Instead of spending hours and hours scrolling through the Instagram feed on your phone, you could do it anyway and make some money in the meantime, right? Wouldn’t that be better? I would say yes.

But it’s not all as simple as it might seem. To be able to make money with Instagram you need more complex work.

After explaining how to make money with a blog, I will try to summarize all the work that needs to be done to make money with Instagram, below in the article. Clearly if you jump from one step to another you don’t have to come to me and complain that you can’t make money with Instagram.

Each step is an important part (otherwise I would not have written it, right?) To understand, understand and then go to act in the best way.If you have comments, doubts or questions then write them in the comments at the end of the post, in the meantime enjoy. (PS: the post is loooong).

What do you need to make money with Instagram?

Let’s start by understanding a very simple thing. In online marketing, and anything in general, you need to be prepared before you take action.

To be prepared you have to study, you have to know, you have to know those basic things that are needed to carry out a certain operation or a job.

A bricklayer who will have to know the various concrete mixes and know how to use a spirit level before working, right? The carpenter, before making a piece of furniture, must study the different types of wood and know how to use a chisel, okay?

Even you then, before you can claim to make money with Instagram, you have to sit down and study.

What do you need to study, what do you need to know? I’ve written you the main topics to know below. Look, it’s not like it will take you 1 day to learn. It took me months to understand a few things and be able to implement them the first time.

One last thing: all this preliminary talk that we are going to do on the necessary prerequisites, must be clear before we can even talk about how to make money on Instagram. Otherwise, if you skip the “stages”, then you will find yourself having gaps and you will miss some basic concepts. Then after not coming to say.. “if I had known…”.

1 – Know the platform and its numbers

Sounds logical to me, doesn’t it? To get to know the platform I don’t just mean to know what it is and what numbers it does. I refer to the fact that you need to know what tools it offers and how to use these tools, but not only…

Knowing the “numbers” of the platform is also very useful (you can see some statistics on the IG platform here). The “numbers” are given and the data are fundamental. At the end of the day, if you want to make money on instagram, you will have to communicate your marketing message to people who use the platform.

And do you know who are the people who use it? Do you know how old they are on average, their sex, their interests? I don’t know..

Here, these are things to know.. and to know them you can start by collecting the generic data of the platform (do a search on google) and then cross them with the data that you and your statistics will collect. Clearly look for data concerning the country where your target market is located.

2 – Know the Types of Instagram accounts

Instagram offers two types of accounts which are the Personal Account, the Instagram for Business Account or the Creator Account. To switch from one to the other it is not necessary to delete the Instagram profile as someone told me (are you crazy ?!)

Which of the three account types is best for you that you want to make money from? Well, it depends on your marketing strategy and goals.

If you plan to sell products and then create a kind of showcase for your online store, the top is the Business account. It provides you with additional tools, statistical data and insights, calls to actions, fields for information about the store and more options for running advertising campaigns using your Instagram page.

Here you will find an official guide for these types of accounts that I recommend you read.

A personal account can work if your strategy is to attract brands, at least in the beginning. Then you can “switch” into that creator or business that gives you much more details in the statistics (and therefore data that is useful to you.)

3 – Know the tools and rules of Instagram

Now, let’s assume you’re not fed up with IG, and haven’t looked for ways to deactivate the instagram account because you were fed up with notifications. Let’s ask ourselves a question:

What tools does Instagram provide for people like you who want to make money?

For people who want to use IG just to pass the time the answer is easy, there are images, videos, stories, funny emoticons etc… But what do you want to earn with Instagram? You must know.

Know the tools and rules of Instagram shopping

In the image an Instagram account that has implemented the IG Shopping flow

So let’s talk about how to show your products, how to get people to click and buy, let’s talk about the tools that Instagram makes available to you to achieve your business goals.

For example, with a Business Account you can request to open a Shop directly on Instagram and then tag the products directly there. Find more info on this page.

And the rules instead? Each platform, be it Facebook, Youtube or Instagram, has its own rules that users must respect. It is therefore a matter of understanding and following these restrictions, which are usually written in the terms of use.

If you are investing money to create a business on Instagram, you cannot afford to have your account closed because you have violated one of the terms of their policy, it would be a disaster.

And you can’t even invest 5 months to study a galactic business plan only to discover in the end that you cannot promote your product on the platform because it is among the “forbidden” ones. Be careful.

After writing the most read guide in Italy in which I divulged the best strategies to increase followers on Instagram, this time I decided to try my hand at an in-depth study of TikTok which in the last year has had an exponential growth (we are talking about millions and millions of users in a few months) and therefore worthy of interest.

To date, the TikTok app has been downloaded over 6 billion times from the App Store and Play Store, as confirmed by Sensortower data, and the number of active users per day exceeds 700 million worldwide as reported by TikTok itself.

I’ll get there right away.

Thanks to a specific study by Comscore, we know that TikTok has also experienced exponential growth in Italy with over 7 million unique users. It turns out to be the social network with the highest growth rate in the last year, so I couldn’t ignore it.

Basically, if before TikTok was populated only by videos of girls dancing, now there is much more variety and the level of content is certainly higher.

But now enough with the numbers, let’s think about the substance.

How can we increase the visibility of our TikTok profile and increase followers?

That’s why you were here, right?

Make yourself comfortable, now we will get to the heart of the guide.

What is TikTok and how does it work

Let’s start from the basics, if you’ve already read some of my guides, I never leave anything to chance.

I explain even the most trivial things, so that even those who are beginners can fully understand my words.

TikTok is a Social launched in 2016, initially known as musical.ly, which allows you to create and share videos of up to 60 seconds by changing the playback speed and adding special filters and effects.

Its operation is simple and is mainly based on the viral aspect of the content, which tends to create suspense and glue the user to the screen.

The TikTok app is equipped with a powerful video editor through which the user can record and edit videos by adding special effects and filters as well as background music.

Another particular feature of TikToks are the challenges (i.e. the challenges) that can be done between users of the platform, which makes it very interesting also from the point of view of interaction and the network that is created around users.

Well, after this short presentation, let’s see together – step by step – how to increase followers on TikTok.

How to increase followers on TikTok

If you want to become popular on TikTok, as well as in other social networks, you must first of all be aware that you will have to dedicate time to it and do it constantly (every single day).

Yes, there is no magic wand trick here.

What I am going to explain is how to make the most of your time spent on TikTok to get the maximum popularity advantage.

Remember that no one can promise you results without you doing anything.

I want to make this point clear, so don’t be surprised if you read such phrases in the next few paragraphs as well.

Set up your profile well

The first thing to do is to correctly configure your profile and complete every single piece of information that TikTok allows us to display.

Don’t stand there and watch, open the TikTok app and go to the ” Me ” section and click on ” Edit Profile “:

Edit profile on TikTok

Fill in all the fields present:

• Name
• Profile image / video
• Biography
• Website
• Instagram
• YouTube

If you don’t have a website, I suggest you create a dedicated page with Linkr.am, which allows you to create a page in a few minutes and have the link to publish.

Andre, but better image or video profile?

Great question!

Unlike Instagram, TikTok also allows you to add a video instead of the profile picture.

Personally I prefer the video profile as it can be an additional distinctive element that could make your profile stand out rather than that of another user.

In the biography, however, you have to describe who you are and what you do.

This description will of course need to be reflected in the content you post each day.

Furthermore, specialization in a specific niche will allow you to achieve concrete results in a short time.

Oh, I almost forgot: switch to the Pro account.

Pro account on TikTok

You will be able to access the statistics of your TikTok profile and know how many start following you, from where and other very important metrics for monitoring growth.

Not only that, you can activate the monetization of your videos ( TikTok Creator Fund ) ie TikTok will pay you for each view of your published video.

In this case, however, there are some requirements to access monetization:

• Having over 10 thousand followers
• Have 10,000 views on videos in the past 30 days
• Being of age
• Well, now let’s move on.

Identify the audience of your content

One of the most important things for those who want to grow on TikTok is to identify the audience you would like to show your content to.

This is because content does not work the same way for one group of people than another, so before creating and pursuing your own strategy on TikTok you will need to identify the target audience.

Once the target has been identified, it will be possible to think of an editorial calendar with contents that will be able to appreciate those people with that specific interest.

Keep in mind that creating level content takes hours and hours of work. I assume you don’t want to waste them on showing them to users who are not interested in seeing them as they are far from their interests?

I really do not think so.

So the goal is not to reach millions of followers, but to attract only the right ones who can like your content.

Also because the more interaction you have on the videos you publish, the greater the possibility of appearing on the “For you” page which enjoys enormous visibility.

Ok Andre, I understand the importance of identifying the public but how do I do it?

Defining the audience to show your videos to isn’t difficult but it takes some time.

In order to be 100% clear, I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say I’m a biker and I want to post viral videos on TikTok of me racing on a motorcycle.

The first thing to do is to go to the ” Discover ” section of TikTok and search for content / users / videos with the word:

motorbike and / or motorcycle (in English if you want an international audience)

Explore TikTok’s page

Find the most popular profiles posting motorcycle-only videos and get inspired by looking at not just the content they post but the audiences interacting with them.

So summarizing:

• Go to the Discover page
• Search with the keyword that identifies your niche
• Find the most popular profiles
• Analyze the videos they post and the users who interact with them
• Get inspired and create content that has similar characteristics
• Everything!

Creating content that has similar characteristics does NOT mean copying them, on the contrary.

What you will need to do is analyze the videos that have gotten the most views and understand how you can do them better by identifying the weaknesses.

So they will have to be taken as inspiration only.

It will always be necessary to create original videos, which reflect your style and which arouse interest in users of a specific sphere of interest (in motorcycles in this example of mine).

Take advantage of the trends of the moment

TikTok is based on the trends of the moment, starting from the challenge (challenges) to the videos of the ballets.

In each period there will be a different trend and it will be up to you to ride it with ad hoc videos.

In fact, participating in the latest trends with specially made videos increases the chances that those contents can be found by other users and, in some cases, be able to go viral.

By viral I am not referring to a nasty intestinal virus, as you may have guessed, but to the possibility that a video can be seen by thousands and thousands of users in a very short period of time.

TikTok has launched its monthly subscription program. Users registered on the social networking platform can now support their favorite creators with a commitment of at least 30 days. In return, they receive exclusive benefits, such as badges displayed next to their username, personalized emoticons and a chat to chat with the creator.

This is a turning point that was in the air because it responds to the requests of content creators to be able to earn even with subscriptions on TikTok and not just by looking for sponsored partnerships. Therefore, the source of income that comes from below changes, from the community of subscribers, and not from the marketing strategies of companies. 

What changes with the turn of the subscriptions on TikTok

This new paid subscription on TikTok, which was initially accessible only to a few well-selected creators, is now available to all users of the world, as long as certain conditions are met. Content creators must be at least 18 years old and at least 1,000 followers. They must of course abide by community guidelines and not encourage subscribers to give them gifts.

Users also need to be at least 18 years old to subscribe, send coins and gifts. For content creators, this new subscription feature helps secure a predictable monthly income. The most famous already earn compensation outside sponsored partnerships, but it is not always easy to obtain stable and secure income with the aim of dedicating more and more time and energy to raise the quality of the proposal.

How TikTok’s subscription model works

TikTok evidently takes inspiration from Twitch, which offers a similar program for creator streams on its platform. Those who subscribe to Twitch receive personalized emoticons and subscriber badges. Benefits for TikTok subscribers include follower badges – the ability for fans to get badges that are displayed next to their name on their profile and can be updated over time.

Then here are the personalized and exclusive emoticons, designed by creators exclusively for those who have shown an act of loyalty and trust such as signing up for a subscription. Users can use them during live sessions and get noticed more easily. The goal is to federate the community and make the online presence more lively and participatory. In case of enabling the chat for subscribers only, creators and followers can start exclusive conversations in order to strengthen the bond until it is almost personalized.

Some tips for getting followers and subscriptions on TikTok

Like what happens on other social networks, the time of publication of the videos on TikTok is a factor that affects the visibility of the contents. There are numerous studies on the subject that reveal how it would be more interesting to publish only in certain time slots. Which? The analysis of the habits of the public is undoubtedly necessary to identify the best ones.

Then a second tip is not to limit yourself to the simple TikTok account when streaming videos. Better to share some content on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Snapchat to make existing communities want to join on TikTok too. Similar to Twitter and Instagram, TikTok allows users to add hashtags to reference their videos in current news threads. However, unlike other platforms, the number of hashtags to add is limited as the text (with hashtags) must contain a maximum of 140 characters. It is therefore essential to choose them well.

Similarly to what happens on YouTube where content producers help each other to broadcast videos on their respective channels, it is possible to ask users to exchange visibility with a similar community. And it is important to frequently share what is produced on social networks. If you don’t regularly post new videos to your account, how would users find the profile? While it’s not mandatory to post every day, it’s useful to think about creating and maintaining a content calendar.

The importance of differentiation earn with subscriptions on TikTok

A useful tip for earning money with subscriptions on TikTok is to find a differentiation strategy with other content producers, whether it’s the way to stage the video, sing, or any other visual element. Thinking about what can make you unique is an essential step in planning your editorial line, bearing in mind the purpose of your presence. Becoming a TikTok Influencer? Increase knowledge of products and services? Increase monthly revenue with subscriptions? Each social network has its own context in which Internet users connect: on TikTok they must be entertained via video.

Tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or LinkedIn can allow small and large companies to reach a greater number of potential customers than traditional channels despite the fact that these platforms are born with the purpose of discussion and meeting between people and not mainly for sales by companies.

Nonetheless, the platforms themselves have made changes realizing that social networks have become a great weapon for acquiring contacts or retaining customers.

Today, people interact with brands and sources that they consider authoritative thanks to social networks which are the fastest and most accessible means of expressing opinions, appreciation and deepening their knowledge of services and products.

Having a strong presence on social media and being able to adequately tell the story of your brand is the key to creating empathy that springs up in sales.

Social media marketing can help small and large companies to achieve their growth and reputation goals, thanks also to inbound marketing processes, and in this article we will explain what to consider that can really make a difference.

The choice of social channels: where to start

Increase Instagram followers thanks to influencer marketing, use Tik Tok to always be “on the spot”, or create viral Facebook content following the trends of the moment.

Many social networks, many strategies and too many confused ideas.

Virtually all social networks have internal dedicated tools for companies: possibility of identifying multiple administrators for shared management, dedicated company pages, advertising account settings and insights reports, or statistical data, to draw their own assessments on trend of social communication.

Going into the concrete of an effective communication strategy, however, it is not just the tool or the platform that counts.

You could decide to use all of them or use only one, there is no correct or wrong social network, there is the right or the wrong approach.

What matters is always knowing how to convey the correct message through the right platform for your target audience.

We can therefore say that making your communication strategy via Social Media effective is the result of 3 factors:

• audience (target audience)
• objective
• content (creativity)

The association between these three factors undoubtedly indicates the most relevant social networks for the marketing strategy and positioning that the brand wants to assume within the relevant market.

Who to address your message to.

The first difference between setting up effective content or not lies precisely in the choice of your buyer personas or target audience.

What is meant by the term Buyer Personas?

The buyer persona is the representation of the typical customer you have in your head or who historically buys your product or service.

A reconstruction of a buyer serves to understand the typical customer in his personal, socio-demographic characteristics and to anticipate behaviors and choices for the benefit of user experience and user satisfaction.

Thanks to this representation, it will therefore be possible to build one’s own communication by arguing one’s products and services with values ​​that meet and satisfy the characteristics of the personas, as well as being able to anticipate objections and propose solutions.

All communication dedicated to social networks must be addressed to the target audience of the company, that is the people predisposed to purchase the services or products of the company itself.

Creating an identikit of the desired customer will allow to identify the characteristics, values, objections and needs of the person and always starting from the prospect’s problems it will be possible to highlight how the products or services will be able to provide a solution.

Answering a few questions to create a real identikit of the potential customer will help to argue and enrich the contents present in the editorial plan.

To start, answer these 4 questions:

• What is the main goal your audience wants to achieve?
• What are the elements necessary for my audience to reach this goal?
• What help, service or information can I give to my audience to enable them to achieve their goal?
• What kind of objections does this person have or might have that block them from buying your product or service?

ATTENTION: answering these seemingly very simple questions requires a great deal of corporate introspection.

It will be necessary to put on paper the desires, goals and fears of its customers and potential customers trying to find the right match with the desires and objectives of the company.

Social Network: what objectives?

Found the audience, we understand the goal.

Before you start creating a social media marketing campaign on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc, you need to consider your sales and branding goals.

Starting a social media marketing campaign without a strategic plan is like playing a basketball game without having prepared plans and trained the fundamentals: the only thing you will get is to fail badly.

• Where is the target audience drawn?
• What is the main objective that the company sets itself from that social network at that precise moment?

Social media marketing can help you achieve a number of goals, such as:

• Increase in profiled traffic to your business website
• Increase in leads and conversions
• Increase in brand awareness
• Positioning of the brand or consolidating the reputation or self-interest in its market niche
• Increase Customer care strategies through the empathic relationship that is generated thanks to storytelling
• To be more concrete, the achievable macro-objectives can be indicated for the most used Social Networks.

Facebook, for example, is a perfect place where you can increase your authority, generate a sense of belonging and increase the amount of qualified traffic to your company website.

In a different way, Instagram will be able to bring an increase in Customer care thanks to the use of Stories, Reels and IGTV, which will be able to tell glimpses of the brand’s daily life on a scheduled basis.

Or again, a strategy, which focuses entirely on organic traffic, could be based on the creation and publication of content on a young and less crowded platform than the most popular social networks, for example Tik Tok, to attract new audiences to be brought to the most institutional channels. (Facebook or Instagram) and generate sales.

4 billion people in the world use Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, TikTok, Clubhouse, Twitter, Telegram, Whatsapp.

Surely in the future we will use platforms that have not yet been developed, or that are still not very widespread today. An impressive volume of users, but above all a huge volume of potential customers for companies.

Because customers are already on Social Networks and they also spend a lot of time there: Italians spend an average of 120 minutes a day watching content on social media online.

Asking if a company should have social profiles is the wrong question.

The correct question is no longer Social Media yes or no, but Social Media HOW?

Opening a company’s social accounts is quick and easy, but populating them with content, growing followers, creating engagement and finding new customers is a full-time job that requires different activities and skills: analysis, creativity, strategy, moderation. In addition to several professionals: social media managers, copywriters, graphic designers, community managers, analysts, just to name a few.

Corporate social management is a team effort.

Analysis of the target, strategy and study of the contents

The publication of a post on Social Media is only the tip of the iceberg of a work that starts from afar, the final expression of a phase of study and careful strategic planning.

It starts with a global evaluation of the customer: the nature of his business and his company, his online presence and his social identity. A comparison is made with competitors and a research on the target that the strategy wants to intercept.

The questions in this phase are many and you cannot go to the operational phase until you have received all the answers.

Is it a B2B or B2C business ? On which social networks are the target customers located? How is it possible to differentiate from competitors?

It is only with a solid strategy that you can begin to think about content.

The content has to speak to some (the Personas) and it has to do it in the right way, at the right time and in the right place.

In the strategic phase, the best Social Media are also chosen to reach the target. Not all social networks are the same both for the type of users and for the type of use that users make of them.

Based on the platforms chosen and the target identified, you can move on to the study of the contents, a very important phase because it allows you to define the identity of the brand on the Social channels and to give continuity in the management of Social Networks.

Each social network has its own characteristics both in terms of media formats and intent of use. Consequently, the contents created will also have to be adapted.

A Linkedin user looking for information content, in order to express their opinion on the subject, will not be interested in the entertainment content found on Facebook.

Conversely, an Instagram user looking for inspiration for purchases will not be motivated to leave his opinion on the corporate news of a company.

Creation of the editorial plan

The Editorial Plan is a crucial tool for the management of Social Media, it is the link between strategy and operations where strategic information, contents and their planning are contained.

To create the PED we start from the research of the topics, the topics, functional to the communication of the company and to the objectives that have been decided.

Whether they are corporate topics or related to events, world days or columns created specifically around a topic of particular interest to the company: everything must be noted in the Editorial Plan to start structuring the content creation activity.

Creation of content for social media

Social contents are almost always composed of 2 distinct parts:

• The copy
• The media

Possibly the copy media (for example in the case of infographics)

Photos, texts and videos alone have little value in social media feeds, they do not attract attention or if they attract it they are not able to give all the answers that the user can have.

This is why it is important that a post is carefully studied in its entirety and that it makes the most of the format that the Social makes available to us.

The copy

For Copy we mean the accompanying text of a post, whether it is a simple claim or a detailed description of a product. It is the content editor or copywriter who has the task of choosing the narrative style and summarizing the message in a few lines. Or many, if it is a “long post” suitable for the communication style of the social network (eg Facebook).

The media

Although words are the most common means of communication, when we scroll through Social Media feeds, what catches our attention the most are not the texts of a post.

What convinces us to stop our scrolling down and stop on a content are in particular Media, i.e. visual content: videos, photos, infographics, illustrations.

This happens because photographic communication is much more immediate than written communication and captures the user’s attention in a moment, what we have available while scrolling through the message boards, feeds, sections explore, etc. of social networks.

The choice of formats, designs and their realization are up to a Graphic Designer in the case of a graphic, a Video Editor in the case of video formats, a Motion Graphic Designer in the case of video animations.

It is an extremely delicate job that requires solid technical skills in the use of specific software, a strong aesthetic taste in the choice of shapes and color palettes and, in particular, continuous updating on new technologies and new digital media forms.

Copy media

The Copy Media is the last part of a content and that is the textual part that completes the Media. It can be a simple claim superimposed on a graphic, the girths of a video or the narrator of a movie.

It is part of the content editor’s duties and serves to reinforce the communicative message without being a repetition of the copy. Sometimes it is a synthesis of the latter, with the aim of making it immediately usable by the user; other times it is complementary or has an alternative purpose: eg. provide detailed information, as in the case of an infographic.

Content publishing

After this preliminary phase we are ready to publish our contents online. We just have to use the Social Media publishing tools we have chosen.

Alternatively, and as a support, there are publishing tools external to social networks able to centralize posting management, allowing (for example) to program and publish the same content on multiple social networks. Among these, some of the best known are certainly Buffer, Social Sprout, Hootsuite and of course the HubSpot marketing module. The latter is one of the most used applications in our agency.

Social publication of content

Each platform has different publishing tools, and some features that make them unique: eg. ability to customize publication settings.

When the content is finished, the work for putting it online is not yet finished and there are many questions to answer: which hashtag should I choose? Who should I tag ? Do I put the geotag or better not? And then the best publication time ? But do I take the post as History? Do I publish it in Italian, in English or in both languages?

Community management and sentiment monitoring

We are online! Very well, but it is not over, indeed, we could say that it has just begun. Yes, because strategic choices, content creation and planning were all choices and actions within the company.

Once published, the ball goes to users who can decide if your content is “good or bad”, if it works, if it doesn’t work, if it is valuable or, perhaps, offensive content. In general, whether or not it is relevant to their interests and needs.

This is where the Community Manager comes into play, a figure who has the skills to monitor user interactions with corporate Social Media and potentially take actions on behalf of the company.

Creating a moderation policy is essential to make the agency as independent and effective as possible in managing comments of any kind, positive or negative.

Moderate comments, answer community questions, assist customers (especially B2C) who contact the company for pre and post sales issues. A very delicate and highly time consuming activity, but essential to have an immediate feedback on how the use of Social Media is impacting the brand and the company.

Once published, the content passes into the hands of users who can thus find an alternative interaction tool (compared to direct channels) with the company. These interactions cannot be “controlled” but must be monitored and moderated, especially since they take place on a public channel, visible to any user.

There are several online tools for monitoring comments ( Hootsuite is one of those we use in the agency) that allow you to follow conversations inside and outside the company channels, allowing community managers to intervene promptly, independently or after discussion. with the customer.

The one founded by Mark Zuckerberg is a social network where people go mainly to distract themselves (and do other people’s business) not to buy or look for work. Don’t forget this when designing a strategy to promote a Facebook page. First of all, you need to build your image and a funnelthat leads to complete strangers to become your supporters and promoters of your products and services. Selling on Facebook takes time and the creation of an audience that knows us and appreciates our brand. Unless you have a super particular product at a good price, it will be difficult for you to sell on this “cold” social network, that is, starting from scratch without a fan base. Aim first of all to create this for you, later you will go to propose your products and services. 

To promote a Facebook page, you can use a very useful tool such as Facebook business manager which, if used correctly, can help you increase your customers, your sales and your online visibility. In order to use the main social channels as the main vehicle for planning your strategies in the online market, sign up for the Master Social Media Marketing ! Plus, find out tips on how to promote your business.

How to promote a Facebook page

Many companies, brands, influential people and small entrepreneurs today are increasingly focusing on social media to promote themselves, especially by doing Facebook advertising. 

Here are some interesting general facts that you may not have known about: 

• The average Facebook user uses it on average at least 40 minutes each day. 
• In Italy there are 30 million active users every month, 24 million every month. 
• Facebook advertising is expected to increase by 15% over the next 2-3 years. 
• These are just 3 of the most interesting data that make us understand the power of this social network, which is now, first of all, a real tech company. Promoting a Facebook page therefore means favorably intercepting one of the biggest growth trends in the digital market.

Become a Digital Freelance, you will learn to perfectly manage your client package

and to use the main Social channels effectively! 

Why choose Facebook

• It allows you to connect with thousands of potential new customers. Use advertising on Facebook and sharing your content, take advantage of the large potentially interesting audience that you can find in Facebook groups;
• You have the opportunity to listen directly to your customers, to get in touch with them by discovering their needs and to keep relationships alive and “human” by interacting yourself. 
• Creating valuable content and giving useful information about your products is no longer enough if you don’t also invest in sponsorship. Facebook has changed its algorithm and now it is practically impossible to have visibility without investing: the organic one is really reduced to a minimum. 

Don’t be scared though, there are also positives to sponsoring your content, indeed, perhaps there are more positives than negatives. 

By learning how to promote a Facebook page you will discover that thanks to your investments you can reach many more people and the specific target that interests you.

And speaking of sponsoring content, besides advertising on Facebook, there are so many other ways to promote. One example is Google Ads. Find out everything you need to know about advertising on Google and sponsoring on Facebook by reading our guides.

That said, in this article I’ll explain how you too can promote a Facebook page from scratch. Let’s begin! 

Promote Facebook page: what to do first

Before explaining how you can promote a Facebook page, I give you some advice: if you have time and you are a person of good will, consider taking one of these two courses on Facebook advertising or Facebook marketing in general:

• Facebook Blueprint certification: is the preparation course for obtaining the official Facebook certification. If you start from scratch it will be very useful for you to understand the basic functioning of the Facebook business platform. 
• Facebook Advertising by Digital Coach: it is one of our most popular courses. With this course you will learn how to take full advantage of Facebook advertising for your business and make it take off online. 

To promote your Fb page at its best, you need to have a solid digital strategy.

There are tons of things you can do with Facebook business:

• find your target and create personalized campaigns.
• sponsor posts on your page.
• sponsor videos.
• create contact forms to collect emails and subscriptions.
• send promotional messages through Messenger.
• promote posts, videos and stories on Instagram.
• collect the data of the people who visit your page and your site. 

What you need to do first of all is to create your business page on Facebook (find out how to manage a business page on Facebook ) so that you can access Facebook Business services. The company page is essential if you have a business, you cannot absolutely use your personal profile and use it to make your company known. 

Personal profile vs company profile: the company profile is absolutely necessary if you want to promote your business because Facebook does not allow you to sponsor personal profiles through its advertising platform. So if you have a personal profile, use it for your things, while for work and therefore for your company, you need to create a company page and a business profile. 

After creating your account you can create your advertising campaign, also to promote your Facebook page. Once you get to your personal account screen, click on “create campaign”. You now have three sections / levels to complete: campaign, ad group and format.

Campaign: Here you have to choose your marketing objective, that is, if you want to get more likes on the page, get views on your video or website, sell products and much more. 

Ad group: here you have to set the area in which you want your sponsored posts to be visible, the duration of the campaign, the characteristics of your target (age, gender, interests,…) and the budget to devote to your promotion. 

Advertisement: here you have to choose the format of your sponsorship, the text to be inserted and the link of your website or page on which you want those who click on the post to arrive.

How the target is defined

There are many important aspects that allow you to tell Facebook who should view the Facebook campaign to promote a page, including:

• Location: where the recipients of my sponsorship are located based on location
• Personal data: what type of people are you looking for based on age, gender and language spoken
• Interests: the social network knows the passions and interests of all its members, so selecting them based on their hobbies is simple. You just have to choose the categories that can coincide with the interest in the promoted Facebook page.
• Behaviors: in addition to interests, Facebook knows the behaviors of its users so based on their moves it is possible to establish whether they might be interested in the product you want to sponsor.
• Connections: reaching those who have “liked” the page of the brand in question and their friends can be another way to reach my potential audience

The article you are reading is aimed at those who have a company and want to start finding customers on Facebook: useful contacts, buyers, people who might be interested in their business. Sometimes it is enough to set up a good presence on this social network to have good results.

Then, to get big numbers, the activity of a social media strategist can make a difference. In the meantime, we must start on the right foot: how to activate advertising on Facebook ? What are the essential steps of a good promotion for small and micro businesses? Here are the essential points.

Open a Facebook page: starting point

Do you have a company and want to promote on Facebook? Perfect, you need to set up a Fan Page. That is to say an essential step to bring a company, an association or any brand to Mark Zuckerberg’s social network.

Create a Facebook page

Can I open a company Facebook profile? No, the rules are clear: it is an option aimed only at individuals, those who break the rule risk losing their jobs. So, if you want to promote your business, start from this link: facebook.com/pages/create.

Now you have to make a series of decisions and follow the instructions of the established path. A few steps and you are online with your company Facebook Fan Page. The essential steps to follow to improve the work done?

• Add as much information as possible.
• Upload the logo as an avatar.
• Add an eye-catching cover photo.
• Use your company name, your brand.
• Create a custom URL.

Start presenting your Facebook Fan Page at its best: focus on clarity of the content and create a good visual. To achieve this you can use Canva, an excellent tool that allows you to create a myriad of visual content. Get familiar with this reality, you will need it later.

Create an editorial content calendar

Do you know what is one of the fundamental problems of companies that open a Facebook page and start publishing? Simple, they believe they have discovered the ultimate solution to advertise for free.

They spend thousands of dollars on billboards or advertisements in local newspapers, but when it comes to the web, everything has to be free. But above all based on a self-referential logic.

The Worst Move: Using the Fan Page to push commercial content only. This means condemning your activity on this social network without mercy. To advertise a company on Facebook in an organic way (i.e. without advertising ) you have to make sure that people are attracted, happy to return to your wall.

Follow the golden ratio of content

The balance is found thanks to a clear management of the editorial calendar. The fundamental rule: create value. To obtain this result it is useful to follow what is called the golden ratio of social networks:

• 60% di content curation.
• 30% own content.
• 10% commercial content.

Percentages do not have to be followed to the letter. But the principle is crystal clear: the commercial aspect (buy, buy, buy) is minimal. Even the self-referential impulses are reduced compared, instead, to what comes from your content curation activity.

That is to say the curation of sources that allows you to identify, organize, enrich and publish something that is already present online. But that your fans still don’t know about. If you want to deepen the theme of the Golden Ratio you can take a look at the slides that you find below.

Attention to user content

One of the best strategies for a company that wants visibility on Facebook: take advantage of UGCs, that is, user generated content. I’m talking about text and images that come straight from the audience.

For example, you can invite people to post or send photos while using the product, or if they are in your store. To then republish the contents.

This is social proof, people who see these photos can touch the emotions of the public. So they are encouraged to participate, to follow the example of other people.

Users are always looking for mental shortcuts to make decisions and user generated content can help you. How does all this help promote a business on Facebook?

Snippet of the Facebook page on Google

Encourage the use of reviews, they are a decisive step to make people understand that they are in the right place. In addition, the parameter is included both in the snippet of the Facebook page and in the Knowledge Graph tab.

The importance of visual in content marketing

When you decide to promote your company on Facebook, you must consider the creation of a good amount of visual content in your editorial plan. Because that’s what works, Mark Zuckerberg’s goal is to keep the audience on the platform: this happens thanks to images, photos and videos.

Percentage of videos on Facebook

It is no coincidence that all the statistics and research (here one by Buffer that makes the right synthesis) suggest investing in visual content marketing. That you can use in different ways.

Any concrete ideas to give people something more and forge a good editorial calendar even without a team of graphic designers and video makers?

I reiterate the importance of this tool to model an adequate visual. Thanks to the predefined templates you can create covers, posts and previews of events. Without forgetting the possibility of generating link previews to be saved in blog posts.

Canva

One of the favorite activities to follow with Canva: creating visual quotes, images with your own quotes or quotes from famous authors. In this way it is possible to work on sharing company values ​​and to register a following on your Facebook page.

Lumen5

You don’t have to be a video maker to get good jobs. For example, I often use Lumen5 to create clips starting from my own visual content or archive. Plus add soundtrack and writing so you have perfect content for your page.

One of the most interesting solutions: the possibility of building content by importing the text of an article. So you can use it to insert copy between various clips, images and videos. There is a free and a paid version, which is really complete.

Direct

A resource impossible to forget. Live shows help improve your brand’s visibility and engagement on Facebook. Manage a good editorial activity, organize direct by asking your fans to leave their questions and opinions on the issues to be addressed.

Facebook live broadcasts can be done from mobile or desktop, and you can improve them thanks to the use of professional microphones, wallpapers and webcams. Also after publication you can change the cover. In this way you have the possibility to better curate the presentation on the Fan Page of the video.

Start making ADV on Facebook

Advertising is an essential step to improve the promotion of a company on Facebook. And the business page on this social network has a big advantage: it allows you to create a campaign with a custom audience to reach the right people. And aim for concrete marketing goals.

Can you sell on Facebook? And find customers? Of course, it depends on the type of business and the advertising that is activated. Because Facebook allows you to activate different advertisements than what you need at a given time. In reality, to advertise a company on Facebook, I usually select three ADV macro-categories.

Get comfortable, open Instagram and fight for the last follower ! Learning how to grow your following of followers on Instagram requires commitment and a lot of attention! It does not matter that you are not a public figure or an expert in social media marketing, what matters is to be able to create an intense network of relationships on Instagram and have a strategy to implement that leads to dozens, if not hundreds, of followers. !

Build your strategy

Define your goals and study your target (interests, age, profession, origin), fundamental and very useful details to reach your goal faster. Study the competition. Try to understand how your competitors communicate, what they are betting on, what strategies they use. To have many followers on Instagram you need to identify the characteristics that distinguish you from others and that added value that only you could offer. After all, if you have decided to get involved, it means that you already feel a little different from your “colleagues”, right? Define your style and design your editorial plan. Finally, optimize your profile, always involve your audience (ads, instagram stories, boomerang, instaphoto, comments on other profiles) and don’t forget to keep communicating constantly with those who already follow you. Strength and courage, we are just getting started! 

To get a lot of followers on Instagram make sure you have enabled your profile as “public” from the Settings menu so that everyone can see it even before starting to follow you. Don’t limit yourself to a simple bio or a trivial description of your brand: make it creative and intriguing ( you have 150 characters to give your best!), And don’t forget to insert emojis and hashtags here too to give it an extra touch.

As for the photos, I will reveal an “incredible” secret: do you know what is the first thing people do when they visit your profile? Scroll through the top ten Instagram photos to decide whether to follow you or not. Keep in mind that your photos will be your trump cards: make sure they are always of quality and that they perfectly describe your style and your business! Last but not least, connect Instagram to Facebook and start with friends already established on the latter platform to increase the number of your followers on Instagram: many of them will surely have an Instagram profile and will not make too many problems to follow you also on another social network.

Post quality photos

To be successful on Instagram remember that the goal is not just to get followers but to know how to keep them, otherwise many people will soon stop following you. When you post a photo, always think about your target audience and what they might be interested in. Put your face to it: telling about yourself through personal shots in everyday or funny situations can always generate a strong engagement! Make your photogallery colorful, original and give it your personal look & feel!

Stand out from other profiles but get inspired: uniqueness always pays! You don’t have to become a professional photographer but have the right idea to immortalize in the right place, with the right mood and define everything with one of the many filters made available by Instagram! In addition to these, in addition, Instagram also allows you to change the individual parameters of an image: I am referring to brightness, contrast and color. After determining your filter go to Edit (bottom right) and work on these other features: Adjust, Brightness, Contrast, Texture, Color, Saturation. I recommend that you always apply the same filter to all images in order to give your feed your own personal and distinct style! Among the best photo editing apps I recommend youAfterlight, Vsco Cam, Snapseed e A beautiful Mess.

Impress with valuable content

4 words: content is the king ! As with any other communication strategy, content is also of fundamental importance for Instagram. The famous 5 Ws are also valid here but it is the style that must make the difference. Tell, inform, excite: there are no length limits as long as the caption, that is the description of the photo, has an impact and knows how to kidnap your reader. Enrich it with emojis and separate the text from the hashtag section.

Another very useful tool through which to increase your followers on instagram and insert valuable content in your profile are the Stories. Make the most of them by alternating polls, texts and emojis to thank your customer, to inform you of something new (even the release of a new post on your blog), to “spin” a particular photo.

We all know that the Stories have a “public life” of only 24 hours, but since June 2017 Instagram has applied two great news: after 24 hours, today it is possible to review the Stories, republish them as posts, repost them in the stories, or set them as highlight on your profile; in addition, there is a new space called Featured Content where you can “park” your most significant Stories about you and your business. They will stand out as long as you like and appear as a new horizontal scroll bar above your profile photo grid. 

Choose the right hashtag #

Literally speaking: a hastag can change your life, or in our case the fate of your profile! I’m not kidding! This is one of the most effective strategies for getting lots of followers on Instagram (word of Instagram addected!). Inserting as many hashtags as possible and relevant to your photo will dramatically increase your likes and you will have a much better chance of being noticed and consequently followed. Before sharing a photo, that you have correctly applied all the appropriate filters and parameters, be sure to geolocate the image (to enter the photo stream and end up in the most popular posts section) and enter all the necessary hashtags. But there is a rule: do not use more than 30 hashtags at a time, including truthful, specific and relevant, and remember that the most popular ones must be inserted between the twentieth and thirtieth hashtags.

To know the most popular hashtags, take a look at Top Hashtags, or download the TagsForLike and Hash Tags Manager apps to quickly choose the category of hashtags most similar to your post (fashion, food, friendship, love, travel, etc.) and import all the best tags of the case inside your photo with a simple click.

Post regularly

An effective Instagram profile is an active profile. Prepare your own stock of photographic shots of travels, weekends out of town, special moments and selfies to always keep at hand: to constantly involve your users, it is good to post every day and never, and I stress never, miss popular events  (holidays and anniversaries, relevant sporting events, seasons, etc.).

It is statistically proven that posting a photo every 3 hours can greatly increase engagement but it is also good to experiment, experiment and study how your target audience responds to your actions. Traffic on instagram is generally constant throughout the week, with peaks on Mondays and every day between 3pm and 4pm and at lunchtime.

When you start to have many followers on Instagram and a certain popularity, and in this case it is essential to prepare a well-detailed editorial calendar, I recommend that you hire a good photographer in order to have more professional shots if necessary and start concretely launching the your business: you will see in a short time how your followers will increase. Finally, remember to comment, like photos that show contextual hashtags to the topic of your profile so that people notice you and start following you once they have ended up on your profile, even just out of curiosity. If you are not the first to interact, no one will interact with you!