How to Handle a Social Media Crisis as a Content Creator

The bigger you grow on social media, the more likely you are to run into a situation that requires deft handling. Here’s how to tackle that according to expert Kait Shiels.

There’s a reason Facebook has been around for more than two decades — and kept growing every single year. 

But if you’re here, you likely already know that Facebook is still the world’s most-used social media network, with over 3 billion active monthly users (MAU). 

You probably also already know that Facebook has incredibly robust shopping tools, and the vast majority (27 percent) of global online shoppers use Facebook as their preferred social platform for purchasing. You may also have heard that it’s the most popular influencer marketing platform for millennials, according to a 2024 report.

You want to grow your Facebook following, so I don’t need to convince you with any more impressive numbers (there are plenty when it comes to Facebook) — so let’s get into the how of building your Facebook following. 

Facebook’s incredible popularity also means the platform is crowded. However, with the right social media marketing strategy and some consistency, even new Facebook Pages and profiles can grow their follower count in 2024. 

1. Make sure you have a Facebook Page or professional mode

If you do one thing on this list, it’s this one. It’s impossible to grow a following with a Facebook personal profile simply because you can’t ‘follow’ a personal profile. If you have a personal profile, users will only be able to add you as a friend. They won’t see a ‘follow’ button. 

To grow a following on Facebook, you have two options: 

1. Create a Facebook Page for a business, organization, or brand. 
2. Switch to ‘professional mode’

Which option is best? In most cases, I’d recommend a Facebook Page (sometimes called a Facebook business page). 

Facebook suggests users ask themselves these questions:

1. Do you want to build a public presence for yourself as an individual, an entity (a business, an organization, a product), or something else (a pet, a pseudonym)?

Answer: 

• Individual → Go to question 2.
• Entity, business, or something else → Create a Page.

2. Do you want to create your public presence from the same profile that you use to connect with friends and family?

Answer:

• Yes → Turn on professional mode on your profile.
• No → Create a Page.

How to create a Facebook Page

If you’re a business or organization, this is the route you’ll want to go. 

• Log into your personal Facebook account. 
• Click the Pages tab on the left, then Create New Page. You can also go directly to facebook.com/pages/creation/. 
• Give your page a name, choose the right category, fill in your business information, fill out your bio, and add your cover and profile photos.
• Once you’ve added the basics, click Create Page, and you’re good to go!

How to turn on professional mode

Facebook’s professional mode will allow you to have both friends and followers. To turn it on:

• Log into your Facebook account.
• On the right side of your profile, below your cover photo, click on the three dots menu button (…) for more profile options. 
• Choose Turn on professional mode.

2. Optimize your Facebook Page or profile

No matter how much potential followers like your content, it’s unlikely they’re going to follow a business or creator with a slap-dash profile. In a nutshell, that means completing every field available. Here’s a checklist:

• High-quality profile photo and cover photo (here’s a guide to Facebook image sizes)
• Bio or About section that contains keywords about your business, brand, or niche
• Location info
• Link to your website
• Action button (you can choose from options like ‘Book now,’ ‘Sign up’ or ‘View Shop.’
• Phone number and business hours (if applicable)
• Choose featured posts

3. Share authentic content that starts conversations

With so many creators and brands active on Facebook, the bar for quality content is high — but don’t let that intimidate you. Facebook is pretty clear about what works well in the newsfeed. 

Facebook says that users value accurate, authentic content. “We work hard to understand what type of posts people consider genuine so we can rank them higher in the feed. And we work to understand what kinds of stories people find misleading, sensational, and spammy, to make sure people see those less.”

Here’s their guidance for creating content that hits the mark.

• Clear headlines: “Pages should avoid headlines that withhold information required to understand what the content of the article is and headlines that exaggerate or sensationalize the article to create misleading expectations.”
• Spam: “Pages should not deliberately try to manipulate the feed to get more distribution than they normally would.”
• Accurate information: “We know there is misinformation on Facebook, and we take this very seriously. False information is harmful to our community, it makes the world less informed, and it erodes trust.”

4. Post consistently

This advice applies to all social networks: post consistently. 

It goes without saying that social networks benefit from users actively creating valuable content there, and they reward people for doing so. Whether you’re looking to grow on Instagram, build a personal brand on LinkedIn, or increase your following on TikTok, consistency might be the closest thing you have to a magic bullet for growing your audience.

How often, you ask? That depends on your target audience. Finding the sweet spot for your audience and growth will take time and experimentation, but my best advice is to post as often as you're able to keep up with. 

Creating content takes work, and the last thing you want to do is burn out before you start to see results. This is where a social media content calendar comes in: rather than posting on the fly, gather your ideas and map them out in advance on your calendar so you always have something queued up and ready to go. Creating a posting schedule to stick to as part of your Facebook marketing plan is also a great way to ensure you stay consistent. 

Here’s how to create your social media content calendar from scratch (with a template).

5. Use Facebook Ads

Using Facebook Ads might be one of the most effective ways to get your content in front of new people and, perhaps more importantly, the right people. 

It’s no secret that Facebook has plenty of data about its users and their behavior, and they put that data to work in Facebook Ads. 

The system allows you to set a goal for every ad you run, so if it’s new Facebook followers you’re after, you’re best off choosing brand awareness or engagement as your ad objective. As such, you’ll be able to get hyper-specific about the new followers you’re looking to reach based on demographics or factors like interests, education, major life events, and more. 

Facebook’s super-targeted ads system is incredibly powerful and has only become more so with their AI update, Meta Advantage+. Turning on Advantage+ features means Facebook Ads Manager from your ad performance and adapt it to help you get the most bang for your buck — in real-time. 

According to Meta, this will help to "maximize the performance benefits of AI in your ad campaigns and maximize the value of each ad impression."

6. Explore Facebook Reels

The most engaging content on Facebook is video. After analyzing millions of social media posts sent through Buffer, we discovered that Reels are the best content for the social media platform when it comes to engagement — they tend to get more Facebook likes, comments, and shares than any other type of content.

Engagement, as is the case with most social media platforms, tells the Facebook algorithm that the post is valuable, making it more likely to appear in other news feeds. 

According to our analysis, images ranked in second place, followed by text, with link-only posts squarely in last place. 

As an added bonus for video content, the Reels feed will help you reach people who don’t already follow you. Like Instagram’s Reels feed and TikTok’s For You page, the feed (right next to the Home button in the app) consists almost entirely of recommended content based on what the user likes and engages with. 

7. Experiment with all their features

Beyond Reels, there are a host of other tools and features creators and businesses can play around with to get the most out of their time and energy. 

For example, Facebook Stories are a great way to share more authentic, behind-the-scenes looks at your business or life, or even user-generated content and reviews. Facebook Live is a great tool for hosting live video interviews, AMAs (ask me anything), step-by-step tutorials, or taking your audience along on an adventure with you. 

If you host any events, virtual or IRL, you’d be remiss not to promote it with a Facebook Event — these will often be recommended to non-followers interested in similar events and a brilliant way to reach new people. 

For Facebook posts themselves, have some fun adding GIFs, creating backgrounds, including activities, using hashtags, and more — the more interesting your posts, the more likely they are to stop Facebook users scrolling through their feeds.

8. Schedule your content at the right time

As part of that analysis of the millions of social media posts I mentioned above, we also uncovered the publishing times that generated the most engagement. Here’s our complete guide to the best time to post on Facebook, but I’ll give you a summary.

The best time to post on Facebook is 10 a.m. on a Friday; however, Mondays at 10 a.m. and Tuesdays at 9 a.m. also saw great engagement. 

As a rule of thumb, mid-morning on weekdays is usually the best time to post on Facebook for engagement.

9. Engage in Facebook Groups — or create one

Facebook Groups are alive and well on the platform, with millions of bustling, thriving communities that gather around a host of different niches. There are plenty of benefits in finding and engaging with Facebook Groups that already exist in your industry. 

Beyond sharing your content (we’ll get to that in a bit), Facebook Groups are a window into the world of the most engaged folksfolks who are most engaged in a specific area. Note what content gets them engaging, what questions they have, and how you might be able to help them — this is a brilliant source of inspiration for your own content. 

When it comes to sharing your own content in Facebook Groups, tread carefully. Many will have specific rules about self-promotion. But even if they don’t, jumping in and dumping your own work shows you don’t value the community. As is the case with all community-building, it’s best to give before you ask. Join conversations, answer other members’ questions, and build genuine relationships with other members before sharing anything you create for best results. 

Creating your own Facebook Group — like a group chat for the most engaged members of your audience — can help strengthen the bonds between you and your Facebook followers. The more you build trust and create value with your audience, the more likely they are to engage with and share your content outside the group. 

Not sure if a group is right for you? Here are three signs you may benefit from a Facebook Group.

10. Cultivate engagement

As you may already have guessed, engagement is the bread and butter of Facebook — but it’s a two-way street. Replying to comments and messages is, at this point, table stakes. 

Whether you’re an influencer, creator, or brand, fostering meaningful connections with your followers will help you build a relationship and trust. That means getting to know your most engaged followers through their interactions and building trust by answering their questions and considering their suggestions. 

Another way to show how much you value their engagement is sharing user-generated content (UGC). If they share something about your product or service, amplify it by sharing it yourself (with their permission). If they tag you in a post of their own, repost it. 

11. Follow Facebook rules and guidelines

Facebook has a host of resources in its Transparency Center, including its rules, guidelines, and community standards, which are worth familiarizing yourself with. Falling foul of these can have dire consequences not just for the offending post but your entire profile. 

There’s a lot to take it, but they’re all pretty common sense — like avoiding any content that includes violence, nudity, or hate speech, for example. 

Also worth mentioning here is fake news, click-bait, and engagement bait — Facebook does not look kindly on these tactics. Posting anything misleading, untrue, or oversensationalized (click-bait) is against their community standards, as are obvious plays for engagement (“Like this post if you love dogs!”). 

Facebook’s algorithm is, as you’d expect, getting better and better at identifying and removing spammy content like this. When they miss it, users can also report it. 

12. Partner with other creators and brands

Whether it’s through an influencer partnership or a co-marketing collaboration with a brand, teaming up is a great way to reach new audiences. 

Look for other brands or creators whose audience complements or overlaps with your own, and reach out to see what they may be interested in if and how they could be interested in partnering. These collabs can take a host of forms: cross-promoting each other’s content, creating Reels together, or even hosting a joint contest or giveaway are all great options. 

13. Keep a close eye on Facebook Insights

There’s no better way to figure out if any of the above tactics are working for your audience than learning from Facebook’s analytics. 

Whether posts go viral or fall flat, get to the root of why by analyzing the info available in Facebook Insights. These metrics are housed in your Page Dashboard, which can be found by clicking on your profile photo in the top right.

• From your dashboard, you'll find a high-level overview of your content performance. Click on See more insights on the top right for more.
• To go deeper still, click the Go to Meta Business Suite button.
• This will take you to a page like the one below, where you'll also get a look at your Instagram content analytics if you have a connected profile.
• To go directly to Meta Business Suite Insights, click on your profile photo from the Facebook home page, then hit the Meta Business Suite button.

To monitor the performance of a specific post, click on See Insights and ads on the bottom left of each post. Here, you’ll find a quick look at post impressions, post reach, and engagement. 

Growing on Facebook is a marathon, not a sprint

There are no clever hacks that will help you grow your Facebook following fast — but consistency, experimentation, and analysis can pay off on the social media giant.  

Don’t be afraid to try new things and focus on creating value for your audience. You’ll see your return on investment soon enough!

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