How to Get More Facebook Likes

Written by Jack Lloyd

Last Updated: July 28, 2021 Tested

Social media platforms like Facebook are a great way to get exposure and share content with friends, fans, and potential customers. Whether you want more attention for your personal posts or are trying to get more publicity for your business, there are a few simple tricks you can use to drive up your Facebook likes.

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:

Personal Posts

1
Evaluate your current posting habits. If your posts are under-performing by receiving too few likes, identifying your posting flaws may help inform your future posts. Common problems include the following:
- Posting either too often (more than a few times per day) or too infrequently (less than once per day)
- Posting during times at which your friends are busy (or asleep)
- Posting long, text-heavy content
- Posting vague, overly specific, or mundane content
- Failing to include images or videos
- Failing to ask your audience for feedback or some other form of engagement
2
Post once or twice per day. Posting often increases your visibility on people's timelines, making it less likely for your posts to be overlooked or skimmed over. If you can become known for posting interesting and funny status updates, photos, and videos, people will be more likely to stop and take notice when your name appears on their feed. The more people actually pay attention to what you're posting, the more they’ll be inclined to like each post.^{[1]
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Research source}
- Posting more than twice per day may result in people becoming tired of your content, blocking or unfollowing your posts, or unfriending you.
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3
Use humor. You'll often find that humorous, light-hearted posts attract significantly more likes than do technical or grounded ones. Replacing your usual content with a joke or a funny anecdote once or twice per day—particularly if you include a photo—will most likely result in a larger number of likes.
- Avoid risky or sensitive topics (such as religion or politics) in your humor, as such topics tend to alienate some people rather than including them.
- If you can't think of something funny, use someone else's humor instead: search for an entertaining joke on the internet and post it to your wall, or share a particularly clever version of a popular meme. You may not have come up with it yourself, but you'll still get all the credit.
4
Include photos and videos in your posts. Visual content is significantly more engaging than text-only posts, so try to include a photo with every post you make. As long as the photo is related to at least part of the post, you should see a generally positive reaction to doing this.
- When posting a video, try to use the post's text to build suspense around the video (e.g., "I can't stop laughing," or "Send help!").
- Keep in mind that sharing photos or videos isn't as exciting as uploading your own original content, though sharing does allow you to create a post with your own commentary on the photo or video.
5
Keep your posts short. Many people won't read more than a few hundred characters. Especially when using humor or captioning an image post, try to keep your typed content below the 300 character count.
- If you have a longer post you want to share with people, consider writing the post on a blog and linking to it in a short Facebook announcement.
- Once you've developed a reputation for being entertaining, try adding in longer posts once or twice per week—just remember that they may not receive the same level of engagement as your shorter posts.
6
Ask interactive questions. Another great way to get more likes is to be interactive with your Facebook friends by asking engaging questions and requesting other people's opinions. You'll want to keep these questions informal and light-hearted, as technical or philosophical questions tend to cause other Facebook users to focus on the conversation rather than the likes.
- An example of a good question might be something like, "When was the last time you threw up?" followed by your own personal experience with a humorous twist.
7
Like and comment on other people's posts. Interacting with other people's content will often encourage them to check out your posts, which may result in them liking your content as well. While this isn't an exact science, continuing to like and comment on other people's content will eventually boost your likes.
- This is especially important when you first add a friend on Facebook. Establishing that you like their content right out of the gate may prompt them to do the same for you.
8
Avoid posting attention-seeking content. Creating attention-seeking, glum, or obviously sympathy-garnering posts is more likely to drive people away than it is to generate likes. Again, people enjoy using Facebook to see humor and uplifting content, not to be reminded of their own personal issues.
- Personal problems aren't always easy to deal with, but try to remember that putting them on Facebook won't fix them. Consider keeping your personal life and your Facebook content separate from each other.
- The same goes for chain email-style Facebook posts or posts asking for likes (e.g., "Like to keep love alive"). While these posts may attract a few likes, they'll mostly just annoy your friends.
9
Post at strategic times of day. Pay attention to your own Facebook habits and keep an eye on chat to see who's online and when. You can use this information to figure out the best times of day to post a status, so you can maximize the number of potential likes.
- Generally speaking, people are more likely to check their Facebook first thing in the morning and later on in the evening, after school or at work; therefore, you should time your posts to coincide with these periods of high activity.
- If you post things at unsociable hours, such as late at night or on a weekday afternoon, you may be disappointed by the number of likes your post receives.
- You will also need to consider external factors which may influence people's Facebook use. Things like national (or international) events, holidays, and tragedies may alter the number of people on Facebook at any given time.
10
Make your posts public. By changing the default viewing setting on a post from "Friends" to "Public," you ensure that anyone who has a Facebook account can see, like, share, and comment on your posts. This can lead to a ripple effect if you have friends who share your posts with their friends, as your posts will reach people who you've never even met.
- Making your posts public may increase your outreach, but it will also decrease your profile's overall security. If you decide to make your content public, remember to avoid posting personal information or using location-tagging.
- You can also just add more friends or switch this setting to "Friends of Friends," but changing your posts to "Public" will ensure that literally anyone can see your content.
- If you use hashtags in your posts while they're public, people may be able to find your posts when they search for the hashtags you used.
11
Review your results after a few weeks. If you see an increase in likes after addressing some of the problems you found at the beginning of this process, you can be confident that your changes worked! If you don't notice any discernible changes, try tweaking things like your posting time, the tone of your posts, and your posts' lengths.
- It can take quite a while for the results of your work to show, so be patient.

Method 2

Method 2 of 2:

Business Pages

1
Keep your promotional content balanced. In general, Facebook analysts recommend posting 80% non-promotional content and 20% promotional content. Therefore, for every 10 posts you create on your Facebook business page, 8 should be focused on audience engagement and 2 should be focused on selling a product (or service).
- Focus on high-quality content that’s relevant and useful to your Facebook followers. For example, if you own a yarn shop, you could post knitting tutorials or link to some fun free patterns you found.
2
Ask your friends and family to like your page and posts. If you're trying to get a new page off the ground, the first thing you should do is invite all of your current Facebook friends to like the page. As an admin, Facebook will give you the option to do this directly from the page. Getting likes and shares through your personal network is a great way to improve your organic reach, or the amount of exposure your page gets without paid promotion.
- Make sure to include a comment where you ask people politely if they wouldn't mind supporting your new business and liking the page—people will respond more positively if you're nice.
- You could also encourage them to invite their own friends to like the page—even if only a couple of people actually do, it will increase the page's exposure exponentially.
- In addition to asking for Facebook page likes, you can also encourage friends and family to like, share, or comment on your individual posts.
3
Post interesting and interactive content. One of the most important ways you can encourage new fans and maintain your existing ones is to post interesting, informative, and interactive content a few times per day. Try to post things that people will want to share with their friends, such as photos, videos, contests, and relevant articles.
- Remember, if even 1 existing fan with a couple of hundred friends shares your post on their own wall, the exposure to your page increases hugely.
- Try to ask lots of questions and get people commenting on your posts, then make sure you answer each fan personally. This will encourage people to keep commenting and will inspire trust and loyalty in your brand.
- You can also allow Facebook users to upload photos to your Fan Page. People like things they can engage with.
4
Offer incentives. Offer an incentive for people to like your page, such as a special offer, a coupon, or something creative. Make this offer exclusive to fans of your page, so people will have to like it in order to reap the rewards. This can be very effective and, if the incentive is good, people will share it with their friends and families.
- For example, if you run an online clothing store, you could do a promotion where fans of your page receive a special discount code which entitles them to 10% off their next purchase.
5
Contact admins of related Facebook groups. Facebook groups can have a large influence and can share your page with many Facebook users. Groups have the power to send out e-mail alerts to followers, whereas fan pages can only send a notification through Facebook. Reach out to other business owners whose products or services complement your own, or contact groups for people whose interests are related to your business.
- Try to entice the group's admin(s) to share your page by providing good and relevant content and offer to promote their group on your page in exchange. A Facebook group won't want to send out spam to its followers, so make sure your page is related to theirs and that the relationship will be mutually beneficial.
- Incentives like promotional codes and coupons will also help to encourage the followers of a group to like your Facebook page.
6
Run a "fans only" contest. This is a contest that only people who like your page can enter. The prize can be anything from an in-depth feature to one of your products. The bigger the prize, the more likely people will be to like your page and enter the contest. They might also be inclined to share the contest with friends, encouraging even more people to like your page.
- You can make the contest interactive by using fun and interesting ways for people to submit their entries.
- You could also ask people to post their stories on your Facebook page, where the best story wins.
7
Post job openings on your Facebook page. If you have any positions opening up in your company or business, think about posting that information on your Facebook page, along with a short job description and details on how to apply. This will encourage people to share the post with other job seekers and keep them coming back to your page for more updates.
8
Encourage likes in the real world. Sometimes just letting real-life people know that your business is on Facebook is enough to drive the number of page likes upward. You can post your Facebook page on your business cards or flyers, or you can include the link in your email signature.
- Mentioning that your business is on Facebook if someone asks where they can contact you is also a good idea.
- If you have a website for your business or service, linking to your Facebook page will increase the number of people who can find your page, thus increasing the like potential for your page.
9
Run a well-targeted Facebook ad. For a fee, Facebook will promote your page to its users, giving you access to people you never would have reached otherwise.^{[2]
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Research source} To get started using Facebook ads, visit the Facebook business page at https://www.facebook.com/business/ads. Facebook ads allow you to:
- Set your target audience. For example, you can target your ad to people of a particular gender or age group, limit your ad to a particular region or country, or create your own custom audience based on other factors.
- Choose where to place your ad (e.g., just on Facebook or across other social media platforms as well).
- Set a budget for your ad.
- Select a format for your ad, such as a video, image, or slideshow.
- Monitor how audiences are reacting to and interacting with your ad. You can use this information to adjust how you advertise your page or business.

Community Q&A

Question

How can I post photos that get more likes?

Community Answer

Many of these tips work for photos as well as general statuses. Look at other Facebook posts and see what gets people's attention. You can use this as inspiration and can post similar things.
Question

What is the use of getting more likes on Facebook?

Community Answer

I've learned it's just for popularity. It doesn't actually do anything.
Question

If someone reposts my original video, who gets the likes?

Community Answer

The person who reposts it, unless he mentions you and tells people to like you also, which is not likely.