Building a compelling Facebook fan page is one thing. Creating consistent engagement is a whole other skill.

In this post, my intent is to bring to light several areas you may be overlooking that are causing your fan page to either plateau or not get off the ground much at all.  To know more about Facebook engagement, check out this two-part post here and here.

The News Feed

Many businesses set up a Facebook fan page and look to their fan growth rate as the primary success metric. But number of fans isn’t really the full story. You need to track and measure how much your fans are actually consuming, engaging with and sharing your content.

Some studies show that a whopping 90% of Facebook users don’t return to a fan page once they click the Like button. They only see and interact with your content in their news feed. So your job is to ensure you’re consistently posting relevant content that gets seen in the news feed of your fans and inspires lots of engagement with comments, likes, shares and @ tags.

To access your metrics, go to facebook.com/insights or click “View Insights” in the Admin panel at top right of your fan page. Insights are available on all fan pages with more than 30 fans, so if you just launched a new page, you’ll need to get your first 30+ fans before you can begin tracking metrics.

Monitor Your Per-Post Insights

This is a handy three-part metric that’s clearly displayed right on your fan page wall next to every post you create approximately 24 hours after publishing. The three parts are:

1. What you posted
2. The number of impressions
3. The percent feedback

To clarify, impressions is the number of times your content was “rendered in the stream,” which means that your content was displayed on your fan page wall, shown in the news feed of fans, commented on or Liked.

Note that the impressions metric does not equate to an exact number of actual Facebook users; your content may be further down on the news feed while a fan is viewing other content. To see a more accurate number of actual views, go to Insights > Interactions > Post Views and that number is the total number of times your content has been viewed by fans and non-fans.

The percent feedback is calculated by taking the total number of comments plus Likes divided by the number of impressions. In the example below, I posted a photograph of the latest version of my social media business cards with an added QR code. The post was made on a Thursday at 5:10 pm PT—which is not my normal “high-traffic window” (typically 8:00 am – 12:30 pm PT). However, this particular post was very well-received, as it a) was a photo, which tends to get the highest weight in the news feed, b) contained exciting new information my fans wanted to know about and c) included actionable tips with links.

Example Facebook fan page Per-Post Insights

If you take 277 Likes + 156 comments = 433 / 70,941 impressions, the percent is 0.61%.

I recommend that you focus on the percent feedback number—you want that to increase. The number of impressions can be misleading. Sure, it’s great to think tens of thousands of Facebook users are seeing your content. But you want them to engage with your content.

Monitor Your Daily Story Feedback

This metric also consists of three components, plus I added a fourth:

1.  Total number of Likes on all of your content for any given day
2.  Total number of comments on all of your content for any given day
3.  Total number of “Unsubscribes” on any given day
4.  Total number of “Unlikes” on any given day

The first two numbers are self-explanatory. However, Unsubscribes is a metric that’s frequently overlooked by most Facebook fan page owners. When a fan chooses to hide your content from showing up in their news feed, this is considered an “Unsubscribe.” Remember, your fans are viewing your content primarily in their news feed.

In the screenshot below, you can see the news feed options for a post made by a fan page I’ve Liked: Hide the post, Hide everything by the page, Unlike the page or Mark as spam.

Here's how a fan can hide your updates.

The top two reasons that fans choose to hide your posts are 1) posting too frequently (meaning your posts are dominating their news feed and they can’t see much of their friends’ activity or other pages that they’ve Liked) and 2) posting content that’s not relevant.

You can’t see exactly which fans have hidden your posts from their news feed, nor can you necessarily tell exactly which piece of content caused fans to Unsubscribe (or Unlike). You can only see a total number for the day. It’s vital to keep a watchful eye on this one metric alone. You may see your fan count growing nicely and maybe there’s a decent amount of engagement happening. But you may be just treading water—as new fans join, others may be hiding your content.

You’ll find your Daily Story Feedback under Insights > Interactions.

Facebook Insights —Daily Story Feedback

The fourth metric is the number of fans who have chosen to leave your fan page altogether. At least with the Unsubscribes, they’re still fans and can post and engage on your wall. Facebook users may choose to Unlike fan pages for the same two reasons they hide posts—too frequent or not relevant. Fans can easily hover over any content in their news feed and select Hide or Unlike, as shown in the screenshot above with the Black Eyed Peas (just as an example!).

You’ll find your Unlikes under Insights > Users > third graph down = New Likes and Unlikes.

There are many other metrics you can track and monitor via your Facebook Insights, such as Page Views; Daily, Weekly and Monthly Active Users; Daily Page Activity; Demographics; Media Consumption and more. But we’ll save those for future blog posts!

For now, by monitoring your Unsubscribes (Hides) and Unlikes against what content you are posting each day and how much engagement (post comments and Likes) you’re creating, you’ll be better equipped to fine-tune variables such as the topics you post about, the type of content you post (photo, video, link, status update) and the time of day you post. Over time, you’ll identify your own sweet spot for maximum engagement.

You might consider creating your own Excel spreadsheet as a dashboard. My coauthor, Chris Treadaway, and I recommend this practice in our book Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day. In fact, I like to take the dashboard concept one step further and create a blend of an editorial calendar with retroactive tracking. That way you can plan what you’re going to post and fine-tune along the way as you watch your daily engagement rates.

What do you think?  What do you measure on your own fan page? Let us know in the comments below if this post was of value to you.

Look no further.  This article will provide an in-depth look at Facebook’s promotional rules.

The Tricky Rules

Running a contest on Facebook is a powerful way to generate buzz, increase engagement, boost your fan count and build your email list. But Facebook has rigorous rules governing what campaigns you can and cannot administer and promote on their platform.

For several years, the contest rules were fairly loose and Facebook users and page admins could pretty much administer whatever campaigns they wished within the confines of Facebook’s general terms (now called Statement of Rights and Responsibilities).

However, in 2009, Facebook severely tightened up their promotion guidelines, causing a great deal of confusion even two years later. To quote Susan Getgood on her post about Facebook contests:

Bottom line, Facebook doesn’t want any explicit involvement in ANY of your contests. It’s all about liability, and the Facebook promo guidelines are designed to distance the social network from whatever companies and bloggers do with their contests.

Every day, vast numbers of page admins—from small businesses to major brands—administer promotions that violate Facebook’s rules.  They are running the risk of having their pages disabled completely. I strongly recommend all Facebook page admins become very familiar with how to safely run contests within the rules.

This post will tell you what you need to know.

What does Facebook mean by a “promotion”?

To quote Facebook:

These Promotions Guidelines govern your communication about or administration of any sweepstakes, contest, competition or other similar offering (each, a “promotion”) on Facebook.

A “sweepstakes” is a promotion that includes a prize and a winner selected on the basis of chance.

A “contest” or “competition” is a promotion that includes a prize and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria).

So, anytime you run a campaign on Facebook where you wish to select a winner, that would fall into the terms of Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines.

Facebook also says:

You will not administer a promotion through Facebook, except through an application on the Facebook Platform. Administration includes operation of any element of the promotion, such as collecting entries, conducting a drawing, judging entries, or notifying winners.

Simply said: You can’t use Facebook’s features for your promotions!

A promotion where you select winners is not to be confused with you simply promoting and marketing your business—that’s exactly the reason Facebook (fan) pages were designed!

What are Facebook’s contest rules in plain English?

On November 6, 2009, Facebook changed their Promotions Guidelines significantly. Prior to this date, it was pretty much a free-for-all. With the changed rules, Facebook basically went from one extreme to the other.

In order to administer any kind of contest, you had to (1) get written approval from Facebook at least seven days prior to running your campaign, (2) have an account rep at Facebook and meet the minimum ad spend of $10,000 per month and (3) use a third-party app on the Facebook platform.

Then, on November 29, 2010, Facebook loosened up a bit and changed rules.  So, the good news is:

1. You no longer need written permission from Facebook in order to run a contest.
2. You no longer need an account rep at Facebook, nor do you need to meet the minimum monthly ad spend.
3. BUT you still must administer ALL contests on Facebook via a third-party app ON the Facebook platform.

That’s right! You MUST use an app to conduct a contest or risk having Facebook come down on you. Unless of course you’re a big time advertiser with Facebook.

What apps are best for running contests?

One of the most widely used apps is Wildfire app. Their interface is fairly easy to use and their fees are competitive.

Wildfire app

You can choose among 10 different types of promotions, including photo, video, quiz, trivia and more:

Wildfire app promotion choices

Wildfire app promotion choices

See Wildfire’s FAQ to decide among running a sweepstakes, contest or coupon/giveaway campaign.

A wide variety of third-party apps offer promotion services that meet Facebook’s rules. Check out any of the following:

• Fanappz
• Vitrue
• BuddyMedia
• Votigo
• ContextOptional
• BulbStorm
• NorthSocial
• Momentus Media
• Friend2Friend
• Strutta

• UPDATE March 5, 2011: Two additional promotions app services to check out include Offerpop and PromoBoxx.
• UPDATE March 14, 2011: Another promotions app to add to this list is Freepromos (currently 400k monthly active users!). Free for Pages with fewer than 5,000 fans. $100 for Pages with 5,000-50,000. White label also available.

See also this related post: Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page. Plus, see Facebook’s list of preferred developers here.

Can I select a fan at random to give away a prize?

No. This constitutes a drawing where winners get selected. You’re effectively using Facebook to “collect entries.” Plus, you cannot contact winners inside Facebook at all—via email, chat or posting on their wall—nor can you post winners on your page wall.

What you can do, for example, is select a fan at random and feature him or her in your page photo. Or possibly feature chosen fan(s) on a custom tab (link). As long as you don’t have other fans vote or submit nominations, etc.

Toys R Us Featured Fan!

Toys ”R” Us currently runs a fun Featured Fan promotion. Keep in mind the submission and voting is, of course, part of an official sanctioned promotion being run on a third-party app.

Toys "R" Us Featured Photo Facebook contest. Note the link to terms and conditions.

Can I have my fans enter a contest by uploading photos?

Not if you ask fans to upload photos directly to Facebook. Photos, or any content, submitted for entry into a contest can only be done via a third-party app on the Facebook platform. The Facebook app doesn’t count.

From the Promotions Guidelines:

You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as posting on a wall of a page, uploading a photo, or posting a status update.

You can: Use a third-party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content to the application. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo to a third-party application to enter the contest.

I searched extensively for a Flickr Facebook app, for example, that might be a good workaround for running a contest, but came up blank.

If you do a Google search for “Facebook photo contest,” unfortunately, you’ll see there are scores of Facebook pages running photo contests that do not adhere to Facebook’s terms.

Here’s a fun example of a photo contest—that does comply with Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines—by the United States Potato Board:

Twice Baked, Twice as Smart recipe photo contest

Can I give away a prize to anyone who likes my page?

You CAN restrict your promotion only to entrants who have first liked your page, as long as the promotion is administered through a third-party app on a separate canvas page (now a link, formerly a tab).

Plus, good news! You CAN provide a giveaway and even collect names and emails from fans and visitors to your page. I highly recommend you add a custom contact form to your page. Use the sign-up box code from your own email management system, or create your own form code using something like JotForm, reviewed here.

You can use a piece of “fan only” reveal code to give away a coupon code or special gift to everyone who likes your page. Check out Guy Kawasaki‘s Facebook page for his forthcoming book, Enchantment, where he gives away a free ebook just for liking his page.

Guy Kawasaki—Enchantment Facebook page

See the Facebook page of 1-800-Flowers for a discount code, only revealed to users who like their page.

How can I tell if a contest on Facebook adheres to the guidelines?

Promotions on Facebook need to have clearly set-out terms that are visible right on the canvas page. For example, here’s the Twice Baked, Twice as Smart photo contest rules:

Contest rules for Twice Baked, Twice as Smart

Can I promote a contest on my Facebook page that I run on my blog?

Yes. As long as there’s no requirement to do anything on Facebook; e.g., like your page, comment, upload content, etc. You can simply post a link on your page to the contest. And, to be fully safe, I would also include this disclosure, “This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.”

Is it worth the risk to run a contest without a third-party app?

No, the risks are far too great, in my opinion.  Yes, Facebook does not have the resources to monitor every single promotion on the platform. But, you never know when you might catch the attention of their legal department.

In addition to our other remedies, we may remove any materials relating to the promotion or disable your page, application or account if we determine in our sole discretion that you violate any of our policies.

Facebook is serious about taking action if they discover a violation. My friend, Jonathan Rivera, had an experience with his real estate referral Facebook page where there was an inadvertent use of a trademark. Despite Rivera’s becoming compliant, Facebook shut down the very popular page with tens of thousands of fans. Fortunately, the issue got resolved in a fairly timely manner and Jonathan got his page back intact… under a new name.

So, just take note that any violation of Facebook’s terms is obviously a risk. (Along with directly administering contests and promotions on your Facebook page, two other common violations are setting up more than one personal profile and/or setting up a personal profile in the name of a business.)

Hopefully the fog around contests on Facebook has lifted for you now! All you need to remember is anytime you wish to run any kind of promotion where you select a winner, you’ll have to use a third-party application on the Facebook platform. I’ll be writing a follow-up post covering the specifics of what makes a successful contest. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, what questions do you have about contests? Have you run any successful promotions yourself? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

UPDATE March 5, 2011: It may be that you can run a contest using Facebook‘s new iFrames feature and remain in compliance with the Promotions Guidelines. Essentially, you are creating your own app in order to use iFrames and you host the content on your own site. I’m waiting to hear back from Facebook with the definitive answer and will keep you posted. Also, please note that my use of the term “third party app” includes an app you create yourself if you have the know-how/resources to do so – you basically become the “third party” in this case.

These apps allow you to customize your landing tabs, add your blog, add videos and photos, add chat, add polls, contests, geolocation, scheduling, email, ecommerce and much more.

Why Facebook Apps?

Why add apps to your Facebook Business (Fan) page? By customizing your Fan page with apps, you can significantly enhance the user’s experience. And, the more you keep your fans engaged and coming back for more, the more likely you’ll increase your “viral visibility.”

In other words, every time a fan interacts with your Fan page, it’s free advertising for you because each fan’s activity goes out into their stream (their wall and their friends’ News Feeds). To find the best apps to enhance your Fan page, you could spend endless hours browsing Facebook’s Application Directory:

Facebook App Directory

However, there are literally tens of thousands from which to choose. Even clicking on the Business category as I’ve done in the screenshot above, we get apps like Bartab (send friends real drinks for $1) and Hugs and Hearts. I don’t know about you, but these are hardly business apps in my opinion!

There’s also Appbistro where you can browse their comprehensive directory of apps for businesses.

Now that Facebook nixed the ability to have our own custom content/apps on the Wall tab (left column), we need to get even more creative to ensure content on tabs is actually seen and that your fans interact with it; otherwise there’s not much point in having a dormant app that doesn’t enhance the user’s experience.

You can track your metrics via Facebook Insights and see which of your tabs gets the most clicks as shown in the screenshot below:

Facebook Insights - Tab Views

However, it may be that very few of your tabs get much visibility except the actual Landing tab (my top scorer in the screenshot above). Your Landing tab is the default page that visitors see who have not yet joined your page (click Edit Page > Manage Permissions > select Default Landing Tab).

So, my recommendation is to focus on those apps that actually publish content to your own Fan page stream (your page wall and the News Feed of your fans). Plus, add a few apps that allow for heightened engagement at specified times, such as live streaming video and live chat apps as I’ve detailed below for you.

Custom Landing Tabs

Let’s start with custom content as it’s important to have a branded Landing tab for your Facebook page. In fact, as reported by InsideFacebook, BrandGlue founder Jeff Widman discovered that a custom Landing tab DOUBLES conversion to fans:

We ran an A/B test just four weeks ago to guesstimate the efficacy of a landing tab. We drove visitors to the fan page of a major brand using ads. Those ad-driven visitors converted to fans at a rate of approximately 47% WITH a landing tab. When we turned off the landing tab, those same ad-driven visitors converted to fans at approximately 23%. A VERY noticeable loss in conversions over the course of the campaign.

The most popular app by far to add your own custom content has been Facebook’s own Static FBML. Facebook will be replacing all FBML tabs and apps with iFrames at the end of 2010, at which time you’ll be able to create custom tabs using iFrames. However, Facebook will continue to support any and all tabs/apps created prior to when FBML gets deprecated. See the Developers Roadmap for updates on the timeline of changes.

By way of example, here’s the Landing tab for Social Media Examiner’s Facebook page. Note the call to action (“Click the Like button”) and the seamless branding:

Social Media Examiner Facebook Fan Page - Landing Tab

Apps for adding custom content/branded Landing tab:

Here are my top two recommendations:

• Static FBML – you’ll need to be familiar with coding or use a WISIWYG editor first. See Tabfusion’s Free Facebook Page Tab Maker here.   Plus, review these two helpful tutorials.
• TabSite – free version with two TabSite subpages or choose from three paid levels. Complete WISIWYG editor; tabs within a main tab. TabSite is one of my favorites. It’s a very easy-to-use interface. I created the “RESOURCES” tab on my Facebook page using TabSite.

TabSite - Facebook App

Facebook custom tab apps:

• Welcome Tab
• iwiPage

For easy-to-use templates, check out these options:

• Static520 – UPDATE 12/21/10 – some users have reported this app provider is not working properly.
• Pagemodo
• FanPageEngine
• PageLever
• SplashTab
• FaceItPages – UPDATE 12/30/10 – added this provider to the list.

These sites offer suites of apps, including custom Landing tabs. Some apps are free, some have a fee:

• Involver
• MiproApps
• Tabfusion
• NorthSocial
• Momentus Media
• Friend2Friend
• ShortStack Lab
• Avenue Social

Involver.com - Facebook Suite of Apps

For a helpful review of some of these apps, see this post on TechCrunch. Plus, read Jay Baer‘s review of several of these apps here. For a list of over 50 Facebook-approved developers, go here.

Designers/developers:

If you’re looking for full hands-on customization service at very affordable rates, my top choices are:

• HyperArts
• Likeable Media
• Custom Fan Page Designs

See also:

• KickApps
• FanPageGenerator
• Say It Social
• Hilinsky Consulting
• 140ology [Update: added 12/21/10]

Enterprise-level customization:

• Vitrue
• Buddy Media
• Context Optional
• Sprout
• Friend2Friend
• Avenue Social

ContextOptional.com - Social Marketing Software and Services

See the complete list of Facebook Preferred Developer Consultants here.

Your Blog

Once you’re happy with your custom Landing tab, it’s time to import your blog’s RSS feed. My favorite app – used widely by many bloggers on Facebook – is Networked Blogs. It’s free and relatively simple to set up.

Networked Blogs - Facebook app

Once you’re set up and have a few followers, you can place the Networked Blogs widget on your blog for added visibility. Any time you have the chance to display your fans’ faces, go for it!

Networked Blogs - Facebook widget

You can add the Networked Blogs app to your personal profile in addition to your Fan page, if you wish. Alternate methods for pulling in your blog posts include:

• Facebook’s Notes app (can be a lag time and is sometimes buggy).
• Any of the RSS apps; e.g., RSS Graffiti, Social RSS or others.

RSS Feed and Content Publishers

You can easily import any of your content that has an RSS or Atom feed. For example, I import my Twitter favorites and Google Reader Shared Items using the RSS Graffiti app.

RSS Graffiti Facebook app

RSS/Content apps include:

• RSS Graffiti
• Social RSS
• Involver – RSS Feed (free version posts to the tab, Pro version posts to the wall)
• North Social – RSS Feed
• Objective marketer (complete publishing platform – used and recommended by Guy Kawasaki).

Video – YouTube and Viddler

I’ve been searching for some time for the ultimate YouTube app – one that automatically publishes new uploaded videos from your channel to your Facebook page wall, has a nice-looking tab, is easy to navigate and doesn’t take users away from your Fan page to view videos. Plus, if I were really waving a magic wand, I’d love it if YouTube gave us the option under their “Activity Sharing” feature to post liked or favorited videos to our Fan page (versus profile).

The closest I’ve found is YouTube Channels – I like their interface but the downside is they charge a monthly fee of $4.99 and I couldn’t get the Publish to Wall feature to work, so I canceled my subscription. Check out the YouTube Channel app by Involver (screenshot below) or the YouTube Video Box app.

Involver's YouTube Channel Facebook app

If you have a Viddler account instead of or in addition to YouTube, check out the Viddler app.

Twitter

I’m not a big fan of importing all tweets onto your Facebook wall, unless you don’t tweet that often! A more effective solution is to only publish select tweets TO your Fan page using this app:

• Selective Tweets – once set up, this app allows you to post your tweets to your Facebook page simply by including “#fb” at the end of the tweet (or there is an option to include #fb anywhere in the tweet but I don’t recommend that option as it’s too easy to make a mistake!). You can choose to post tweets to your personal profile and/or Fan page.

Or, my favorite solution as mentioned in the RSS Feed section above is to only import your Twitter Favorites. I do this using the RSS Graffiti app. To find the RSS feed URL for your Twitter Favorites, with the new Twitter design the only way is to view your Twitter account while logged out:

Another Twitter solution is to simply install an app that pulls in all your tweets onto a tab, but doesn’t publish in the stream. I’m not sure there’s much benefit to this, as I say the primary goal here is to get into the News Feeds of your fans.

• Involver’s Twitter Facebook app
• North Social Twitter Feed Facebook app

To publish your Facebook content TO Twitter as tweets, connect your page using Facebook’s own Twitter app. You have a choice of six different types of content: Status Update, Photos, Video, Links, Notes and Events. Facebook’s publisher (the field where you type your updates) takes up to 420 characters; whereas tweets are 140 characters. With this Facebook to Twitter app, your content will automatically be truncated with a link back to your Facebook page which can help increase engagement by bringing your Twitter followers onto Facebook.

Facebook's Twitter app

Flickr Photos

To display photos from your Flicker account, you might want to try the Flickr Tab app. See also the suite of app providers above.

SlideShare

If you have slides up on SlideShare, display them on your Facebook Fan page! You’ll have a nice display on the SlideShare tab, but I haven’t found that adding new slides automatically publishes to the wall. So, as you add new slides (and/or videos) to SlideShare.net, also publish the URL right on your Facebook page wall. What this does is pull in an actual player very similar to the video player with the blue play button icon. Your fans can play the slideshow right on your wall, and of course like and comment, providing that coveted News Feed ranking.

SlideShare Facebook app

Reviews

Facebook has a Reviews app that you can add to your Fan page. The cool thing about this app is whenever a fan writes a review, it goes out into their stream (their wall and friends’ News Feeds). If you have a particularly negative review, spam or trolls, unfortunately there’s no way to remove individual reviews. If that ever happens, you could remove the app altogether. Otherwise, I think the Reviews app is an often-overlooked goldmine for businesses to have on their Fan pages!

Live Video

One of my favorite apps to spark immediate real-time, live engagement is Vpype. You can launch a webcast at any time (or scheduled time) to your fans and the app then posts an announcement on your wall. The app can hold up to 300 viewers with a live chat alongside your webcam broadcast. You can easily record and archive your shows; recordings include the full chat transcript too. Plus, you can even download the FLV file of your shows. The app tab is aptly named “Shows.”

Vpype Facebook app

Read my review here from when I beta-tested the app for Vpype.

Alternatives to Vpype include:

• Livestream
• JustinTV
• UstreamTV
• Linqto (going live January 2011 – this should be a very popular webinar/livestream app!)

Live Chat

Along with offering impromptu or scheduled live video broadcasts, you could also offer live chat sessions with your fans. One such app I’ve tried and like is Clobby. The one downside of this app is the obnoxious banner ad at the top of the chatroom as you can see in the screenshot below. However, simply scroll the page down enough to hide the banner while chatting.

Clobby - Facebook live chat app

Whenever you open your chatroom, you can publish an announcement to your Fan page wall, which of course goes out in the stream and fans start coming over to chat. Publish a tweet as well to get even more people in the chatroom! You could host a regular live chat for your fans; I suggest capturing the chat stream with an app like ScreenFlow for Mac or Camtasia Studio for Mac or PC – that way, you have an archive to refer to.

For a more upscale chat room, see Involver‘s premium Facebook Connect Chat app. [UPDATE: 12/21/10 - this app is not displayed on Involver's website but IS available if you contact them.]

FAQs

If you find yourself continually answering the same questions for your clients and community, be sure to compile a Frequently Asked Questions section – the simple FAQ Page app allows you to have an FAQ tab on your Fan page that you can direct fans to when answering questions on your wall. A couple of things to note about this app: you can’t reorder the questions once inserted, so you may wish to compile your FAQs and all their answers in a separate document before pasting each one in. Also, it would be great if each question had its own unique URL so you could just share the link in answer to questions on your wall, but this isn’t the case.

FAQ Facebook app

Polls and Quizzes

For a poll or quiz app to work well, you want your fans to quickly and easily participate and for that activity to spark more engagement and visibility. If users have to jump through extra hoops to participate, they’ll likely just move on. This screenshot shows the Fan Appz poll app live on the Family Guy Fan page – I like how the app provides the option for voters to share (on their personal profiles) and also to share on their Fan pages!

FanAppz.com Poll app for Facebook

Some choices include (free and paid):

• Poll
• FanAppz Polls and Quizzes
• Widgetbox Poll app
• Involver’s Poll app

Contests and Promotions

Facebook’s rules around contests, drawings, competitions and sweepstakes are rigorous. Though many Facebook users are either unaware of the rules or choose to ignore them, I personally feel it’s not worth the risk to administer a promotion of any kind that doesn’t adhere to Facebook’s rules. In one fell swoop, you could lose your carefully built Fan page.

Facebook Promotions - Target example

The safest way to run any kind of contest or drawing on your Fan page is to use a third-party app such as:

• WildFire
• Fanappz
• Vitrue
• BuddyMedia
• Votigo
• ContextOptional
• BulbStorm
• NorthSocial
• Momentus Media
• Friend2Friend
• Strutta

Apps for Local Businesses

With the boom of LBS (Location-based Services), local business have more ways to integrate social and mobile media than ever before. Why not show off your Foursquare customer check-ins with an app on your Fan page?

Plus, be sure to claim your Facebook Place page: just search for your own business name on Facebook and look for the link at the foot of the Place page that says “Is this your business?” Once claimed, you’ll have the opportunity to merge your Place page with your Fan page. The resulting new page looks rather different, so think carefully about this. (For examples of merged pages, take a look at Iron Horse Vineyards and The Ellen Show).

• Foursquare Place Widget – see screenshot below
• Yelp Reviews by North Social
• Store Locator by Involver
• Facebook Places and Deals

Foursquare Place Widget - Facebook app

Appointment Scheduling

Make it super-easy for your Facebook fans, clients and prospects to book time with you. Add a tab synched with your appointment scheduling platform of choice. Remember, each tab has its own unique URL; you can easily direct your fans to your appointment tab.

• Schedulicity app (requires a Schedulicity account)
• Genbook BookNow! app (requires a Genbook account)

Schedulicity app

Contact Forms

Ideally, you have your own email marketing service provider as outlined in the next section. However, perhaps you wish to get started with a simple contact form on your Facebook page. Here are a few options:

• Contact Me

ContactMe app

Embed on an FBML tab:

• Response-O-Matic
• JotForm
• Allforms

See this helpful post by Tim Ware at HyperArts with a review and tutorial on JotForm and Allforms.

Email Marketing Apps

Your Facebook Fan page can be a tremendous source of traffic and a means to collect email addresses of your fans. Plus, some email marketing service providers have a feature that allows you to post your latest enewsletter to your Fan page. Check out any of the following:

• Mailchimp
• Constant Contact
• Nutshell Mail
• Delivra via TabSite integration. (See Delivra on Facebook)
• AWeber

NutshellMail - Facebook integration

Ecommerce Apps – Sell Products on Your Page

Many Facebook page owners often ask me if it’s okay to put up “Buy now” buttons and actually try to make sales directly from their Fan pages. I say “Go for it!!” If your fans are already spending time on your page learning about you and your products and services, you just never know when someone might be ready to buy from you. There are a few choices for adding a shopping cart tab to your fan page, including:

• Ecwid – free, run your own store, mirrored on many sites
• Payvment
• ShopTab
• VendorShop [UPDATE: added 12/21/10. Thanks to Krishna De for the tip + review.]
• OWJO [UPDATE: added 12/21/10. Thanks to Krishna De for the tip + review.]

Ecwid - Ecommerce app

See also this related blog post on Social Media Examiner: How to Sell Products via Your Facebook Page.

What do you think? Do you use any of these apps?  What has been your experience?  Also, have I missed any Facebook page apps you’ve tried successfully?  Please add your comments in the section below.

By the way, you’re not alone. There are still many business owners and marketers who don’t quite know where to start—they struggle to gain momentum and achieve measurable results from their efforts.

This post is designed to help you understand what Facebook can do for your business and lead you through a step-by-step process for getting started on building a compelling presence and optimizing your Facebook marketing.

STEP 1: Review Your Profile

Most likely, you already have a personal profile. Facebook’s Terms of Use stipulate you’re allowed one account in your own real name. (If you don’t yet have a Facebook account, just go to http://facebook.com and register.)

Next, choose your approach for using your personal profile. It’s entirely a personal choice. You may wish to keep your profile for connecting only with friends you already know and family members. Or, you may wish to blend both your personal and professional worlds.

My recommendation is to use your profile for a mix of both personal connecting and professional networking. Regardless of how you choose to use your profile, you’ll want to make use of Friend Lists and adjust your privacy settings so that you control who sees what content. (See Mike Stelzner’s post 3 Reasons Facebook Trumps Twitter for Business, where he talks about how these two features rocked his world!)

I’ll cover Friend Lists and privacy settings in a moment. First, here are several key areas to review on your profile.

Go to the Edit Profile section of your profile to edit each of these areas:

You can get to the Edit Profile area by first clicking the Info tab, then the edit pencil in the top-right corner. Also, it may help to know that anytime you edit much of this information—such as changing your profile picture, your relationship status, your bio, etc.—a notice goes out to your friends in their News Feeds (unless you previously adjusted your privacy settings very tightly!).

Remember to click the blue Save Changes button on each section if you make changes!

Hide Your Year of Birth

Under the Basic Information section, I strongly suggest not showing your year of birth as a layer of security.

Update Your Bio

Check to make sure your bio and contact information is the way you want it, ideally in a first-person, conversational tone. I also recommend filling out the “mini bio” section just under your profile picture (click the edit pencil); you get 245 characters and can include links.

Check Your Photo

I recommend having a professional headshot taken. In fact, get several from the same shoot and use them throughout your various social sites for consistency.

In today’s social context, stay away from overly formal photos. Instead go for a relaxed, informal—yet professional—look. Crop your picture to your head and shoulders only; when your thumbnail appears around Facebook, you want it to be recognizable. Also, stay away from using group photos of you and other people. If a potential key contact doesn’t know you yet, he/she won’t know which one is you.

If your profile picture is more than three years old, it’s time for an update. Your goal is to have people come up to you when they meet you in person and say you look exactly like your picture. This actually helps to build trust.

Select Your Relationship Status

Over the years, Facebook has added a few more possible relationship status choices. If, like me, you wish to remain private about this area of your life, select the blank choice and your status won’t be shown at all. There is an area in the privacy settings where you can choose who sees your relationships settings; I have mine set to Friends as I’m happy for my friends to see my relatives, which is the only other information in this section.

Understand How Likes and Interests Work

As you fill out the various books, movies, music, etc., that you like, Facebook will automatically connect you to the related Facebook Page/Community Page for those interests. When you begin to type the word, select from the drop-down:

To understand more about how Community Pages work, see this post.

Grow Your Network

Facebook allows you a maximum of 5,000 friends and I suggest—over time—you look to optimize this maximum. Having key contacts as friends allows you to maintain a more personal connection with them.

For professional networking purposes, proactively seek new friends who may be influential people in your industry and related industries, prospects, media contacts, people you admire, potential collaborators, and so forth. Just be mindful to not overdo the outgoing friend requests in any one session. Facebook views this as potentially spam behavior and you run the risk of your account being deactivated. Twenty requests at a time is a safe number.

To find new people to add, use the Friend Finder, Invite friends by email, and join relevant Groups and Facebook pages. When sending friend requests, always add a personal message.

STEP 2: Make Friend Lists

Friend Lists on Facebook allow you to do three things:

• Control which of your friends see what content you publish (see Step 3 on privacy).
• Filter your News Feed stories.
• Control who can see that you’re available on Facebook Chat.

First, you’ll need to make at least one Friend List. Go to Account > Edit Friends:

Then click Create New List:

A pop-up box appears with all of your friends, so give your list a name and select the friends you wish to add. You can have up to 100 lists, with up to 1,000 friends in each list. Friends can be in multiple lists. Nobody knows which list of yours they might be on; this is for your own private use.

NOTE: You can also add Facebook Pages to Friend Lists, which I highly recommend for ease of reading your News Feed!

Suggested Friend Lists might be: Family, Buddies, Colleagues, Clients, Students, Key Contacts, Favorite Facebook Pages, and so on. One of my favorite lists I call Social Media Experts and I source much of my news from this stream.

Filter Your News Feed Stories

On your home page (News Feed page), click the link for Friends and you’ll see your Friend Lists there. You may need to click the “More” button if you have several lists. You can now view your friends and Facebook page activity via these lists.

If you’d like to have your default view be a certain list, here’s a fun trick: Each of your Friend Lists has its own unique URL. Open the one you want to go to first in a new tab (right click), then bookmark that particular URL. Now that will be the default page view that opens.

Control Your Facebook Chat Availability

I’m not a fan of the Facebook Chat feature at all; I keep it turned off almost all the time because it’s just too distracting. But, you may wish to show yourself as being online to a select group of individuals via a Special Friends List!

Click on the very bottom right of your window where it says “Chat.” If you’ve already created your Friend Lists, you’ll see a list pop up. Beside each list, you’ll see a little “slider” that you can turn from green to grey. Green tells your friends in that list you’re online and grey shows you as offline to friends in that list.

To go offline completely, select Options > Go Offline.

STEP 3: Adjust Your Privacy Settings

One of the many questions I’m asked frequently is, “How do I know what is public and what is just between me and the person I’m talking to on Facebook?”  The short answer is simple: the *only* communication that is private between you and another person is email. Otherwise, all your own wall posts, posts on friends’ walls, comments, likes, photos, videos, links, activity on Groups and Pages and likes on external sites are visible to friends, friends of friends or everyone, depending on your privacy settings.

Facebook has received much criticism for their seeming lack of care about privacy. Yet, mostly, this pushback has been things like the Beacon fiasco and, more recently, the Instant Personalization feature. The fact is, Facebook offers extremely granular privacy settings so for every piece of content you publish, you can control who sees it and who doesn’t. That’s where the complexity—and confusion—arise, as the New York Times wrote about!

The best way to set your privacy settings is to go for the Custom option:

Click Customize Settings (#2 above) and for each section on the next page, choose whether you want Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends Only or a Custom setting:

I recommend using a custom setting for “Posts by Me.” That way, your default for any content you publish can be viewable by Friends of Friends except certain lists. You can override the default at any time on the Publisher.

STEP 4: Set Up a Facebook Page

Once you’re happy with the way you’ve chosen to use and configure your profile, it’s time to set up your Business Page, often referred to as a “Fan Page.” Previously, we would join these pages by clicking the “Become a Fan” button; however, Facebook changed this a few months ago to their ubiquitous “Like” button.

With Facebook’s 500 million active users—half of whom log on daily for an average session time of 55 minutes—having an active Facebook page helps gain tremendous visibility for your business and meets your prospects/community where they are. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to “max out” your personal profile first. The time to start a Facebook page is right away!

What You Need to Know About Facebook Pages

• You need to have an account on Facebook in order to create a Facebook page.
• Your Facebook page will be tied to your personal profile as the admin of your Facebook page; however, only you and Facebook know the connection exists.
• You can have an unlimited number of Facebook pages.
• You can have an unlimited number of fans (Facebook users who “Like” your page).
• Facebook Pages are public—anyone can find and view your page whether they are logged into Facebook or not.
• All content posted on your Facebook page gets indexed on Google.
• You can target your posts by location and language.
• You can add applications to your page, including your own custom content—video, rich text, graphics, opt-in box and more.
• You can add additional admins (highly recommended).
• All admins have equal rights to administer your page, including adding and removing other admins (choose with care!).
• You can’t post content on your Facebook page from your personal profile (unless you use an @ tag from your profile and have your settings for that post set to Everyone).
• Select your page title and category carefully as they cannot be changed once set.
• Start here to create your Facebook page.

Study Other Facebook Pages

To get a sense of what’s possible for your own Facebook page, look at a variety of examples in your own industry and related industries. Here is Facebook’s own Directory of Pages; see also this fun site called Facebakers.

And, here is a great slidedeck with ten examples of business-to-business Facebook pages:

Recommended Six-step Approach to Building Your Facebook Page

#1:  Objective

First, be clear on what your primary purpose is for your Facebook page. Examples include raising brand awareness, enhancing customer service, building your email list, driving traffic back to your blog, building community, etc. You may have multiple objectives, and that’s fine; be sure to prioritize your objectives. Mike Stelzner and the team at Social Media Examiner have a great editorial guide for their Facebook page; you can view an excerpt in this post.

#2:  Design Strategy

Once you’re clear on the objective(s) of your Facebook page, the design needs to reflect that. Say your primary objective is to build your email list. You’ll need to feature at least one opt-in box. For instructions on how to add custom content to your page, see this post. Go to Social Media Examiner’s Facebook Page to see a sample opt-in box.

#3: Content Strategy

Ideally, just as with your blog, you’ll have an editorial guide (or content matrix) which includes a plan for publishing a mix of updates, photos, videos, and links. For a sample content matrix, see this Google doc. Use a platform like HootSuite or ObjectiveMarketer to pre-schedule your content. Depending on the nature of your business and your overall objective, for the most part, it’s best to publish a mix of your own content and what I call “OPC” (other people’s content). Sources of quality OPC include Guy Kawasaki‘s AllTop, Technorati, Listorious (a directory of Twitter Lists), along with your favorite blogs (subscribe in Google Reader or via email). Plus, remember your own Facebook Friend Lists!

#4:  Promotion Strategy

Now you’ve built it and need to ensure “they come!” There are many ways to promote your Facebook page inside Facebook, outside Facebook and offline. See this post for ideas: 21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase.

#5:  Engagement Strategy

Now you’re starting to gain traction! But you’ll need to allocate resources to ensure your Facebook page is being monitored and moderated—if not always by you, then by your team. If one of your objectives is to enhance customer service, you’ll want to be prompt in responding to fans’ comments and use a personal, approachable tone. BestBuy does a great job of this. See these two posts for ideas on enhancing engagement: How to Better Engage Facebook Fan Page ‘Fans’ and 13 Ways to Move Your Facebook Fans to Action.

#6:  Conversion Strategy

I usually find the tipping point in social media is between 500-1,000 fans/followers/friends/email subscribers. You’ll start to see measurable results with this size group. You’ll be building trust and loyalty among your fanbase with consistently good content and reliable responses. Now you must have a strategy in place to convert your fanbase to paying clients or customers. Perhaps you’ll offer a special event (live or virtual), coupons, discounts and other incentives to give your fans a strong call to action. The bottom line is to let your fans know exactly what you want them to do. And pace your offers. If you’re hosting live/virtual events, be sure to also use the Facebook Events feature. See this post for ideas: 10 Tips for Creating Buzz With Facebook Events.

By the way, just as soon as you have your first 25 fans, be sure to register your own unique username (sometimes called a “vanity URL”) for your Facebook page at http://facebook.com/username.

That’s it! That’s all you need for now—(1) a profile with a strategy and settings you’re happy with, plus (2) the makings of a robust, active Facebook page.

I trust this has been of use if you’ve been a bit stuck on how to really gain traction with your Facebook optimization. Did I miss something? What else would you like to see covered here? Got ideas of your own for what’s working well on Facebook? Let us know in the comments below!

The root of the anger: Businesses have invested in Facebook pages only to find community pages appearing that seem to compete with their pages.

This article is designed to demystify Facebook community pages and provide you with important actions you can take.

What Is a Facebook Community Page?

Facebook first announced Community Pages as a feature designed to address all the fan pages set up around generic, non-business topics. For example, “I Love Sleep,” or “I Need a Vacation.”

Facebook wanted to differentiate between bona fide Official Facebook Pages (fan pages for businesses) and what they now call Community Pages. In Facebook’s words:

Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. Just like Official Pages for businesses, organizations and public figures, Community Pages let you connect with others who share similar interests and experiences.

Facebook Business Pages Vs. Community Pages

On first pass, the concept of Community Pages seems like a great solution to create a clear delineation between 1) Official Pages (Facebook’s term for business fan pages)—administered and controlled by company representatives and 2) all the fan pages created around an idea or topic.

The example Facebook uses in their blog announcement is for cooking. So, the Cooking Community Page could prove to be a helpful source of information on a topic you’re passionate about (although you could just as easily find the information directly on Wikipedia!) and/or a great networking resource to identify and reach out to people who share your passion for cooking.

(Interestingly enough, when doing a search for the same Cooking Community Page Facebook profiled in their blog announcement, I couldn’t find it using their internal search facility. I waded through pages and pages of search results and in the end just went to Google and entered “facebook cooking community page” (not in quotes) and the Community Page came up second!)

This is an example of a a community page

Two Types of Community Pages

One of the many factors causing much confusion around these Community Pages is the fact that there are TWO types of Community Pages: Facebook-administered and user-administered.

I’ll go into more detail about each below, but in a nutshell, Facebook-administered are all the auto-generated Community Pages. User-administered are Community Pages you can set up yourself that essentially look identical to fan pages (Official Pages), but you create them for a topic, not your business.

Facebook-administered Community Pages

Let’s tackle Facebook-administered first, as that’s what Facebook actually announced on April 19, 2010 on their blog.

Facebook automatically created 6.5 million Community Pages in mid-April. These pages were auto-generated from users’ “Likes and Interests” and “Work and Education” sections of the personal profile Info tab.

Here’s an example of an auto-generated page

Given that these Community Pages were auto-generated, anything separated by commas produced a Community Page with those keywords/phrases as the title. So there are thousands of such pages, many of which have only one or two fans (people who Like that page).

Where Does the Content Come From?

Depending on the subject matter of each Community Page, content (including the Page photo) gets automatically pulled in from Wikipedia. All other content is auto-populated from wall posts and status updates made by any Facebook user containing the keywords of the Community Page.

This is where the nightmare begins for many businesses, schools and more. There are no administrators (yet) for Community Pages and you have zero control over what shows up on the page.

Here are the Official Fan Pages of SeaWorld Florida and SeaWorld San Diego. And, here are just three Community Pages for SeaWorld, out of hundreds. (The first two have a tab and image pulled from Wikipedia. The third has the Wikipedia tab but no image. There are many of these Community Pages without images).

By the way, community pages have a tab called “Related Posts.”  In the below screen shot, the “Related Posts by Friends” includes any related updates from friends OR related fan pages you have joined (liked). Try clicking on the SeaWorld Community Page.

What About Privacy?

A user’s privacy settings DO affect how their content is viewed, even on Community Pages. For example, let’s say you had “Posts by me” set to “Friends only.” In that case, if and when any of your content happened to have keywords of a Community Page, only your friends could see that content and no-one else.

However, as Jeremiah Owyang pointed out in this tweet, the vast majority of Facebook users seem to be completely unaware of how their information is being viewed. (That is, despite the new simplified privacy settings!)

You only need to take a look at www.YourOpenBook.org and do a search for something like “I hate my job.” Yikes, such a tragedy. Lots of people unhappy at work.

Openbook allows anyone to search any and all public Facebook (status) updates. You don’t have to be logged into Facebook or even be a Facebook user to access any information on Openbook because it’s all publicly available information.

In other words, these updates appear because the users have their privacy settings wide open. (I’m actually a strong advocate for wide-open privacy settings; my rule of thumb is if you don’t want it shared, don’t share it. However, I completely understand that rule doesn’t work for everyone!)

This content is essentially the same as any content that could appear on related Community Pages, but it’s much easier to find with one central search engine such as Openbook.

To find actual Community Pages, you need to use Facebook’s search facility, which can often yield literally hundreds of results all jumbled up with regular fan pages in a variety of categories along with your Official Page. Definitely an area needing improvement!

Do Businesses Have Any Control?

Following is a forum post (used with permission) from a social media coordinator for expressing her frustration with the confusing morass of Community Pages for the college.

Much to my surprise I did a search on our College name yesterday on Facebook. Now there is a “Community Page” with the exact same name. They stole our logo without permission and are aggregating all of our posts—and other completely unrelated posts.

This page has 53 fans—our students I assume. I immediately let our students know that this was not our page, nor were we responsible for any information put on it. However, there is no way to post anything on the Community Pages. Clicking on the “Sign up” to add to this page button was a joke, as was adding an official website. “Thanks for signing up, we’ll let you know when we need your help” which to me translates—”we aren’t really sure what we are doing yet.”

When I dug further I found a dozen or more versions of our College name with “nursing” or “business” in them—WITH NO CONTENT. Isn’t creative content important in social media??? Why would Facebook push all of these blank pages?

Why in the world would Facebook create all of these pages with no content? I don’t want our students confused by these pages. Is anyone else having this problem? This just seems like the most ridiculous move ever.

Alyssa has articulated exactly why so many organizations are reacting to the confusion of Community Pages.

For clarification—any logo or image on Facebook-administered Community Pages is pulled in automatically from Wikipedia. Facebook users do become fans by clicking the “Like” button, the same as Official fan pages. However, the vast majority of fans were automatically connected because they had the Community Page name in their “Likes and Interests” section. For further explanation on how these auto-connections came about, see Facebook’s official post.

Unfortunately, at present, businesses have little to no control over any Facebook Community Pages. However, given that the “official” content is being pulled in from Wikipedia, as Jeremiah Owyang points out in his excellent post, “To be successful, brands must keep their Wikipedia pages fresh and accurate.”

User-administered Community Pages

Let’s talk about the second type of Community Pages—ones you create yourself. If you have an idea for a Community Page, setting one up is very easy. Just go to the same Create a Page section as before, and you’ll now see a second choice on the right (see screenshot below).

When creating an Official (fan) Page, you need to first give thought to the category/subcategory and page name, as neither can be changed after the fact. You also need to confirm you are an official representative and have permission to create the page.

But, creating a Community Page is super-easy—give your page a name, and voila! No category to choose, no need to verify you’re the official company rep.

Now, initially, your new Community Page will look, feel and function exactly the same as an Official Page. The big challenge, though, is if your Community Page becomes “very popular;” that is, “attracting thousand of fans.” As Facebook says, you will lose all admin rights and your Community Page will automatically be converted into a Facebook-administered, Wikipedia-type Community Page.

Rather ironically, when my coauthor and I were attempting to set up an Official fan page for our new book Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day, we could not get past the first stage, as Facebook does not allow their name in page titles. So, as a workaround, we were actually able to set up a Community Page and got the name we wanted with no problem. So, for the moment, our user-administered Community Page looks identical to an Official Page. But eventually (according to the current terms), we could lose admin rights should the page gather thousands of fans!

Important Points to Know:

#1: Deep search was already available.

Facebook’s deep search was first introduced in August 2009, meaning that anyone on Facebook could do a search for any keyword and view Posts by Friends and Posts by Everyone.

This is exactly what is displayed on the new Facebook-administered Community Pages. When you view any Community Page, you’ll see a section for “Related Posts.”

#2: Community Page content is already public.

Content on Community Pages is publicly viewable information anyway. Anything that was being said about your brand—good, bad or indifferent—was findable in the past. Now, that same content may be aggregated on Community Pages. As John Bell from Ogilvy PR states in this post,  “Are the Community Pages really that much different than a Google search that returns a bunch of blog posts, the Wikipedia article for your brand, user-created videos and more? 25% of the top Google search results for the top 100 brands are user-generated content.”

#3: Users still maintain control via privacy settings.

As a user, if you wish to have more control over how your content is viewable, adjust your privacy settings. The main setting to edit is “Posts by Me” (that is, “My status, photos and posts”—anything you publish on your own wall). I recommend first making Friend Lists and going for the Custom setting where your default is “Friends of Friends” and hide from certain lists. That way you can better control on a post-by-post basis who sees what content.

Six Steps Businesses Can Take to Optimize Pages

#1: Monitor your mentions.

As part of your routine brand monitoring efforts, experiment with a combination of www.youropenbook.org, www.kurrently.com and Facebook’s own deep search feature to search for your various keywords and company name. (Of course, you may be using a Brand Monitoring tool that will already be picking up public content on Facebook.)

For the most part, you may not need to take any action at all, depending on how large your brand is, what’s being said and how often. But there are two primary aspects to look for as described in steps #2 and #3 below.

#2: Appease any naysayers.

Look for any negative mentions of your brand and, depending on the severity of the negativity, reach out to these individuals. Email them on Facebook and/or search for them on Twitter, Google, etc., and contact them. See how you can listen to their complaint, take remedial action and turn them into fans.

#3: Find your Superfans.

Look for your undiscovered brand evangelists and reach out to them. Email them on Facebook and/or search for them on other social media channels, and contact them as well. See how you can reward, incentivize and empower these individuals to become what Aliza Sherman calls Superfans.

#4: Keep your Wikipedia content accurate.

Make sure you periodically check that any content pertaining to your company, brand, products and services on Wikipedia is highly accurate.

#5: Continue to drive attention to your Official Page.

The more you can put the spotlight on your Official fan page, the better you’ll be able to dissipate any confusion among your fans and potential fans. Refer to one of my earlier Social Media Examiner posts here: 21 Creative Ways to Increase Your Facebook Fanbase.

#6: Sign up for all community pages of your brand.

As best you can, search for all possible Community Pages in your name, company name, product names, etc. (As mentioned above, I found Google search was more reliable than searching on Facebook.) Sign up to put yourself on the list of possible administrators, and also suggest your official Wikipedia article if you have one, and your official website for sure.

After reading this post, hopefully you have more clarity on what exactly Facebook Community Pages are, how they impact your business and what proactive steps you can take to maintain control of your brand and reputation.

Have you had any challenging situations to deal with stemming from these Community Pages? How about any positive experiences? Have you already integrated a Community Page monitoring initiative in your company? If not, do you think you will? Please share your thoughts in the comments box below.

People must be lured to your fan page. And there are some good and bad ways to go about doing this. In this article, I’ll share a big myth and 21 ways to drive more fans to your Facebook fan page. (Though Facebook recently changed the “Become A Fan” button to the new, omnipresent “Like” button – and a fan page is called a “Business Page” or “Facebook Page” – we can still call them fan pages and people who join are fans!)

The Big Myth

There’s a great myth that once you create a Facebook fan page for your business, the first thing you should do to get fans is invite ALL your friends from your personal profile using the “Suggest to Friends” feature.

Unfortunately, this strategy may not be that effective and can, in fact, often backfire. I have seen many industry gurus complain that when they decline a fan page request, it’s frustrating to continue to be asked again and again.

There are several reasons not to use the Suggest to Friends feature:

• Facebook users can only like up to 500 pages and may wish to be selective. (Though I have seen it’s possible to go over this limit).
• Fan page suggestions may often build up, unnoticed. (At last count, I have 593 overlooked fan page suggestions and am already a fan of 500!)
• To aggressively pursue all your friends to join your fan page – for no apparent incentive – is counterintuitive to the nature of social media.

So, the good news is there are many ways to promote your fan page and proactively increase your fan base without bugging all your current Facebook friends, and also by thinking wider than just Facebook.

Here are 21 ways to get more fans for your Facebook fan page:

#1: Embed Widgets on Your Website

Select from a number of the new Facebook Social Plugins and place them on your website and blog. The Fan Box widget is now the Like Box and it works well to display your current fan page stream and a selection of fans - see screenshot below with Whole Foods Market Facebook Like Box. I would recommend adding a title above the box encouraging visitors to your site/blog to click the “Like” button (which makes them a Facebook fan).

Whole Foods Market Facebook Like Box.

You might also consider the Live Stream widget for more advanced uses, particularly on an FBML custom tab of your fan page itself. The Live Stream widget allows Facebook users to add their comments to a live event, for example, and that activity pushes out into their stream.

#2: Invite Your Email and Ezine Subscribers

Assuming you have an opt-in email list, definitely send out an invitation to your subscribers via email (several times, over time) letting them know about your fan page and encouraging them to join. Ideally, provide them with a description of the page and an incentive to join.

Be sure to have the Facebook logo/badge appear in your HTML newsletters. Instead of the usual “Join our Fan Page,” say something creative like “Write on our Facebook wall,” or “Join our Facebook community,” or “Come add your photo to our Facebook group” (where “group” is actually your fan page). Users have to be a fan in order to interact with your fan page in this way.

#3: Add to Your Email Signature Block

Instead of promoting your Facebook personal profile (if you do), include a link to your fan page in every email you send out. If you use web-based email, check out the Wisestamp signature addon.

#4: Make a Compelling Welcome Video

Create an attractive landing tab (canvas page) with a video that explains exactly a) what your fan page is about, b) who it’s for and c) why they should become members.  The result: you’ll increase your conversion rate from visitors to fans. One of my favorite fan page welcome videos is by Steve Spangler, the Science Guy! After watching his video, you can’t help but want to join!

(By the way, with the new Facebook changes, if your custom welcome tab and video talk about clicking the “Become A Fan” button, you may want to change the wording to “click the Like button” now).

#5: Use Facebook Apps

I recently tested a new live video-streaming app called Vpype. The app adds a tab to your fan page called “Shows” and when you broadcast as your fan page, everyone can view by default. (You can also broadcast as your personal profile and selectively invite friends/friend lists). I wrote up a review of this app here. By announcing via Twitter, your personal Facebook profile, your blog and your email list, you can broadcast regular live Internet TV shows from your fan page and create much buzz.

Another example of app integration is Target’s “Bullseye Gives” campaign. Target had their fans vote on which of ten charities they most wanted to see the company donate to. By voting, a post goes out onto your Facebook wall and into the News Feeds of all your friends, thus providing Target with valuable exposure. (For custom apps, see companies like Buddy Media, FanAppz, Wildfire Apps, Involver, Virtue, Context Optional.) [UPDATE: Thank you to Context Optional, the creators of Target’s “Bullseye Gives” campaign!]

#6: Integrate the Facebook Comment Feature

My favorite example of this is the t-shirt company Threadless. On their landing tab (canvas page), you can view and purchase t-shirts as well as Like and comment on any item and choose to have that comment posted to your Facebook profile, as shown in this screenshot:

(Screenshot of Threadless Facebook Fan Page landing tab)

Threadless actually has their landing tab set up so visitors don’t have to become a fan to purchase/comment/interact. Yet they have organically built well over 100,000 fans.

As users comment on items, that activity is pushed out into their stream (profile wall and their friends’ News Feeds), which creates valuable viral visibility for your fan page.

(Important Update: Facebook no longer supports FBML. Please refer to the articles on Facebook iFrame.) For further information on adding the comment box to your FBML page/app, see these pages.

#7: Get Fans to Tag Photos

If you host live events, be sure to take plenty of photos (or even hire a professional photographer), load the photos to your fan page and encourage fans to tag themselves. This, again, pushes out into their wall and friends’ News Feeds, providing valuable (free!) exposure. And, a picture says a thousand words – we notice the thumbnails in our feed more than text. (Props to Nick O’Neil for this tip.)

#8: Load Videos and Embed on Your Site

Facebook’s Video feature is extremely powerful. You can load video content to your Facebook fan page, then take the source code and embed on your blog/website. There is a “Become a Fan” button right in the video itself. For an excellent tutorial, see Nick O’Neil’s post: How To Get Thousands of Facebook Fans With a Single Video.

[UPDATE: Since Facebook changed the Become a Fan button to the Like button, embedded Facebook videos now display a white watermark hotlink of the Facebook name in the upper left corner of the video player - see first screenshot below. This is a clickable link that goes to the original video page on your fan page. If the visitor to your site clicks through to Facebook from your video, and they are logged into Facebook at the time, they will see a Like button at the top left corner of the video player - see second screenshot below.]

(Screenshot shows example of an embedded Facebook video on an external site)

(Screenshot shows the same video on the original page of the fan page with the Like button)

#9: Place Facebook Ads

Even with a nominal weekly/monthly budget, you should be able to boost your fan count using Facebook’s own social ad feature. It’s the most targeted traffic your money can buy. To buy an ad, scroll to the foot of any page inside Facebook and click the link at the very bottom that says “Advertising.” From there, you can walk through the wizard and get an excellent sense of how many Facebook users are in your exact target market.

Then, when you advertise your fan page, Facebook users can become a fan (click the Like button) right from the ad as shown in the screenshot below. Additionally, Facebook displays several of your friends who have already liked you, thus creating social proof.

My book with Chris Treadaway, Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day (Sybex) contains comprehensive instructions on maximizing your marketing through Facebook social ads.

#10: Run a Contest

This is somewhat of a gray area because Facebook changed their Promotional Guidelines last year. Essentially, you need prior written permission from Facebook and need to be spending a significant amount on ads per month. However, you CAN require Facebook users to become a fan of your fan page in order to enter a contest, sweepstakes, drawing or competition. See these two posts for further explanation. PLUS, good news: you CAN run contests and sweepstakes with the use of the apps created by Wildfire App.

#11: Link to Twitter

Link your Twitter account to your Facebook fan page and automatically post your Facebook content to Twitter. You can edit what gets posted, choosing from Status Updates, Photos, Links, Notes and Events.

You have 420 characters on the Facebook publisher and 140 on Twitter. In the tweet that goes out, Facebook truncates your post past a certain character count and inserts a bit.ly link back to your fan page. To track click-through stats on that link, just paste the bit.ly link that Facebook created for you in your browser’s address bar and add a “+” sign to the end. This works for any bit.ly link!

I also recommend you promote your Facebook fan page on your Twitter background and possibly in your Twitter bio/URL field too.

#12: Get Fans to Join Via SMS

Your fans can join your fan page via text message! You’ll need to get your first 25 fans and secure your username. Then, to join your fan page, Facebook users just send a text message to 32665 (FBOOK) with the words “fan yourusername” OR “like yourusername” (without the quotes).

This feature is ideal when you’re addressing a live audience, say. Have everyone pull out their mobile phones and join your fan page on the spot! This would also work well for radio or TV. (Note that this only works for Facebook users with a verified mobile device in his or her account.)

#13: Use Print Media

Look at every piece of print media you use in your business. Your Facebook fan page (as well as Twitter and any other social sites you’re active on), should be clearly displayed. Put your Facebook fan page link (and the logo) on your business cards, letterhead, brochure, print newsletter, magazine ads, products, etc.

#14: Display at Your Store/Business

If your business is run from physical premises, put a placard on the front desk letting your customers know you’re on Facebook. Ideally, you have a simple, memorable username. Incentivize customers to join right away via their mobile device and show you/your staff the confirmation for some kind of instant reward!

You might give out physical coupons promoting your fan page. For restaurants, put the Facebook logo, your username and a call to action on your menus.

I was at a hotel in San Francisco last fall and they had a placard in the elevators promoting their presence on Facebook and Twitter. The sign was very noticeable because of those ubiquitous Facebook and Twitter logos/colors!

#15. Add a Link on Your Personal Profile

If you’d like to promote your fan page to your Facebook friends, just under your photo on your personal profile there is a section to write something about yourself. I call this the “mini bio” field and strongly suggest adding a link to your fan page like so:

Be sure to format the URL with http:// otherwise it will not be clickable with just the www’s. You have a limited amount of characters, so keep it succinct and leave out the www’s. You can put in hard line breaks though to make the content easier to read.

#16: Add a Badge/Button to Your Profile

Using an app like Profile HTML or Extended Info, you can create your own custom HTML, including a Facebook badge and/or graphic embedded, as shown in the screenshot below:

#17: Use the Share Button

The Share button is all over Facebook and is a very handy feature. It only works for sharing on your personal profile. So periodically go to your fan page, scroll toward the bottom left column and click the “Share+” button. Add a compelling comment along the lines of exciting news, recent changes, special incentives, etc., happening on your fan page and invite your friends to join if they haven’t already. I find the Share button far more effective than the Suggest to Friends approach. (And, if you’d like to Share content from the web on to your fan page vs. profile, I highly recommend using the Hootlet bookmarklet tool at HootSuite.com).

#18: Use the @ Tag

As long as you’re a fan of your own fan page, you can “@ tag” it on your own personal profile wall. From time to time, you can let your friends know about something happening on your fan page by writing a personal status update that includes tagging your fan page with an @ tag. Simply start typing the “@” symbol and the first few letters of your fan page name (this works whether you have your username registered or not), and it will appear from a drop-down menu to select. This then makes it a nice, subtle hyperlink that your friends can choose to click on.

#19: Autograph Posts on Other Walls

A subtle way to gain more visibility for your fan page is to add an @ tag for your fan page when writing on your friends’ walls as a way to sign off.

I would use this one sparingly and, again, monitor the response from your friends. I have never been a fan of adding a signature block on Facebook wall posts because our name and profile picture thumbnail are always hyperlinked right back to our profile anyway. But the simple @ tag could be effective.

#20: Autograph Other Fan Pages

As with adding your fan page @ tag to posts you make on your friends’ walls, you could equally use the same technique when posting on other fan pages. This needs to be used with discretion and I would advise against doing this on any potentially competing fan page!

#21: Maybe Use “Suggest To Friends”

I won’t rule this one out completely as it does depend on how many friends you have, your relationship with your friends, how often you suggest fan pages/friends to your friends, etc (see ‘The Big Myth’ above). But I do recommend monitoring the response to this technique – perhaps simply by asking for feedback in your status update.

So, these are just 21 ways to create strategic visibility and promote your Facebook fan page.

Let’s hear from you.  Which ones have you implemented with success? Plus, do feel free to add any of your own creative promotional ideas in the comments box below!

Perhaps you have a Facebook Fan Page and even some fans.  But now what?  How can you encourage your fans to act and interact?

In my prior post I covered the various sources and types of content you can post on your Facebook fan page. I also talked about the importance of consistent updates.

However, just like the “Field of Dreams” – if you build a fantastic fan page with plenty of quality content, will they come and will they stay?

They will come and they will stay if you give your fans good reason to engage.

Given that over half of Facebook’s 400 million active users log in daily and spend an average of 55 minutes per day on the site, you can get your target audience to spend some of that time getting to know you, your brand, your products and services.

The secret is to create a fan page with the right blend of ingredients that resonates most with your ideal fans. And to ensure they’re made to feel a strong part of your online community.

As mentioned in Part 1, I’ve found there are essentially two components to Facebook fan page engagement: 1) Sharing quality, relevant content and 2) inciting comments. So, here in Part 2, we’ll talk about just how vital comments (and likes, wall posts and @ tags) are to the success of your fan page.

Now that you have a wide variety of regular, quality, relevant content posting on your fan page, here are some ways to get your fans to interact:

1. Ask questions

For status updates, try ending with a question. In the example below, Best Buy generated 274 responses so far to their question about what feature your can’t live without on your phone.

And, in this example, Skype got 147 comments to their question about meeting your partner via Skype!

2. Use the words “you” or “your”

Use the word “you” often – “What are your thoughts?” “What do you think about xyz?” Here, the Hard Rock Cafe is giving out a coupon code with the words “Our gift to you because you rock…”

3. Keep it short

The easier it is for your fans to read, the more likely they are to respond. Keep your status updates short and simple with one topic. You have up to 420 characters per update, but I recommend about half that for an ideal size. For longer updates, use the Notes app – or write a blog post and update.

4. Post in high-traffic windows

Get to know when your fans are most responsive. Depending on in which part of the world the majority of your fans are, you might want to post between 9:00am and 2:00pm in your timezone.

5. Respond promptly

Do your best to respond to fan questions (as wall posts) as promptly as possible. If you find you can’t keep up with the volume of questions, offer a free teleseminar or webinar where you answer the top questions for your fans. You can do this in the traditional way of having people opt-in to get the phone number so you’ll build your email list at the same time.

6. Address fans by name

Come back and reply often to your fans’ comments – Facebook currently doesn’t have threaded commenting, so I suggest addressing specific fans in your comments as @name. See my comment at the bottom of the screenshot below:

7. Comment yourself

Add your own comment as needed to get the ball rolling. However, don’t step in too soon. I often find that the comments come more freely when you allow your fans to run by themselves initially.

8. Thank your fans

Acknowledge your fans often with simple thanks. Genuine recognition goes a *long* way!

9. Surprise your fans

Don’t be afraid to stray “off topic” from time to time and surprise your fans. In other words, your content doesn’t always have to be directly related to your product or service. You might share an inspirational quote and add your own thoughts, for example.

If you happen to know a fan’s Twitter ID, send a tweet thanking her/him for the comment on your fan page. With a link of course.

10. Use @ tagging

You can tag other fan pages that you’re a fan of and your own friends (along with Groups you belong to and Events you’ve RSVPed for). When appropriate, and used sparingly, @ tags can be a very powerful way to have your post show up on others’ walls, which gives you more exposure and brings more fans or potential fans back to engage.

11. Use the Discussion Board

Give your fans a place to network with one another. Plus, often fans want to do self-promotion. You can encourage these types of activities on a specific discussion thread. Also, when you first launch your fan page, be sure to start 3 to 5 discussion topics so it’s not a blank  tab.

In this example, the most popular discussion thread on Chick-fil-A’s fan page is asking their fans where they’d most like to see a Chick-fil-A next. Topics are always listed in order of the most recently commented on.

12. Send updates to fans

Each tab on your fan page and each discussion thread topic has its own unique URL. To bring fans back to your page to contribute to a discussion and get them more engaged, send out an update with a call to action and specific link. (To find the Update feature, click Edit Page under your image then look for Send Update to Fans on the right of your Admin page.)

13. Monitor insights

If you’re a perfectionist, the goal is to get 5 stars and a perfect 10 score! Facebook uses algorithms to calculate your Post Quality as determined by the percentage of your fans who engage when you post content, calculated on a rolling seven-day basis. The number of stars depends on how your Post Quality compares to similar pages (for example, pages that have a similar number of fans).

The more activity your fan page posts generate, the longer you’ll show up in the News Feed of your fans!

As you build up your fan base, consistently add quality, relevant content and engage your fans. You’ll start to see results that translate into an increase in brand awareness and positive brand sentiment, email and blog subscribers, and of course, sales and paying customers.

Editors note: Check out Social Media Examiner’s new Facebook fan page by clicking here.

How are you engaging your fans? What did I miss? I’d love to hear from you. Add your ideas in the comments below. And do ask any clarifying questions as I’d be happy to answer you.

But, if you build it, will they come? And if they come, will they stay and engage?

There are two primary components to Facebook fan page engagement: 1) Sharing quality, relevant content and 2) inciting comments.  In this article I’ll tell you how to best engage with Facebook fans.

Of course, there are many other components of effective Facebook fan pages and Facebook marketing in general. However, for the purposes of this two-part post, we’ll focus on content and comments. The more comments you have, the more viral visibility and free marketing you’ll create. But your fans have to have something to comment on!

Share Quality, Relevant Content – Daily

TechCrunch recently posted a Facebook fan page study by Sysomos that revealed 77 percent of fan pages have fewer than 1,000 fans. What stood out for me in that post was this fact: “Facebook fan pages tend to be updated only once every 16 days.”

TechCrunch goes on to say, “On Twitter, you follow someone because you want to hear what they have to say. On Facebook, you fan them just to show your support or affinity. Too often, it’s a throwaway gesture.”

While this may be true for many Facebook members and fan pages, I see a lively fan page as an extension of your blog and business – a place where you can generate real community and further solidify your brand.

1) How Often Should You Post?

• For most fan pages, there is a direct correlation between frequency of posts and number of fans. Frequency is king, but there’s a fine balance – you don’t want to overwhelm your fans.
• If you’re just starting out with your fan page, I would suggest a minimum of one update per day and increase from there to several times a day (mixing up the types of posts – see below) if you’re getting a good response from your fans.
• Daily posting (at least Monday through Saturday) should yield daily comments and engagement.
• You’ll find the right rhythm with your fans. Better to start with once a day than several times a day and have your wall filled with only your own posts.
• Also, keep in mind “high traffic windows.” Depending on your time zone and the time zone of the majority of your fans, you’ll probably want to post sometime between 8:15am PST and 2:00pm PST.

2) What to Post

• I recommend a mix of your own thoughts, breaking news, useful tips, tools, resources and links from other sites in your industry and related industries. Stay on topic, stay focused.
• You could create an editorial calendar for your fan page just like many bloggers do.
• If you’re not sure what content your fans want, ask them – in a poll or status update.
• If your fan base is small and still growing, ask your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, email list, and blog subscribers. They are all potential fans. (See related post: 5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page).

In this screen shot of Volkswagen’s Facebook Fan Page, photos from a recent auto show yielded 363 likes and 68 comments and a video trailer got 121 likes and 25 comments. These are great results, as every one of the fan actions created a post on their respective walls and out into their friends’ news feeds. Free visibility, and every line item has a link back to VW’s fan page.

3) Sourcing Quality Content

• Your own blog: Import using the Notes app or, ideally, the Networked Blogs app.
• Create your own Alltop page and review each morning for fresh content to share.
• And/or subscribe to the top 15 to 25 blogs in your industry and related industries in your Google reader and review daily.
• Create Twitter lists and scan daily for new, relevant information to share (see also 5 Creative Ways to Use Your Twitter Favorites).
• Your Twitter Favorites RSS feed imported via the Notes app.
• Your YouTube videos and/or other relevant videos.

4) Cultivating Your Style

• Most people will come back to your fan page if there’s a real sense of community.
• It’s important to be open, inviting, warm, friendly and personable. Even if you’re a large brand.
• Starbucks leads the way with engagement – you might observe their style for ideas. Though they use their globally recognized logo, you’ll occasionally see posts in first person. I think this is commendable, as it really creates that personal feel so important to social networks.

5) Mix Up the Types of Posts

Text

This is your standard status update. You get 420 characters in the publisher to say what you want. As long as you don’t have a link in the update, the post automatically changes your latest Status Update at the top.

I highly recommend using the Facebook fan page to Twitter app at http://facebook.com/twitter. You simply link your fan page to your Twitter account, then choose which posts to share as tweets (Status Updates, Photos, Links, Notes, Events). You may need to experiment to get this just right.

Your posts will automatically truncate at around 120 characters and include a bit.ly link back to your fan page. Regardless of the number of characters, the tweet always contains the bit.ly link. Here’s an example of an update I posted for this blog post:

To track stats on any bit.ly link, just paste it into your browser and add a “+” sign at the end. As of the time of this writing, this post/link had 109 clicks and the post had 23 comments, plus replies on Twitter.

Video

Video is the next best thing to meeting your fans in person. There are many choices for video updates: You talking into the camera, photo montages (try Animoto), screencasts (using software like Camtasia Studio for PC or Mac, or ScreenFlow for Mac).

When you talk into the camera, always make good eye contact with the camera lens – just as if you were chatting to one good friend. You could do a video tip per day or per week. Make sure to keep the length short and the content concise. The ideal length for videos is up to 1 minute and 40 seconds.

You can record directly on Facebook or load a file onto your fan page – see screenshots below:

Here’s a video upload example from Dell Computer’s Facebook Fan Page – a 41-second ad for their nifty new customizable range of laptops, with 179 likes and 57 comments.

Or, you could pull in the video from YouTube as a link (click the Links icon on the publisher) – and this pulls in the live video player just as if you’d loaded the video file as in the example above:

Photos

Upload relevant pictures periodically and be sure to encourage your fans to upload photos anytime they wish. Each time your fans upload a photo, the thumbnail goes onto their profile wall and out into the news feeds of their friends.

Make sure your settings allow fans to post content. Just to the right under the publisher, click Options, then Settings:

In the screenshot below, there’s a photo on the Coca-Cola Facebook Fan Page – what’s neat about this photo is it was actually a fan-loaded image that Coca-Cola then reposted using the Share button (a great illustration of how Coca-Cola partnered with their raving fans who created the page).

Links

• Anytime you post a link in the publisher, Facebook displays a preview with a choice of thumbnails. (If you’re publishing content from a third-party app like Ping.fm, the thumbnail will be a default view.)
• You may at times wish to create an actual status update with a link in it, instead of a link with the preview on the wall. Here’s what to do: Before clicking the Share button, simply click the “x” to delete the link preview:

The post goes out as a status update with a clickable link:

Events

You can quickly create Event listings right from the publisher for any virtual or live event you have coming up. Fans can easily RSVP, as a regular Event page is created when you publish the event.

@ tags

This is a relatively new feature on Facebook. You can tag any friend, any fan page you’ve joined, any group you’re a member of and any event you’ve RSVPed to attend. You can include up to six @ tags in any update. Use the @ tagging strategically and your post will show up on your friends’ walls and other fan pages’ walls per the tag. (Just type the @ symbol in the publisher and the first letter or two of who/what you want to tag and a list drops down for you to select from.)

Notes app

This app is typically used to import your blog. However, I like the Networked Blogs app, so I actually import the RSS feed of my Twitter Favorites via the Notes app, which makes it easy to push relevant, regular content onto my fan page wall (and into the news feeds of my fans).

Incite Comments

Now that you have a wide variety of regular, quality, relevant content posting on your fan page, here are some points about inciting comments:

• For status updates, try ending with a question.
• Add your own comments as needed to get the ball rolling.
• Come back and reply often to your fans’ comments – Facebook currently doesn’t have threaded commenting, so I suggest addressing specific fans in your comments as @name.
• Do your best to respond to fan questions as promptly as possible. If you find you can’t keep up with the volume of questions, offer a free teleseminar or webinar in which you answer your fans’ top questions.

Vin Diesel has the second most popular Facebook fan page with well over seven million fans. Vin doesn’t post all that often, but when he does, each post yields tens of thousands of comments and likes. Just like Starbucks, there’s something to learn from Vin’s style – he talks to his fans in a very warm, caring and authentic manner.

In part two of this Facebook Fan Page Engagement post, I’ll cover:

1. How to encourage fans to keep coming back to add their own content and comments and ask questions, etc.
2. Monitoring insights – what do they mean, how to analyze the numbers and adjust your posts accordingly.
3. Should you also use the “Send an Update to Fans” feature? Do fans read their updates?
4. How to spark ongoing engagement via the Discussions tab.
5. Setting up systems for monitoring and responding to your fan engagement, given that there are currently no notifications of activity or RSS feeds to subscribe to on fan pages.
6. Integrating your Twitter followers and activity into your fan page engagement.

Editors note: Check out Social Media Examiner’s new Facebook fan page by clicking here.

Now it’s your turn: What types of content are you finding sparks the most engagement on your Facebook fan page? Where do you get stuck most with your fan page and what else would you like to see covered in future posts about social media engagement? Please add your thoughts in the comments below, then stay tuned for part two!

With the constant stream (river!) of information rushing by on Twitter, here are five fun ways to capture your favorite tweets and have a way to archive/refer back to them.

First, let’s make sure you know how to favorite tweets, what types of tweets to favorite, and where to find your Favorites URL/RSS Feed:

How to Favorite a Tweet

From the regular Twitter web interface, favorite any tweet by mousing over the tweet then clicking the star. This works for anyone on Twitter, whether you follow them or not.

On third-party apps, the Favorite button might be a heart like Twhirl:

Or, on TweetDeck, it’s actually a three-step process.

On the iPhone app Tweetie, you can slide your finger over any tweet for options and tap the star, or tap the star at the bottom of the actual tweet:

What Types of Tweets to Favorite

It’s really a personal choice, but you might want to favorite a mix of great content tweets from people you follow, your own tweets and @ replies to you that are endorsements/testimonials (I usually take screenshots of the latter to keep them separate).

Where to Find Your Favorites URL/RSS Feed

Look for “Favorites” on the side panel of your Twitter page. If you right-click and select the link, you’ll get a simple URL like: http://twitter.com/MariSmith/favorites.

If you left-click the link to get to your page of Favorites, then scroll below the montage of your follower thumbnails, you’ll see “RSS feed of username’s favorites” with the recognizable orange RSS icon.

Okay, now you’re ready! Here are those five creative ways to make good use of your Twitter Favorites!

1. Publish to Facebook Via FriendFeed

FriendFeed.com is an excellent feed aggregator; literally anything with an RSS feed can be combined into one feed and then that feed can be added to your Facebook profile. Here’s how:

1. Register for your free account at FriendFeed.com if you haven’t already.
2. Click on Settings at the top right.
3. On the popup, look for the link that says ” add/edit” next to Services.
   
4. On the next screen, click on one of the orange RSS icons (it says “Blog,” but can be used for any RSS feed).
5. Paste in your Twitter Favorites URL. Mine works fine with the straight URL http://twitter.com/MariSmith/favorites, but you may find you need to put the actual RSS feed URL in. I’ve heard it can be a bit buggy for some folks.
6. Next, head over to Facebook and add the FriendFeed application.

Now, you should be able to favorite a tweet and go refresh your Facebook profile and see the new item on your Wall (and it goes out into the News Feed of all your friends).

I find this practice much more effective than automatically syncing all tweets with my Facebook updates. It gives me more control and means I can share more select content to my Facebook friends. Plus, with the ubiquitous Comment feature, your updates (Twitter favorites) can spark discussion.

Also, there’s always an abundance of great content to share on Twitter – if you’re away from your desk, for example, you can easily favorite a few tweets on your mobile device and that content goes over to your Facebook friends.

2. Favorite Content on Your Facebook Fan Page

I find the Facebook Fan Page to Twitter app very useful. You get a whopping 420 characters in the Publisher to create content. Then the app truncates around 120 characters and posts to Twitter with a bit.ly link back to your fan page. You can choose what content to post to Twitter; for example, your Status Updates, Photos, Links, Notes and Events:

Then when the post goes out as a tweet, when you favorite the tweet, you trigger the sequence in #1 above: posting to FriendFeed and to your Facebook profile, thus giving you additional visibility and control over what content goes where.

3. Add Your Favorites to Your Email Signature File

WiseStamp is a really nifty Firefox extension that gives you an HTML signature file for any webmail. You can insert any content, plus WiseStamp pulls in the icons for the social sites you wish to share as well:

Along with your social media icons, there’s an option to add an RSS feed of your choice. Click the RSS button and paste in your Twitter Favorites RSS Feed, enter your own Feed Title and voila!! As you select tweets to favorite, your email signature file now has dynamic content!

4. Create a Widget of Your Favorites for Your Blog

Among the various cool widgets Twitter offers (Goodies, they call them), they have a Faves Widget which you can easily customize and add to your blog/website:

This allows you to not only have your own tweets in a Twitter widget, but also to share dynamic, select content on your blog/site.

5. Make an Ebook Out of Your Favorites

Tweetbook.in is a little-known site that actually generates a PDF (plus XML backup) of your Tweets or your Favorites.

Tweetbook.in uses Oauth, so no need to enter your Twitter credentials. Once logged in, click the tab for Favorites, then click the “Generate PDF” button. If you have a ton of favorites, it may take a couple of minutes.

I first came across this nifty site some time ago and just recently remembered it! ” I’ve been adding to my Twitter Favorites since 2007 and have over 1500 favorites. The ebook I just created of my favorites is 104 pages! You’re welcome to download it here.

The cool thing is that any links in tweets are clickable in the PDF. The Twitter IDs are not, but @names and who authored the tweets are obvious.

Imagine the possibilities of creating your own PDF with your tweets/favorites!

These are just a few of the ways to use Twitter Favorites you may not have known. What other creative ways do you use Favorites? Add your comments below; we’d love to hear from you!

When setting up the event as an organizer, I highly recommend you leave all the default settings the way they are – that is, allow guests to invite others, upload photos, write on the wall, etc. The reason is that every one of these activities creates news items that go out into the feeds of those individuals and their friends. This is great viral visibility for you and for them. Here is an example of all options you want to check:

And, as an attendee of any event on Facebook, you can easily help create buzz and visibility for both yourself and the event organizer. Win:win!

I do recommend being strategic and mindful about the events you RSVP for. (I’m sure, like me, you get your fair share of non-relevant event invitations!)

Also, when setting up your own events, be sure to choose a really catchy title, subtitle and photo. These three fields are the only ones seen in “Requests” when you invite your friends (and they invite their friends). The small greeting you can include goes out in the email notification, so that’s important too.

Here are my top nine tips for creating buzz as a Facebook Event attendee and/or host.

1.  Always RSVP

If you are attending an event, make sure to RSVP and write a message in the box on the “Request” page.  Here is an example of a personal invite to an event.  The invitee could then write a reply in the box below. If you want to punch it up a bit, you can even record a short video from your computer, letting your friend know you are excited to attend their event.  And then all you need to do is click on the video icon and upload it!

2. Get Noticed

If you RSVP to an event, make sure to write a note on the event wall – whether your RSVP is a yes, no or maybe.  This is great visibility for you!

Also, if it is your event, continue to generate buzz by periodically commenting on your own event wall. When people RSVP and write on your event wall, go write on their wall to thank them personally. Comment on any added photos/videos/links. Each of these activities goes into your mini feed and your friends’ news feeds. I call this strategy “RSV” – radical, strategic visibility.

3. Upload Photos

Make sure to choose an engaging photo for your main event description and add multiple photos related to the event to pique interest.  An engaging photo should be eye-catching, warm, friendly, and inviting. Typically a person’s face is better than logos/images/graphics. You MUST include a photo or your event will have that nasty question mark. And who wants to attend a “?” event?

4. Upload Videos and Links

As mentioned in tip #1, you can record a video and upload it to any of your RSVPs.  If it is your event, you can make a short video explaining what your event is about and upload it to the invite. And just like photos and videos, links are a great way to offer more value as well.  You will want to make sure you include a link for your participants to register if you have an opt-in strategy.  Make this very clear to your participants.

5. Write a Personal Message

This makes your event more personable.  Most people have their email notifications turned on and they’ll get an email with your event title, date, time and your personal message. I also recommend including the time zone in the personal message, because Facebook defaults to your own time zone.

6. Send Out Invites

Click on “Invite People to Come” and invite your friends. This invitation will go into your friends’ “Event Requests.”

7. Spread the Word

Click the “Share” button and “Post to your Profile” and your invite will go on your wall for all to see.

Or use the “Share” button to send an invite to specific friends or lists.

This is my rule (you may want to test your own parameters): I only promote about one event of my own on Facebook every month, so I don’t have any qualms about inviting all friends because my events are virtual (conference calls).  (In this case, I would use tip #6 above and “Invite People to Come” and “Select All” to invite everyone.) For location-specific events, you may want to be more selective.

8.  Tweet About Your Event

Send out tweets with a link to the Facebook event. Preferably not just, “Check out my event! [insert link].” Rather, offer something enticing like, “Learn How to Create a BUZZ With Facebook Events [insert link—use a short URL].”  (Link to either the Facebook Event page or your registration page.)

Also include the link in your Facebook status updates periodically and mention your event on Plurk, LinkedIn, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Ping.fm – whichever platforms you’re active on and have followers/friends! Your friends and followers will happily pass the snipped link on for you.

9.  Experiment With Social Ads

Promote your event with Social Ads and every time someone RSVPs, their name and photo may appear alongside your ad. Experiment with a weekly/monthly budget and see what happens.

10. Send Out Reminders

As the event date approaches, be sure to gently remind people who have not yet registered that there’s still time.

Wow, that was a lot to cover!  I hope you find value in these tips!

What do you think? Did you learn something new about Facebook Events? What has your experience been so far with Facebook Events? Share your thoughts in the Comments box below.