Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to friend 25 - 50 people each day.
YES each and every day until you reach at least 2500, FB will let you have 5000 friends but it is not necessary to have that many and later I’ll explain why.
Now these are not just any random people, you need friends who are interested in what you do and who will engage in the content you will be putting out.
How Do You Find These Elusive Friends?
Here’s how to find and friend them:
1. Scroll down your feed and check out the adverts or sponsored posts that are relevant to your niche, check out the comments and those who have liked the post.
2. You are probably already in various groups in the niche of your choosing, so check out those posts too for people who are actively engaged.
3. Check out each potential friend's profile. You are looking for how they are using their profiles, do they have a recent post, is it something that resonates with you, do they seem to be a person you could help, how many mutual friends do you have?
❌ A word about mutual friends, you don’t want to have too many in common say less than 100 if all the friends are also marketing in your niche. It will be hard to stand out if your new friend is also seeing 100 similar posts in their feed every day.
✅ While you are checking out their profile look for something specific that catches your attention … it might be a catchy quote in their header, a cool profile image or some post that interested you, a friend in common etc..
You need to do this because you will be sending a Private Message to each person you friend and you will mention this.
4. The very best advice I have received when deciding who to friend ask yourself “would I go and have a coffee and a chat with this person?” if the answer is no, then don’t send the friend request and move on. You may end up working with these people, you need to like them, they are your friends first and potential clients second.
5. Once you have sent the friend request as I mentioned above you will send a personalised message to each one. Something along the lines of “I am looking to grow my FB circle of online friends with interesting people and your profile caught my eye. I see you are also interested in horses, is that your horse in the profile pic?
Always end your message with an easy question that your new friend can answer, this starts the conversation and gives you an opportunity to get to know them.
6. Also jump on your new friends profile, read and engage with at least 2 of their posts. You need to use the Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry emoticons, don’t just click LIKE. The like emoticon holds no weight with FB, so use one of the others, and leave a comment.
Share the love, if you engage on your new friends profile they will see it and be more likely to engage with your content. Likewise FB will see that you are actually friends and is more likely to show your content to your new friend.
Don’t skip this step. It only takes a few minutes and makes a huge difference to who your posts are shown too.
My posts on there are few and far between but each one relates to me personally and the page also has a link to a small charity that I run locally.
I hear what you say about your wall being a tool for your business but do you have a page as well or just your personal wall? And do you have similar tips as these for business/fan pages too?
Cheers Heidi
Mark
Reply
It is a complete waste of time trying to reach warm free traffic with a page, it needs to be your profile.
It's against FB terms to have a second profile but plenty do it. You must use a completely different email address and name eg. Heidi A Yates instead of Heidi Yates and have no links to your original profile.
I did this for a while but found it a pain to swap between the two profiles so just bit the bullet, my business comes first and I made the decision to use FB as a tool, but thats a decision for each individual and I know it's not palatable for some.
I also have a group which is worthwhile but initially I recommend concentrating on building your profile, adding friends and posting in bigger groups to cement your authority within your niche. It's really all you need to get in front of your audience.
Hope this answers your question?
I have been moaning for a few months now that none of my posts don't even get a simple like. I played a game where you entered friends @names and I did not get a single person to acknowledge the post or play along.
So thank you, many times over for this blog.
Going to put it into action.
Stay safe,
Sue
Having the right friends will make a heap of difference to your leads and sales, but it is not the only thing. Check out my other training on getting the right privacy settings and using different types of posts to boost your engagement. Generating Targeted Organic Traffic From Facebook A Quick 10 Minute Tutorial On Facebook Posts That Work FB is my #1 source of warm leads and it works if you work it. Hope these help.
