As a community manager at Engauge, I spend much of my time building strategy, writing and best of all learning for my clients. As we enter into a new year, it seems this is the best time to take a look back and revisit how we present information to our fans.

As quoted in the 2011 Engauge Digital Outlook, “Brands aren’t celebrities, they’re not people and they’re not peers, but they can be very useful friends – driving the use of social.”

Taking this to the core of some of my responsibilities as a community manager, here are some of my favorite tips to keep in mind when managing a brand’s social presence:

1. Build a calendar: Each month, I plot out our posts within a calendar using either Keynote or PowerPoint. However, if you are looking to share a calendar among several team members, Google Calendars make an easy way to see at a glance what should be posted each day and quickly rearrange when necessary.

2. Add variety: One of the largest mistakes brands make in social is to focus strictly on the bottom line. While product is still important, be sure to clearly define “buckets” for types of content. For instance, if your brand frequently holds events or has a strong philanthropy arm, set content aside for those areas and define an amount of posts per week to be devoted.

Likes and comments and re-tweets = stream impressions = new fans and followers.

3. Create engagement: Going along with #2, try asking your fans questions or to share a recent experience. You will be surprised how eager they are to speak with you. However, do keep in mind, that you cannot offer fans anything in return in the form of a prize, as this is illegal within the wall on Facebook.

4. Test and learn: Experiment with posting at different times of the day, different days of the week and posts of varying length. Not every brand audience will respond the same way, so this is key to learning more about your fans, not Facebook users in general.

5. Create a voice and tone: Defining a voice and tone for how a brand will speak, act and engage with fans will help fans to more easily identify with who you are and what you will say. For instance, what works for an energy drink may not be as well received by fans of a non-profit.

6. Take advantage of analytics tools: Track everything. Time of day, length of post, number of comments, fan growth week-to-week, impressions per post. The information is there and if used correctly, will be the key to proving not only do your fans love you, but here’s why and here’s how.

What would you add to this list? Do you have a go-to form of communication strategy when it comes to your pages?