Social Media Logistics: Facebook Fan Pages, Part 2

0 Comment(s) | Posted Mar 1, 2010 by Peter Wylie

Peter Wylie

In an earlier post, we touched on how you can establish a Facebook Fan page for your business to begin interacting with current and potential customers.  Facebook has more than 100 million active monthly users in the U.S. alone, so it is a crucial place to begin social networking interactions for most businesses. 

But once you have built a Facebook Fan page, the real challenge begins—growing your fan base and building lasting relationships with customers that lead to offline business results.  Here are some recommendations to improve your Facebook presence and the amount of fans you convert to customers.

As Mari Smith wrote in a great post on driving better engagement with Fan Pages, “there are two primary components to Facebook Fan engagement, sharing quality, relevant content, and inciting comments.”  Great content is the key to return visits to your Fan Page.  If you’re not providing something interesting and useful, why would somebody bother to come back?

You can ensure that you are creating enough great content by setting a daily schedule of updates, and planning the content a week in advance, so you have time to edit it and refine what you are posting.  Also, be sure to vary the types of content you post.  Pictures, videos, and text content all attract different people, so be sure to have a plan for how you will gather these types of content for your page.  Great content is the key to getting comments, as well, because people need to be inspired to take the time to comment.

Another very useful feature on Facebook is the ability to create and track events.  If your business is having a sale or special promotion, you can advertise that for no cost to your fan base by creating an event on Facebook.  You can add pictures that give context to the offer and other additional content to attract more customers.  You can also send invitations to your fans about the events to track the interest and likely visitors.

Timeliness is the final important practice for building a Facebook Fan Page.  If people comment on your page, make sure to respond quickly and with enthusiasm.  You want to show Fans that you are engaged and excited about their interest in your social presence.  If visitors to your Page see that you respond and enjoy dialogues with Fans, others will be more likely to comment.

Filed under: Emerging Media, Entrepreneurship, Small Business