I have been building up a bit of a following on Facebook to one of my pages. It's in the politics niche, and I've noticed this is easier to do than in others such as online marketing. Political Facebook page likers are extremely engaged. I think this has much to do with the subject being so emotional.

And just as they are very engaged, they are also very loyal. Quite a few of them keep coming back and commenting regularly. So of course I've got to keep them happy by acknowledging their input, showing that I appreciate it. 

This can be tricky sometimes because of course I don't agree with everything they say. And they can be offensive at ties. For example, this page is critical of political correctness, including false accusations of racism. But I'm certainly not advocating real racism! On the contrary, I find it utterly abhorrent.

But every now and then one of the page's fans will say something that is in itself borderline racist! Thankfully, they haven't gone over the line, requiring me to delete the comment. But they do occasionally write things that make me roll my eyes. 

Hard to know what to do when situations like this arise. I don't want to scare them away. But then I don't want them to keep pushing the envelope and end up posting vile stuff that basically abuses my effort in creating and updating the page, either. 

Anyway, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. If it happens again I might add a post asking people to restrain themselves a bit ...

In any case I'm glad I've got this page going and building a bit of momentum. It's taught me heaps apart for anything else. 

The best way I've found to get new likes for it is to log in as my page and then contribute to other popular pages in my niche. As long as I keep commenting thoughtfully on their updates and liking them from time to time I find the new likes for my page trickle in. 

I think repetition and consistency are crucial here. The trick is in constantly appearing in front of that audience. And you must always add value. After a while that page's fans start to think, oh there's that guy again. They read your comments and if they're consistently interesting then they'll keep an eye out for you. Sooner or later some of them look at your page and a certain proportion are sure to end up liking it.

So, you've really got to see this as a long term activity and just keep at it. This goes for Facebook pages in all niches of course ... I think the mistake a lot of people make is they go hammer and tongs at it for a few days and get nothing. They decide that maintaining a Facebook page is just not worth the effort and give up entirely.

A while ago, when Julia Gillard was still PM, the Aussie Labor party was suffering hugely poll-wise. The leadership were looking for excuses. So Gillard and her team took to describing any criticism of her as sexist. This "misogyny" angle was clearly false and seemed to make Gillard's popularity plummet even more. So clearly a lot of people were getting very annoyed by this.

At about that time I noticed a Facebook page making fun of this tendency of hers. It's disappeared now, so I can't be totally sure of the name. But it was called "It's Because I'm a Woman" or something like that. I immediately liked the page even though there was almost no content up there at the time.

It just seemed to nail something that I and a lot of other people found very annoying. And it got me thinking about how bloggers could use this technique in other ways. After all, a Facebook page doesn't always have to relate directly to your blog and its content. You can generate a community around some widely held sentiment, or a meme, then use it to promote your posts.

The example I cited above was political. But you could do something similar with pretty much anything. Maybe you have a blog about beer and there's a popular beer brand that has a cool advertising campaign that everyone's talking about. Maybe you could set up a page for fans of the campaign? Along with direct references to that ad campaign, you could share some of your blog posts. Or you could just have the link to the main URL in the description. You'd be sure to get a fair bit of targeted traffic as a result.

Or perhaps you have a website about entertainment. And there's some celebrity who a lot of people find extremely annoying for some reason or another. You could build a page about that and tap into the traffic that ensues.

The potential is limitless. The key is to find something in the news that is provoking a lot of public sentiment. Then build a page, or even a group, around this.

Of course the benefits may only be temporary, which is a downside. But if the page goes viral to even a mild extent it could be a great way to get lots of new blog readers.

As I've mentioned, one way effective way to get more likes on your Facebook page is to comment on others. Common sense dictates that the older and more popular these pages are, the greater the number of people who will see your page's name when you engage with them, and therefore the greater the number of people who will ultimately like your page.

Like new FB pages

But I also think that liking, then commenting on, new pages with low numbers can be beneficial. This is because these page owners really appreciate the fact that you've actually contributed to their page. They're more likely to reciprocate by liking yours back, or commenting on it, or liking your posts. (At least that's what my own recent experience tells me.)

I also suspect that they're much more likely to continue to engage with your page, particularly if you do the same with theirs. (It's a bit like a couple of kids who make friends on the first day of school. It's a strong bonding experience.)

Comment on young blogs

This also holds for blog commenting. Of course you should comment on prominent, high traffic blogs, since they'll tend to bestow more clicks than the younger ones. Still, how many of those popular bloggers will have the time or the inclination to have a good look at your blog, let alone comment on it?

Certainly some of them will do this. But it won't be most or all of them. Unless you're consistently writing absolutely brilliant comments on their blogs, the big names are unlikely to check yours out.

New bloggers, however, being chuffed that you have responded, will almost always do this. They'll often come back to comment again and again, too.

Potential long-term benefits

Remember that even the big names had to start somewhere, too. So a certain percentage of the newbies that you connect with via mutual commenting will eventually become established bloggers in their own right. You might end up benefiting traffic and link wise at some stage way down the track.

For these reasons it's a good idea to engage with a mix of new blogs and Facebook pages as well as old and established ones. You'll get the best of both worlds then.

If you have a Facebook page, you'll want to get likes to it. Interacting with other Facebook pages in your niche is an effective way to do this. So you'll want to find and like as many of these as possible. (And remember to be logged in as the page you want to promote when you like them. Then when you interact with them, your page name is what's displayed.)

Facebook search

You can locate a lot of relevant pages simply by searching within Facebook itself. You just type your chosen keywords into the search box and click on the Pages button in the search filters. But if you are really determined to find a lot of pages then this method probably won't supply you with enough of them on its own.

Google, Bing, Yahoo

So, you should then move outside the "walled garden" of Facebook and search on Google, Bing and Yahoo as well. Just type in your chosen keywords along with "Facebook page". This will supply mixed results, but if you do it often enough you're sure to find ones you haven't seen already.

The pages themselves

If you've used both these techniques then you would have accumulated quite a few of them. And you can use these to find even more. Just look at the likes of each of these pages. They usually list several, sometimes scores of other pages in their niche. Helpfully, Facebook tells you which ones you've like already. It's kind of like going from blog to blog via the comments. You'll never run out of them.

Blogs

And speaking of blog-hopping: That's yet another way to find new Facebook pages. This is because a substantial proportion of bloggers already have their own pages. They almost always have badges for them (much as I have on this one). So, make sure that you're logged into Facebook while you're looking for new blogs. You can join them as quickly as you find them, then.

Facebook users

You can also find new pages via the contributions of others. You'll see these in the top right hand corner of each page as well as below each update in the form of likes and comments. A good percentage of them will be from other pages. And if they are from individuals, you can check them out too. A fair proportion of them will have liked several more pages in the same niche as the one they've commented on or shared a link with.

If you use several of these methods to find new Facebook pages, before long you'll have hundreds of them to interact with as your own. You can engage with them repeatedly and thereby get on the radar of many more people.

I have been investigating various methods of promoting blog posts on Facebook lately. I've discovered that a good method of doing this is to build a page for your blog, then log in as your page and like other pages in your niche. You can then share links to your blog posts on other pages' timelines (where it says "write something").

Sometimes page owners have it set up so that other pages can't actually do this. In that case you can always log in as yourself and do it that way.

Be selective

Before using this method you should suss out if the page owner will accept your posts or not. You can get an idea about whether this will be the case by checking if other people have already done so.

Also, the character of the page owner comes across in its content. Some are clearly heavily into branding and it's all about them. In this kind of page the only contributions you see in this section are comments about how wonderful the page is, and how much the commenter is looking forward to the next webinar, etc. You don't want to be posting blog links to pages like this, because they will probably be deleted.

It's usually not worth posting links on pages with absolutely no monitoring either. They'll be overrun with spam and no one will click on your posts.

There are pages that are halfway between these two extremes, however. They are the ones to go for.

Be relevant

Obviously you don't want to only ever submit your own, irrelevant, blog posts. That's spamming. You have to include only those posts that are relevant to the subject matter of the page. If you do that on popular pages you will get occasional clicks coming through. You'll also be getting some exposure for your own Facebook page. The other fans of the pages you're doing this on will see your page name, after all. That's why it's important to only share quality, relevant blog posts. And it always helps if you include a little introduction about the post you're sharing, and maybe even why you did so (although it's not absolutely vital).

Be persistent

I've been doing this for a while now and the traffic certainly does come in from this, albeit slowly. Also, I've been getting quite a few likes on those posts from the page owners themselves. This is a good sign because it proves that they don't resent this approach. Nice to know because you don't want to be annoying them.

Be varied

As well as sharing your own blog posts, you should also include links to those by other people. Doing this shows that you're not only trying get traffic for yourself. Your aim is to contribute useful information to the fans of that page.

You should also write the odd comment on the page's updates, as well as liking them occasionally. The owner will appreciate this and see that you're not just taking advantage of their page. You are engaging with it in a range of ways.