The addition of the "People Talking About" metric on Facebook should have brands thinking more about engagement on fan pages and increase focus on actually delivering more content, more updates and giving fans a reason to come back to the page.

So, you have your 20,000 Facebook fans, but how do you keep them engaged?

Be smart

Many companies have focused on acquisition and neglected a key rule of marketing. Keep it SMART. Setting objectives is important and following the SMART framework will help you keep your goals specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time based. Following these rules should put you on the path to successfully engaging your fan base and thinking about longer term objectives.

Be real

Many brands have taken a formal, corporate approach to communication on their Facebook fan pages. While this approach minimises the risk of your employees saying something stupid or stepping over the line with a customer, you do miss out on some genuine creativity and flair that they might bring. Fans and customers are much more likely to engage with someone they see as a real person than some wooden corporate suit. Set clear guidelines for your social media team but give them the freedom to express a little personality. Your customers will appreciate it.

Become a source

Do you have those bookmarks and webpages that you always visit, even though they only distribute content instead of actually creating it? Make an effort to be the page that posts news, updates and gossip before anyone else. Become the place where people go for up-to-the-minute news on your industry or topic and start conversations about this news. People will start to return to see more, so make sure you keep it up and give them what they want to see.

Understand your fans

Do as much as you can to understand who your fans are and what they want. The best way to do this? Ask them! You'll be surprised how many people are happy to answer questions, respond to polls and engage in conversations if you start them. If you know who your fans are, you can start to understand them and the content that will keep them engaged. Facebook offers a wealth of metrics, so make sure you make full use of them.

Be relevant

Anyone who has maintained a Twitter feed or Facebook page figures out quite quickly that the on topic content and posts get way, way more engagement in terms of likes, responses and retweets than something that's even marginally off topic. While maintaining a brand Facebook page recently I posted two messages around 30 minutes apart. The first message was very on topic and relevant, received a large number of likes and started a conversation in the comments between a number of people. The second was regarding a somewhat related topic, but only received three comments. Keeping your content relevant requires a real understanding of your customers. It's possible to tailor content for specific groups on your page, so make sure you utilise this feature to make your content and relevant and engaging as possible to that specific group.