Managing a Facebook community isn’t easy. There’s the constant need for new and engaging content plus the need to keep people involved. Then, on top of all that, there are other Facebook communities begging for your visitor’s attention.

If keeping your Facebook community engaged is important for you or your business, read on. What follows are 7 things you can do to keep visitors coming back for more.

1. Stay on top of Posts and Answer Questions

When a member posts in your community make sure to acknowledge that post and answer any questions they asked in a timely manner. You don’t want your members to have to wait an extended period of time to get an answer from you. Answering quickly makes members more loyal to your community.

According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, “Happy customers who get their issue resolved tell about 4-6 people about their experience.” This means that by making one person in your community happy you can add between four and six potential members!

Facebook has made it quite easy to stay on top of posts to your community page by allowing you to get notifications for any post on your page. To make sure your notifications are working go to, Edit Page > Manage Notifications.

2. Keep Things Visual

Visuals are an important part of any community. Whether it is a funny picture with a caption, or showing off your hardworking employees, you want to be able to capture your audience’s attention with a quick visual to get them to look deeper into your posts.

That said, you can go overboard on visuals. Users don’t want to see a picture with every update you post. Doing so fills up the page with clutter, so make sure that the visuals you upload add some value.

Here’s a great example of how Crest Toothpaste keeps things light and lively with their use of visuals. You’ll notice how Crest took a funny photo and tied it into their brand by mentioning the importance of smiling. They also did a smart thing by encouraging the visitor to share the post — which is good for the visitor and good for Crest.

3. Recognize Your Members

Everyone loves to get a little bit of attention and recognizing your members is a great way to make sure that they stay involved with your brand.

Here are a few easy ways to recognize your members:

  • If you have an event, post pictures of the members who showed up
  • Have a contest using WooBox or AgoraPulse
  • Most importantly, promote other people who help promote your community

4. Establish a Brand Persona and Stick With It

Whether you’re expected to be extremely serious and businesslike or completely off-the-wall, you need to know the brand persona your community expects when they stop by for a visit.

Having a consistent style in your community is key to keeping your listeners interested and entertained, as well as finding more people to join your community.

Whether it’s only you managing your Facebook page or multiple people, everyone has to make sure they know the persona attached to it. Consistency is key here — your users want to know what to expect when it comes to content.

Here are a few guidelines on how to keep your brand persona consistent:

  • Decide what it is your visitors are looking for in a Facebook community and then stick with it
  • Make sure each post stays within the brand persona your community has come to expect
  • Re-visit your brand persona every so often to see if it needs updating or can stay the same

5. Understand the Rules of Facebook

One of the most important parts of managing a community is knowing the rules that Facebook has set up. You can find these rules here. Facebook is known to shut down communities who violate their rules, and they will do so without notice. If they shut down your community page it is a very difficult process to get it restored, and no one wants to lose the hard work they put into their community.

The basic rules of Facebook:

  • The name for your page must accurately reflect what it is about
  • You may not use the “Like” button for contest purposes
  • You may not publish the personal information of your members
  • No graphic content or nudity

In the image below, you’ll see an example of what not to do for contests. You may not tell people to like and share your post to win a contest, this is against Facebook rules and can get your community page removed.

Facebook makes a lot of changes and they do it often. So you have to make sure that you know about the changes they make. Two great resources for keeping up with the changes Facebook makes are Facebook NewsRoom and Facebook Marketing. There are also many other great Facebook update sites out their, feel free to find the one that fits you the best.

6. Negative Posts Happen

Negative posts are bound to happen when you run an active community page, but knowing how to deal with them is something every community manager needs to learn. When you have a negative comment, make sure to respond quickly so that your community knows that you’re listening to feedback.

The one thing you don’t want to do is respond negatively. Try to figure out a way to resolve the issue and let them know you really appreciate their feedback.

The Jim Moran Institute says that, “Up to 95% of customers will give you a second chance if you handle their complaint successfully and in a timely manner.”
 This means there’s an opportunity to turn a negative situation into a positive one, if you handle it correctly.

Here’s a good example of how to respond to a potentially negative post:

7. Enjoy Yourself!

Have fun with your members in any way you can think of. Try to get connected with them and learn who they really are. Treat them like friends and they’ll appreciate you a whole lot more.

Managing a community on Facebook can seem like a big job when you first look at it but in reality you can make it a lot of fun. Connecting with members of your community can be one of the most satisfying things you can do. So go out and start having fun with your community!