The +one guide to running Facebook Pages

• Don't forget you're a brand, not a person

  Brands that constantly chatter like they're real people are horrifically lame. Do you really want to hear "Woo hoo it's Friday!" from a brand?

  Most of the time personal comments from brands sound fake (does Nike* really care that it is Friday or is it putting on something really interesting this weekend you can go to rather?) and a bit desperate.

  We believe consumers want to hear something relevant to the brand when they follow their pages - we have real friends for inane banter.

  Know when to shut-up

  A Like isn't a marriage proposal, it's just a Like and it might only be a sort of, kind of Like. So most consumers really aren't going to be too thrilled with brands clogging up their news feed with hourly posts.

  Two-to-three posts a week is probably a decent limit for very active brands (meaning doing lots of interesting things). For less active brands, one every two weeks is really fine to maintain a basic presence.

  On the whole, brands talk way too much (and you can track the effect on your Page in Facebook Insights by the number of unlikes you get per post).

  Make sure most of your activity happens in the real world

  People use social media to talk about things that happen in the real world - the events they go to, things that have happened to them or at the least TV shows they're watching (we'll count that as the real world, I suppose). All of the brands we work for do things in the real world that we then talk about or encourage people to participate in online.

  The trick to running a Facebook Page isn't knowing how to set-up a page, it's how to populate it with something genuinely interesting to consumers - which means getting out of the office and doing something useful/entertaining to talk about. This is a big flaw of social media/digital agencies that don't have a remit (or the experience) to run things offline.

• Integrate marketing and the rest of your business or die

  While some brands just about get away with running campaigns without different agencies talking to each other (don't get me wrong, this is still lame), social media practitioners can't work without being integrated. The conversational fuel for brands comes from everyone involved in not only communications but the whole company.

  Most brands will also definitely need to consider how they handle customer service (quickly) via Facebook.

  Integration naturally applies between websites, Twitter and wherever else the brand is also online.

• Traffic driving is at least 50% of your job

  If your page has under 5000 users, you're probably not spending an efficient amount of budget managing it. But obviously everyone has to start somewhere - you just need a plan for scaling your audience as quickly as possible.

  Facebook ads are by far the quickest and most reliable way of doing this (although definitely an artform).

  Even after 5000 followers, a substantial part of our time dedicated to Facebook Pages is spent in finding credible (ie non lame/spammy) ways to entice people to join.

  It's also worth saying that ATL advertising, in most cases, is a terrible driver of online traffic - you have to fish where the fishes are (meaning you're not surfing the net while you drive past a billboard).

• Microsites are sooo 20th century

  We almost never recommend running a microsite these days for brands. They're expensive, time-consuming to develop and usually ignored by consumers.

  For a while, we ran microsites in parallel with Facebook Pages and gave up when we compared the traffic (unique page views) - Facebook was at least x3 of a microsite and at times considerably more.

  The functionality available in tabs also means you can do pretty much anything you could do on a website in a tab. For some tab design inspiration you can always visit this inspiration feed post.

  Critical mass is essential

  Most pages have a certain amount of organic growth that depends on the brand, what it does and, very importantly, how many people are already in your Facebook community.

  A page with over 30 000 fans grows substantially faster than one with 3000 (one of our pages on 35 000 fans grows by about 1000 fans through organic growth a month, compared to 100 or so for smaller ones in the low 1000s).

  There needs to be a definite plan for achieving scale quickly to make the most of social media budgets.

• Keep up with Facebook

  Facebook seems to change rules, ad features and implement redesigns every couple of weeks. It takes a lot of time to keep up with the pace of change and make the most of the platform as it changes.

  Its terms and conditions also need keeping an eye on (for example, a regular transgression is running competitions on the Wall).

  Keep an eye on the Facebook Blog for regular official development news.

• Know when to post

  There are better times than others to post to get a good response.

  Generally, we tend to post around mid-morning or late afternoon to get the most exposure (post impressions). Posts timings also depend on the type of brand (for example, alcohol brands make more sense to post later in the week and later in the day) and time of year (for example, the lead-up to the summer holidays are a good time to talk about travel).

  See Facebook activity study - via Mashable and this post about weekend traffic via All Facebook.

  Measure everything

  Facebook provide great insights tools that can be used to evaluate the success of a page (how many fans you have, their demographics, interaction levels, post and page views amongst others). The insights aren't just information to share with clients/your boss to prove you should keep your job but should also be used to learn what content works best.

  See this beginner's guide to Facebook Insights (from Mashable).

  Have an editorial plan

  Every Page we run has its own rough editorial plan agreed with our clients upfront (but flexible enough to react to events as they happen). The actual copy is up to us and is not signed off in advance (burdening social media with an approval process for individual posts just doesn't work; it's not quick enough).

  As well as a plan, we spend a lot of time figuring out the correct voice for the page and how to respond to incoming comments and questions (it is supposed to be a conversation, after all).

  Remember mobile

  We're often asked if it's worth having a Facebook Page, considering so many companies block it. Our answer is that you should wander around your company and have a look at how many people are staring into their laps (at their phones...).

  Mobile access to Facebook makes the IT departments obstacles to access pretty meaningless.

  We've also picked up that young South Africans in particular are accessing Facebook on phones, rather than on desktops, which has definite implications for use of tabs (they can't see them unless they have a smartphone) and multimedia content.

*Just an example; I'm sure Nike is very un-lame in its postings.