Facebook fan page is useless if no one is paying attention to it. Engage your followers, build your audience and grow your Facebook fan page quickly to turn it into a powerful promotional tool for your media brand.

 

Interact With Your Fans

When fans post on your wall or comment on your posts, interact with them when it’s appropriate. For example, if you share a video of local students visiting your station and someone comments on how cute the kids are, post a follow-up comment about how much your station loved having them visit. If someone makes a remark slamming the mayor about your city’s murder rate, use your discretion when commenting.

You don’t want to get involved in a confrontation or say something that will damage your media brand. This is why you need to have a clear social media policy in place. You want to avoid employees, acting on your company’s behalf, to interject their opinions or get into a heated debate with your fans.

Balance Your Posts

Don’t randomly post updates. Use a strategy to balance your posts while following the social networking rules for media pros to grow your Facebook fan page. Bombarding your fans’ timeline with endless posts will make fans hit the “unlike” button. But you also don’t want to make your Facebook fan page look like a ghost town because you’re not posting often enough.

Find when your fans are online by clicking on Insights, then Posts. The data shows the peak hours your fans are online. Hit those peak times with carefully-planned posts so you can get your posts in front of your target audience without annoying them with a continual stream of content that clutters their timelines.

Promote, Promote, Promote

Don’t stop promoting your Facebook fan page. Promote it on your website, on the air, on your business cards and through your other social media accounts. Never stop promoting your page.

Drive people to your Facebook fan page and drive people back to your website and/or on-air product. That circle will give your brand continuous exposure online and off.

Ask a Question

Use your Facebook fan page to pose a question that engages your readers. Use a trending news story to ask your fans’ opinions. Ask which bands viewers are looking forward to seeing at the local music festival this weekend.

Post short, conversational questions that prompt your fans to answer with more than a “yes” or “no.” Statistics show that Facebook posts 80 characters or less perform better than longer posts so cut those long posts down to increase engagements.

Share the Comments

After you’ve asked those questions, use the comments on the air, on your website or in your magazine. People want to see their comments shared and it also motivates people who aren’t yet interacting on your page to do so. All of this will boost your Facebook fan page’s interactivity and drive your fan base up.

Hold a Contest

Facebook has changed its rules for contests and promotions. Before, to run a contest on Facebook, you had to use an app or risk Facebook shutting your contest down.

In August of 2013, Facebook announced changes to its contest rules. Now, you can run promotions and contests directly on your Facebook fan page, which means you can collect entries by having fans comment on posts or liking a page post. You can also use likes as votes in your contest to determine the winner. While Facebook’s new contest rules give you more flexibility on running contests, be sure to implement contest rules that follow the law so you don’t end up in legal trouble.

Run a Poll

The easiest way to increase engagement on your Facebook fan page is to run a quick poll. People who don’t normally chime in with their opinions in comments will still take the time to click a button that sums up their opinion. Of course, the poll results aren’t scientific but they can be used as content on the air, online and in your magazine.

Advertise to Your Demographic and Location

Targeted advertising on Facebook can grow your fan page by the thousands. Facebook’s Ads Manager lets you narrow down who will see your ad, down to your city and the demographic you want to reach. Spend some time identifying who you want to see your ad so you can get the most return on the ad money you’re spending.