Tips for Facebook Social Networking

Having been working on my personal blog for many years, I think I am not a complete newbie in this field. I have a Facebook fan page which has over 8500 fans, and the number remain increasing though I now have very few time to maintain it. I ran another fan page for my company, whose fans reached as much as 1000 within 3 months. I have the confidence to make a new-created fan page's fans reach 100 in a week, if enough free time, and if I was allowed to use my mother tongue.

Social networking is a time-consuming work that requires lots of practice and patience. No one can become an expert without actually doing it, and you may find social networking for different events, companies, and websites, demands different ways to do it. The result varies depending not only on your efforts, but also on many factors like the base number of your targeted audience, current trends, the resources you own, etc. For instance, two fan pages, A and B start from the same day. A is a famous singer's fans club, and B is for collecting moral examples in our city. I should expect the former one will grow much faster. But if A is not an official page and  B is run by the government, the situation may change.


If you choose a wrong topic, chances are that you need to put more efforts to make it a success. Too general can mean no target. Too narrow can mean unpopular. In reality, I mean, not for school projects, we usually have no need to worry about what we need to promote since the boss will assign it. So I am not going to talk about how to choose a intriguing topic. Let's focus on how to get traffic and how to stabilize the fans amount we have.

Continuity is more important than Frequency

You may have been told that you have to update your fanpage as frequently as possible to get more traffic. I want to point out that frequency is not that important.

1 update per day? Or 3 update per week? Define yourself a frequency, and insist on it. Higher frequency can speed up the process with limitation. Low frequency also works. The key point is to keep the consistency. DO WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE EXPECT YOU TO DO. If you have 3 updates for today, that's fine. Just remember to prepare another 3 updates for tomorrow. In this way you are at the lowest risk of driving people away. Why? People check how your fanpage is going before liking. They think it works for them, so they end up liking it. You should try your best to keep the pattern they're used to.

I'm not saying that frequency is no important. Neither too short nor too long the intervals should be. People of different backgrounds tend to be on Facebook at different time period. If you have 3 updates for one day, you'd better distribute them to different period of time. This ensures most of your fans see your posts.

In another case, if you have only one update for a week, you need to consider what the time is when Facebook is most "crowded" in a day. I would choose after dinner. But maybe what you need to consider more is raising the frequency, since it's almost impossible to achieve success in social networking by one update per week. As I say, people go on Facebook at different time. Such low exposure can mean no connection for many of them.

1-3 update per day is most ideal for me. But I never want to see 3 updates at the same time.

Don't Rush!

More updates enables you to achieve your goal sooner. Be careful about the intervals between updates. I've seen many people giving 5 updates in one day and then no movements for a week. People may get annoyed when they see more than 3 posts  from the same person on their wall, and your page will be unliked. They are more likely to do so when you've disappeared for a long time and suddenly break out with overwhelming messages. So trust me, NEVER DO THAT, even when you think you're bringing good news.

Fans like your page, which means, you, a stranger in their life, are authorized to deliver your messages on their walls. That is a precious chance you should treasure. It's different from showing ads on your own site. They invite you to advertise at their places through a pattern they accept.

I truly understand that continuity is the most tough part. You don't want to do it everyday. Occasionally you may have passion to update it, so you want to do as more as you can. That's why you rush. Now you know that's not a good idea. What can you do?

Try scheduling. There's a wonderful fan page feature hidden in the small button under your text area. Click it and decide when you want your message to be posted. You can schedule multiple updates when time allows. Plan them carefully. Then you may enjoy your holidays.

Give them good stuff

An important principle is always updating useful things. A boring, perfunctory update is even worse than no update. Let me emphasise it again: People invite you to advertise on their wall. They have the intuitive to like/unlike you. Do remember, you are not their friends or even acquaintance. Once they find you are not helpful, they leave easily. It gets harder to ask them back after they go away. So, don't disappoint them.

Before updating a fan page, try to imagine that you are one of the fans. Are you expecting to see this kind of information? Or will you be intrigued? If it makes no difference, maybe you should try different stuff. Find something that works for both you and your fans.

No matter you're posting links or pictures, always type some descriptive texts when updating. Your audience need you to tell them what you're delivering before they check it out.

The next step is to organize your content. If the update is from your blog, make sure the contents have been formalized. No broken codes/images exist, and the typography is decent. Inserting at least one graphic is highly recommended. That will generate a thumbnail on the page when you repost it on Facebook. People are more likely to click links with thumbnails.

If you are going to insert a long url, or more than one link in an update, use URL shortener to shorten the links. Without doing this, you may mess up your descriptive texts with long urls. That's really ugly, and some people may misunderstand that you are spamming or spreading virus.

Overall, the idea is to make your updates precise, readable, and organized.