it is undeniable that these will help you reach a new audience, fans acquired are often not very good. For example, if you are hosting a contest to win movie tickets and your business is absolutely not related to this area, you may see land a horde of “opportunists” who come like your page just by greed (and who can blame them?) and they will not hesitate to unsubscribe or block you from their new feed once the action is completed.

That’s why, when you have a contest, it is important to offer prices that relate to your brand, whether one of your products or something connected in any way to your products / services and your message. In this way, you will attract a lot more qualified audience and likely to become a real client.

In the form of competition, several options are available:

• Campaigns sweepstakes (excellent way to collect email addresses and thus obtain valuable leads)
• The content generated by users (e.g. Photo contest featuring online using one of your products)
• The votes (for example, ask your fans to choose between two versions of your new logo)

A dedicated strategy content

Finally, it would be completely unrealistic to try to win a community of fans who interact with your brand if you do not offer them content that may be of interest. Of course, for this you must first know who are the individuals which make up your audience and what are their interests.

And remember, as far as possible, to add visual content to your publications, they traditionally have much more impact (in terms of “likes”, comments and shares) than other types of content. This is due among other things, to the new version of the Google news feed, which would focus on those visual publications rather than ones that contain only text.

You can also share with us what strategies have you used to increase the number of your Facebook fans.

Albert Palacci is passionate about digital marketing and helping small business owners to grow , he is writing for several online magazines and websites, also you can check his Google+ and you can find more about him on his Pinterest or Academia profile.