We hear this a lot from businesses today trying to grow their Facebook Page presence: “How do I get more Likes for my Facebook page?”. I decided it was finally time to try this for myself.
I went ahead and conducted a small experiment to see if I can increase likes for a Facebook Page that covered major events happening in India. After 4 weeks of A/B testing and working with various tools, I got to 1000000 likes for my Facebook page. And because I was able to do it with no prior experience, I wanted to share with you the 5 steps that got me to the 10K mark:

1) Make Content Rich Facebook Tabs

The very first lesson I learnt after starting the page was that content mattered. And more importantly, the way you display that content is critical. I made use of Tint (www.tintup.com) to create beautiful, content heavy Facebook tabs. I aggregated relevant news from various publishers and showcased it on my page. I then shared those tabs to different communities on Facebook, which generated a lot of traffic directed at my FB Page. When people landed on my content rich tabs, there was a more likelihood of people liking my Facebook page vs. just browsing and then leaving. Please note that using Tint alone will not get you likes. Tint is not a like generator. Tint generates content and good content makes your audience like your page. 

2) Post Images over Status Updates & Links

As the second stage of my experiment, I started adding relevant, humorous, and compelling images on every post that I shared. I carefully observed the growth in reach and virality for each post after it was shared. The results are shown below.
From the experiment, it was very apparent that attaching strong, powerful images will get you more likes for your post vs posting a simple status update. And the more likes you get, especially right when it is sent out, the more exposed it will be to your community and their friends. That is how Facebook’s algorithm works – sparking content engagement right at the beginning equals higher virality. That means more exposure to your Facebook Page and more likelihood of getting free “Likes.”
Experiment 1: A status update / link
Screen Shot 2013-02-21 at 5.43.46 PM
Experiment 2: Posting a photo
Screen Shot 2013-02-21 at 5.43.34 PM

3) Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are by far the easiest way to get more likes for your Facebook page. The difficult part is to effectively manage the Facebook Ads and make the most of a limited budget. Its really important to A/B test every single ad. You should closely monitor the following variables and make changes accordingly based on the ad performance:
a) Changing the target audience depending on the interests
b) Gender
c) State / Province – Geo targeting
d) Bidding for the price
The first three points are fairly intuitive. But the most difficult part was figuring out the optimal price for maximizing my Ad’s reach. I made a beginner’s mistake by letting Facebook optimize the price for me. I had paid 0.10 cents for every click which was way too expensive for me with my very limited budget. I chose to optimize the bid by trying out various options and got my bid to hover around .02-.05 cents per click. I started to notice that 90% of people who clicked on the ad went on to “Like” my page.
So I started to optimize my Ad and lowered my bid down to .01-.02 cents and varied the time at which I made my Ad visible (timing is key– you don’t want to show ads when your demographic is sleeping). Interestingly, I found that my Ads performed its best during early mornings and late nights!
The last A/B test I tried was on which page the ad would land on– the Facebook tab with content or the Facebook page itself. Not to much surprise, I saw people who landed on my Facebook Tab with rich content “liked” my Facebook page more than people who directly landed on the Facebook Page itself. Lesson 3: A/B test the SH** out of your Facebook Ads.

4) Tools

I used tools like Sproutsocial andCrowdbooster to measure my post performance. They help you analyze and track your social media marketing. This was critical because it helped me figure out the optimal time to share the content to get maximum exposure on my Facebook Page. Again, this is important because getting more likes for your posts gets your Facebook Page more visible among your friends, your community, and THEIR friends as well.

5) Creating Communities

This one’s a no brainer but sometimes forgotten. Interact with your fans. Ask them questions, request opinions, and give them incentives to invite their friends to your page through contest campaigns by using apps like ShortStack. This will help increase your Likes for your Facebook page at zero cost.

Screenshots of my progress:
a) My Facebook Page with 222 likes
b) My Facebook Page with 1,000 likes
c) My Facebook Page with more than 10,000 likes


After employing all 5 techniques mentioned above, I was able to achieve 1lakh likes in 1weeks. I hope this was helpful and you have some new-found strategies to try out for yourself! Have you implemented some of these techniques? What are some steps you have taken to increase your Facebook Page likes? Feel free to share them in the comments below!