If you are an independent professional, a small business, a large corporation or anything in between, a compelling Facebook fan page should be an essential part of your marketing plan. With over 350 million users and average daily session time of 25 minutes, Facebook provides a great opportunity to maximize your visibility, to connect with your fans and to increase your SEO (all content on fan pages is indexed by Google & is now available in realtime indexing as well.)



In order for your Facebook fan page to be successful you need to do more than just create it-you need to engage your fans. This article will give you the information you need to start actively engaging your fans and will help you build a larger fan base by showing you how to create a real community for your fans or consumers.

To better understand how to engage your fans lets cover some basics on the Facebook fan page platform.

There are three primary components to Engaging Fans on Facebook:

1. Create & design you fan page.

2. Share quality, relevant content.

3. Stimulate comments and reaction from fans.

There are more advanced components for creating the ultimate Facebook fan page but we will stick to the essentials in this first article.

Share Quality, Relevant Content


A fan page should be a true extension of your business, brand or organization. Used correctly a fan page can be a wonderful tool for marketing helping you to generate a consumer community, to engage with your fans, to promote new products or services and to create a solid brand identity. Here is a step by step guide to sharing content on your Facebook fan page.

Timing Your Posts

If you are starting out with your fan page, you should update at least few times a week. Once you gage your fan reaction’s you can increase posts to fit your community. Keep in mind “high traffic windows” when the most users are online. You will most likely want to post between the hours of 8:15am PST and 2:00 pm PST or also try between 6:00 pm PST-8:00 pm PST.


What to Share?

There are endless options for sharing content. Here are some ideas to get started. Remember to keep things relevant, friendly and shareable!
• Latest News -about your business or even your industry

• Useful tips or other resources

• Your own comments when appropriate

• Photos

• Videos (you can upload direct or post from YouTube)

• Loyalty promotions (for example “thank you for becoming a fan…”)

• Import your Blog (using the notes application)

• Post upcoming events

• Set up a weekly podcast

• Link to your Twitter account

• Encourage fans to post their own photos, videos etc regarding your brand or business

• Post a survey or consumer poll

This should be enough to get you started. Sit down and brainstorm-think about how you want to reach your fans, what you want to share about your brand or business and what is most relevant to your target demographics.
Create a Community & Engage Your Fans

You have created a page and added some great content-now what? Now it is time to start engaging your fans and creating your community. Here are some tips to get fans to comment and react to your posts.
• You can kick things off by adding your own comments first

• Use a call to action with your status updates or simply ask a question

• Reply as often as possible to comments that your fans leave for you

• Encourage fans to share content on your fan page

Now that you understand the basics follow us for our next post which will cover Advanced Facebook Fan Page Engagement. This will include tips on several advanced topics including:
• How to encourage fans to keep coming back

• How to use word of mouth marketing on your fan page

• Monitoring your fan page statistics

• How to get more fans

• Advertising your fan page

Comment and let us know other social media marketing topics you would like to see covered. What are your thoughts/experiences with Facebook fan pages for your business?

Here are a few social media ideas designed for those companies who are just beginning to engage with social media marketing. This initial strategy will help show some benefits of social media marketing services while limiting the risk involved.






1.Internal Communication - One of the often overlooked social media advantages is that they can often be used privately for internal communication. You can create a password protected workspace for collaborating, a corporate blog, a private intranet or you could start with some on-line training.

2.Web Conferencing- Another great option would be to utilize professional web conferencing. This is a wonderful way to engage in social media. The next time you have a planned conference that would normally require travel utilize a free trail from a web conference company on-line to try it out. This is a great social media tool and as a bonus, it is a great way to save money on travel expenses!

3.Content Sharing- One of the concepts becoming a huge force in the future of social media marketing is the idea of content curation. First, you simply find content that already exists and then share it in some sort of useful format, such as a blog. The greatest advantage with this activity is that at first it requires no content creation. It also helps brands to ease into social media simply by finding what is already out there and bringing it together in a useful way. This is a great way to share relevant information with your audience without the pressure of coming up with new content (just be sure to observe copyrights and always post sources).

4.Industry Tracking- Though it is common to hear that you should be listening on-line, what is often disregarded is how you should be focusing on keywords for the industry that you are in. See what words people are using to talk about your industry on-line and you can learn how you might be able to make your business or brand more shareable with your social media marketing efforts. Twitter is a great tool to use for searching keyword content for your industry-simply enter your industry as the search term and see what posts come up-you can easily scan the posts to see what words people are commonly using within posts that are relevant to your industry. This will help you better target your market with your social media strategy.

5.YouTube Channel - Many businesses or brands have videos that were produced for some reason, maybe for sales training or as advertising. Posting these videos onto YouTube is an easy way to share content that you already have. It is cost effective and gets you started with the process of uploading, tagging and sharing your content on-line. If you are worried about possible comments on your channel simply disable the commenting option-instead offer a link on the page for private feedback if you wish.

These options will give you a good place to start while limiting your risk involved with social media marketing. Fore more information on social media marketing visit our free section on social media marketing resources and tutorials.