Greetings and Salutations -

I wanted to chat for a moment about the personalities of Facebook Fan Pages. Different types of people congregate to different types of fan pages. It makes sense. The crowd that talks about Sunday Night Football might be a different crowd that talks about quilting patterns. They have different styles of interaction.

So one key in building up the interaction of your Facebook Fan Page (and, really, of any social page at all) is to try a number of styles, and see which one gets results. It could be that a technique that works on one fan page just doesn't work on another. And that's OK! That's the fun of life - that we are different.

Here are a few examples.


MUSED FAN PAGE

https://www.facebook.com/MusedLiteraryReview

We have a fan page for our Mused literary review which I admit I wasn't interacting with much. I would post notes as we came near a deadline, and when we released an issue, but not much in between. This meant I was "wasting" the access to those 436 people. Those people could be people who would talk up BellaOnline and our opportunities - but they were probably forgetting all about us in between my announcements. I wanted to keep us "fresh in their mind" so if a friend said they wanted to learn more about writing or publishing or such, BellaOnline would spring to mind.

I tried posting poems. I tried posting about writers and asking if people liked them. I asked about favorite poets. Nobody was responding :).

On Friday I went to the local art museum, because their month of free admission was about to expire. I like free :). I took a bunch of photos there. I posted one on the Mused page with a "guess this photo" theme.

Voila! People liked it! They started guessing and having fun. I posted another one today and got even more people joining in.

So this is apparently what this group likes. A fun challenge. Something on topic to test their brain cells. This will keep them thinking about Mused, and hopefully recommending us to their friends and family when the topic comes up. Plus, their guesses show up in their friends' news feeds, which means it lures their friends into coming and playing.

Give thought about a similar fun guessing game in your various feeds. What could people guess about, that goes with your topic theme? Guess the battleship? Guess the bird? Guess the flower? If you need help brainstorming, post in the editor's forum and we'll lend a hand!


LOW CARB FAN PAGE

https://www.facebook.com/bellaonlinelowcarb

On my low carb fan page, what gets the most results is talking about what we eat each day. I post a note about what I eat. That creates the "starting point" for other people to respond to. Without that starting point, if someone posted it would just go into the "recent posts by others" bucket which doesn't get seen easily. So it's important for me to make that initial post each day. Then people enjoy chiming in with what they're eating, asking each other questions, and sharing in the sense that we're trying to make healthy choices.

When I post things like my weekly weigh-in it gets reads, but people don't really respond :). When I post news stories / articles, it's the same thing. People read but rarely respond. It's those daily menu posts that get people engaged. And that then means they think more about me and my site when they're looking for recipes and other information.

So give thought in your feeds about what type of daily posts you could make. Could it be the cute thing your cat did today? What you're grateful for today? It's that daily contact that you want to build up. A routine. A connection. The more you become a regular, normal part of someone's life, the more they think of you at other times. The more your site comes up in their mind when they're talking with friends, or looking for information.

Again, post in the forums if you need help brainstorming, and we'll lend a hand!


Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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