How to Grow the Facebook Page for Your Apparel Business
In December of 2017, Facebook made an announcement that it was de-prioritizing content from businesses. So, what’s an apparel business to do?
Make It Personal
A big mistake that small businesses often make on social media is to constantly talk about products and sales. It’s important to remember the primary reason people are on Facebook – to connect with people. It’s personal.
Use that to your advantage. If you have multiple employees, make sure you’re posting updates about them as well. Did Sally just run a 5K for charity? Facebook is a good place to post that information – and be sure to tag the cause to expand the audience. If you don’t have employees, you can still use this technique and tag your personal page.
Use Ego Bait
Speaking of tagging, there are few things on social media more effective than ego bait. People love to share when they’ve been featured on another page. Ask your customers if you can post a picture of their finished shirt and tag them in the post. This expands your audience beyond those who already like your business page.
If you target a specific niche or geography, a fun way to do this is to call customers and get them to provide quotes for you. You can use a program like Canva to quickly create a graphic with the quote.
Go Live
Facebook is still prioritizing video content, so take advantage of that while the getting is good! Don’t get hung up on producing a slick, professional video. The key is to do it regularly. Just point for your smart phone and talk. Make the content about a special promotion or something that will help your customers.
If you’re stuck for ideas, look through our content for inspiration. Your customers may be interested in some of the same topics – like how to use show through on the shirt to achieve the look of a second color – which will save them money.
Run a Like Campaign
You’re probably familiar with sponsored posts, where you pay money in exchange for reaching a larger quantity of people. But did you know that you can run ads with the purpose of increasing the number of people who “like” your page. Have you ever seen an ad that shows you how many of your friends like a company page? That is a like campaign. 
There are two options for this. If you have less than a couple of hundred likes, you will have a campaign option available called “Get More Likes.” This option shows up above your cover photo in the admin panel. If you don’t qualify for this type of campaign, you’ll see “Build Audience.” The “Build Audience” option is slightly more complicated, but all in all, are similar.
Facebook will walk you through each step of the process. We recommend starting with the smallest budget and working your way up. When you’re marketing your business, it’s always a good idea to test into your campaign to make sure it’s right for you and your business.
Post More
Did you know that only 1-4% of your page’s likes will actually see what you post? Some businesses find that by posting a few times throughout the day, they increase the likelihood that their customers will actually see what they are posting. Another strategy is to post on off-hours, like at 3 AM. For some, they find that their content will be at the top of their customer’s feed in the morning.
The challenge is, who is going to wake up at 3 AM to do this? This is easily handled by scheduling posts through Facebook itself. If you have multiple social media platforms, consider using a tool like Hootsuite to manage all of your accounts in one place.
A big mistake many businesses made after the big Facebook announcement was to abandon their pages altogether. It’s important to keep posting regularly to increase the likelihood of engaging your audience.
Want more social media tips? Be sure to check out this post on Social Media Best Practices!