Intel Social Media Strategist, Ekaterina Walter, offers 20 great tips on how to engage your fans over Facebook in this extensive guest post.

We all know that Facebook is one of the fastest growing sites on the web. Just look at the numbers… Over half of Facebook’s 400 million active users log in daily and spend an average of 55 minutes on the site. TechCrunch reported that the site drives 44% of social sharing on the web. According to Facebook 5 billion pieces of content are shared on their platform weekly. Hitwise found last month that Facebook just became the most visited site in US (bypassing Google). And if that isn’t enough, 65% of US Facebook users said they are more likely to buy a product based on a positive Facebook friend referral (eMarketer). The list goes on… It is no secret that as a marketer you should consider a presence on Facebook.

Once you are on Facebook the question becomes “How do I effectively engage my fans and sustain the meaningful dialogue that will help grow my fan base and help me build long-term relationships with my customers?” Below are some tips and things to remember that might help you create a meaningful and engaging presence.

Administration Tips:

1. What to create: a fan page, a group or a personal page? If you are a brand – create a fan page. That is a no-brainer and actually a Facebook requirement (you cannot create a personal page if you are a brand). If your objective is to create a community for a very specific purpose with the limited number of members, create a group (remember than the maximum allowed number of members is 5,000 and you cannot have a vanity URL).
2. Get your fan page name right from the start, you won’t be able to change it later.
3. Get a vanity URL for your page. You only need 25 fans to be able to get it. And you can only set it once, so think twice about it.
4. Remember that you can’t delete your starter administrator account. This means that whoever was the first to create a page with his/her personal account cannot be removed as an administrator for the life of the page. This might pose a risk if in the future the employee leaves the company and still has access to your page.
5. Your wall status update has a limit of 420 characters and your tabs’ names have the limit of 16 characters if you decide to customize the name of the tab.

Engagement Tips:

You would think engaging your fans on Facebook is easy. You post your updates on your company’s fan page wall and your fans automatically see it, right? Well, not necessarily.

Facebook created a NewsFeed – a stream of the most popular Facebook posts. NewsFeed stream is what automatically shows in front of Facebook users when they access their page. There is a secret algorithm that decides which posts to show and which not to show in the NewsFeed. No one knows what this algorithm is exactly, however, through experimentation we derived that the more your fans like the post, comment on the post, or click on the links within the post, the more likely it is to be displayed in people’s NewsFeeds. I also noticed that videos and photos are algorithm’s preferred medium. One thing Facebook did admit to though – only 2% of the stories make it into the NewsFeed. So you need to work hard to ensure your stories are interesting, relevant and engaging. Hopefully the tips below will help you do that.

6. Do not automate your content! A lot of times automated content doesn’t make it into the NewsFeed. Post manually with the customized copy – you will get far better engagement that way.
7. Ask questions. Ask fans to share their thoughts or share your news with their friends. You will be surprised at how many of them will. All you have to do is ask.
8. Don’t be afraid to show your human side. Thank them for their replies and for sharing their opinions with you. From time to time talk about things other than your products. Some of the most responded to posts on Intel’s Facebook fan page were my wishing our fans Happy Holidays or asking them about their favorite Christmas traditions.
9. Don’t be afraid of negative comments or people posting on sensitive topics – what you will find is most of the time your fans jump in and defend you or address these comments for you. And that carries much more weight that you trying to chime in yourself.
10. Post more videos. Not only do videos seem to be preferred by the NewsFeed algorithm, they are also your secret weapon. Whenever a non-fan watches the video the button pops up in the top left corner suggesting he/she becomes a fan of the page (or Likes the page, in the new Facebook speak)

11. Post polls. Your fan base is the best focus group you can ask for. Take advantage of it!
12. Put your fans in charge – crowdsource! I loved seeing Budweiser asking their fans which commercial they’d like to see at the Big Game – they got a ton of passionate responses and made their fans feel relevant.
13. Target your status updates by country and language when appropriate.

14. Watch your post frequency and timing. I suggest starting posting once a day and when you feel comfortable going to twice a day. Vitrue study shows that people are most engaged on the social networks Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. However, I believe that it depends on your audience. Be patient, watch the trends, identify the frequency and best time of the day to post that works for you.
15. Don’t waste your time on the Discussion tab. Unless you tell your fans you posted something there, they will never know (there are no automatic notifications). Create discussions on your wall page.
16. Create editorial calendar. This becomes especially important if you have multiple administrators.
17. Avoid using link boxes. When you are inserting a link into the wall post, the link box automatically pops up under your message displaying the content of that link. Click on the x in the top right corner to close that box. It’s okay not to display a pretty picture or the first paragraph of the blog post. Having a pure link inside the wall post might seem too boring without the accompanying link box, but often times the wall post doesn’t pass the algorithm test if you keep the link box open and attached to the post. Trust me, I tested this at least 30 times.

18. Moderate! Watch out for people who disrupt or damage the environment that you are trying to create on your page. Don’t be afraid to cut them off in order to maintain your focus and ensure that your participants are comfortable. I had to intervene a couple of times and remind our fans about Intel’s moderation guidelines (http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_us/social-media.htm#moderation) or report the spammers. Because there is no pre-moderation capability on Facebook, constant moderation becomes important!
19. Provide exclusive content to your fans. During the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this January Intel livestreamed CEO Paul Otellini’s keynote only to Facebook fans.
20. Cross-pollinate. Make sure you integrate Facebook into your other online presences and vise versa. When relevant, drive traffic to your Facebook page with your paid media dollars or your PR efforts.

These are just some of the tactics that worked for me. I would love to hear what worked for you.

If you are looking for more tips, here is the replay of my free webinar on the topic (http://bit.ly/ckZnDc ).