Five Simple (yet Powerful) Words

We see these words on websites, business cards, menus and storefronts. We have even seen them on the bottom of our television screens and have had them read to us over the radio airwaves.  

We are intrigued and make the conscious effort to search for the Facebook page and connect with them as we have been instructed.  We even make sure that we check the appropriate "Show in News feed" and "Get Notifications" links so as not to miss any important updates. As consumers/fans/ followers (however we want to label ourselves), we did as we were asked and now we wait.  

However, we may end up waiting an eternity. There appears to be a problem. A quick check on the page's timeline reveals that there has not been an update to in several weeks, months or since the page was created.

All too often page administrators take the attitude that the simple act of having a presence on Facebook will drive hordes of dedicated followers and fans to them.  They need to realize that their fan base needs to be engaged on a regular basis. Updating and encouraging engagement can take anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours.  In fact, Facebook makes it easy with their post scheduler feature where you can schedule page updates days, weeks or even a year in advance.  In addition, there are several third party applications (i.e. PostPlanner) which help to relieve some of that time management stress.

There is no set rule of thumb of how often a page should be updated. However, ignoring those that made the conscious effort to connect with you on Facebook (at your request, mind you), defeats the whole purpose of having a social media strategy.  

Facebook makes it easy for the administrator by providing statistical analysis on a weekly basis.  You know how many new likes you have, how many people have seen your posts and how many are talking about your page.  But what is the sense of having all these statistics at your fingertips to be analyzed when you are not providing your page followers anything to engage with? It is time for page administrators to put that social media strategy you worked so hard on developing to good use.