Tips for a Better Facebook Page

Over the last month I’ve been tracking stats for just about every University Facebook page in Canada. Everyday I run a program which provides me with a daily like count, talking about count, post count, post likes, post comments and post shares for over ninety different pages. It’s an amazing way to quickly see the types of content that lead to more fan engagement and which type of content makes people want to kick you in the junk.

Below are a few of my general observations.

Please note that these are general observations only and not a statistical analysis, and although this data is from Canadian higher education, the observations below seem to make sense across other industries.

Having a high number of Facebook fans is positively correlated with the number of people ‘talking about you.’

It may seem obvious but there seems to be a connection between the number fans and the number of people ‘talking about you’. Simply put, having more fans could equate to a larger number of folks mentioning you.

Growth in Facebook fans is not correlated with the number of admin managed posts.

It seemed that pages without a great number of posts seemed to grow just as fast as those that were posting more frequently. This isn’t to say that quality posts don’t increase fan growth rate it just means that posting all the time isn’t going to increase your growth rate in a linear fashion. It seems that over posting dud content like press releases seems to lead to more ‘unlikes’ and is more harmful than under posting.

Having a high number of Facebook fans is not correlated with the amount of engagement on each post.

Whether you have 20,000 fans or 400, your opportunity for post engagement seemed to be about the same. In fact many well-managed smaller pages did just as well at attracting likes, comments and shares as many of the big schools.

Mediocre content leads to mediocre fan engagement. Great content leads to great fan engagement.

Mediocre content = press releases, basic announcements and event details. These all seemed to really land with a thud. Often when I noticed a decrease in number of fans day-to-day it was because of this type of content.

Great content = moments of key celebration, well-chosen and dynamic photos, kick ass videos, thought provoking questions or posts that really added value.

So what does all of this mean?

Being large is great if you can be. It will likely help you get more mentions. However, even small organizations can have a well-managed and engaging page even if it doesn’t have a bazillion fans.

It’s about interaction; not the shear number of fans.

Posting more content does not equate to the page being ‘better managed.’ Forget about the number of posts and focus on posting a smaller number of true gems. If people aren’t liking, commenting or sharing your posts…you’re on the wrong track.

Forget about the garbage press releases and announcements and focus on engaging with your fans.