After spending over 20 years in consumer product & marketing roles you’d think it would be easy to work out the right or wrong way to take a product or service to market. Although it’s far from the truth and with the evolution of various social media platforms that task becomes a little trickier but also more exciting.

On our Logitech Australia fan page we recently surpassed the 100,000 fan mark which is a great achievement, but has come from lots of trial and error to get the right balance of engagement with the people (yes not fans, people – we forget that sometimes) engaging with our page.

You can read thousands of different articles, ideas, thoughts and really, they are all 100% right - but what’s most important is working out what is right for you, your page and the people you are engaging with.

Our philosophy has been to act like a human ourselves and so we’ve done two things;

a)  We made avatars/characters for each person managing the page which gives us each an identity. From time to time we will respond and engage using our personal identity vs our ‘official’ page name

b) ‘Friday Fan Day’ – a simple idea, but we let the people in our community come up with the questions to be posted on the wall and it stimulates great conversation.

Neither of these examples may suit you, but that’s the beauty of the medium and the platform – you can decide from all the great ideas & choose what you feel is right for you.

Special Thanks to Paul D’Ambra for sharing the Logitech philosophy with us here at AFPS. It is so important that we treat our fans like people and not like computer screens.

Why Content is Crucial

This post is about content – what you write and post on your Facebook page – and I’m going to talk about why what you share is really important.  Content is really the foundation of your Facebook business page.  And if you don’t get it right, you may as well not bother!

It’s so, so crucial as the interaction on a page post is one of the things that Facebook looks at when it decides where to put your post in the News feeds of the people that are following you.  It also looks at other factors, but that’s one of the main things and you’re only going to get the interaction on it or people liking and commenting and sharing it if you’ve got the content right for your audience.

The other thing to be really aware of now on Facebook, especially with all of the recent changes, is that it’s really easy to switch people off and filter people out and turn off updates that aren’t helping you or aren’t useful or are just pointless!

In this blog post I really want to share with you 2 crucial things about content that have really made a difference to my clients.

Are Image and Video Part of Your Posting Strategy?

My top tip is about having images and video as part of your posting strategy.  This is something I talk about all the time when I’m working one-to-one with people (and I’ll actually be covering this in more detail on a webinar I’m running soon – I’ll share the details of that at the end of this post).  Whatever level my clients are working with me, I talk about this content strategy and this really makes a difference.  People love the visual stuff!  It is absolutely true that a picture is worth a thousand words sometimes. So do post photos and videos all the time on your page.

I’ve got one client, Ben Nash from Come Alive Health Coaching, we’ve been doing some work on his content and he was posting status updates on his business page and they weren’t getting lots and lots of interaction.  And I kept saying, put some images, put some video, people are going to love that.  And then he finally put a video up and he got lots of interaction!  He got about seven comments, he got people sharing the video – really taking notice of what he was doing – that really, really worked for him.

That’s just one example.  And you know yourself, when you’re looking at Facebook posts, when you’re scrolling through that News feed and getting a bit distracted….what are the updates you click on? I’ll bet it’s often the updates that have got an image or the posts that have got a video?  And you can implement that today in the next post that you write! See what difference it makes to your interaction.

Ask the Audience!

Another strategy that I talk about a lot with people is asking your audience what they think.  So many people just write posts that are like a statement of fact and people don’t know what you want them to do with it.  Your audience might be thinking, well so what?  How does that help me?  But asking people what they think, just adding that really simple phrase at the end of your post, “what do you think?”  Suddenly you’re turning it around, you’re being interested, you’re caring what your fans and your followers think.  This is really key to getting great engagement on your page.

I’ve got another client, Amy Taylor, she runs Amy Taylor Accountancy, and she’s been on Facebook for coming up 2 months.  We’ve been working together and she’s already got three clients from Facebook, who’ve signed up for her services.  And that’s because she’s got that content right for her audience.  She’s asking them what they think, she’s putting images on there, she’s engaging them, and she’s talking about things that are relevant to them in terms of tax breaks or ways that they can save money or ways that it can be easier to get their accounts done.  She’s done really well with her page to get those clients just using Facebook smartly.

So, those are 2 of my tips – use images and video, and ask your audience what they think – and you can start doing those today!

Let me know what you thought and how you get on with these tips below, leave a comment, share with your friends.

Thanks Sam for this insightful post with clear examples of how this can work for everyone. Sam is running a webinar on 20^th December covering these tips in more detail, and will be sharing a whole lot more strategies too. The entire webinar is focused on getting you great engagement through great content on your Facebook page. You can read more about it and sign up to attend here.

Well two bin nights in one week LOL

The big news is that Facebook have launched their newest upgrade to what we have always known as the Profile, and have now called it the Timeline. Essentially making Facebook all about me! Well you … you know what I mean. It is a total reflection of everything that you have added to Facebook over the years, a true “Expression of Yourself”.

I am actually really starting to like the Timeline already …

What does this mean for Facebook Pages … at this stage no changes are planned except for the Friends Activity that was added to our page menus. But I predict that the page upgrades will follow shortly after. At least that is how they brought in the big page upgrade last time. And besides you don’t introduce a funky new profile design to have no plans for business pages …

And then you have Google+ launching their business pages “soon” so that is when I believe Fb will reveal their new page designs. Get set for another learning curve gang… sorry!

You are telling me all the time lately that Facebook changes too often, they force you to spend more time figuring out the platform than actually marketing your business and it is driving you insane.

I heard you and I have created a program to help support you  while you use Facebook for business. With more than 30,000+ fans I am constantly being asked for help, as people just don’t know where else to turn. So I would like to introduce to you … Facebook Roadside Assist.

Now you can let someone else worry about working out how, where and why things have changed and you can get on with focusing on marketing your business on the worlds largest marketing place.

Learn more about Facebook Roadside Assist here http://nanacast.com/facebookroadsideassist

I have also made a couple of tutorials about the major changes to the security settings on Facebook and these are available free of charge when you access the members log in area.

Cheers
Leigh Kostiainen

PS: Trust a proven industry expert who helps thousands of people use their Facebook for business on a daily basis and allow yourself to focus on the tasks that matter most …  http://nanacast.com/facebookroadsideassist

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