Whether you have an established Facebook business page or are planning to launch one soon, here are five tips to make your page more effective.
1. Provide content helpful to your audience
This sounds obvious, but I see many business pages that spew company messages that are not at all helpful to their fans. Don’t be one of those companies. Think about your audience. Are they coming to you as a resource? Do they want special offers/discounts? Put yourself in their shoes. Or better yet, ask a few fans/potential fans. Links to other’s relevant information are ok, but try to provide as much original content (blog posts, tips, videos, etc.) as possible.
2. Post regularly, but not too often
There is a fine line between posting enough to satisfy fans and achieve viral benefits, and posting too much and annoying fans. You want to post enough that users see your content regularly and come to view your page as a helpful resource. And, you want to give them plenty of opportunities to see your content and comment, thus sharing with their friends. If you post too often, or with irrelevant content, users may decide to stop being a fan of your page. For a very small business/consultancy, I think 1-2 posts/day is a good rule of thumb.
3. Use images whenever possible
In very informal tests, I have found that posts with images elicit more interaction than posts without images. Use your own images, or grab images online. Subscribe to sites including Shutterstock and iStockPhoto that offer free or low cost stock photos or search Google Images for images with Creative Common licenses (be sure to note that there are several licenses, and in some cases images can only be used in some circumstances, or require giving credit to the author). Try to use relevant and enticing images whenever possible.
4. Manually post blog feeds
A blog can be your best source of original content. There are several ways to automate blog posts to your Facebook wall, which is certainly handy, but I think it is better to post manually at this point. The reason is that in my opinion you want to post an accompanying image (see tip 3), include a short summary/teaser (tip 5), post at opportune times (sometimes blog articles are posted late at night, but it might be better to hit the Facebook page during the day), and attain SEO benefits. None of the current solutions I have researched (Facebook Notes application, Networked Blogs, or Social RSS), can do everything mentioned. Every case is different. It may make sense for you to automate, but in general I recommend manually posting blog feeds at this point.
5. Encourage fans to interact
Some audiences are very comfortable on Facebook, and to these audiences commenting and posting comes easily. Other audiences are not as used to interacting and need some prodding. If you are speaking to the latter, help them get more accustomed to interacting by posing questions, and letting the group know you value their thoughts and feedback. When you are just starting your page, it is also helpful to ask friends and colleagues to post to get the ball rolling.
I hope these tips are helpful. If you have comments or other tips, please share!
Great advice, thanks. I like the manual posting suggestion in particular, as one also keeps control this way.
Great tips, thanks!