Blogging software news: Understanding The Importance Of Facebook Fan Page Engagement

When I first started using Facebook fan pages on my various websites I immediately began to think of those pages as an extension of Twitter. On Twitter I simply dump every story I write directly into my Twitter profile and allow my users to pick and choose what they read. However I soon realized that not only do Facebook users begin to ignore a fan page when their are too many posts popping up in their news feed, it can also cause Facebook to turn away from your pages, displaying them to less fans.

To better understand Facebook fan page engagement and why it’s important let’s take a look at what engagement does for a fan page.

1. Post Engagement Leads To Exposure

Many Facebook users don’t realize that the less engagement they receive on their fan page posts, the less future posts are shown to fan page subscribers. For example, if I setup a Facebook post on my page and of my100 page followers 5 people leave a comment I have a 5% engagement rank for that post. Because anything over 1.5% is typically seen as a high engagement score Facebook is more likely to show my next fan page post to all or most of my subscribers. If my engagement score falls below 1.5% however there’s a chance that only a fraction of my fan base will be shown my next posts in their news feed. Hence, post engagement leads to more website exposure.

2. The Importance Of A Question

When posting stories to your Facebook page I highly recommend asking questions that will resonate well with your readership. For example, if you’re most popular posts lately have been about Facebook privacy policy updates it would make sense to ask “Did you know Facebook just changed their privacy policy again?” This type of question serves two purposes, first it targets your core readers by focusing on an issue that your website analytics shows they care about and second it leaves a lot of information to be determined which in turn often leads to better user engagement as your base asks questions. Regardless of what type of comment, like on a fan page post or share occurs you are receiving engagement points which in turn helps the fan pages exposure.

3. The Problem Of Auto Sharing Posts

As I stated in my opening argument, simply throwing up every post from your website is a mistake. For the longest time I was implementing RSS Graffiti for my posts, allowing every single piece of content I published to reach my Fan Page. The program with that type of thinking was the fact that RSS Graffiti and various other feed sharing programs don’t attempt to ask questions and engage with users, they simply throw up your post with a title, link and description. When I started asking questions about posts and then posting their links I immediately found that users were more apt to answer question and engage. I also found that by asking questions during certain times of the day I was able to receive higher engagement, for example a question in the morning received page impressions and answers all day long while an 11pm post I wrote was less likely to become engaged by my page followers.

Whether you increase engagement by offering engagement prizes (giveaways, free e-books), through page posts that force users to ask questions or by simply choosing your best posts that tend to resonate with readers, the important thing to remember is that engagement will bring with it more exposure and likely even more Facebook fans who appreciate the fact that you aren’t spamming their news feed with tons of posts on a daily basis.