07 May How to Develop a Sound Facebook Fan Page Strategy: Step 5
This is the final step in the series 5 Steps to Developing a Sound Facebook Fan Page Strategy. This is finally where the rubber meets the road, and we begin implementing on a Facebook fan page. However, even though this is the last in the series, it shouldn’t be considered the final step. In many ways it’s just the beginning.
Let’s get started.
Step 5: Implement, then Monitor and Respond
Now that the strategy has been set (and agreed upon), it’s time for implementation. This step will first require that you:
- Understand the approval process of the page
- Assign an “owner” of the page
- Frequently monitor how content is performing
- Adjust content
As a social media agency, we know that developing an approval process isn’t a one-size fits all approach because each strategy and approval process is slightly different. For some clients, we have a trial period of updates that are approved by the client, and then the training wheels are taken off and we can update without each post being approved internally. For others, we submit one or two weeks worth of content at a time, and this content is approved by both a client and legal department.
Generally, we prefer the first option. This isn’t because we don’t like going through approvals but because healthy pages in terms of interactions and community generally operate this way. This allows for faster responses, flexibility, and content that is overall more timely and adjusted to fit the needs of the community. Make these considerations for your organization, and do what is best. You will have to find a custom solution that balances your corporate culture with your goals for your page.
Next, you’ll need to designate the “owner” of the page. The reason this is singular is because you need the oversight of a person who is familiar with the page and willing to enforce the strategy. This person can have multiple collaborators providing them with content, but they will need to tweak the content so that it fits the voice of page, and reject content when it doesn’t meet the strategy. This person is the most important person to the health and the life of the page and, therefore, shouldn’t always be the intern you just hired (sorry interns).
After you’ve designated a person to be the owner of the page, you will need to consider what will be monitored on a weekly and monthly basis. At this point, you should have already outlined your objectives and now just need to determine what key performance indicators you’ll track on a regular basis to see how you are driving these objectives. By utilizing Facebook Insights, you will be able to collect simple stats like total fans per day, fan page views, number of unsubscribes to the page, number of interactions on the page, etc. However, to glean actual “insights” from these, you will need to analyze this data and take it one step further (ex. engagement rate over time, net new fans, etc).
In addition, your page owner should also be familiarized with the Facebook feedback scores on a per post level, to see immediately how content is performing. Now that Facebook Insights has improved coming out of F8, you are now able to log in and see data per post. (Don’t worry, we will be covering these improvements to Facebook Insights in greater detail in posts to come…).
After one month you should already have sufficient data that can help direct and guide the types of content that resonate better within your fan base. You should also have a better understanding of what your updating frequency should look like, what times of day or days of the week are more successful, and if fans are unsubscribing because of too much content posted on the page. It will also reveal if you need to re-work your current value proposition, tab structures, or promotions so the entire page closely aligns with what your fans want.
Have any other suggestions or tips for implementation, monitoring, and responding? If so, please share in the comments below.
