Written by ContentPowered.com
Facebook changes its layout constantly, but many businesses keep their pages steady, perhaps in some misguided attempt to maintain brand recognition at the expense of innovation. Other Facebook pages are simply neglected, used as a marketing channel without the touch of love that makes it stand out. Some just fall into ruts, a day to day and week to week routine that grows stale over time. How can you spice up your Facebook page?
Refresh Your Photos
One of the simplest ways to refresh your Facebook page is to change up the stale images that have been acting as banners and icons for your business for months. When was the last time you changed your cover photo?
It’s easy enough to change your cover photo and profile picture to match some new theme, whether it’s a new color, a seasonal shift, a current event or just something new. You can also change up your tab app thumbnails, to make them more attractive.
If you’ve put off changing them because you tested them months ago and settled on the most attractive, it’s time to change. Even the most attractive images grow stale after months without change.
Post More Multimedia
Many businesses fall into the rut of posting the same few statuses over and over again. “Here’s a text post about something related to our business.” “Here’s a link to a blog post we wrote.” “Here’s a link to a site we found interesting.” There’s no room for inspiration or experimentation, so you need to add it yourself.
Of particular interest is video. If you haven’t posted a video in a while, or ever, you may want to consider it. Videos are easier than ever to make and they can bring a surprising amount of engagement, particularly if they’re interesting and relevant.
Prune Your Followed Pages
Business pages have a followed list, which is visible to your followers. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to audit the pages you’ve followed over the past years. Some of those other pages may no longer exist, or they may not be active. Others may have shifted direction and no longer post the kind of content you want to recommend. Meanwhile, other businesses and other pages have come up that you may want to promote. Take the time to follow new pages, unfollow old pages and generally spice up that section of your page.
Update Your Information
When was the last time you updated your About section? It’s a crucial part of your page, but it can often go neglected. You spend some time making it perfect when you first create your page, but it might get out of date surprisingly quickly. Even little details, like your hours of operation if you’re a physical business, should be kept up to date. You should consider updating this information every few months. If anything changes, update it immediately. This includes URL migrations, business name changes, hours changes and location changes.
Run a Contest
Contests are a way to give back to your community, your followers, for their attention. You can run all sorts of contests, from the ultra-simple image caption contest to video creation contests with high value prizes.
Before you run a contest, you should be aware of Facebook’s contest guidelines. You should also spend some time deciding on an appropriate prize. It’s generally a bad idea to give away something completely unrelated to your business, because the prize attracts new users, and you want those users to pay attention to your business when the contest is over.
Feature a Fan
As part of the prize of a contest, or as the prize of its own, you can feature a fan for their contributions. In some cases, you might have a few high profile fans that comment on everything, help moderate your discussions and generally make your community a nicer place. These fans certainly deserve recognition for their efforts. Featuring them can breathe new life into your stale page. If you have no such fans, you can run contests involving fan submissions, like using your product in real life; something that has the human element to feature.
Host an Open Comment Session
A weekly or monthly questions and answers session can be a great way to bring in new engagement and spice up a boring timeline. Set a basic theme and guidelines for questions you’ll answer. Set a time, typically a couple of hours on a weeknight. Promote your session ahead of time, so you have users ready to ask you questions when you open the session. Done right, you can spice up your feed while engaging users and raising awareness about your industry.
Create a New Tab App
Have you ever wanted your users to have a quick and easy way to sign up for your mailing list through Facebook? How about a central location for them to see any events you’re hosting? Maybe a personalized map that pulls the user’s location and finds business locations near them? You can do all of this and more with tab apps. Create a new tab app and promote it on your page. It gives users something to do, something out of the ordinary.
Add Company Milestones
Take a look at the Coca-Cola Facebook page. See that massive timeline along the right side? Obviously, Coke hasn’t been on Facebook that long; no one has. Those dates are all important milestones in the history of the company, going all the way back to it’s date of founding.
You can do a similar sort of thing with your business; add milestones along the way, even retroactively. Sure, you might not have 100 years of history to add, and your milestones might not be as large-scale as selling your first million units, but you can add them nonetheless.
Shake Up Your Content
This was partially covered under the video heading above, but it bears repeating; spice up your page by shaking up your content. Post more graphical content. Share more from industry allies. Ask more questions of your users. In general, be more interesting.
Consider a Rebranding or Redesign
Sometimes, nothing can quite breathe new life into your page, and the feeling is spreading. Maybe you’re starting to grow dissatisfied with your website and the direction your business is heading. It’s a desperate circumstance, but it’s not uncommon. Extreme circumstances may make it worthwhile to consider a complete redesign or rebranding. Change up your website and sweep through your Facebook page with changes to match. Just make sure to do it properly if you do it.
