Encourage Facebook Page Engagement – Change Default View to “All Posts”

This Facebook marketing tip relates to the official pages marketing tool in Facebook.  For clarification on where this tip fits into the greater Facebook marketing picture, please view our post Facebook Foundations: Facebook’s Marketing Tools Explained.

The Concept:

A basic tenant of Facebook marketing is that Facebook rewards engagement.  The more engagement a post has, the more likely the post is going to linger, or resonate, on the news feed.  As a Facebook marketer, this is exactly what you want to have happen.  If you don’t appear in the news feed, you are invisible on Facebook and your marketing time and effort is wasted.  So, understanding this, why would you ever put up a speed bump to engagement on your page?  This is exactly what happens when you accept a default setting on your page which filters fan posts from appearing on the wall tab.

When you set up a Facebook page for your business, by default, the wall tab has a sub-menu on it that filters out all posts by people who like your page.  This means that only posts that are created by page administrators are visible on the wall, unless the visitor clicks on the sub-menu links.  This is something that users rarely, if ever, do.

This is what the default setting looks like:

As you can see in the images above, if a Facebook user posts on the wall of your page, or tags your page in a post, their post would not be visible unless the “Just Others” link is clicked. Think about this from the consumer’s perspective.  Putting comments from fans on a separate tab is similar to putting blog comments into moderation. It is a bit deflating to a user who is excited to engage with you. The user goes through the effort of crafting something unique, or posts a burning question, and their post is demoted to a hidden page on the wall. They are left wondering if anyone will ever see it.  In addition, one of the frustrating elements of Facebook is that as a page administrator, you are not actively notified of new posts that are left on your page. You have to pro-actively go in and look at the page. Many administrators forget to check the “Just Others” tab. This amplifies the likelihood that the comment from your fan goes unnoticed.

Page administrators can help alleviate these issues by changing the setting to display all posts on the wall, regardless of who creates the post. Changing the setting will result in this kind of view for people who visit your page:

How To Change View Setting:

To edit this setting, click the Settings button on your page and change the “Default View for Wall” to “All Posts”:

If the Settings button is not visible, then you probably already have “All Posts” selected – you can confirm this by selecting the Edit Page link under your page photo and going to Manage Permissions.

Changing this setting will create the strongest scenario for page engagement.

So why wouldn’t everyone do this?  Let’s address three main reasons Pixel Coaching is aware of:

1. Ignorance:  Page administrators aren’t aware of this setting, or don’t realize they can change this. This post should clear that up.
2. Spam:  Page administrators are concerned about spam messages appearing on their wall.  The occasional spam message is a reality in Facebook page marketing.  However, Facebook has recently launched a spam filter for page administrators helping to manage this issue (notice the “spam” link in the screen shots above).  Even if an occasional spam message does make it onto your wall, it is very simple to remove. Administrators can delete the message by clicking the “x” that appears on the post when they hover on right hand side of the message. Since posts initiated by anyone other than the page administrator (this includes posts by both spammers and fans) don’t get auto-fed into the newsfeed of liker’s, there is no need to be concerned that your fans are seeing the spam message in their feed.  And, because you are actively monitoring your page (you are checking your page at least once a day, right?), the likelihood of that spam message appearing for very long is minimal. The negative impact of restricting your fans from having their posts appear on your wall outweighs the inconvenience of having a spam message appear on your wall.
3. Success:  Some administrators of phenomenally successful pages have chosen the default setting because the quantity of user posts detracts from the primary message of the page. In this case, it is possible that more people are frustrated by the lack of filtering than are hindered by it. This is a good problem to have and an evolution of your page strategy that you should hope to achieve. You likely won’t have this issue until you reach thousands of fans.  For the vast majority of real estate pages, posts by fans should by default, appear on the wall tab of the page.

This article is part of a month long series of tips, tricks, and strategies for real estate marketing with Facebook. View additional posts from our “Tip a Day” series on Pixel Coaching.