Lots of likes, comments and shares on it.
It would be no fun to have a page with a handful of followers. Or a page where a new post gets very little involvement. Which is why many Facebook page owners often decide to buy Facebook likes. Buying and selling Facebook Likes is a flourishing online business.
There is no dearth of sellers and sites which promise to sell “genuine” or “true” Facebook likes but that is one bait or trap any business or brand should know to avoid. Not only do fake likes get no involvement at all, they are likely to pull down the organic reach of the page besides, of course, running the risk of getting penalized.
Here is a detailed post on “Why buying Facebook Likes is a bad business move?” This should act as an eye opener to all those who have been thinking of buying likes to promote their page or enhance their online visibility.
If BUYING likes is a bad idea, what can businesses and page owners do to enhance the reach of their pages?
The only alternative that works in the long run is to get more real likes.
Though that is easier said than done, it is not impossible to get REAL people with real profiles to get to click the LIKE button.

The sooner you can master the art of winning them over and persuading them to do so, the better it is for you. Assuming, of course, that you do not want your Fan page to be flagged or served a penalty. Worse still, banned altogether.

Here are a few things you need to keep in mind when you step up your efforts to get more free Facebook likes:

1. Have a Facebook Like Page

This seems to be the most common-sensical thing to do, to begin with.
You obviously cannot expect people to connect with you on Facebook unless you have a Like box widget on your website or blog. Try to place it somewhere it is sure to get the visitors’ attention.
You can even try having a slide-in Facebook Like Box.
Experiment by placing it different positions and try out different colors, sizes and height till you begin to get the results you want to.

2. Invite People

Begin building up on numbers by inviting friends and relatives on your list to do you a favour.
Take care to invite only those who will not just ‘oblige’ you with a like and never bother to interact with you on your page. Resist the temptation to do so and invite instead only those people from your list whom you expect to be active members on the page later.
That can fetch you only a few hundred likes, at the most.
What after you are done with that list?
Well, after that start sending out invites to relevant people i.e. people who, according to you, have some interest in your products and /or services.
You can send them direct invites over Facebook or send them emails asking them to connect to you.

3. Online Promotion of The Page

First of all, make sure that each of the pages on your website/blog has a Facebook Like button. Don’t expect your fans to go all the way and log in to Facebook, locate you over there and then Like your page.
Make the process easier for them.
If you reach out to lots of people through emails, put the link to your fan page there too!
If you have a sizeable following on other networking sites like Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon, etc, ask them to like your page.

4. Offline Promotion of The Page

Ask the visitors on your store to follow you on Facebook.
Don’t just ask them.
Provide them something so useful on your Facebook page that they feel energetic to check your page.
Tell them about the wonderful deals, packages and news they would be able to get from time to time if they do so.
Make sure your visiting cards, receipts and handbags for packing all bear the easily recognizable, so that people know they can stay connected to you through this networking site.

5. Provide Value

Remember that visitors to your store and your prospective clients are all human. And all of us love to interact with other people around.
Whether you are selling body building supplements or own a brand of luxury watches. Whether you sell security equipment or software- your end customers are PEOPLE.
And people love to get involved in a conversation. Most of us love to be involved in an intelligent conversation, unless your targeted audience is a bunch of thickheads!
Put some health related stuff from time to time – something that would interest everyone. Even if you are running a health related site.
If your audience is, by and large, local, you could invite a discussion on local issues.
Try humour as well – everyone likes to be tickled once in a while!
See what interests them and share 2-3 updates with them daily, on an average. Try to get them involved in a conversation or discussion.
That is because every time someone likes your post or comments on it, it moves to the top of the News feed and becomes visible once again to all those who have liked you.

6. Run Contests

Running contests and asking all contestants to like your fan page first is another easy way of building up a commendable Facebook presence.
Encourage them to share the story of your giveaway or contest with their friends and give them more points or rewards for doing so.
But again keep in mind that a person who likes your Facebook fan page just because he wants to win the two free t-shirts you are offering as the prize or for winning a free cell phone, they are NOT interested in you as a brand.
They are interested in ONLY the prize. In most probability, they will NEVER visit your page again. And so they simply lower the EdgeRank score of your page by just being there!
Check these 2 FREE Tools to Run a Facebook Contest & Pick a Winner.
So, make sure that the contests you run are highly targeted. People should like you because they ACTUALLY like you or your product.
And not because they stand to win a free gift for doing so!!

7. Running Facebook ads

Now, another way of getting likes to your page is by running Facebook ads.
Facebook ads is one of the most effective ways to boost your brand awareness as most of the people are on Facebook now a days.
On Facebook you can target audience from any specific country with targeted age group and interests.
Few days back Kulwant talked about getting cheap Facebook likes for your business page. Go through that article and read more advanced ways to get penny likes.
They should also be used to get more likes only if you are convinced that doing so will win you loyal people and buyers. People who love you for the personality you portray online.

Twitter is THE source of micro-blogging. As bloggers, we often use Twitter as an extension of the blog persona, expecting to draw traffic, build some authority and network with others. The ‘right’ kind of blog Twitter marketing can yield significant results.
However, getting a Twitter followership isn’t easy or simple. You can’t spend hours clicking ‘Follow’ and neither do you have time to network on Twitter 24×7.
In this article, I offer you 5 working tips to get more followers on Twitter. I do assume you already have a Twitter account, with a nice user profile description and image.

How to Get More Followers on Twitter?

It isn’t difficult. Just understand the science controlling the social media ecosystem and you’re all setup.
The complete social media ecosystem is ruled by “push and pull marketing system”.

What is the Push and Pull Marketing System?

In short, you put the product (blog) either in front of the buyers (pushing) or get the buyers to come seeking you (pulling). ‘Buyers’ here means ‘readers’. The ultimate purpose in learning how to get more followers on Twitter is to expand your blog’s brand. Isn’t it?
So, let’s get on.
All the strategies conform to the push and pull marketing concept.

1) Identify Your Authority

Who are you? A non-entity?
What do you want to become? – That’s the real question, which leads to another thought – how do you want Twitter profile visitors to identify and relate with you?

Dan Zarella, a data scientist with HubSpot, researched the importance of Twitter bios and the relativity factor, and found that people prefer to identify with an authoritative figure.

See the findings above.
As a blogger, we fit anywhere between Founder and Author. Ensure that “what you are” is clearly visible in the Twitter profile bio. Don’t be vague and uncertain. Be specific and focused.

2) Do You “Burst” Often?

A reason why you need to find more Twitter followers is because you’re un-followed frequently. Why is that?
In 2011, a group of Korean researchers studied 1.2 million Twitter accounts over a span of 50+ days, delving into the nature and content of tweets and the level of interaction. The researchers wanted to understand why Twitter accounts get un-followed.
The research revealed that when people share unnecessary things about their life, write on vague and uninteresting topics and tweet too much within a short span of time, it leads to a high number of account un-followers. You can read the report here.
It means you can’t afford to take Twitter presence lightly. You can’t log-in at your own will every couple of days and send a sudden burst of tweets. First, the action won’t benefit the blog and second, you’re likely to be un-followed.
Your Twitter feed should post consistent updates.
If you’ve a blog on WordPress, add plugins like Tweet Old Post, Digg Digg, Really Simple Share and Twitter Share Button, which will regularly send out blog post updates from you and blog readers.
Often, you can pitch it and post a personal update so readers know there is a real person behind the account. You can also sync Facebook with Twitter for auto-sharing account updates on either platform.

3) I Scratched Your Back, Did you?

Twitter pretty much operates within the “you scratch my back, I will scratch yours” environment. Start following people who follow you.
The action might seem counter-intuitive to the current purpose but it helps in the long-run. You’re not a celebrity who follows a couple of people and yet has millions of followers!
Twitter is a crowded place. Often, you won’t even read all the tweets showing up in feed. Therefore, be selective about whom you’re following and following back.
If it’s a blog-based account, remain relevant to the blog niche.
This way, you create a selective community of active Twitter members who identify and are interested in your blog niche.
As a result, when you push updates, they’re more likely to read and take action.

4) Informers vs. Meformers

A Rutgers University research found two things:

• Twitter “Informers” have twice the number of followers than “Meformers”.
• Between Informers and Meformers, the market share is 20:80.

The research founded the term “Meformers” implying tweets which are mostly about the tweet sharer. In comparison, Informers are those who push information out on the web for the benefit of other users.

The researchers studied endless data from millions of Twitter accounts and their interaction to identify 9 types of Twitter updates, as presented below.

According to their data, 53% of tweets were from Informers (Information Sharing) category and 48% were from Meformers (Me Now) category.
Why you needed to know this?
You need to become a part of the “Informers” category and share content which benefits the reader ecosystem. There is a lot of opportunity because the market share is just 20%, which also means you have the chance to become an authority Twitter presence.

5) Content Creator vs. Content Curator

Many social media experts suggest that to master any social media platform, you've to follow an existing influences or authority figure.
It is a fact but just a half-truth. Even if you tried, it is quite tough to get the attention of influencers. They are already too busy and occupied maintaining their own web domains.
Therefore, you have to turn towards something else; you’ve to understand the distinction between content creators and content curators, and decide which one you’ll be.
A content curator is one who scoops up niche-based information around the web and shares it on platforms like Twitter. A content creator is, as you know, a blogger, among other content creator types.
If you’ve just started blogging, begin by sharing blog posts of those who are a step above you in blogging. Such bloggers have just left the tag of a ‘newbie’ and entering into a more professional sphere of blogging BUT they will notice you, for sure.
You can follow a mix bag method. Curate and share content of other bloggers and create and share your own blog content.

It is a cyclical strategy benefiting both, the bloggers and the readers.

This is such a platform where people hangout in realtime, so getting in touch with the customer and taking direct response is one of the prime motive for big companies.
You can check various Facebook ROI case studies where companies performed awesome by investing little money and got up to 4000% ROI with Facebook ads.
We Blogging Cage's Facebook page is a very active page where we share out latest blog posts and informative stuff, so many of our readers were sending question asking how to create a Facebook business page.
So here we are going to guide to step by step procedure to create business Facebook page.
Setting up a Facebook business page hardly takes 2 minutes. What matters is how the business page is optimized to gain maximum results.
This quick guide will teach how to set up a perfect business page on Facebook in quick steps.

1) Create Page

If it is, I'd like to explain what social media meta tags mean for your blog, and how they can help you drive more traffic from social media.
Also, this is not the first time SMT ( Social media tags ) are being discusses on the internet, but the reason we are working on this article is, it's almost a never used section of blog optimization and didn't receive the amount of attention it deserves.
Also with the latest updates on Search Engines and Social Networks, the increased demand for a better optimized post structure is seen, and the methods and strategies to use and improve the meta tags has changed a lot, and we mean a lot, lot.
Thus, it's high time we discussed how to leverage the social media tags for more traffic.
Also we noticed, not every blogger out there will be on WordPress, and thus this is the very first time, that the implementation of Social Media tags on any other platform apart from WordPress is published, because there aren't many people out there who would go to the trouble of all the technical aspects of editing their HTML structure to show you how you can implement this on any other platform except WordPress.
Yes it's of course not alike the meta description you use for your search engine optimization, because Facebook or Twitter are not “Search Engines”, but according to Forbes, 31% of your traffic does come from social media.
Or in other words, you can leverage 31% more traffic from social media than your blog normally receives, but for that your post needs to be optimized enough to drive a high enough CTR ( click through rate ).
Right?
Because it's time, that optimizing posts only for the Search Engines is not sufficient, they need to be optimized for Social networks too because that's where you might be missing some potential traffic.
Okay so what you need to understand before reading this piece is, optimizing your Social Media Meta Tags won't affect your On-page SEO directly, but it does immensely help in grabbing traffic off your Social media networks, specially Facebook and Twitter, because they have their own Meta tags that can be optimized, and recently, there is an increased focus on post structure on these networks.

What are social media tags?

Facebook launched Open Graph couple years back, but less than 20% users on Facebook utilize it. What it exactly does is, it tells Facebook, what a certain post is about, which parts are important and should be displayed along with the post, instead of just displaying a post title.

When you share your post on Facebook, you expect a post format as below screenshot, right?
But sometimes, or maybe most times in your case, something like the below screenshot appears

Oh, and also this article will help you fix your problem for “image not displaying for new blog posts on Facebook”  if you have it, that's another reason to continue reading.
Which post structure in your own opinion, is inclined to have a better CTR rate? The first post, with the well-carved structure and snippet right?

How to optimize Social Media Meta Tags on WordPress:

If you are on WordPress, you're lucky, because it's quite easy for you to optimize the tags on WordPress, as WP has a plugin for almost everything, so just installing this plugin is enough, and it'll take care of everything.
Even if you aren't on WordPress, its not much of a concern. It's not as easy as installing a plugin on other platforms, but it's not as hard as building a spaceship either. So don't worry even if you aren't on WordPress, you can optimize your social media meta tags for almost every platform, and they would help you drain in the traffic regardless of the traffic.
If you aren't on WordPress, most likely you are on Blogger or any such similar platform. The good news is, you can edit the HTML directly in all of them, including even WordPress if you want to, and have the time to do all the manual work.

Optimizing Social Media Meta Tags on blogger or any other Non-Wp platform:

I'm writing this article with a prospect to make this article the first, and most simplified social media meta tags integration post, so even if you are not a coding lover, fear not because I will break this down to the simplest possible format, trust me.
So here's what you need to edit on your page “HTML” in order to optimize it's Social Media Meta Tags:
First of all, you need to update your <head> tag to <<head prefix=”og: http://ogp.me/ns#”>>. I won't go into explaining why because that would just complicate matters, but if you are indeed interested, the comment box is all yours, and I promise an explanation.
After that, you need to add the following pieces of texts ( codes ) onto your post HTML.

• og:title: This is the code that will tell Facebook about your posts' title. Normally, this is by default applied, but still it's better to apply it yourself if you're going for the tags optimization. So you need to add the following property exactly as it is, but make sure to edit the colored part with your relevant title:

<meta property=”og:title” content=”Social Media Tags optimization for more traffic.”/> .

Although keep in mind, not to exceed 90 characters on the title.

• og:type: Next you need to tell Facebook what “Type” of article is it. It's an article related to sports, politics, people or whatever. Now are you getting a picture? On how facebook's “trending posts”categorize themselves as different categories?

So I guess it's clear how important and powerful these tags are for Facebook right? Here's what you need to add to your page HTML to define the article type:

<meta property=”og:type” content=”article”/>

So you're done with the Title and the type right? What about the post “description”? This is one of the most important aspects of a blog post, be it Search Engine or Social Media. Because a title is not always sufficient to tell the audience what the article is about, so the description backs it up, and a well-carved description with the right use of diction ( words that influence ), you can expect at last a 28-35% more engagement on the post.

• og:Description: You probably already have an idea by now how to implement it, so I'll directly share the code, just make sure to edit the green coloured part, with compelling words, that's what matters. Do not worry about keyword density, in fact it's better to avoid it. It will only take up word-space and make the description look desperate, and it doesn't add to the “SEO” of the post on social media, so instead just focus on writing something the “users” can't resist, not the bots.

<meta property=”og:description” content=”Ever heard of Social meta tags? Forbes says they can drive you 31% more traffic, and they are in fashion right now. A 2000 word illustrated guide on Social Meta Tags implementation, even outside WordPress. . “/>

• og:image: This is the most important of all the above-mentioned tags, why? Well, images are the main modification, that social media tags can provide to your post and thus increase your CTR, and just like the very first image screenshot, having an image greatly increases the chances of the post being clicked upon.

<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://www.bloggingcage.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/socialmediametatags.jpg”/>

Implementing the image tag is a bit different, no, not hard , just keep in mind the following tweaks and all will be good:

• Make sure the image is greater than 200px on each side. Well Facebook does accept as small as 50px images, but if we are talking about traffic optimization, lets just do it better.
• Make sure it doesn't exceed 2-3mb's in size.

• og:Url: This tag is helpful, when you have more than one URL for the same content. For eg. Sometimes you might have “http://www.yourwebsite.com/blog/something/” and http://www.yourwebsite.com/p=23 redirect to the same content right? So it helps Facebook know, that the content is the same. And thus the “metrics” meaning the shares, and likes and stuff are both combined, and not are counted as individual engagements, meaning if you receive a like or comment on any one of your URL's, it'll be combined, showing 2 likes on both the posts, instead of showing 1 like on each.

<meta property=”og:url” content=”http://www.bloggingcage.com/2015/01/22/social-media-meta-tags-traffic-boost./”/>.

So after you're done with meta-tagging your posts for Facebook, there's an impressive tool by Facebook that lets you analyze your hard work. In short, it shows you what you've done right, what else needs to be done, and what you shouldn't  have done ( in case you've done such a thing. ) .

The real problem comes when you have to decide how will you advertise online or which channel to hit the most?
While Google Adwords offers “safe” results (effective and prominent), many small businesses often forget about other advertising channels. That being said, you cannot deny the fact that social media is one of the dominating forces in digital marketing today. If you are like me, you likely go through your Facebook news feed, Twitter posts and Instagram pictures several times in a day. Well, your users do this too!
Small businesses are mostly apprehensive about spending or rather, exhausting their marketing budget over all these platforms. Yet, Facebook is one  advertising social media channel which no small business marketer should ever ignore?
Reason? I’m going to give not one, but 5 reasons!
Facebook ads are getting real, effective and valuable results. Not only do they generate awareness and increase your likes but also, contribute towards getting your small business lead generations and ultimately conversions.
Let’s get started on why should you, as a small business, invest in Facebook Marketing.

1. It’s Easy to Set Up

Cutting to the main point: Facebook ads are easy!
You don’t have to be an advertising or marketing guru to crack the process of creating basic ads for facebook. This is especially useful for small business owners who are usually overwhelmed while engaging with the traditional ad platforms.
Facebook has done a great job in simplifying this process for their users.
All you have to do is choose your targeted audience on the basis of Country/City or simply by interests, choose the budget and set your schedule.

2. Huge Audience

Facebook offers the largest opportunities for ad clicks. It has a user base greater than the entire population of China! With over 1.59 billion active users and 800 million users logging in daily, you can find a good percentage of your targeted audience on Facebook.
With elaborate targeting options, you can direct your ads towards a specific audience. It’s a little difficult to reach out to people in the “conventional working hours”. But with Facebook, you can choose to advertise to individuals subtly without the time constraints of the working environment.

3. Economical Cost and Effective Results

Facebook ads definitely do not burn your pocket. In fact, they literally cost a fraction of what other online marketing channels would cost. As a small business, you might be budget-strapped. By targeting the right keywords and audience, you can boost your conversion rates as high as 40%.
You can start with a budget as low as 1$ and still get great results.
Facebook offers four types of bids which you could choose from depending on your campaigning objectives:

• Cost Per Mille (CPM)

Here you bid per thousand impressions. This can help you increase your brand exposure and awareness. Thus, potentially increasing the brand engagement of your business

• Cost Per Click (CPC)

Here you bid per each click. Bidding through CPC can get your users to actively click on your ad and visit your website.

• Optimized cost per mille (oCPM)

You can use this option to direct your ads to people which you think are most likely to act on your ads.

• Cost Per Actions (CPA)

This is the safest option for small business marketers. You pay only when users do a specific action, for example, when they like your page.
With all these options for bidding, it is critical that you choose the most appropriate plan for your ad campaign according to your budget.

4. Targeting Options are Huge

Targeting the right audience with your ads is the key to getting maximum efficiency out of any ad campaign. If we look at other advertising channels, they offer nearly 50% accuracy in targeting users. But Facebook offers an exceptional 90% accuracy.
It lets you segment your audience based on their location, age, gender, interests, education level. The level of granularity offered while selecting the target audience simply impresses me.
Here are some examples:

1. Selling jewellery? You can target women between the age group 25-50 who are  interested in “jewellery”, “fashion” and other related interests.
2. Providing services for home improvement? Target Fans of companies like Home Depot and Ace Hardware.
3. Have an online dating website? Go for singles, use relevant ads for different genders.
4. Selling shoes/clothes/bags for ladies online? Target females whose interests are “shopping” or “fashion”. Select an appropriate range as per your product.

It’s easy to find new leads through Facebook Advertising.
Once you have a target audience that can easily convert, Facebook will help you find new leads with similar interest. The feature is called “Lookalike audience”. Here you select your custom audience and then facebook will reach out to more people who have similar interests.
These lookalike audiences can be built on the basis of conversion pixels (from paid search results),  data from mobile apps or just from your fans on Facebook. Also, you can choose the size and targeting options to make sure that the lookalike audience is a replica to your potential buyers.

5. You can Easily Analyze Your Spend and Performance

On other social media channels, it is relatively difficult to track the exact ROI for the time and resources you have invested in advertising campaigns.
The best part of Facebook Advertising is that you can find out exactly how your ads are performing and what you’re getting out of them.
Facebook Adverts Manager offers a huge range of metrics to help you analyze and measure your performance. Here is the information they provide:

1. Total number of times when your ad was displayed. This includes the impressions, number and type of people who viewed your ad (reach) and the average number of times they saw it (frequency).
2. The actions people took after seeing your ad. It might include likes, comments, engagement and shares.
3. Information about the cost – average Cost per like, cost per click and cost per conversion.

It is important to analyze your ad performance from time to time to understand what works for you. To track your conversions, use utm_campaign parameter.
I hope by now you’ve understood that investing your time and resources in facebook advertising is worthwhile.
Having talked about the reasons to advertise on Facebook, now I am going to give you a quick primer to get you started with Facebook Advertising.

How does Facebook Advertising work?

Facebook ads offer a variety of options. You can customize the ad to promote your page, your posts, your website or other actions that your users take. Though the main objective of Facebook remains to keep traffic on their site, you can still succeed at sending users to your website, if you choose the right targeting options.
How would you target Facebook ads?
Targeting the wrong audience is the #1 mistake done by marketers.
The targeting options Facebook offers are unparalleled . You can target users on Facebook on the following basis:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Interests
• Languages they speak
• Education
• Relationship status
• Workplaces
• Connections

While all these options can be useful depending on the type of audience, I’d suggest you to mainly focus on Location, Age, Gender and Interests.
Location: Through this, you can target users in the country, state or city where your business operates.
Age and Gender: This depends on your existing customer base. If you sell cosmetics, women between 23-45 are your probable targeted customers. Start by targeting this group. If the campaign gives you great results, you can then go ahead and expand your target audience.
Interests: This is the most effective, but misused feature of Facebook ads. Targeting interests offers two options: Broad Category targeting and Precise Category targeting

• Broad Category targeting: This includes categories like Consumer, Electronics, Expecting Parents, Birthday in 1 month, Horror movies and so on. You can reach a large range of audiences through this category, but its results do not justify the costs. I’d suggest you to avoid this category and focus more on Precise Category targeting.

• Precise Interest Targeting: This targets users on the basis of their profile information. Likes, apps they prefer, timeline content are some examples. Choosing this category appropriately gives the best ROI.

Facebook offers a variety of interest from Harry Potter to Yoga, but choosing the right one is a task!
When you’re targeting these interests, Facebook offers the size of the audience and other suggested interests. Once you’ve selected the interests for your ad, Facebook will suggest an aggregated bid.

One quick suggestion here would be to not go with the largest group possible (as these are more expensive and less targeted). Rather than going with these broad terms, research a little on specific interests (for example, which groups they follow, which magazines they read and likewise). This way you’ll reach people who are interested in your business and are willing to spend money on your product/service.