Facebook page not growing... despite a 9-10% engagement rate & lots of non-fan views

[starhunter]

Do you absolutely need to pay for likes now on Facebook? Or what am I doing wrong? It seems like everything is going well for this page except the audience growth is abysmal.

I run a Facebook page about a celebrity I'm a fan of. Most of the posts are IFTTT automated posts from their twitter feed as they choose not to be on FB.

So looking on FB insights I see an average engagement in the past month of about 9-10% (6-12% but most near the middle) and about 3 non-fans seeing a post for every 2 fans seeing a post (i.e. a lot of views from shares).

Yet, despite this, I've gotten about 30 new likes in the month (currently, a little over 10K so just under 3%). And the month before I had half that with similar post engagement.

 

[starhunter]

For comparison, I help run another page with just under 8K likes, an average of about 4% engagement, and very few non-fan views (2 for every 10 fan views) yet in the past month it has gotten about 200 new likes. The only 2 things that might work in its favor are: it posts more (2-4x a day rather than 3-6x a week) and it is more of an identity as it's a kind of community versus just fan of X (hence even views on shares are often of those who already liked it).

 

[olcote]

@starhunter Are you paying to boost posts or for ads?

 

[starhunter]

@olcote The page with 8,000 paid to boast 1 post by 2,000 views in the past month but that isn't much when it gets 5,000 organic views a week. The 2 days it was boasted have slightly above average likes (10 & 15) but don't account for anything close to a 30 to 200 difference.

EDIT:

The 10,000 page has never paid for any FB ads - I started it as a bit of a fanboy and now use it occasionally to promote my own stuff related to the celebrity.

Neither page paid for likes this month; the 8,000 page has in the past and the 10,000 page never did.