My experience with my Facebook page has been pretty good so far but I want to reach more people and get more likes. What are some tips you have for building page. Btw my Facebook page it buttercream Bella.

I don't understand this obsession with 'likes' - it is a number - it translates to NOTHING

More than 3/4 of a cakers 'likers' are other cakers - its not going to mean extra business - spend your tiem and effort perfecting your craft - I know some BRILLIANT cakes who only have 500 likes - they don't do the begging for likes or anything else - I also know some cakers who have 1,000's of 'likes' and their work is .... ummm...... well you get my drift ! LOL

The tip for any 'page' - whether it be FB or Blog or ?? - have something people WANT to look at/read about - so much more successful that teh random posting...... COME LIKE ME !

I guess there isn't a need to be too obsess with the likes. I mean, if you have great, interesting articles on your fan book page, people will just keep coming for the updates!

Having said that, my take is similar to Crazy-Gray. Have some interactions with readers, encourage to comment or share some links on your page so that more people can be aware of your page

A friend with a massage therapy business will about once a week post something of benefit to the readers, maybe a link to a massage or wellness related article or website, sometimes will just post something positive and uplifting. She will also occasionally post a special offer. 10 % off a massage with a certain staff person for example. All of these things keep her in mind and are things to benefit the FB reader. Nothing really strong sell. She also has an ongoing thing where for each 100th friend she does a drawing from all the FB friends for a prize, in her case each 100 is a progressively longer massage. She doesn't go crazy with the posts, maybe 1 or 2 a week. All ideas that could be translated to a cake business.

If this is a business, the best way to increase your audience (besides word of mouth) is advertising, look into FB and/or Google ads.

I have nearly 5,000 fans. It's fun, it's a way to interact with other decorators, but I don't consider a measure of success AT ALL. Now if those 5,000fans were all local, and they were beating down my door to order cake, sure, I'd change my tune.

I have an opinion about people who run their businesses thru their Facebook pages, and it's not a nice one. So I'll zip it starting now.

Let me clarfiy that. I have an opinion about businesses running their orders thru Facebook who also complain about all the messaging and cancelled orders and drop off of communication and cheap cake seekers. Seem to go hand in hand. To date, I cannot track any orders from people who initiated contact on my wall. Maybe so, but I get an email or a phone call, and that's how I do orders.

If you have 20 facebook likes, and they all are people who buy cakes from you every single month, you're doing great. If you have 10,000 and they're all other decorators who you post on their pages, they post on yours, and nobody buys anything from anyone, that sucks. But at least you'll have lots of time to post on each other's pages since nobody will be selling anything, that's always good for business.

Don't worry about the number so much as what kind of interactions you're having with people offline. Posting ideas for customers, like another poster suggested, is a good thing to do. Get people to answer a question or poll, do something that makes people want to ineract with your page. Then see who's interacting, are they clients or other decorators? If it's mostly decorators you need to reevaluate what you're doing. If you get a lot of clients then you're on the right track.

Costumeczar has a great blog article on Facebook 'likes'.

I only have about 500 likes on my business page (I don't have a personal Facebook), but it is increasing slowly. Some are friends/family, some are other decorators, but many, many, many are new and return customers. These I value most. They spend their £/$ at my place and they recommend me to all their friends and acquaintances.

I don't SPAM them with 500 updates a day. At the most 3-4 times a week - sometimes I post a pic, or tell about a new item we have at the store, or that something is on sale (fr example cake toppers for weddings are all 50% the next two weeks - even if they aren't getting married themselves they probably know someone who is planning a wedding) .

I never run cake orders through FB - it just seems so unprofessional to me. If someone has a question about cakes or an order I always ask the person to either e-mail me or call us at the bakery and we'll be happy to help them.

There is actually a really good reason to try and get likes on your FB page no matter where they are from - it helps with search engine optimization. The more "likes" you have the more legitimate your business is "seen" on Google, Bing etc, so the higher up it makes you in search rankings (assuming your FB page is linked on your business page and vice versa). If you live in a small town or an area where there isn't much competition, it's not that big of a deal. But to someone like me it helps. Sure, the people that search for "custom cakes in SF" may not necessarily become a fan my FB page, but my FB business page brings my business page higher up in an organic search making me more visible.

Same thing with Twitter (getting followers and tweeting), Tumblr, maintaining a blog, Pinterest, Instagram etc. All that stuff helps to bring you up higher in search engines.

So anyway, it may seem silly but it does serve a purpose.

OP - Getting new fans takes time and for the most part takes other people pimping your business on their FB page.