How to Grow a Facebook Page to 10,000 Followers (and Beyond)

On quote images, sharing what goes viral, and thinking outside the box

After two years of running my Facebook page, I’ve accumulated nearly 400,000 followers. I’m mainly a writer, but I decided to get on Facebook to “diversify” my online revenue streams.

Growing a page can actually be a great way to make money. There’s a brand deal I’m looking at right now that will pay $500-$3,000 for a sponsored post.

I’m able to apply for it because my page has grown pretty large.

I also run ads in my videos, which makes up the lion’s share of my income. To turn on ads, you need 10,000 followers and 30,000 minutes of watch time accumulated.

I can make $1,000 per month from ads on a good month, but I could be making even more if I was located somewhere else besides the Philippines. The ad CPM’s here are quite low sometimes — in the $3 range, in fact. The ad CPM’s in America could be four or five times that. Meaning if my audience were Americans and not Filipinos, I could be making about $4,000 to $5,000 per month from ads alone.

Okay, so you can make money from running a Facebook page — we get it.

You can also use a Facebook page to drive traffic to your blog posts. You could get some free travel if you’re into that. But over anything else, Facebook is a great platform to grow a following.

It’s a better platform to grow as a video creator than Youtube. That may surprise many of you, but it’s true. You know why? The share button. Youtube, in all of its wisdom, doesn’t have a share button that will put the video in front of your own subscribers.

It’s also a better platform to grow on as a gaming creator. Why? Because everybody has flocked to platforms like Twitch and Youtube, and nobody cares about Facebook.

That’s their mistake — Facebook has a new Level Up program that allows streamers to make money after they get 100 followers. Just 100.

Then you may even be able to become a Partner. That’s where Facebook will actually pay creators a base fee to stream regularly. From what I’ve seen, it’s not that hard to become a Partner!

Opportunities abound on the world’s largest social media platform, yet it’s constantly forgotten about in favor of extremely saturated platforms like Youtube and Twitch.

Why? I have no idea. Maybe because it’s not sexy to be a video creator that has no Youtube channel. Or maybe nobody knows Facebook is such a good video platform.

Well, it is. It has been for years now, and I’m about to show you how you can grow your own Facebook page. These are some little tricks I’ve learned over the years.

1. Invite People to Like Your Page

I’ll start with the best tip first. Did you know you can invite people to like your page? That’s like inviting people to subscribe to your Youtube channel, except that’s not possible.

For one, you can invite everybody on your friend’s list to like your new page, and from what I’ve seen, about 5% of your friends will actually convert. Just go to your Facebook page, scroll down, look at the right-hand side, and wait for the “Invite Friends” box to appear.

It looks like this (pictured left). Hit that “Invite Friends” button and you’ll be able to select all of your friends in the blink of an eye.

That’ll be good for a few dozen likes right off the bat.

Another way to invite “likes” is sort of hidden. This trick is like discovering fire.

Take any post you’ve created on your Facebook page — any at all — and click on the number of likes.

Pardon my terrible drawing skills.

A box like this should pop up. Do you see the “Invite” button next to people’s names? Scroll down and hit every single one of them.

I’d say about 5–10% of these people will like your page too.

This can only be done on posts that you have created ON YOUR PAGE. You can’t do this for a post on your own personal profile.

This is a great hidden way to rack up a bunch of likes + follows very quickly.

2. Never Post Status Updates

Why make a simple status update when you can include a picture along with it? You should never ever make just a simple status update. Well, you can, but you won’t get nearly as many likes.

Try to post a picture with everything you write on Facebook. The algorithm loves it, your followers love it, and you’ll get way more likes this way.

Likes which you can then invite to become followers of your page.

Media plays on Facebook. To survive on this platform, you need to play the video game and the picture game.

Speaking of picture game…

3. Make Quote Images

Here’s a post I made a few months back that got 600 or so likes. It’s a simple quote-based picture that I took on a desk. It might’ve taken me about 15 minutes to organize it and another 15 minutes to write up a post for it.

Simple, right?

These types of posts can be a lightning rod for likes because they’re easy to consume, get straight to the point, and look pretty darn good.

And as I said a few points ago, you can invite all the people who like the post to like your page.

All you need is a sheet of lined paper, a good backdrop, some props, and you can make some pretty shareable images.

Here’s something else you could try.

4. Share Viral Videos

You could either share viral videos with the share button, or you could work out a deal with other creators where you download their video and post it on your page with a citation.

The second option works better because the Facebook algorithm REALLY likes videos uploaded directly to your page over sharing a video that was uploaded elsewhere.

It just does. Multimedia does amazing in the Facebook algorithm, and if you’re incapable of making your own videos (I’ll get to that in a second), then share somebody else’s.

To do this, just head over to Instagram. Create a profile, let Instagram know what kind of content you’re into, and start following some tags.

Then hit the magnifying glass on the bottom of your mobile app, and you’ll find the “discover” page with all types of pictures and videos that are doing well on Instagram.

The discover page is pictured right.

Then you can click into these posts, direct message the owners of these pages, and ask their permission to download these videos and post them on your Facebook page with a citation.

It’s worth a shot, and could help you go viral a few times.

5. Create Your Own Videos (Make Sure They’re Square!)

On your left is a video I created a few days ago for Facebook. I just want you to pay attention to the format.

It’s a square video with a title up at the top, and it was made in Adobe Premiere Pro.

It doesn’t take too long to make videos in this format once you get the hang of it, and I must say that if I didn’t format my videos like this and instead opted for the Youtube format with no title, I would probably have less than 100,000 Facebook likes right now.

Writing a title for a video like this is sort of like writing a title for a blog post. It means a heck of a lot, and it’s there to grab attention right off the bat.

Don’t botch the title.

I’ll leave it up to you to create your own videos and buy your own camera and learn how to edit videos. Here’s a video on Youtube that really helped me to create videos in the square format for Facebook.

Some general tips I’ll give you about video creation is to talk about a current event, take a hard stance, and look at what other video creators are doing and mimic what they do.

Use Your Writing Skills

Many reading this are probably writers themselves. I am not an amazing video creator. I’m pretty mediocre, actually, but I use my writing skills to elevate my videos.

I write scripts every time I make a film. Since I have more experience with words, that helps keeps people’s attention.

My videos are basically just the visual version of my blog posts.

Use your writing skills to create beautiful picture posts, too. Write a few paragraphs in the description.

Think Outside the Box (the Most Important Lesson)

I saw a video on YouTube called “Call of Duty Mythbusters.”

It was basically Mythbusters but inside a video game. How freaking brilliant is that?

Maybe you want to do nothing but Disney tournaments where you do 16-team brackets to determine the best Disney movies and characters. There’s a great idea. I’ve done that a few times on my Instagram stories and my followers love it.

Take something really popular and combine it with something else.

March Madness + Disney = Great Facebook page.

Modern Warfare + Mythbusters = Great YouTube channel.

Think about the same thing. Think about fusion. That’s a really great piece of advice that could be 50% of your most important work done.

Shout Out Your Page in Your Articles

Take every opportunity to shout out your Facebook page in your articles from here on out. That’s how I grew my Youtube channel to 1,000+ subscribers back in early 2018.

Every like counts.

Use every platform at your disposal.

Use the Comments on Viral Posts

When a post starts going viral, I always throw a comment down beneath it with a call to action. One time I got 1,000 Instagram followers in two days because of a simple comment I left under my viral video.

When a post goes viral, just leave a comment like:

“Thanks for watching my video! Consider liking my page if you want to see more stuff like this. :)”

Then tag your page in the comment. Done. That really, really helps in ways that you might not expect from a simple two-sentence comment.

Since you’re the owner of that post, Facebook will prioritize your comment to make sure it shows up first for everybody who looks at the comments. That could be tens of thousands of people if it goes viral enough.

I hope you liked these Facebook tips. Some are tactical. Some are strategic. They all helped me to grow my page to 10,000 followers and beyond.

One last piece of advice… There’s about 5–10% of posts that will account for 90% of your likes. These are the mega-viral posts that get thousands and thousands of shares.

Just keep posting and experimenting, and when one post goes viral, use that as a template to create more viral posts to keep growing your page.

Strike gold once, and you’ll be more likely to strike it again.

Thank you for reading.