Hey! Are you looking for some Facebook Business Page Tips to help you grow your business following? In this video, I interviewed food blogger Adele McConnell who shares how she grew her Facebook Page from 0 to over 58,000 followers so, stay tuned.
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So, how do you grow your Facebook following? In this interview, food blogger Vegiehead Adele McConnell shares her Facebook Business Page tips to help you grow your following from scratch.
Ready? Alright, let’s go, okay. Hello and welcome to the interview here, we have the lovely Adele McConnell from vegiehead.com and I am really excited to have this interview. We’re going to be talking to Adele about how she grew her Facebook following from nothing to over 68,000 followers.
Yes!
So, Adele, why don’t you start by telling us a bit about yourself for those people who don’t know who you are?
Yeah, great! Hi everyone and thank you so much for having me, Sara. So, I am a published author. I write plant-based recipe cook books. I am published in four languages and available in bookstores all over the world. I have an Online Academy. I run online workshops and programs. I also do in-person live workshops and my latest book was actually written, It’s a dog recipe book. It’s just been released a couple of months back to rave reviews. So, people are loving being able to cook for their furry friends and I’m also about to launch a range of lipsticks. So that’s me in a nutshell.
Awesome! So, with the courses and the books and things you have out, so what’s the theme and the basis behind these materials that you have?
Behind everything, it really just goes back to being able to be ethical, sustainable, healthy, and really just knowing where our food is coming from and incorporating more plants into diets. You know, I am a passionate humanitarian, I love animals. I wouldn’t call myself an activist but I am definitely passionate about making sure that our animals are protected. So, I’ve got a really, really huge strong calling to protect and serve and just make plant based food as accessible and easy for everyone as it can be because it really is simple. So, I really just come back to health, I come back to simplicity and delicious food.
Fantastic!
Yes.
So, at the moment, I think, I checked last night, your Facebook Fan Page is at 68,000+ followers which is a phenomenal effort. Congratulations on getting it to that level because I know how hard it is to grow a Facebook Fan Page.
It is really hard.
So, with that in mind, how long did it take you to grow this following?
I’ve been at it on this page for probably for the last 5 years. And it’s hard work like, I started off and I really started with nothing as you said it really did start from just starting a Facebook Page. There was no traction, there was no fans and it really snowballed when I started to; when I shutdown my profile that I actually had instead of a business page, I had a business profile. Instead, that got closed down and I started focusing all of my energy and attention on this Facebook Page that we’re talking about right now.
So, it really started when I had nowhere else to go, I had no other options and I was just like I’ve got to put everything I’ve got into this one page. And I; it really is a full-time job. There’s no wonder there’s social media managers out there because it really is a full time job and you really need to be aware when you are coming into it that it is work.
So, it’s not for fun, I don’t look at it as fun, I actually take it very seriously because it’s a very big part of my business and it’s a huge driving force in everything that I do. So, social media for me is not just about being social, it’s about being really smart and about focusing my attention on what I know works and making sure that my audience is always constantly engaged and excited about everything that I am doing.
Okay, awesome! So, what are the top three things that you’ve done to grow your page then?
Yeah, I love this question. I’ve tried so many things over the years and I would have said competitions. If you had asked me this question a few years back; I would have said competitions. But Facebook are very, very strict on the sorts of competitions that you can run and you need a sort of apps and you need to be able to prove a whole of different things and apply and it just got too messy so I actually stopped running competitions but they were very effective way back at the start.
So, I don’t do anything at the moment like click ladders are a really popular where they’ll ask you to say “comment yes and I’ll send you something in your inbox.” I don’t do anything like that. The things that are the most popular in terms of engagement that I found have been really just engaging with your audience.
So, responding back to them, getting to know them on a personal level, being open and able, being accessible to them to ask you questions. I find it really frustrating myself if I’ve a question on someone’s page and I don’t get response. So, I always try to at least acknowledge by liking their comments. So, I’ve got a very, very high level of customer service in that regard, and even though they’re not paying customers yet or maybe some of them are but some of them aren’t yet, they will be in the future. That’s probably the biggest thing.
The second biggest thing is to really be open about my life and to share and to make it interesting. My page is so much more than just plant based recipes. I include pictures of my dogs which honestly are more popular than anything else that I do.
People want to see the dogs. They’re like “when are you putting another photo of the dogs?” So, I put up photos of the dogs and I know it sounds sort of passé but a “selfie” photo, they’re always really, really popular because people want to see things and I am launching this lipstick range so people are just gagging for more information. So, I post a little sneaky picture and I am like “this is one of the colours” and they freak out.
Just being really open and vulnerable and letting them know that you’re a person as well. That’s possibly the second biggest thing, and the third biggest thing that’s been really popular is making sure that I don’t SPAM them.
I am really conscious of the times that I post and I want to make sure that I am not over posting and not I suppose overwhelming them with a lot of information that are not relevant to them, so, I am not sharing silly things that it just from random pages. Everything that I do is very thought out and I really listen to my gut when I am posting.
So, there is no malice or conscious intention behind it, it’s very much a gut-based feeling and I wake up in the morning and think, well, what am I going to post first thing. How am I feeling, what do I need to be told. Say for example if I need to be told “have a rest and have a break and have a breather and get out in nature” I would post something to that effect on my page.
If I am feeling like I need a little bit of nourishment and I need a certain type of food. I’ll put something like that on my page. So, I really listen to what need and reflect that back as to what my audience is going to want because at the end of the day I’ve attracted people that are example the same as me. So, that’s probably the third biggest thing.
Awesome! So, what’s been one of the biggest challenges you faced with building a Facebook Fan Page?
Definitely the trolls and Facebook have got a really great handle on them now. At the start, they were out of control and I would get; I mean I am talking I would have hundreds of comments on posts of people saying that they are going to kill me.
I’ve had death threats through my Facebook like crazy things over the years to the point where I am very strict on my privacy and my security. I don’t even tell people the suburb that I live. So, Facebook now have gotten very, very strict guidelines and I myself enforced a ban with me when I had people helping me manage my page over a couple of staff that sort of come and go. We all know that there is a one strike policy.
I ban and block the people that comment that I don’t like and I delete the comment which I don’t have any time to argue back but that whole thing of do not feeding the trolls really does work. I stopped feeding the trolls, I enforced this really strict rule and I really don’t have any trolls on my page at all. I can’t think of the last time that I’ve had a negative comment on one of my posts and that is saying something. So, I am very, very strict with that and that was the biggest challenge for me was growing a very thick skin because you need one.
So, based on mistakes that you’ve made in the past. What would you do differently now knowing what you do know to I guess improve your Facebook Page?
Probably, the thing that I would do would be to invest in some smart advertising. I wish I have done it earlier on, it would have probably made my journey; you know, I could have gotten there a little bit faster or to do what I wanted to do or if I was launching something in the past, I never would want to run ads because I didn’t know how, but now, it’s very important that you’re seen by the right people.
So, finding someone that offers really great Facebook Ad services is so important. They need to be targeted, they need to be tailored and every single ad is going to get you different response. It is something that I haven’t delved into myself. I would rather outsource it out to someone that I trust because it’s just a whole of the kettle of fish Facebook Advertising but I wish I knew what I knew then. I wish I have known about it then as I do now because I absolutely would always recommend Facebook Ads.
Amazing! Our final question for you today, thank you so much for your time is what words of advice do you have for people who are just starting out who have maybe zero or three Facebook fans including their mother and their bestfriend who are looking to grow their Facebook Fan Page?
You’ve got to be persistent. It all comes down to persistence, consistency and really, determination. You just cannot give up. If it’s something that you really want to grow, you do need to focus on it. You do need to put a number in the air. You know, at the end of last year, my goal was to have 40,000 likes and I exceeded that. So, have a goal, have a number that you want to reach. Even if you want reach a thousand people by the end of the next 12 months, you can do it. You just need to be really conscious of it.
Be persistent and be consistent, so, make sure that you’re picking your times at the same time every day to post, I think it’s really important since we are creatures of habit. People want to know that when I go onto their phones and they are scrolling through their feed on their laptops or their computers that they’ll see you at the same time everyday, it’s a psychological thing; we are creatures of habit.
So, be really consistent with your post and ensure that the voice that you’re using is actually yours. There’s no point to try and pretend to be somebody else from behind the screens of your computer. You really need to be vulnerable. You need to be willing to step up and be open about yourself and people want to know more. They are going to want to know you.
They don’t want to know just the words on the screen, they want to know about your life and it can be a little bit disconcerting when you’re starting out but I think that if you’re really smart from the very start, it’s going to grow. So, keep at it, please don’t give up and know that anything you do, the world desperately needs what you’ve got to give.
Thank you so much for your time Adele.
You’re welcome.
There were so many nuggets in there from being consistent to having a thick skin with the trolls and all about just presenting yourself and putting your message out there. Thank you so much for your time. Now, where can people go to find you if they want to see your Facebook Fan Page and learn a little bit more about you?
Yep. They can head over to; just type in your search bar on Facebook vegiehead with one “g.” So, v-e-g-i-e head and you can go to my website it’s vegiehead.com and also at AdeleMcConnell.com as well which is my new beautiful shiny website. So, you can check those out.
Thank you, Adele.
You’re welcome.
See you, bye.
Bye.
So, there you have it! Facebook Business Page tips from vegiehead.com on how to grow your following on Facebook from scratch. If you found this video useful, give me thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. If you’re looking for ways to build and grow your business using Facebook, make sure you grab a copy of my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets. It’s a super simple guide to help you get up and streaming on Facebook Live even if you’ve never hit record before. So, get your hands on it simply, click on the link in the description below and thanks for watching.
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About this video:
In this interview, Online Marketing Strategist Sara Nguyen talks to Food Blogger Adele McConnell of VegieHead.com who shares her Facebook Business Page tips on to grow your Facebook following.
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