How To Grow Your Facebook Page Quickly [Case Study With Examples]

Wondering how to grow your Facebook page — and in turn, your blog?

Then you’re in the right place.

Here’s the deal:

As a blogger, you’re also a small business owner.

And if you’ve ever asked yourself “Is Facebook right for my business?”, you likely came to the conclusion that it is.

Why?

Well, not only is almost every demographic and interest on Facebook, but it’s one of the top social media platforms for business due to its huge number of built-in features, like Facebook groups, live video, event creation and Page Insights.

The problem is, growing an engaged Facebook audience isn’t as simple as posting daily.

The good news:

In this case study post, you’ll learn how to dramatically increase your Facebook post reach and engagement using simple strategies.

We’ll look at one travel blog in particular, and how they grew a highly engaged audience using Facebook in less than one year.

Psst! Don’t forget to pin this post for later!

Facebook Engagement Case Study: Wandering Rose Travels

In my online travel blogging courses, I encourage bloggers to stop trying to be everywhere, and instead choose just a few platforms they can really rock.

Which is exactly what Martin and Libby Rose of Wandering Rose Travels did with their Facebook business page.

Martin is a member of my Travel Blog Prosperity membership community — which you can join the waitlist for here, as doors are opening back up soon!

Wandering Rose Travels aims to encourage baby boomers to pursue active travel; with their adventures often including five-to-eight-mile hikes and bike rides up to 50 miles.

There’s a charitable angle, too:

Most of the blog’s revenue is donated to charities that support affordable housing, e-bikes and preserving outdoor spaces, like People for Bikes, Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains and Habitat for Humanity.

And their social media strategy for growing their blog?

Instead of scrambling to be everywhere, create a focused, consistent strategy for Facebook that works.

A Quick Note On Facebook Ads

Now before we continue with the case study…

I want to share some juicy information about Facebook Ads!

Below, we’ll discuss these further, though I’ve also created the video above to help you troubleshoot ads that aren’t performing well.

Bonus:

Click here to snag my FREE 11 Steps To High-Converting Facebook Ads Blueprint.

This no-fluff freebie includes actionable advice, visuals and workbook sections so you can put learning into practice.

Grabbed it?

Then let’s get back to the case study.

Quality Over Quantity

When it comes to Facebook — and really any marketing platform, whether it be social media, email or your blog itself — you should focus on quality over quantity.

This means it’s much better to have a small and engaged audience who actually reads your blog, subscribes to your newsletter and purchases your products, than a large audience who rarely clicks.

For this reason, it’s smart to focus on social media engagement over straight fans and followers.

Wandering Rose Travels has really mastered this concept.

At the time of writing, their Facebook business page has 3,474+ fans; a healthy number, though there are many travel blogs with a larger fanbase.

But here’s the thing:

Their Facebook shares consistently get over 50 likes — actually, frequently over 100 likes.

The comments they receive are genuine, and it’s not uncommon for a post to get over 20 shares.

In their first year, they’ve reached over 230,000 Facebook users.

And not surprisingly, Facebook is the primary driver of traffic to their website.

This is incredible, especially when you realize that plenty of Facebook business pages with much larger followings aren’t seeing engagement numbers like these.

In this post, Martin shares exactly how they did this — so you can replicate Wandering Rose Travels’ Facebook strategy for your own social channels!

What Is Organic Reach On Facebook?

There are two types of reach on Facebook:

• Organic. This involves reaching people without any paid promotion involved.
• Paid. This involves paying for Facebook Ads.

While you can certainly grow your business focusing only on organic Facebook reach, the truth is it will be tougher and will take you much longer.

In this case study post, Martin will share actionable advice and examples utilizing both organic and paid tactics (as in, using a Facebook Ads for bloggers strategy).

Martin’s insights come from what he’s learned from his first year of successfully creating and growing an engaged Facebook business page.

What is very clear:

It is possible to make Facebook work for your blogging business, even in a small amount of time.

You just need the right strategy.

How To Increase Organic Reach On Facebook

1. Post less frequently, but more relevantly.

We believe this Facebook strategy has paid off for us in better engagement.

Our aim:

Publish to Facebook three times a week, sometimes only two.

2. Create deep content just for Facebook.

Video does fantastic.

We’ve also had great success with collections of 12-24 photos, published as a post, with captions.

3. Respond to or acknowledge every Facebook comment as quickly as possible — within a few hours preferably. 

Facebook likes this and rewards you.

If someone has a complaint, address it openly.

Encourage conversation with readers and engage wholeheartedly when they share photos, tips or stories.

If someone asks for advice, help them out or direct them elsewhere.

How To Get More Likes On Facebook Posts

4. For the most part, people who are on Facebook want to stay on Facebook, not go to your web page.

Too many bloggers focus most of their posts on promoting their website articles.

We did too, at first, because we looked at Facebook solely as a driver of web traffic.

As time went on and we realized we needed to tweak our strategy, this perspective changed.

The truth:

Facebook is a standalone channel capable of having its own fans who may or may not ever touch your blog.

As such, we limit link click posts to our site to about 30%-50% of total posts.

And we’re increasingly putting links in text for those that want more, but including enough in the post to get the message across for those that don’t.

5. When posting links, keep the text light, interesting and engaging.

Don’t repeat what’s in the link preview.

Experiment with the link preview format versus text link with a photo attached.

We’ve personally had more success with the link preview box containing a strong image.

6. One of the best ways to stay engaged with fans is to mix posts about travel destinations and tips with personal posts about yourself.

This helps build your brand and a loyal fanbase that wants to stay engaged with you.

Plus, this differentiates you from all the big corporate travel blogs that crank tons of content but lack personality.

Include photos of yourself traveling, share how you celebrate holidays and seasons, and introduce your travel companions and the important people in your life.

How To Increase Reach On Facebook Ads

7. For each post that can achieve a business goal, put some money behind it to reach targeted people outside your fanbase.

Wondering how much to spend on a Facebook Ad?

Well that depends on many factors, though for us it generally equates to $40 per campaign.

I realize this can be a barrier for new bloggers; but you can easily give up one thing — coffee, drinks, a meal out — each week and invest in your business.

From that investment, our main goals are to grow our email list or Facebook fanbase.

One strategy:

We invite everyone who likes a post to then like our page, and do it immediately so they remember our name.

This produces slow but steady growth, and our paid promotions are very targeted so we’re reaching the right people for the content and our brand.

The more popular a post is, the more likes you will earn.

Even a $10 Facebook boost post cost can exponentially increase reach and engagement.

And all this builds upon itself, improving your visibility and relevance, and growing your community, reach and engagement.

8. Facebook loves video, and you can use it to reach people cheaply.

We reached 12,000 people for 1-cent per video view — and many became fans.

We ran 65 posts for engagement — as in, likes, shares, comments — at six cents per engagement.

Link posts were more expensive at 31 cents per click, but more valuable as they connect people to the site.

Our page likes campaign — featuring engaging video or photography — averaged 34 cents per like and conversion rate of 9.3%.

That gives you some sense of an average benchmark.

Honestly, we’re doing even better now that we’ve learned what makes a good Facebook Ad.

9. Paid ads are mainly about targeting.

You should know from your blog’s business plan who your desired audience is.

Then, you want to find them on Facebook.

Watch your demographic insights to hone in on who’s performing the best.

Split test different audiences to see what works best.

Pay attention to your relevance score, which ranges from 1-10. The higher the score, the more people you will reach and less money you will spend.

Facebook has been giving us 9’s and 10’s for relevance scores recently, allowing us to reach up to 11,000 people — who care about the topic — for $40.

10. Check in with your strategy, and shift goals as needed. 

For our first year, paid Facebook Ads were used to drive traffic to our website because we needed readers while we cultivated organic search, referral and direct traffic.

We have grown those over the course of the year, and will continue to focus our energies there.

Honestly, we hate paying for traffic that is going to be one and done; but we felt like it was a necessary tactic when growing a blog and Facebook business page from scratch.

In our second year, we plan on being more intentional about trying to convert site visitors into email subscribers or fans.

Facebook Share Examples From Year #1

Example #1

This early success taught us the power of asking relevant groups and pages to share our posts.

We emailed the director of this county’s tourism board, who shared our post with their huge fan base.

You can see how much of engagement came from shares.

We used precise geo-targeting for paid promotion to hone in on a four-state area within a short drive’s distance, in addition to age and interest targeting.

Engagement was much higher than usual because it was much more relevant to the audience.

Example #2:

This was our first effort at deep content prepared specifically for the Facebook audience.

It is essentially a photo album of places we have visited in Maine with captions to explain where things are.

We quickly discovered that viewers love this kind of thing and engage.

Facebook likes it too, giving us a great relevance score and serving it out to many more people than we usually get for $40.

Example #3:

Our $40 investment paid off big in the form of shares and earned a very high relevance score.

Almost 9% of people reached reacted, and 14% clicked on the post.

Success was featuring a unique, timely exhibition, combining a popular destination with a well-known artist.

Example #4:

Our post on the Canadian Rockies is an example of content exclusive to Facebook.

As with the above Biltmore/Chihuly example, Facebook gave this its highest relevance score, so $40 went very far.

We were thrilled with the 11,330 people reached, with 14% of these people reacting, including 1,070 post clicks.

We then invited all who liked the post to also like our Facebook page, leading to a gain of about 100 new Facebook fans.

Example #5:

Wandering Rose Travels developed a free personality quiz, which is hosted our on website. The goal is to entice a user to leave Facebook and spend time on our site.

As always, targeting is the key to relevance, and Facebook rewarded us with a ton of page views for our investment.

Our initial $40 over five days did so well we extended it to a second week with an additional $80.

We also created an interactive Google Map of the 59 U.S. National Parks that we offer on the quiz page to new email subscribers.

The plan:

To do more with the interactive map later, but for the moment want to see how it does with this audience that has an affinity for national parks.

We are awed that of 8,488 people reached, 1,293 clicked through to our website.

Example #6:

Newsjacking is another technique that helps relevance and engagement, and therefore, reach.

We visited Windsor, England a few weeks before it was announced as the site of the 2018 royal wedding.

We waited until the week of the wedding to feed the wedding frenzy with these two posts.

The post with 18 photos was intended to generate photo view and reactions within Facebook, while the other post was intended to drive traffic from Facebook to our website.

Both performed stunningly for what they were intended.

Example #7:

Quotes with images always do well for us.

Just watch the amount of text in the image versus Facebook’s limitations.

They are a great way to stay connected to our fan base and get lots of shares.

The key:

Make sure they truly express your personality and travel philosophy.

Example #8:

We try to limit “local” posts, but the Chinese Lantern Festival was too unique to pass on.

The strategy:

We kept our paid target area very close within two-hours or less from the event.

This was another early success, with a 6,000+ reach, 403 reactions and 282 post clicks — well above our average at the time.

Have any insight to add on how to grow your Facebook page? Please share in the comments below! 

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