So you’re on Facebook, and you have a great Facebook Page to promote your business – now what? Now you need to engage your fans and get them interacting with you and your Page. On Facebook, it’s all about building a community – your audience that actively participates in the conversation and responds to what you’re doing.
Here are some ways to engage your fans and get them interacting on your Facebook Page.
1. Post Regular, Consistent Content
One of the best ways to get your fans to start engaging with you more is to start posting more often. Remember that Facebook fans usually only see you when you post an update that goes into their News Feed. By posting regular, consistent updates, you’ll keep showing up in their News Feed and you’ll become more familiar to them. They will be far more likely to comment and interact with you if they feel like they already know you.
2. Always Provide VALUE
Whatever you are posting to your Facebook Page should be relevant, helpful, and interesting to your fans. You want to provide valuable information that will let them learn from you and even get results before they ever actually buy from you.
You can share quick tips related to your topic, how-to articles and videos, quotes, case studies and even resources from other people. If it will be helpful for your audience AND is relevant to your business and topic, then share it.
3. Ask Questions
Asking questions is a blatant invitation for your fans to engage with you. It can be a great way to spark a discussion and find out what your fans are thinking.
You can ask questions in just about any way you want. Add a question to the end of a quick tip asking them to share their experience when they apply the tip, or to share any additional tips they would like to add.
Or ask JUST a question in your update to start a conversation. You could ask them what their biggest frustration is right now around this topic, or invite them to share something great that happened to them recently, or ask them who they would recommend as a resource for something you need. These are all great ways to show them that you are interested in what they have to say and to invite a discussion.
4. Post Photos and Videos
Photos and videos tend to get a lot of response on Facebook. They stand out and people love to SEE something, instead of always just reading your updates.
You can post photos of your products, events you do, your team, and other photos that are relevant to your topic and business. You could post photos of you with clients, images from your portfolio or pictures of your store front if you have a physical location.
Videos are a great way to share great tips and how-to info. Post video tutorials, interviews, teaching sessions, workshops and anything else you can share through a video format. You could also do video interviews with each person on your team to introduce them, video testimonials from clients or share videos from others that will be useful to your fans.
A good mix of different types of media will help to keep your fans interested and give them a choice of how they prefer to learn from you.
5. Respond Quickly
When you do get comments and engagement from your fans, be sure to respond quickly. Let them know that you are listening and are happy to hear from them. Reply with a thank you, or even ask them a question to keep the conversation going.
The more engagement you get on each post, the more it will show up in your fans’ News Feeds, so encourage them to keep contributing to the conversation. You could ask them a question about what they commented on, to entice them to keep engaging with you. This also gives you a chance to get to know THEM and to find out what they think and what they need from you.
Make sure that someone on your team has the task of checking your Facebook Page for new comments, so that you can respond quickly.
When you add these 5 steps into your Facebook marketing strategy, you’ll start to see your fans commenting and interacting with you and your Page. The more interaction you get, the more your updates show up in the News Feeds and the more people will see it and want to participate in the conversation. It’s a beautiful upward spiral that will have your business EXPLODING on Facebook in no time.
Image credit: mil8 Flickr Commons