How To Send Updates To Your Facebook Fanpage Fans

There are two types of updates that can be sent to your Facebook fanpage fans -- "Send an Update", and "Share Status".

Send an Update: when you Send an Update, you are sending the user a message to their inbox. Actually, it goes into an inbox subfolder called Updates (see image). Your fan will never get notified of the update (they used to, but this was disabled several months ago). Many people, like me, never bother to look here. On the flip-side, you can "target" your communication to specific fans based on gender, age, and location. In the end, it's a free type of email marketing, albeit one that is easily ignored.

Share Status: An admin can "share" a status, post a link, pose a question, or add a photo/video. This "share" may appear in the user's wall feed, and will include all the "likes" and "comment" counts for that share. This type of communication is great when you are trying to "share" something with your fans in the form of two-way communication. However, the share isn't guaranteed to show up on the user's wall, it disappears within a few hours, and the user has the ability to "hide" all future shares from you if you come off as too chatty.

Should I "Update" or "Share" with my Facebook fans?

Status Updates are great for one-way communication that makes the user aware of something (e.g., "Check out this upcoming event"). Shares, however, are great at prompting two-way communication when posed in a statement/question form (e.g., "Ostrich medallions are now on the menu. What is your favorite menu item?"). In general, I get more interaction from a share because of its "conversation" appeal.

For example, a restaurant could get fans engaged to add a review of their most recent visit or even share a photo with other fans.

How Often Should I Send Fans Updates or Share?

I recommend you error on the side of safety as you won't know when someone has deleted your update or hidden you from their wall. Ideally, you would keep the conversation going by Sharing something once every week and sending updates about once month.

A tip for power users -- queue up all your Shares with Hootsuite.