How to Create a Facebook Fan Page

Many marketers I know tried to stay away from Facebook for business for quite a while.  There was something overly familiar about connecting everyone you know from all walks of life – past meeting present, work meeting play – that made it sort of uncomfortable for many to bring their personal/business social graph into the marketing fold.  Nowadays, many have simply accepted Facebook into their business persona…either that or maybe it was the Hitwise data crowning Facebook as the top site of the web.

So you’re ready to take the plunge into the world of Facebook pages.  Maybe you already have but are looking to be better? Here are some tips that you’re sure to glean something, no matter where you are on the scale:

1 – Make Your Logo Stand Out

Note that the image on the left of the main content area only has a standard width – most people don’t take advantage of how tall to make them.  Facebook lets you make 200×600 images, so take advantage of what everyone else who isn’t reading this post doesn’t know

2 – Create a Custom Landing Tab

Facebook pages have tabs.  By default, the first tab uses see is the wall tab.  You can easily make your Facebook page more engaging by making a custom tab.  Note this is for users that are not yet fans haven’t yet hit “I like this.”  Tamar has a great post on this in further detail.

3 – Get More Fans

If you know your way around Facebook, you probably know how to bring fans to your page.  It helps if you are already an established brand or if you’re showing up in Facebook / Bing search results.  If all else fails just put a quarter in Facebook’s meter and pay up for Facebook advertising.

4 – Keep Your Content Fresh

There are a number of apps that you can feed in content from elsewhere: Ping.fm, Hellotxt, Selective Tweets and Hootsuite all come to mind.  One in particular I’d recommend is RSS Graffiti, as it can parse an RSS feed and still give the fans people that like the page a preview image.  You should also mix in content you manually place on there as well as content from other sources.  Come on, you’re heard this already about Twitter.  The rules apply on Facebook as well.

5 – Get a Vanity URL for Your Page

Many of us remember the Facebook vanity url gold rush of last year, but what was rolled out a bit quieter was the Facebook fan page vanity names.  Simply go to the the Facebook username page and click on pages (note: you’ll need at least 25 fans).

6 – Expand Beyond Facebook

Your presence on Facebook should be known outside of Facebook too and the interactive Fan widget.  The Facebook widgets page offers a variety of widgets and fancy things that include most anything you’d be looking for, regardless of your ability level.   My favorite is the Facebook fan box which offers one-click access to your on-site website visitors to become fans of your Facebook presence.

7 – See What Others are Doing

Here are a couple of Facebook pages I enjoy:

Viperchill

Our friend Glen at Viperchill does a good job showing the user the interactive landing tab, effective logo, fan diversity and varying content and is using RSS Graffiti – keep up the good work, Glen!

SEO Dojo: Before

Our friends at the SEO Training Dojo have just started the process of fleshing out these tips.  We see here that the fan base is only underway and there is no custom landing tab.  The logo could be larger and content needs to be updated.

Update: SEO Dojo After:

The Dojo got a facelift

Bonus Tip: Utilize the Facebook Like Button

Be sure to now use the like button, so you too can be a cool kid

Seriously though, it basically turns any non-Facebook page into a Facebook page using the new Facebook Open graph.  More info here on the Facebook developer page.  There’s a handy code generator there, so no special programming skills are required.

What other tips and tricks do you recommend for Facebook Pages? Let me know in the comments.

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