@aremorch Great question!

One tip is to engage EVERY person who posts on your wall.  We do that over at our wall.

You’d be surprised how much people like that…

@aremorch A common tip I’ve heard from many webinars, including those done by Social Media Examiner, is to personalize your interactions with fans. Always mention their name when replying, and also ending with your name, really seems to break down the walls.

I’ve also had a modest amount of success with single picture posts with a call to action telling people to add a caption to the image. Depending on what your line of work is, you can find timely events in the news and post up pictures which people will be more inclined to engage with.

The company I work for deals in retail and wholesale party supplies, so pop culture and entertainment news often is on the minds of our customers. A quick picture of Kim Kardashian looking smug along side estranged hubby Kris Humphries is ripe for funny captions.

Best of all, after people write their caption, if they think it’s really funny, they are inclined to share it with their friends to show off their handy-work.

@aremorch One tip I’ve found for our FB page (also in the hospitality field) is that you have to offer Valuable Content.  You’ll hear that everywhere on Soc. Media Examiner and elsewhere.  Though you may have a small handful of fans who would “like” your page no matter what you were offering, most of your fans are fans in order to get something in return.

Information is a great thing to give them, such as behind-the-scenes info and tips. BUT better still is a deal or a giveaway or an experience.

Lastly, people enjoy sharing their own opinions and they enjoy responding to simple, no-brainer posts.  For example, one of our most successful FB posts just asked what people’s favorite restaurant in town was.  The number of comments was outstanding and we weren’t even “offering” anything other than a space for them to share their own thoughts about a universal thing – food.

Sam

Since we are a direct lender offering home loan programs, it’s hard to really do giveaways or special deals. We have to focus on bringing up important information in the industry along with fun stuff to get people’s attention.

 It’s challenging to gain likes for our page. We engage with anyone that likes our posts as well as others in the industry and beyond but not too much seems to be coming out of it. I know it is a slow process, but any other tips for a company like ours?

@aremorch We work helping all kinds of small businesses build their web presence and here are a few tips that I usually give for engagement.

1. Look at other pages like your industry and see what types of posts they are creating that get the most engagement and then try a few out.

2. Think about what you typically find the most interesting on either a friends profile or another Facebook business page… What gets you to respond, share, click like? And, again, recreate those types of posts.

3. It seems silly but simple questions seem to get the most engagement. Questions like true/false, Multiple choice, Agree/Disagree, or yes or no, may seem silly, but if they are industry related and they get folks talking it’s going to help get you in the news feed.

4. Last, but certainly NOT least is Valuable Content! And, I know that’s already been mentioned here (and everywhere else), but if it’s something that is truly valuable and of interest to your audience it will get shared. Think of things like photos, infographics and great blog posts with intriguing titles.

A good mix of this plus posting regularly and engaging with fans who do comment, is a great way to spawn more engagement.
Joan

What I have found works well is when i mix the more traditional business focused posts with more informal non-work related posts. The object is to turn lurkers into engaged users.

An example is with a local cancer charity I support. If they are doing some quirky fund-raising initiative, I’ll post about it on my Page and get a good amount of engagement on the post. This is a win-win situation for the charity, which gets more volunteers, and for me because it improves the edge-rank with those people who have engaged with the post.

Another tip I use is at round-about 4.45pm on a Friday I’ll post something like “Have a great weekend” and again I’ll get lots of people commenting on this too.

Hope this helps!

@cnsholidayhomes Lizzie my point about posting the odd non-business update on your FB Page is to encourage fans to interact with the page. 

In a lot of cases, fans can be reading your regular content and finding it of value but they don’t interact with your page, which means that they have less chance of seeing future posts. However, if you ask a strong-engagement question or a post that invites feedback, then your fans will click Like, Comment or Share your post which improves the EdgeRank between them and your Page. 

Alan