The reasons you want to create a Facebook Fan page are probably to increase brand recognition, generate leads or clients, or to increase website traffic.  There are no guide to teach you how to obtain all that were mentioned above.  Each business have their own ways to work things out but here are 7 things you can do to get you started.  Start with these 7 ways to increase engagement on your fan page and start doing experiments on your own to see what works for you.

1. Post Regularly – Facebook Marketing is a new marketing strategy.  Unlike Newspaper ads where you place the ad and thats it.  Facebook marketing or any sort of Social Media marketing is an on-going project.  Create calendar when to post and what to post.  You might want to post promotions every Monday?  The recommended number is post at least once or twice a week.  You don’t want to post too frequently and bombard your fans and scare them away or barely post and become a stranger to your fans.  You have to experiment with your fan base to see what number works for you.
2.  Be Brief – You don’t want to post an essay and bored all your fans.  Post 100-150 charactesrs and less than 3 line of text.  Something simple and brief will usually generate more comments and likes.
3.  Post during optimal Time– posting during the best time to increase visibility and engagement.  The optimal time varies based on businesses.  Retailers and restaurants might have differnet time when their fans will be using Facebook.  For example, restaurants can post at 7AM and 12 Noon because that’s when they post promotion for breakfast and lunch to increase foot traffic.   However, Facebook engagements are usually highest from 9-10PM at night because that is when majority of the people are at home and using Facebook.  For B2B companies, night time might not be the best time, you might want to post during normal working hours when fans are checking their Facebook at work.  Experiment with it to see when is the right time for your business.

   Related Article: Best Time and Worst Time to Post Research by Bit.ly

4.  Respond to comments and messages – This is pretty self explanatory.  When someone comments on your page, it is an opportunity for you to interact with them.  By ignoring the comments, you are missing the only chance when your fans are paying attention.  Especially with the new Timeline, people are able to message fan pages, so make sure to check up on those and reply.
5. Ask questions – Ask questions people want to answer and are interesting.  Other than questions, fill in the blank posts is also a good choice.  Research showed that ”fill in the blank” posts have 90% engagement increase than the typical status posts.  For example, a simple “My favorite inbound Marketer is ___________” can get you a lot more engagement than regular status updates that doesn’t have Cal to Action. You can also use questions type of post to act as polls to drive engagement and interaction/
6. Post Photos and Videos – Based on your business, photos and videos can help increase engagement.  Photos ans videos are more eye catching and more entertaining than a post with only words.  For example, a restaurant can post pictures of the special dish they will be serving that night or a retailer can post special promotional pictures of what is on sale.  Photos have 120%more engagement and video 100% increase.  Sometimes posts migth get lost in the newsfeed so use bold colors in photos and video to stand out from the crowd.
7. Give Fans Exclusive Access to Content – So why should people like your page?  By giving fans some incentives, it gives them the extra push to like your page.  You can offer special exclusive offers to Facebook “fans” only.  For example, offer free webinars or free ebook to your fans on Facebook only.  Make them feel special.  Everyone wants to feel special.
8. Review Your Insights – Facebook provides insights for admins to see such as number of people viewed a certain post, number engaged users, and number of people talking about that post.  You can get all these information from Facebook’s insight and based on these information, you can tell which posts have more engagement and thus create more posts similar to that.

BONUS:

If you have extra money in your marketing budget, feel free to try Facebook’s “Promoted Post” and the “Page Post Ads” to generate more visibility for your posts.

Page Post Ads – The page post ads is similar to Facebook’s advertisement which appear on the right hand side of the page, but instead of an ad, your post will show up.  Similar to advertisements, you get to set who you want to target based on their location, sex, interest and etc.

Promoted post - I believe it is only out for fan pages with 400+ fans but they will definitely roll it out for everyone else soon.  The promoted post works the same way as the usual post but instead you can pay a certain fee to have your posts viewed by a number of people.  You can compose your posts like you usually do and on the left hand side of “Post,” press the button “Promote,” then choose the budget and see the estimated reach for each amount.  The promoted posts will show up like a usual post in the newsfeed; however, it will also show at the top of the newsfeed with the words “Sponsored Posts.”  In the insight section, you will also get to see the amount of organic views and paid views.