Facebook Followers, Now is the time to increase them!

Last week Facebook announced that they will be changing their algorithm that decides what posts are included in your Facebook timeline, so, is it now time to start increasing your Facebook followers?

From now on Facebook will prioritise posts from your friends over posts that are from pages you follow. If you would like to know more about this change here is a link to more details on Facebook increases friends posts.

In case you didn’t realise, when you log in to Facebook and start catching up on what all your friends have been up too, you won’t actually see all your friends status updates. Facebook has a very complicated algorithm that decides which of your friends posts it will include in your timeline. I guess if you have a 1000 friends, firstly you’re very popular! and secondly, it would be a lot of data for Facebook to display in one timeline.

So they created an algorithm to help show the posts you are most interested in.

Now Facebook are prioritising friends posts should we all increase the number of friends we have to increase the chances of our posts being seen? Essentially using our “friends” as possible future customers.

There is another way, you could start getting Facebook followers.

What are Facebook followers?

Facebook followers are slightly different to Facebook friends. When you are Friends with someone both you and your Friend both see each other status updates. However, when you are Following someone you will see their status updates but they will not see yours as they do not follow you back.

Originally this tool got created so you can follow Celebrities or other “Famous” people you are interested in.

How Do I Allow Facebook Followers?

It is very easy to set up, click SETTINGS from the top right menu dropdown and select FOLLOWERS in the left menu.

This will display the Followers Settings page.

There you will find a button with FRIENDS written on it, click and change to PUBLIC.

By doing this Facebook will display further options that you can set as well as an Embed code to add to your website.

Facebook Turn on Followers

Are there any restrictions?

As far as I am aware there is only an age restriction, Facebook does not allow anyone under the age of 18 years old to post public status updates.

Can I Follow Stuart Cole on Facebook?

Well, that is very nice of you to ask, of course you can! Click on the button below.

What will Followers see?

Each time you create a status update you have the option to post it to just to your Friends or to the Public, it gives you the chance to keep some of the more “personal” posts to your group of friends.

Why do this?

Have you ever heard of “Personal Branding“?

Personal Branding gained huge traction at the end of 2015 and is now a very powerful tool to have in your marketing arsenal. I won’t go into How to start or increase your personal branding today, I’ll save that one for another day.

What I will say is that you don’t need to be Katy Perry or Lady Gaga to have followers (fans) on Facebook and the rewards might just be too hard to ignore.

What benefits will there be?

As I mentioned somewhere near the top of this post that Facebook is now favouring posts from your Friends rather than Pages you follow, well Friends also include the people you Follow.

Without actually running an experiment I can not guarantee this but there is a chance that your personal posts will get in front of more eyes than your Page posts (assuming the same amount of followers for both your Page and for you).

Conclusion

If you have just skipped down this post to the Conclusion then, Hi! \o/

One thing I have learned over the years in online marketing is that you should use as many tools at your disposal to help advertise your business or product, I think creating a “Following” in Facebook is another one these tools to embrace, and the best bit, it is Free!