12 Must-Know Tips to Improve Fan Engagement on Your Facebook Page

Last week we had an amazing discussion at my Facebook Page about boosting fan engagement on Pages. The fans are super-generous to offer great tips and examples that I hate to see all those goodies went unseen! To do them justice, I rearranged the tips and re-presenting them in a list post, hopefully they will inspire you to do more for your audience:

 

Before we jump to the tips, here are the contributors for this discussion:

Note: The answers were slightly modified to fit in the tips. If you’d like to read the complete discussion with original answers, kindly visit here.

 

“What’s Your #1 Tip To Improve Fan Engagement?” [Discussion]

#1  To Incorporate Visual Content in Your Posting

Saboohi: “Use engaging and interactive images on 80% of the posts.”

Deva: “Instead of posting a quote or a tip (as a plain status update), post it with a picture to express your views.”

Frances: “Include captivating images.”

 

Summary:

Their opinions are proven by Dan Zarrella’s latest research that ‘Photos’ perform better comparing to other post types on Facebook:

Must Read: 20 Innovative Ways to Use Visual Content to Rock Your Facebook Page

 

#2  To Adjust and Find Out Your (BEST) Posting Frequency

How frequent do you think a Page should post to improve fan engagement?

Deva: “Be human and post in a regular interval.”

Pervara: “I would look at a couple of Parameters. For instance it depends on the Brand Personality. If the Brand is to behave in a certain way then Frequency is also to be done similarly. I also look at the category and reason to be on Facebook Page. It is important to understand what the Members are seeking from the Page as well etc.”

Kimberly: “You have to be upfront, consistent, and tell people how often they’re going to hear from you.”

“There is a RICH sweet spot between 1-2 posts per day. Some businesses can get by with an “every other day” pattern. I find that most do best at that once per day mark and that’s what I set my clients to aim for. They can optimize all they want later. The first thing is learning to condition their readers, set an expectation and consistently deliver. Yeah, this means they can’t go AWOL for a week like many like to do.”

“Play around if you like within that range of every 1 day vs every 2 days but generally you’re going to quickly find that total engagement is higher on a daily due to the way EdgeRank works. Working “well enough” is often enough when a business has many, varied, needs in marketing. Get it started, get consistent, and tweak later if and when you have the resources in both time and staff to justify it. (Different for SMBs and Corps who have the funding and really should optimize asap.)”

Summary:

Be consistent and don’t overwhelm your fans. Find out your fans’ expectations from your Page and let them know upfront about your posting behavior. Use Scheduler if need to space out your posts (Tip: refer to #7’s ‘Points to Ponder’ of this post when using Facebook Scheduler.)

 

#3  To Include a Call-to-Action

Frances: “Vary the content and ask people to comment.”

Suzanne: “Ask fans to give a comment with their best tip – i.e. this post asks us to add a tip for engagement!”

Harini:“ “Tag” beats “share” and “like”. ”

Summary:

Try to encourage fans to like, comment and share a post from time to time. Suzanne has a keen observation about my post for this topic – it was indeed my intention to encourage fans to engage with a bunch of CTAs:

 

#4  To Keep Trying with New Tactics

Marcus: “Keep trying new approaches. Fan engagement will never be an exact science”

Clean and Simple Clearning: “Post a variety of things and then see what gets the most engagement, then continue with that!”

Deva: “General topics like having a Poll or Fill in the Blank.”

Summary:

What about ‘using photos more in posting’? The idea is to experiment and find new ways to engage with fans better, besides photos. Some pages do well in ‘Fill in the Blank’ and get massive attention. If you fans love it, why not add this to your posting strategy?

 

#5  To Brand and Share Special Tips from your niche

Kimberly: “Shareable tips with a CTA is one of my favorite.”

Lisa: “We have had a lot of success with our branded business tip images. People “like” them and always have something positive to share. They also tend to go viral – which is what you want your content to do.”

Summary:

Create a series of branded tips for your niche. Don’t forget to add call to actions like how Lisa did it:

 

#6  To Become Source of Information for Your Niche

Online Agents: “For those in the real estate industry I suggest using your page as an historic timeline of property pricing in your local community.”

Summary:

Give your audience something they can refer back. Be a curator for information they crave for.

 

#7  To Highlight Your Fans on Cover Image

Ileane: “I changed my timeline cover to a picture which included as many of my top fans as possible. Then I was able to tag each one of them and they really appreciated being on the cover and getting tagged as well.”

What if the other Fans feel disappointed for not been included?

Ileane: “I will go over to their pages and leave some likes and comments or I will tag them in the next version of my timeline cover.”

Summary:

Be kind and appreciative to your audience. Here’s an example of how Ileane shine the spotlight on her fans:

Tip: Since admin can only tag ‘friends’ in the photo, you may encourage your fans to tag themselves (or help to notify those they are friends with) if they don’t mind.

 

#8  To Make Sure Your Posts Add Value

David: “Make sure whatever you post provided value to your fans. Don’t post something just to post.”

Summary:

Think on behalf of your fans. Quality over quantity.

For example, I found this article on Twitter and thought it can be useful to my fans, so I posted it. The result is encouraging, even though the article is not my own:

 

#9  To Never Stop Learning from Others

David: “It’s never a bad idea to go to a competitor’s page and see what they do to engage their fans. Maybe they created a post that had great engagement. Learn from your fans, as well as others.”

Summary:

Continue to monitor and learn from pages (including competitors) that do well in fan engagement. Observe what works and what doesn’t.

 

#10  To Make Your Fans Feel Special and Attended to

Audeliz: “Make an effort to make a call. Some fans like and want personal attention.”

Cindy: “Acknowledge every person who takes the time to leave a comment and call them by name. I try hard to see, hear and further the conversation with every person who asks a question or leaves a comment, just as I would do if we “met” in person.”

What if there are too many comments to acknowledge each person individually?

Ching Ya: “The admin can thank the fans generally and ‘Like’ their comments; respond to important questions promptly instead of waiting the comments to pile up so you won’t get overwhelmed. Or, maybe offer a weekly incentive so the active fans can benefit from it.”

Summary:

Try to be more ‘human’ when responding to fans. Acknowledge and address fans via name-tagging in the comment. ‘Like’ your fans’ comments if can’t respond to them individually.

 

#11  To Realize Some Posts Require Immediate Attention

Cindy: “I do think timeliness of response can impact engagement rate. When a conversation is action and current, more people see the interactions in their ticker and the opportunity to join in on that conversation seems more immediate. But any conversation, even 24 hours later like this one, is valuable, counts as engagement and helps ambiently invite others to join in because it keeps the conversation active.”

Summary:

Respond timely so your post stays current and appear in fans’ news feed and ticker. Always try to keep the conversation active and on-going.

 

#12  To Know that ‘Practice Makes Perfect’!

I find David’s response about this is spot on. Definitely worth a mention here although it’s from another thread:

David: “We’ve been posting long enough to have a pretty good idea of what content is best to post and when. I think a lot of page admins have to know that not every one of their posts is going to do well. You have to take the good with the bad. You should just make sure that you maximize the good posts. We usually have two posts a day that don’t do well in terms of engagement and reach. But we know how to offset this when we post our other updates. It’s important to also keep a spreadsheet of all of your posts and how they do engagement- and reach-wise. Practice makes perfect! Let’s not forget that we’re competing for newsfeed space with a zillion other pages.”

Summary:

Not all of your page updates will go viral. Don’t feel bad if some of your posts didn’t get the response you hoped for. Learn from it, monitor your post performance and try to offset it with the good ones, even if it takes time.

 

A few tweaks here and there, add a little thoughtfulness, be interesting and informative, be responsive… you can improve page engagement. If not overnight, then learn from the experience and get to know your audience better. Isn’t this what a brand page should be doing – build long-lasting relationship with your supporters and maintain it?   It’s not always about the ‘numbers’.

[UPDATED] Want to Pin this on Pinterest? Here’s an Infographic I created specifically for this post: http://pinterest.com/pin/146437425354645601/

 

Now Is Your Turn

Do you have more tips to add to the list? Feel free to share your ideas and examples from your Page in the comment. Love to hear from you.