Jimmy Gilmore

This is the sec­ond post in a series of tips on using social media for busi­ness users. Note: This post assumes you already have your strat­egy set and by no means should you be engag­ing your cus­tomers with­out one in place.

1. Remem­ber main goal of the page and ask your­self before post­ing if the post is on topic.
2. Leave a lit­tle room for fun. Your fans will enjoy it if it doesn’t over­whelm the rea­son they fanned you in the first place.
3. Del­e­gate a project own­er­ship, if you don’t have time to post continuously.
4. Give the page a user­name for unique and mem­o­rable Face­book URL (facebook.com/“brandname”). Go to facebook.com/username – select your page from “My Pages” and then apply for user­name. MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT SELECTING FOR YOUR PERSONAL PAGE. Then dou­ble check, because you can’t change it. Maybe even have some­one watch you do it, really.
5. Don’t for­get there may be a larger com­mu­nity dis­cussing your cat­e­gory, you can join and post there, too. Feel free to post respectfully.
6. Mon­i­tor daily at best. Weekly at worst. Set alerts so you know when some­one has writ­ten on your wall.
7. Face­book should only part of your online pres­ence. Use it to cap­ture fans and then drive them to deeper con­tent on a blog, con­nect on Twit­ter, and pro­mote video on YouTube. But, most impor­tantly, they need to be mov­ing toward busi­ness goals.
8. Use other online vehi­cles to recruit Face­book fans includ­ing links on your home­page, ads, pro­mo­tions and other social media sites.
9. You are only a small rea­son your fans are on Face­book. Be respect­ful and don’t over-promote or you risk los­ing them.
10. Put fans first. Con­sider what is valu­able to them and link to it or post about it.
11. Con­sider pro­mot­ing oth­ers on your page who have done some­thing sig­nif­i­cant in your area.
12. Lis­ten, con­verse, ener­gize, help, sup­port, or embrace are six things you should ask if your post do.
13. Keep things as pos­i­tive as possible.
14. Pro­mote offline and inte­grate with other mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als. (Exam­ple: Put that unique URL on your ads.)
15. Respond to comments.
16. Thank peo­ple for becom­ing fans.
17. Ask peo­ple to use the “share” but­ton if it’s a par­tic­u­larly impor­tant post.
18. Ask fans what they think about a sub­ject or post, when appropriate.
19. Con­sider using apps to give your fans some­thing inter­est­ing to do.
20. Pro­mote real-world events. This con­nects online and offline.
21. Face­book isn’t just for kids any­more – con­sider that FB is get­ting more mature, less edgy. Don’t treat fans like kids.
22. Put a fan box on blog and site.
23. Take notes. Make an Excel spread­sheet with stats. (Don’t rely on Face­book to store your data.)
24. Occa­sion­ally use Fan Page as focus group and con­sider giv­ing a prize for participation.
25. Track fans. See if you have peo­ple leav­ing or com­ing. Try to fig­ure out why.
26. Fre­quency is key. You can’t ignore fans and expect them to stay interested.