Once your brand is on Facebook, the
question becomes: How you engage those fans and sustain a meaningful online
dialogue with your customers. Facebook fans will only want to engage with us if
we serve up relevant content and truly participate. We also forget about
EdgeRank — Facebook’s News Feed algorithm that helps display “relevant”
stories. The News Feed only displays a small subset of stories generated by the
friends and brands users engage with the most. The more popular your story, the
more likely it is to show up in people’s News Feed. News Feed optimization
becomes as important as your content strategy.
Let’s explore ways we can create updates that are optimized for
the News Feed and engagement. Below are some dos and don’ts to remember each
time you tackle that all-important question, "What should we post to our
Facebook Page today?"
1. Don’t Automate Your Status Updates
Don’t automatically feed your blog posts or your Twitter updates into your Page. Often, automated
content doesn’t make it into users' News Feeds. Your fans can also distinguish
between "auto" posts and customized ones. For a lot of brand pages,
auto posts do not engender engagement.
Don’t share the exact same content across all networks
(Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) in exactly the same format. We
all understand the value of saving time, but respect your customers enough to
manually post customized copy. You will get far better engagement and show your
fans you care. Some folks who use Facebook don’t really like Twitter and get irritated
when they see hashtags or other Twitter-specific content in their Facebook
stream.