With its 600 million users and average daily session time of 25 minutes, Facebook provides an exceptional opportunity for visibility, Google indexing, live search ability, and fan engagement.

But, if you build it, will they come? And if they come, will they stay and engage?

Be Interesting

Keep your audience engaged and offer something of value. When fans “like” a certain brand’s page they need to be provided with content or activities to keep them active on the page. In order to keep your page “alive” it is important to launch something interactive daily.

Here are some interesting and creative ways to engage and interact with your residents:

• Have fun with your profile picture and change it up often
• Post your You Tube videos
• Notify residents of upcoming concerts and events in your area
• Post interesting new jobs.  I’ve seen a property management company that has a Twitter feed on their website with job postings that fit their demographics
• Post new movies out on DVD or to the theatre
• Start a 'Best of' list and have residents to vote
• Offer green cleaning tips
• Plan a Yahoo Sports Pick Em’ Group for the playoffs
• Offer exclusive discounts, coupons, and content (40% of FB users “like” Pages that give them deals)
• Partner with restaurants in the area and offer exclusive deals (I live in a condo community and the new restaurant across the street gives us 10% off!)
• Post a photo of a local restaurants dish and have a contest to have residents guess the dish and where it came from (offer a gift card to same restaurant)
• Advertise a time and place at the community and host a “Sweets in the Streets” where you hand out candy bars
• Post an events calendar to share with sister communities.  Allow residents to participate among the communities
• Have monthly Birthday Parties and post to Facebook
• Have a yearly 'Birthday' for your community
• Reward residents and fans by helping them give to charity
• Recognize fans and select a “Fan of the Month”
• Become “Fans” of local business and post on their walls
• Use the Question feature to offer polls (more on this below)
• Contests are one of the most effective ways of keeping your Fans interested and engaged
• Introduce various competitions with giveaways
• Watch the comments/likes pour in with these status updates from Funny Status (not all are appropriate)
• Post trivia questions- people love to show off their knowledge
• Ask for opinions
• Encourage your Fans to share personal stories on a particular topic, like “my first apartment”
• Upload lots of photos from Resident Appreciation Events and be sure to “tag” your Fans

Use your status updates to engage in a conversation with your Fans, respectfully discuss their feedback and build a sense of community between your Fans and your apartment community. Provide value to the conversation and you will gain their trust and interest. It’s also important to share meaningful, relevant information with your Fans on a consistent basis. Consider your resident demographics and what is important to them. When you post status updates and links relevant to their lifestyle, you are providing a valuable amenity to your resident.

Ask for what you want! Do you want Fans to ‘like’ a post? Ask them to like it. Want them to ‘share’ it? Ask them to click share.  Fans follow instructions well—the simpler, the better. Key words: Like, Take, Submit, Post, Comment, Tell Us. Be direct with your Fans. Use the word “you” more often: “What do you think?”, “What are your thoughts?”, etc. This makes your residents feel valued, respected, and included. Most people will come back to your Fan Page if they feel there’s a real sense of community.

Be Timely

Post early in the morning, at the end of the work day, and late at night because that’s when your audience is checking their Facebook— not when you’re at your desk! Brands that posted outside of business hours had engagement rates approximately 20% higher than average. Try TweetDeck to schedule your posts for free.

In addition, do your best to respond to Fan wall posts as punctually as possible, at least within 24 hours. Leaving posts unanswered may discourage residents and Fans to contribute any further, or post additional (possibly negative) content. Another advantage to keep the conversation going is that longer threads are more likely to show up in News Feeds.

Relate your posts to current events, and ask your Fans what they think about breaking news or other topics.  Did you know that posts that reference upcoming events (including your own) get ranked higher on the News Feed?  So be sure to run timely campaigns to promote your events— just make sure you don’t post too often (once every few hours for the same event is probably too often).

Be Unique

Instead of the long gibberish in the url address, how about something more memorable? Here are two communities’ pages to show you the difference:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000036024353

http://www.facebook.com/altaatkstation

In order to set the Facebook vanity url for your fan page, there are several things which need to be in place first.

• You need to be admin of the page in question
• You need to have 25 “likes” or “Fans”
• You need to know the name you want for your community’s page because once you set it, you can never edit or transfer it.

To create your pages url, click on “Edit Profile” and choose “Marketing” from the left-hand side, then select “Create Alias”.

Be Creative

Build a custom landing page. A Static FBML app can be used to make your Fan page a unique destination. This versatile plugin can also bring some interactivity to the column that appears on the left-hand side of your page. Moving a Static FBML box over to the left-hand column is a great way to exploit this valuable real estate.

Here’s how to do it: Add the app to your page and make sure it’s functioning as a “Box” rather than a “Tab.”  You can also go to “Edit Page” and click on Apps on the left side-hand side of page.  Choose “Browse More Applications” and choose “Utilities” on the left-hand side. Scroll through until you find the Static FBML app.

Add content to your box using standard HTML. Graphics cannot be uploaded to Facebook, so you must reference them from a URL. Choose one from your own website or blog. Just right click the photo and choose “Copy image URL”.

For a sidebar, think about adding some clean graphic buttons or icons that link out to other destinations your Fans would be interested in, such as your company website, blog or Twitter account. This sidebar will be visible no matter what Fan page tab your visitors are on, so consider using graphic elements that coincide with your existing logo and color scheme.

If this is too complicated (and it isn’t easy- even for someone savvy to Facebook), there are companies that can build a custom landing page for you.  One of my faves is Creating Home.

Be Proactive

According to Facebook, “Places is a Facebook mobile application that allows you to see where your friends are and share your physical location. You can check in to nearby Places to tell your friends where you are, tag your friends in the Places you visit, and view comments your friends have made about the Places you visit. Use Places to experience Facebook in a completely new way by connecting with your friends in the real world.”

With Facebook Places, you can easily share where you are, what you're doing, and the friends you're with. It helps people discover new places or businesses by seeing where their friends are.

Here are some benefits to adding your community to Facebook Places:

• It will come up when people try to check in to anywhere nearby (building awareness)
• When people check in it will appear in their Facebook newsfeed (brand awareness)
• You can add more information about your community to the check in description (website, phone number, address, etc.), so when they check in on their phone they instantly find out more about your community
• If people find you on Facebook while on their computer they can get directions to your community

It is quite challenging to add your business to Places, especially without a smartphone!  The best description I found on the Internet that led me through it quite painlessly is the website for Dummies.

Another benefit of merging your community’s Facebook page with Facebook Places is that you will be able to offer deals to your customers and residents with the new Facebook Deals. With Facebook Deals you can offer a 50% off coupon on deposit fees for new residents, a concession of a Free Patio set (instead on one month free),  $100 off on next month’s rent to the first resident who checks-in at your community 10 times, etc.

Be Apps Friendly

Questions App— Sometimes you just need a little feedback. That’s what social engagement is all about, right? Facebook recently introduced a new Question application to conduct surveys, provide random interaction, and ask for Fans views and suggestions. In the Questions settings, simply come up with your burning question, list your choices, and select your publishing options.

Questions and polls can be published to your page wall/feed, live on a custom tab or be popped into your left-hand navigation where visitors can click anytime they come to your page. You can invite your Fans to take a poll, and they can easily share it as they would any other post or app. Best of all, everyone can see the poll results without leaving Facebook.

Promotions App— Contests and giveaways are a great way to engage your residents and prospects. A chance at some free stuff (like free application free, free pet rent, etc.) is one of the top reasons people follow and friend brands in the first place. The Promotions app makes it easy to build and publish a contest on Facebook in a way that is inherently social and shareable.

YouTube for pages App— If creating video content is part of your community’s social media strategy (and we recommend it should be) you can squeeze more views out of your productions by dedicating a Fan Page tab to your YouTube channel.

The YouTube for pages app “features” your most recent upload or favorite, and displays thumbnails for previous videos on a simple, clean interface. The videos play directly on Facebook of course, so Fans can watch without ever leaving your Fan page. Just be sure to add the tab in the app’s “Application Settings.”