(News) Feeding your Facebook Fan Page
(News) Feeding your Facebook Fan Page
Image by compujeramey via Flickr
As social media manager, I teach social media workshops; from social media basics to advanced social media business strategy. My workshop participants vary in level of social media knowledge and include business owners, office managers as well as entrepreneurs.
I do a lot of local networking to connect with potential clients and sometimes a friendly one-on-one meeting will result in a referral exchange, mutual respect and friendship. Usually these meetings are set up at the request of the business owner who wants to ‘pick my brain’ or ask a few questions. And more often than not, they have indicated they might want to become a client and are requesting an initial consult.
Several times now, as I’ve connected with new local business owners, I have found that they are already somewhat connected on several social media platforms. In looking at why they are eager to meet one-on-one and why they set up the meeting and asked for my help, I often see the same reason:
They need help with Fan Page Engagement, or really, lack thereof.
Lack of engagement, particularly on their Fan Pages, but also on their Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, is often an issue with new business owners and those that are just starting out in social media.
In this post, I’d like to highlight the Fan Page news feed, one of the most overlooked tools for small businesses on Facebook.
Your news feed is a constantly updating list of stories from people and Pages that you follow on Facebook.
Your Fan Page news feed contains information, links and updates from Fan Pages you follow.
Most of my new clients have not ‘liked’ any other Fan Pages ‘as their page’. Therefore, they have no information, links and updates from other Fan Pages in their news feed to share on their Fan page wall because they are not following anyone!
Let me go through this step by step to explain why this is essential for Fan Page engagement:
- Sign in with your personal profile.
- Look at your Personal Profile news feed. You’ll see the most relevant stories from people and Pages that you follow on Facebook.
- Next, go to ‘Account’ and ‘Use Facebook as Page’.
- You will now be able to see your Fan Page news feed. If you do not see many posts, you have not ‘liked’ many Fan Pages as a page.
If you need help connecting with other Fan Pages, do a Facebook search. Consider searching for key words pertaining to your industry (i.e. printing, sewing, social media) You can also search for Fan Pages by name or location.
Here are 5 great reasons why you should be feeding that newsfeed with newly ‘liked’ Fan Pages:
- You can share content from other Fan Pages with the click of ONE button if you see the post in your news feed. Just hit ‘SHARE’ underneath the post you want to share on your wall.
- Finding other Fan Pages in your niche enables you to share relevant and up-to-date industry news with the click of one button. Even if you are swamped with work and you do not have time to write a blog post or send out an e-mail, by re-posting newsworthy posts from others, you still are on top of your game and do not have to disappoint your own Fans.
- You can go to the Fan Page’s wall and engage as a business, with a business. That is called business to business networking! You leave a ‘link back’ to your Fan Page every time you do that. You also have a real possibility to build lasting social media relationships that way.
- Once you’ve liked a Fan Page as a Fan Page, you can @tag those other Fan Pages and do a shout out or promote them to your fans. This allows for easy referrals and testimonies.
- When you comment on other Page’s posts as a Fan Page, you have an opportunity to establish yourself as an ‘expert’. Leave a detailed comment and show off what you know.
All this engagement leads to more fans, more exposure and ultimately, more business for you.
Are you ready for some Fan Page engagement?
How many Fan Pages have you ‘liked’ as a Fan Page?
We would love to hear how you have used your Fan Page news feed to connect, get more engagement and build your fan base! We encourage you to leave you comments below.
Dorien@MoreInMedia.com
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About Dorien Morin-van Dam
Dorien is owner and social media marketer at More In Media. Dorien enjoys social media training, educating and consulting and is passionate about teaching social media to small business owners. In her spare time, Dorien manages five kids, two dogs and a husband. She runs marathons and loves to bake, travel and read.
I’m happy that you handle this on our behalf.
With all the constant changes on the key social media platforms, it’s hard to keep up.
Paul Morin recently posted..Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
I need to sit and review. this is so much helpful info! thanks.
I don’t know what it is, but I guess since I spend time working social media it startles me when so many business contacts are either afraid of it or appear skeptical or put off. Don’t think it is a generational thing, since on average I’m 20 years older
LOL
curious…any ideas re: the barrier?
Peg,
I think it is the forgotten news feed, really. I’ve had three recent interactions where I showed it to people and they had an ‘aha’ moment. I felt by the third time, that since it is just overlooked so often, it was worth a blog post. All three people were intelligent people who’d set up their own Fan Pages. They just forgot that little piece of the puzzle, so to speak. Or they never were aware of a separate news feed! Many people log in with their personal profile and post things to their Fan Page wall. They never actually log in as the Fan Page admin.
They needed social media training, which, of course, I provide with my workshops.
Great article and so easy to follow. Many of the business that I’ve worked with also have the same questions about newsfeed. Many of them think that just because they’re on Facebook, it’s enough. Social media is all about engagement. I wrote a blog last week about that too. Keep writing Dorien!
Jocelyn Wilhelm recently posted..Learn Social Media from The Fresh Market
Thanks for commenting, Jocelyn,
I really wrote it because so many people made the same mistake. It seems to me to be the number one social media rookie mistake.; not engaging as a Fan Page! I now can refer any of my (potential) clients to this post and say: ‘Go read this. That explains it.’ Until now, I had to demonstrate
It always makes for a great ‘aha’ moment. I witnessed it three times already!
OK, Dorien,
I admit I knew a lot of the information in this great article but I’ve been neglecting my FB page. I’m now inspired to add it back into my daily plan.
Thank you!!
Sherrie
Sherrie Koretke recently posted..Crafting Your Life’s Work
Sherrie,
glad to have inspired someone today. Super cool.
Thanks for the time out of your business schedule to read my blog and leave me a comment.
Great post Dorien! I recently came across a great quote on Twitter saying “Social media is not like the Field of Dreams, they won’t come just because you built it”. It always takes that extra effort for things to fall in place and roll.
Oh, how I wish I’d used that in my post
I might have to do a follow up. I love movie quotes, too.
A lot of my clients are already connected on social media and have several social media platform profile set up by the time they need/want/seek my help. 99% of the time the engagement is missing and they do not know how to get it! MoreInMedia to the rescue. I wrote this post so I can demonstrate it to them first and then say: ‘If you have further questions, read this!’
Smart post, Dorien! I love business to business networking as a fan page–it definitely seems to be much more effective for establishing relationships with other businesses I agree and I’ve also noticed that many people don’t seem to realize that option of interacting “as” your fan page is even available..so that is so great you explained it so well!
Hi Dorien,
Great post. I found it when looking for a method to monitor multiple fanpage newsfeeds.
Do you by any chance know of such a tool?