I would think that the category of Building Materials features a lot of DIY tips, and possible nice photos of aspirational homes.

Thanks for that feedback @annalise_kaylor:disqus, very interesting! Good tactic, definitely worth trying. I hope you’re doing great 🙂

I’m coming into this a bit late, having just seen Mark’s tweet re-promoting this post. One of the most effective techniques I’ve found for increasing Page Likes is to not focus on them at all in ads. I work in travel and entertainment, undoubtedly two highly competitive and saturated verticals.

Instead of focusing on likes, I’ve found tremendous results in running page post engagement ads. When the ad is engaging and served up to a highly qualified (read: typically under 10k audience size, but the core of our target market) group, I get the “likes, shares, comments” I want, but our Page likes jump considerably alongside – and even better, I’m only paying for the one action (not engagement AND a like).

Further, I can usually see results for under .09 per click (FB click, or less than .18 to a website). For our niches, it’s almost impossible to get people to various websites for that cheap; it’s simply too competitive.

All of that said, I think a lot of businesses fail to understand that writing a post is not the same as writing an ad. It’s a subtly different art, and our team usually writes no fewer than three different pieces of copy to go with three images. Then we test them, and funnel the spend to the highest performing ads as a whole.

You don’t need to “beat” an algorithm – you need to impress it.

Hi there – reading these comments and guessing you guys haven’t seen the hypothesis formed by Veritasium?

I think he is very on the mark with possible issues that arise from buying your likes on Facebook.

You may be buying people from click farms. But I think what is even more likely is that you may also be buying people who aren’t genuinely interested in your content. You end up generating a fan base of people who didn’t like your page because they saw a great post they liked and clicked to become a fan, but instead just a bunch of people who clicked a like ad.

When your content comes up in their Newsfeed after they’ve liked the page, it might not be of interest to them and they never engage, reducing the odds they’ll ever see a post from you again…and from there, your organic reach % tanks

Hmmm @businessesgrow:disqus, maybe I’ll wait until you release the new Google thong…

In my experience, targeting fans of other pages with a “page like” ad does very poorly. Retargeting your website audience is what works best.

@jasonjue:disqus, Buffer is the one that comes to mind immediately. About their quick wins, I remember that they wrote a blog post about that, you should definitely check their blog: http://www.groovehq.com/blog

Hey @disqus_a6LgXoOOIo:disqus, it was a mixture. Some was targeted to fans of other pages, some were targeted using custom audiences. 🙂

Yes – it’s very disturbing. It would be interesting if someone could design a study to test this hypothesis.