I recently watched a webinar on HootSuite University called Facebook Brand Pages: Rules of Engagement, and since most of you reading this probably have a Facebook fan page for your pizzeria, I thought it was important to share some of the tips I gleaned from the webinar’s host Jason Li, lead strategist with global creative solutions at Facebook. Let me know which of these strategies you’ve tried and how they’ve worked out for you!

First of all, Li says that, on average, your posts will only go to about 16% of your fan base. In order to increase this number, you should strive for a virality of 1% to 2% within the first couple of hours of posting. Meaning, don’t post at times when users are unlikely to see and share the post, such as 2:00 a.m. Also remember that 40% of people’s time on Facebook is spent in the News Feed, so pay attention to how your posts appear on the News Feed page, since most people will see them here, rather than on your actual Facebook brand page.

Li’s 4 Steps to Business Success on Facebook

1. Build your page
2. Connect to customers through Facebook ads (What’s more important than quantity of fans, is quality of fans. Are they actual customers? Facebook ads can target the exact demographic you’re seeking.)
3. Engage with customers through quality content
4. Influence the friends of your fans (organic word of mouth and paid media) If you have 50,000 fans, you have the ability to reach 4 million friends of fans.

Steps Toward Customer Engagement
Rather than fill-in-the-blank questions and polls, Li suggests a more sustainable method of content creation.

1. Identify why customers love your brand (do they love the way your product smells, tastes, feels, functions, the way it makes them feel, etc.?)
2. Understand why people share content on Facebook (liking, sharing, commenting, etc.).

The Four Principles of Why People Share on Facebook

1. To make my life easier (asking for recommendations from others on Facebook to solve a problem/question). How you can do this: Help them learn something new, discover something inspirational or reward them with savings or tips.
2. To build relationships/rapport (often people like something just to acknowledge to their friend that they were on their page). How you can do this: Create a two-way dialogue, provide prompt and meaningful responses, recognize/celebrate fans, create an emotional relationship, make them smile!
3. To help others (sharing best places to go in a city, etc.) How you can do this: Ask for feedback; be open and transparent about your company.
4. To craft our identity (sharing our movies that we watched, music we listened to, restaurants we visited, etc.) How you can do this: Enable fans to express who they are.

Once you can identify why people love your brand and can integrate that into one or more of the above four principles, you will be able to drive quality engagement.
Establish a Communication Rhythm with a Posting Strategy

• Once you have quality posts to share, post at least one to two times per week (no more than 5X per week). Don’t create posts just to fill in spots. If you have two good posts, post two times per week. Fans will see through the “filler” posts.
• Create a content calendar and schedule your posts.
• Understand your audience and engagement with Page Insights. You can see how many people you’ve been reaching, and how many people have been engaging with your posts on a weekly basis. Keep track of this to note trends in time, frequency, etc.
• Promote your posts to increase engagement in the News Feed.
• Download the Pages Manager app on iPhone to post updates via mobile.

I hope these tips from HootSuite’s webinar with Jason Li will help you in your fan engagement. It never hurts to try something new when it comes to social media!