Chapter 2

Engaging and Retaining Your Community

In This Chapter

Engaging people to keep them coming back to your Page

Understanding and making the most of the News Feed

Learning the art of responding to comments

Banning and removing people and comments as a last resort

Engagement is the Holy Grail for Facebook Pages. To engage your target audience, you need to be clear about your purpose and branding, and let your own personality (or your brand’s) shine through.

Best practices dictate that you can post almost anything to your Page as long as you adhere to the express purpose of having conversations with current and potential customers. Remember: Facebook is a friend network where conversations are the whole point.

If your Page is about DIY tips, for example, ask fans for their favorite DIY hack to create more closet space. By contrast, posting a video of your favorite American Idol contestant might confuse people. What’s the connection between DIY tips and American Idol?

In Book II, Chapter 3, we explain how to use the regular posting features, status updates, video posts, audio, events, and other aspects of posting. In this chapter, we explore how to use those features to engage your community even further.

Specifically, we tell you how to use questions, milestones, and images to create conversations on your Page. We also explain why you need to understand Facebook’s News Feed algorithm (how it affects who sees what on your Page) and how to create posts that will give you more views and engagement.

We explain the difference between what your visitors see when your Page has Highlights selected and how that changes when they select Posts by Others, Posts by Page, or Friend Activity, and how that all ties into Admin settings for your Timeline. Finally, we show you how to remove unpleasant guests from your Page.

Creating Posts and Updates That Engage Your Readers

Facebook has millions of Pages, but the majority are still trying to figure out how to attract an audience, authentically engage the people who might like them, and increase revenue. Many brands, on the other hand, have well more than 1 million likers and have figured out the best ways to engage their particular base so that a viral effect starts and they recruit even more people to their brand or cause.

How do they do it? They use these strategies (most of which we explain in the following sections):

• Use Facebook-approved contests. We cover contests in detail in Book VI.
• Share the best. Share your best videos, tutorials, resources, and quotations.
• Ask questions. Use both types of questions (see “Asking questions,” later in this chapter) to see which works best for you. Encourage conversation by responding to all questions with an answer and another question.
• Give attention where it’s due. Recognize fans with “shout outs” in updates.
• Give away things. Give coupons, discount codes, e-books, and other stuff related to your business. Make giveaways a regular activity to encourage return visits.
• Acknowledge people. Reward your community through activities such as Fan Friday, charity support, and random acts of thanking.
• Respond quickly. People are impressed when an actual human responds to a customer question or comment.
• Post on a schedule. After you discover the formats that your audience responds to most favorably, post in those formats on a regular schedule. Doing so sets the stage for the conversations.

Some types of posts resonate with your audience better than others. In the beginning, you might try a variety to see which ones work the best.

As of this writing, more than 1 billion active Facebook users access Facebook through their mobile phones (and devices). Make sure to view your Facebook Page through your device so that you can see what those people see. View it with the direct browser link at http://m.facebook.com and through iPhone and Android applications.

Consider these three scenarios and ask these questions:

• How do I get visitors to not only view my Page after they initially like it, but also return regularly?
• Do visitors need to return to my Page (for example, after posting a customer service question to follow up on your reply)?
• Can I send everything I want visitors to see in a post?

Asking questions

Asking questions or inviting your audience’s opinion on something instantly creates a personal connection. People like to tell you their opinion on subjects that are dear to them. Your most enthusiastic likers have an opinion about your brand, marketing message, or community involvement (or lack thereof). Asking them to express those opinions can open the door to lots of conversation and involvement. To ask a question, simply post a status.

Here are some engaging ways to ask a question:

• Find a topical news story that connects to your business, and ask what people think about it. Post the question with a link to the news story for a bigger response.
• Pose a question you get from your potential customers, and ask your enthusiasts how they would answer it.
• Use fill-in-the-blank questions. The Life is Good Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/Lifeisgood), for example, asked this fill-in-the-blank question: “A positive life lesson I’d like to share is XX.” There were more than 1,300 comments and more than 500 likes in just a few days!
• Ask a question with a one-word answer. Don’t ask your audience to write a detailed evaluation of something. Some of the most popular fill-in-the-blank questions require just a one or two word response: “Chocolate — Dark or Milk?”

Giving away something

To extend the idea of asking questions, combine asking and giving: for example, “Who wants a coupon?”

The prospect of receiving discounts is always one of the top two reasons for consumers to like a brand on Facebook, so asking the question “Who wants a coupon?” usually gets a good response. We discuss creating coupons for your Page in Book VI, Chapter 2.

Measure and note your audience demographics. Note whether your readers prefer coupons or contests. (If you don’t know, ask them!) Pay attention to what kinds of status updates they respond to and then do more of what’s working. Think “incentive” all the time. You know what motivates you to seek something out. Analyzing your own behavior can lead to insights about what may work on your Facebook business Page.

Promoting your fans and enthusiasts

Nothing in marketing is more powerful than word-of-mouth promotion. We all know that.

So how do you find and encourage people to open their mouths and speak favorably on your behalf?

First, acknowledge them. You know how it feels when you’ve been acknowledged for something you’ve done. You can give that feeling to someone else on your Page in a variety of ways:

• Ask your fans whether they’ve volunteered for any charities or donated to one. Then challenge your fans to match that good will, or write a blog post about the charity and mention your fan by name.
• Publicly thank, by name, the people who are sharing your posts with others. Remember: Pages can’t tag Facebook users unless they’ve commented on the post you’re tagging them in.
• Have your Page be a place for fans to share what they do by dedicating a day to those posts. If your Page is dedicated to sustainability, be a forum for fans to share their best resources. Have a Resource Wednesday, a Sharing Saturday, or whatever suits your Page.

Many Pages use a Fan Page Friday concept, similar to Follow Friday on Twitter. Figure 2-1 shows how that looks on Boom Social with Kim Garst Page (www.facebook.com/kimgarstboomsocial).

Tagging key players in updates

How do people know you’ve thanked them on your Page? If they happen to see your status update come through their News Feeds, they’ll see their names. But what if they don’t catch your update in the News Feed?

If you tag them by using the @ symbol, they see the post on their personal Timelines and get notifications that they’ve been tagged in a post by you. This works for your Friends and Pages that you like.

Keep these things in mind:

• If you’re posting as the Page, you can’t tag Friends or individuals in the main status update (but you can tag other Pages).
• If you’re posting as yourself, you can tag Friends, individuals, or Pages.

If you have a lot of fans who are also Facebook friends, tagging them in page updates can be quite effective.

To tag a Friend or Page in a post, follow these steps:

1. Type the @ symbol in the Status Update box on your Page and then start typing the name of the Friend or Page you want to tag.

   Make sure not to put a space between the @ and the name you type; see how @Am appears in Figure 2-2.

   A list of all your Friends and Pages with that name appears.

2. Click the correct name or Page name.

   The name you click appears in the status-update box, hyperlinked to that person’s Profile or Page.

3. Finish the message.
4. Click Post.

   The person or Page sees your message on her Timeline and notifications.

   

Using public posts to thank people

Key players are your cheerleaders and enthusiasts. On Facebook, these key players can influence hundreds of people with their comments. Most of us take our friends’ recommendations more seriously than those of strangers’ we found searching online. After you establish who your key players are, thank them and encourage them to interact even more.

Through your Insights dashboard, you might find that women age 25–34 are your highest viewing demographic. Thank the members of that age group, too, by providing something valuable to them generally. For example, you might create a post that provides a link to something they value, such as discount codes for diapers, as a way to thank them for being part of your Page.

If you find through your Insights dashboard that a huge number of people from California visit your Page, say hi to them and thank them. You could say, “Hi to all the people in California who have liked this Page! Post a picture of you outside on your favorite hiking trail with our Brand Z hiking shoes!”

You can find a textbook case of using questions on the NFL Page (http://facebook.com/NFL). Just scroll through the posts to see the mix of videos, polls, questions, discounts, and giveaways. Most importantly, note the number of people who liked the post; also note the number of comments generated by that post. Check out their use of call to action via tagging in Figure 2-3.

Creating a posting schedule

One aspect of engaging readers is how often you post. Good social media consultants tell you to post at the rate your audience expects. Say, every Friday you post a coupon code or Facebook Offer (review Offers in Book III), a clue to a treasure hunt contest, or a free training ticket. When you continue a pattern like this, people will start to remember and look for your posts on those days.

Your audience’s expectations for your rate of posting depends on what you post. If you post breaking news in your field, for example, your audience depends on you to give that information as it becomes available. This can make for frequent posting.

Even different news Pages handle posting frequency in other ways:

• iPhone Life magazine (www.facebook.com/iphonelifemagazine), an online and hard copy magazine for iPhone enthusiasts, posts three to eight times per day.
• GeekBeatTV (www.facebook.com/geekbeattv), a channel of the well-known Internet TV Station Revision3, posts once or twice per day with lots of comments.
• NPR (www.facebook.com/NPR) posts as often as hourly.

Here are some examples of how often small businesses with a local reach post:

• Noah’s Ark Animal Foundation (www.facebook.com/NoahsArkIowa) finds loving homes for stray and neglected dogs and cats. It posts adoption photos or videos once daily to help boost adoption. It sponsors Meow Mondays, Woof Wednesdays, and Foster Fridays. In between, it posts news about its dog park project.
• Finnywick’s (www.facebook.com/Finnywicks), a toy store, posts only once per week and highlights a new toy that just arrived.

Targeting your posts to be seen

To know how to send your posts, you need to understand how Facebook decides where to post them. Your posts can show up in one of four areas:

• Top Stories feed: Aggregates the most interesting content (from Pages and Friends) based on a News Feed algorithm.
• Most Recent feed: Shows you the posts of your Friends and Pages you’ve liked and have conversations with on a regular basis in chronological order.
• Ticker: Appears to the right of the News Feed, and is where Facebook puts activity stories — actions such as someone liking a Page, subscribing to a Profile, commenting on a photo, and so on. Personally, we find the Ticker to be full of wonderful things, as you can see in Figure 2-4.

Posts could also show up in any custom list someone has created through a Profile.

Facebook’s own research says that 95 percent of users view only the Top Stories feed. From our experience, we can tell you that most people don’t know that Facebook’s News Feed algorithm decides which posts will show up in Top Stories.

Try to educate your fans to click the name of your Page when they see it in the News Feed and then hover over the Like button to make sure that Get Notifications is selected (as shown in Figure 2-5).

In the Facebook iPad app, you also see a drop-down menu where you can further filter what you see: only posts by Pages, only posts with links, only posts with photos, only status updates, or any custom Friend lists.

What does this mean for your Page? First and foremost, you need to understand the News Feed algorithm so that you can deliver your updates in the best way for your likers to (potentially) see them. You also need to educate your fans about how they can adjust what they see in their News Feed by clicking the Sort arrow and changing it from Top Stories to Most Recent.

Understanding the News Feed Algorithm

You want more than anything for your Page to have high visibility and to show up in people’s Top Stories feeds. A Page with high interaction ends up in the Top Stories feed, which means that more people will see your posts.

The algorithm that Facebook uses to determine the visibility of a Page post is based on four factors:

• Affinity: How often two people interact on Facebook. Affinity scores increase the more often you (or your Page) and a person exchange messages, Timeline posts, comments, and links. The more often a person who likes your Page posts, the better the affinity exists between your Page and that person, and the more likely your Page posts are to show up in that person’s Top Stories feed.
• Weight: How many comments and likes a post gets. Weight value increases the more comments, likes, and other variables a post has, based on what Facebook is weighing at the moment. Places, video, and photos seem to have the most weight.
• Decay: How old the post is. Decay weakens the News Feed algorithm automatically as your post grows older in the Timeline; as time increases, value decreases.
• Negative Feedback: Facebook users can mark any update in their News Feed as being spammy, offensive, or simply unwanted. An increase in negative feedback hurts that posts ability to appear in more News Feeds.

Like and make a comment for each post made on your Page to engage conversation. You can comment as yourself (if you’ve selected that option) or as the Page. Commenting as both is good unless it just feels unnatural to you. One action — commenting — will help increase the Weight value.

If one of your likers clicks the Share link for one of your posts and likes it, too, the shared post has a better chance at showing up in the Top Stories feeds of his Friends (those who have the highest affinity scores with the sharer).

Using News Feed optimization strategies

We don’t explain the nitty-gritty details of the News Feed algorithm (what’s the point?), but we can explain a few strategies to help increase reach for your posts.

Here are a few proven News Feed optimization strategies:

• Encourage people to like your posts. Ask them directly, as in “Like this post to show your support for XX.”
• If you have a Facebook Places Page, consider merging it with your regular Facebook business Page to increase the weight, or relevance, of what is posted. Before you do that, please see Book II, Chapter 1.
• Be sure to post photos, videos, and use Facebook Questions on a regular basis because they have more weight. Even better is having your likers post their photos to your Page’s Timeline.
• Post when your audience will see the posts. Are they looking at Facebook daily or only on the weekend? Post when they’re online and looking. (Find out in Book IX how to determine when your fans are seeing your posts.)
• Ask your closest Friends and key players to make comments on your Page as much as possible, and return the favor to start the conversation rolling and help shy people feel safer about commenting.

Following these easy strategies will help boost your News Feed algorithm and help deposit your posts in your likers’ Top Stories feeds. It may also be helpful to educate your Friends and likers about how this system works. Many people have asked why they don’t see posts from certain Pages and people. The News Feed algorithm is the reason.

Creating and Participating in Conversations with Your Audience

Creating and participating in conversations is why we’re on Facebook. Having an authentic conversation that involves and motivates people feels good and draws more people to the conversation. All the writers of this book have found new and wonderful people through personal conversations on Facebook.

When you can converse with someone about a customer service issue or tell someone through a post how happy you are with that person’s product, and he responds to you quickly and respectfully, a bond is created that will bring you back to that business. The business is counting on this reaction, and that’s why so much attention is being given to the art of conversation in Facebook.

Optimize the settings for posts to your Timeline

When you create your Page (see Book II, Chapter 1), you make the decision to have the posts on the Timeline be just your own or open for posting by the public, as well. Most Page creators select the Everyone options to encourage conversation — anyone can post something. If you don’t select those options, people can comment only to something already posted by the Page.

After you start to have conversations with people on your Page, you can modify those original settings. To review and possibly change those settings, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Page and open the Admin panel at the top.
2. Click Edit Page.
3. Choose Edit Settings from the drop-down menu.
4. On the resulting page, select Posting Ability, Post Visibility, and Tagging Ability selections, as shown in see Figure 2-6.
5. Click Save Changes.

Understanding the different views people see on your Page

It would be a wonderful thing if we all saw the same thing on a Facebook Page, but because of the toggle views (Highlights, Posts by Page, Posts by Others), we don’t.

By understanding all the different views a person can have on your Page, you’ll be more educated about how to generate and participate in conversation with them. Figure 2-7 shows where people can toggle the view of a Page from Highlights to Posts by Page, or to Posts by Others.

Facebook defaults the Page view to Highlights, which are determined by Facebook. Highlights are collections of posts that have the most interaction, posts that you’ve highlighted, and photos. The viewer can choose Posts by Page to see posts in chronological order.

If you prefer that people see your posts in chronological order, explain to them how to toggle the link at the top of the Timeline to Posts by Page. Some Pages occasionally create a post to remind people how to toggle the view. Here’s some suggested text to use for that post:

You can view the posts on this Page in chronological order by clicking Highlights (right below the Timeline Cover photo) and choosing Posts by Page.

If you let other people post on your Page’s Timeline, you can toggle the view to see only those posts by selecting Posts by Others.

Being responsive and allowing conversation

Regardless of whether your fans select the Timeline view to be Highlights or Posts by Page, you still need to comment, ask questions, be responsive, and generally be available to the people who like your Page.

The best way to be aware when people interact with your Page is to monitor your Notifications section in your Admin panel and the Posts by Others view (or box).

You get perks with a conversational, friendly Facebook Page:

• You can nurture a community of people whom they can run ideas by or test new products on via giveaways. By having a friendly, responsive Page, you can realize many opportunities for testing and expanding your business.
• You get to direct the conversation but also should be open to the conversation going in a different direction from what you anticipated. More than anything, people on Facebook are looking for a community of like-minded people.

  If you have a controversial subject on your Page, you gain respect by behaving like an adult when you need to be responsive. Allow the conversation to flow, but also moderate, remove, or report users and Pages if things get out of hand.

Keeping the Conversation Civil

Most of the time, the conversation on Facebook is fun and enjoyable. Occasionally, however, someone posts things on your Page that aren’t congruent with your business — spam or rude, derogatory statements.

We hope that you never need to remove or ban someone from your Page, but you have a responsibility, as the admin of your Page, to keep the conversation going in a positive direction and in line with what your Page is all about.

Know the four types of posts to your Page and also how you can delete, hide, or report them:

• To remove a post that you posted: Click the hidden pencil icon to the right of the post and then choose Delete or Hide from Page.
• To remove a post from your Page in which your Page was tagged: Click the pencil icon and then choose Hide or Report/Mark as Spam. You can’t delete this type of post, though, because it was created by someone else. The best you can do is to hide it from people who visit your Page or report it.
• To remove a post that was posted directly on your Page (not tagged): Click the X and then choose Hidden from Page, Delete, or Report/Mark as spam.
• To delete a comment: Hover over the comment, click the X that shows up on the right, and choose an option: Delete, Hide Post, or Report as Abuse.

After you delete a post, you can’t undo the action, so be sure that you really want to delete it before you click the Delete button. The person who created the post isn’t notified that the post was removed. The only way that person will know that it was deleted is if she comes back to your Page to look for it and can’t find it.

Note: Deleting a post doesn’t ban the poster from posting again.

Reporting a poster

Deleting or hiding a post is one thing; using Report/Mark as Spam takes it up a notch. This process is for posts that cross the line into spam, abuse, or use of violent words.

Anyone can create a new Facebook account, like your Page, and again post inappropriate comments. Be vigilant about bad apples.

We describe two ways to ban a user or a Page from posting to your Page. If you have a few likers, the first way is really easy to use. If millions of people have liked your Page, the second way is the only way to go.

Banning someone when you have a small following

If you have only a few likers and want to ban someone or another Page from your Page, go to your Page, and follow these steps:

1. Open the Admin panel and click the See All link in the New Likes box.

   A dialog box appears with a list of all the users who have liked your Page (see Figure 2-8).

   

2. Click the X to the right of the user you want to ban.

   A dialog box opens.

3. Select the Ban Permanently check box.
4. Click Ok.

   Now this person or Page can’t re-like your Page and post again unless he creates a new account with a different name.

Banning someone when you have a large following

The other way to ban a person or another Page from your Page — especially if a large number of people like your Page — is to ban her directly from an offending post that she made. Follow these steps:

1. Put your cursor on the right side of the offending post and click the X.

   A drop-down menu appears, with the six options shown in Figure 2-9: Default (Allowed), Highlighted on Page, Allowed on Page, Hidden from Page, Delete, and Report/Mark as Spam.

   

2. To ban someone from your Page, select the Report/Mark as Spam option.

   You will see a confirmation in the Timeline with two links.

3. Select the option you want: Undo, or Ban This Person from Posting Publicly.

   If you make a mistake, click the Undo link right away. You can’t undo a banning later.

Sometimes a post crosses the line and becomes what you consider abusive. Facebook defines “abusive” as spam or scam; hate speech or personal attacks; violence or harmful behavior; or nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content.

If you need to report a post as abusive, follow the steps for deleting a single post, choose Report/Mark as Spam, and then ban the user. After you submit the post, Facebook investigates the report and decides whether it needs to ban the user or the Page from Facebook.

Remembering that users can block your posts too

Just as you can block or ban users from posting on your Page, users can turn the tables on you by blocking your posts from their News Feeds or reporting your Page!

Not too long ago, Facebook rolled out a new feature that enables fans of your Page to hide your posts from their view (without un-Liking your Page). When someone sees your post in his News Feed, a hover card pops up; he can then hover over the liked button in the bottom-right corner and deselect Show in News Feed. This action effectively removes your posts from his view unless he visits your Page directly.

Deselecting Show in News Feed keeps the user as a liker of your Page but leaves your posts out of his News Feed completely. You can find out how many people (but not specific names) have hidden your Page’s posts in your Insights dashboard. Find a complete description of the Insights dashboard in Book IX, Chapter 2.

Last, but certainly not least, anyone can go to your Page and report it. When you click the drop-down menu to the right of the Message or Like button on any Page, you see options that let you unlike the Page or report it (see Figure 2-10). If users report your Page, Facebook investigates you and your Page for any violations.