I bet you know the best way to engage with your fans is by posting status updates, which appear in each fan’s news feed (on their Facebook homepage). But did you know optimizing your visibility within your fans news feed involves more than just posting status updates?

Your fan’s news feed shows all status updates, photos and conversations from their friends and pages they’ve liked. To determine which posts are more important (and thus should be located at the top, for everyone to see) Facebook developed an algorithm called Edgerank. The Edgerank is calculated with three variables: the popularity of the update (based on how many clicks, likes and comments the status gets), the relevance of your fan page to the fan (based on how interactive your fans have been with past statuses) and recency (how recently your status was posted). The higher the Edgerank score, the higher your post appears on your fan’s news feed, which means maximum visibility.

As you can see the key is to get likes and comments to your updates. Trust me, that’s not going to happen when you’re simply promoting your products. Every time you post a comment, you should ask yourself “are fans going to engage with this post by commenting or liking it?”.

I know it can be quite hard to come up with creative ideas for your updates, which is why I came up with the list below to give you some ideas that WILL work. Don’t use them as-is, you should modify them to make sure they fit into your niche. There’s no point asking about the whether when you’re selling cat food, for example.

1. Questions: Ask simple questions, such as “What’s your favorite holiday destination, and why?”.

2. Fill-in-the-blanks posts: Updates that you write that requires people to fill in the blanks to complete a sentence, such as “(Fill in the blanks) _______ is my favorite BMW”.

3. Post photos and ask something about it, such as “Where do you think this picture is taken?”

4. Post a video and ask about a specific moment in it, such as “What do you think that guy is doing at 1:43?”

5. Talk about the news: Select something that’s currently getting a lot of conversation, and invite discussion on your page.

6. Ask for likes: Simply post updates such as “Like this if you can’t wait for the weekend to begin!”

7. Caption contests: Post a funny photo and ask fans to give a title. You can even give away something to the comment with the most likes (don’t forget to announce the winner).

8. Ask hypothetical questions, such as “One-way flight anywhere you choose. Money’s not an issue. Where do you go?”

You see what I mean? Try these kind of status updates out on your fan page, and you’ll see you’ll get comments and likes (which increases your Edgerank and thus your visibility).

Good luck!

Rick

@alexandrabriggs  Glad to be of help, if you have any tips you could add please do so!

@rlmosca  Thanks for the tips, very helpful!!

@rlmosca I will put them to use, right away. I know that they work because a posting by one of my new FB friends got my attention. I posted a like and a comment. It happened to be about a music group I liked. I often checked what this friend has posted now.

The real experiences that we get from these venues will ultimately prove to be more valuable than any gold or platinum Rick, trust me. There are many such stories occuring, as we speak.

Yay! Some awesome ideas. Thanks for sharing. Will be using some later today

@pacey  Let us know how they workout for you!

@rlmosca Will do I already use a few of them and would never ask them simply to like a status. I want users sharing and interacting because they want to not just because i said but i love the fill in the blank one, just posted it like 10 minutes ago

Must admit it is not doing great so far

@rlmosca

Clear, concise explanation of Edgerank, combined with useful, valuable content with examples.

What else could a guy ask for in a post!

Thanks for your insight.

@rlmosca Very cool post! I wrote your 8points down and I plan to give them s shot!

Great ideas to get the creative juices flowing

@rlmosca, would say that this explanation and examples are worth hundred dollars, what others do by charging hefty dollars, you’ve done with charging nothing and that’s the real spirit of  Social Media for the Social World where society comes first before business comes Thank you mosca!

Great suggestions!  I have a skydrive file that I share with one employee from each of our clubhouses.  This list is going in the file   Thank you!

Thanks Rick. Very helpful information and lots I can get to doing!

Thanks Rick, great post!  I run Facebook Workshops and cover this very topic and have most of those covered but really like your suggestion regarding comment with a Photo and Video.  I also include what i call ‘This or That’ so a status would read ‘Facebook or Twitter’ or ‘Cat or Dog.

 Hi Ann,

I read an article awhile ago which used the term ‘Lurkers’ – people that read but don’t comment, I follow lots of pages which continually educate me but I don’t comment on all of them and am too guilty of being a Lurker! 

Rick – all great tips and thank you. I used the “fill in the blank” question the other day – (I got the idea originally from Mari Smith) and gained like ten new “likes” in a matter of a day or two.

Rick,

I made a resolution to myself this weekend to Dive into my facebook page and promote, engage and encourage new Likes etc etc.  Your tips will form part of my strategy, so thank you, I currently have 61 Fans at this moment.  I will be sorting out the look of my Page this week and then implimenting some of your strategies.

I will keep you all informed of the outcomes.

Thank s

John

ok, my facebook page is just about ready to start using some of the tips at the top of this topic, a little help is needed.

Ive used woobox to setup a welcome screen asking people to click on the “like”.

What happens is that a new person visits my page
http://www.facebook.com/pristinecleaningdublin and the page I created appears.

Excellent So far so good.

The person Clicks on “Like”, Excellent again.

The Page does not move onto the wall, you have to click on the “Wall” on the left hand side.

Does anyone know how to fix this
Thanks

John

Great post! I couldn’t agree more! I stress this a lot on a daily basis that your fans don’t just want sales pitches! They want to feel like the company they choose to do business with is their “friend”. They want to connect on a greater level. I believe this to be true in social media as well as selling. I use to be a sales position and I was only super successful because I tried to connect with my clients rather then just sell them something. Making the connection is KEY! 

These are very good tips and I will have to utilize more of them. Thank you

This is a great list of tip for posts but I do need to put in a huge note of caution re Tip 7.  You are quite correct @Kelly Lester, in that this idea breaks Facebooks Promotional Guidelines and you risk having your page shut down by FB. You can’t run on page competitons by using Facebooks mechanisms of likes and comments, and also announce prize winners. A shame as it does create great engagement, but I am not prepared to risk losing my page over it, and stories are now surfacing of some big pages being shut down for running ‘on page’ competitions.

What if you ask a question and no fan answers?

If you can make it topical – even controversial, but be careful here not to offend – or linked to a news event, then more likely to get a response.

thank you all for insiprational tips, I hope I will be able to avail them in relevant customization for my purpose.
@shannontaylor22 I totally agree, that is all about stay connected.

Great Tips! I could use some of those too.

Great tips! Love the caption contest so smart

@rlmosca

ossammmmm

i really like this…thanks

Great tips. Encouraged me to go post immediately!

I don’t know about the rest but i’ve experimented with poll, question,fill in the blank, post funny photo to ask for the best caption but the result is far from satisfactory. But when i see the same being done on some of the more popular pages especially those from public figures like Jim Rohn and Brian Tracy to name just a few, their results are just phenomenon. Correct me if i’m wrong but it would seem to me that the same tips would not work on every page. I think for these tips to work well there must really be a very strong established relationship with the fans. I’ve recently observed a page that i’ve liked having a dismal result (something like less than 10 comments) using the same tips despite it having more than 23,000 fans !! So, the question is what’s the key to getting the best result from using the tips shared by @rlmosca ? 

@Louisteoh, my hunch is that the pages with a lot of interaction have a higher edge rank and their messages are being seen in more fans’ walls. For the pages I admin, sometimes we have a fantastic response, and sometimes we don’t. I think it has a lot to do with who’s seeing our message, and, of course, the timing of our post.

Remember too, based on the http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php we shouldn’t use any facebook functionalities as means to offer prizes. You’d risk Facebook shutting down your page, without any notice or explanation.Eek!

@moinshaikh Have you ever had a client, or knew somebody who’s FB page got shut down?

Thank you Rick…..that has helped…almost got tongue-tied..or maybe I should say finger-tied thinking what to say to engage people!

One addendum to the ask questions. Not all questions do well. For example “What is your favorite vacation spot”. People have to stop and think about this and tend to move on without answering. In my experience yes or no questions get the most responses.

Love these ideas to increase Facebook fan interactions, i am definitely going to try some of these out. I have also started posting pictures with almost every post, not sure if it is helping but my timeline is beautiful and colorful!

This is wonderful, thank you!

Nice summary.  My “funny picture” posts often get more interaction than a “meaty” informational post.  LOL

These tips are very useful, great ways to engage readers and make them feel like they are valued. Thank you!

@rlmosca Thanks for this brilliant information about edgerank. An excellent place for new topics is Google. Just search google for what is new and use the news as relevant and new topics for facebook interaction

Great list! It’s amazing how your engagement on Facebook grows by just asking people to share their thoughts.