One of the ways that Facebook can be particularly useful to your Internet Marketing Strategy is by facilitating and encouraging engagement with your brand and your marketing messages. Setting up a Facebook ‘Page’ (sometimes known as a Fan Page) is a way that you can represent your business within Facebook. This is different to a Facebook ‘Profile’ which represents you personally. You can however have both and although the Profile is for ‘not for profit’ activity, you can switch between the two and post as either, and it is highly likely that there will be some crossover benefits between the two.

Building a Thriving Community by Focusing on ‘Engagement’

Engaging people’s attention of and interest in your Page to as great a degree as possible brings many benefits including:

• Widening your reach and enlarging your audience and community.
• Lots of clicks on your ‘Like’ Button.
• Getting repeat visits – a regular audience.
• Increasing the chances of driving more traffic to other areas of yours on the web e.g. website, blog.
• Generating a good reputation which could have rub-off value for your search engine rankings.

The Relevance and Importance of the ‘Top News’ Feed

When in your Facebook profile for example, Facebook presents a you with a group of posts in your ‘Top News’ that Facebook decides are the posts you’ll be most interested in. Facebook uses a set of default criteria to decide which posts end up in this ‘Top News’. The implication is that somebody just clicking on your ‘Like’ button will not automatically see your posts in their Top News. The posts that your fans are likely to see in their Top News are likely to be the ones where as well as clicking on a ‘Like’ button, they’ve actually been moved or motivated to comment on posts, engage in videos or look at the pictures on a page. Getting into the Top news of your important Fans newsfeed therefore means maximising their engagement with your Page.

The Criteria for Getting Into Facebook News Feeds

Having your posts stand out to fans on their Top News feed is a good way of actively ensuring that people see and read your Facebook communications.
Current knowledge and understanding by expert Facebook users indicates that anything posted on Facebook e.g. a status update, a video, a link etc. is subject to the following criteria to decide whether or not it will make it into a fan’s Top News feed:

• How often does that fan read your posts?
• What type of interaction has taken place with the fan? For example if the fan was moved to comment on the post rather than just click the ‘Like’ button, that extra level of engagement and interaction will make your posts more likely to be important to that fan (as far as Facebook is concerned).
• Have you posted content recently and is there a good level of activity on your Page? It’s important to keep your content fresh and concentrate on keeping engagement levels strong.

How to Post for Engagement

Facebook experts have found the best results by posting using a mix of media and content types i.e. audio, video, text only posts and text with links.

Have an Engagement Strategy

Successfully making you Facebook Page engaging requires the use of a closely followed engagement strategy and a strong focus on making your Facebook Page all about your Fans, their needs and interests and not all about you.

At the heart of a good engagement strategy is trying to keep up to date and in tune with what your audience is looking for, and posting great content about it on a regular basis. Constantly responding to all comments keeps a good level of activity on the Page.

Here are some suggestions that could form the basics of your strategy:

• Give the personal touch to your fans and give them a clear point of contact to look out for by signing off with your first name. This should apply to all people who post on your company Page as people may not be able to see your photo when you post in Page rather than in Profile.
• Reply to all comments.
• Try to add value multiple times i.e. leverage your communications. For example, post some of your most engaging blog posts on your Page, post highly relevant 3rd party articles. If a post is particularly significant and you need to make sure people have seen it, re-post it.

The Augmented Strategy

Add to these basics by using other means to heighten engagement with your Page and brand by e.g.

• Hosting a weekly event on your page that is highly valued by your fans e.g. a Q & A session with a company / industry expert on your page at a set time and set day each week.
• Pick a ‘Fan of the Week’ and feature them for that week in e.g. feature them in your Wall image.
• Harness the synergy of other social media platforms to create a buzz and increase engagement i.e. use Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to drive traffic to your Facebook Page e.g. to announce your weekly events.

Use Social Plugins Outside of Facebook

By going to Facebook.com/plugins you will find an easy to set-up selection of social plugins which can be added to places outside of Facebook e.g. your web pages, to raise awareness of and to help enhance your strategy within Facebook. For example:

• Add a ‘Like Box’ to your web page or blog. This is a way of adding a Facebook Page section to a web page / blog. It’s a good way to build your following outside of Facebook.
• Add a ‘Like Button’ to your blog posts or sections of your website. This allows you to enhance your reputation within Facebook from the outside.