Facebook Fan Pages – The Good, The Bad….
I’ve noticed more and more Facebook Fan Pages popping up and it’s great. Fan Pages are a great way to connect with people, build your credibility and ultimately generate leads and grow your business.
I’ve seen some good ones, some bad ones and some really ugly ones! To be fair, I have seen some really good ones too!
But the problem is most people are making one BIG mistake
when it comes to their pages. More on that in a minute.
In this article I will cover:
• Facebook usage stats
• The “Big Mistake” So Many People Are Making
• Who Can Build A Fan Page
• Who Should Build A Fan Page
• Special (limited time) Offer
Before we talk about the one big mistake, let’s look at a couple key facts about Facebook Fan Pages:
Unlike groups in Facebook, Fan pages are visible to unregistered people and are indexed by the engines – which is another opportunity for you to come up in the engines.
The number of Fans you can have is unlimited (whereas the Friend limit is 5,000).
Pages are generally better for a long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers.
Pages include links. Because the pages are public, you can get some link juice (link popularity).
You can send “updates” to fans whenever you want. It’s a nice way of building a database of interested users. Send messages about new products, updated website, etc.
When someone joins a Fan Page, it’s published in their News feed for all of their Friends to read (unless they have turned this off). This helps spread the word about your Fan Page.
A Fan or Business Page is designed to promote a business. It can be used to share simple information like your business hours, contact information and product/service offerings. It can also be used as a marketing tool.
If you design a fun and graphically appealing Fan Page that is designed to capture leads and promote your business well, it can be a good tool for generating new leads.
In Facebook’s own words: “Start the Conversation. When your fans interact with your Facebook Page, stories linking to your Page can go to their friends via News Feed. As these friends interact with your Page, News Feed keeps driving word-of-mouth to a wider circle of friends.”
Some interesting Facebook stats:
• Facebook has 400 Million Global Users (and growing)
• Facebook has 100 Million U.S. Users: Facebook is strong around-the-world (Canada has the highest penetration rate), but nearly 1/3 of all Facebook users are in the U.S.
• The average Facebook User Spends 55 Minutes Per Day
• Real-time Search Is Important Today: Facebook is now making most content available publicly (unless you adjust your privacy settings). This has tremendous implications for search engine optimization and reputation management. You need to be on top of real-time search – today.
A recent study (The Sysomos study) found a strong correlation between amount of content (notes, links, photos, videos and custom pages/tabs) and number of fans. <This is really important information!!>
The “Big Mistake” So Many People Are Making
So what is the big mistake I keep referring to? Ready, drumroll please…
Everyone is creating pages that look like everyone else. They are using the default tabs and not adding anything compelling and interesting to the page.
I am a huge fan of Sex and The City and much to my disappointment, I am going to use their Fan Page as an example of what not to do!
Let me start by saying that with over 1 million Fans you might think I’m crazy for talking about what they are doing wrong, but that is the precise reason I chose their Page to focus on.
Needless to say Sex and The City has a huge following – they are doing radio and TV ads, they have major word of mouth and a massive built in Fan base after 6 years on HBO and a hit first movie.
Most of small to medium businesses don’t have the same exposure and can’t expect to get the same results without effort.
All Sex and The City had to do was post their trailer for the new movie and voila, instant success.
The rest of us need to work for our exposure and fans.
The first step is creating a great page that is eye catching and compelling. The next step is populating it with great content (take a tip from SATC, posting their trailer on their Fan Page first was a really compelling reason for people to check it out. So post something people will really want to see and make it available on Facebook First).
Let’s talk about how to make the page more compelling….
By default Facebook comes with “tabs” for Info, Notes, Photos, Events, Links, Discussion, Video and the Wall for the page. Those are all great tabs and you should use them – but you need to take it a step further and create custom tabs. FBML is an app that allows you to use graphics and HTML to create beautiful pages that are compelling and designed to capture leads.
Take a look at the Sex and The City 2 Page, you land on the Wall and there are no custom tabs:
Now take a look at my page, you’ll notice you land on a custom tab that has marketing text, a place for me to capture leads and the page is enhanced with graphics.
The info I chose to place there is helpful to my visitors, I tell them how they can get up-to-date SEO info, how to get a proposal, I offer them a free book (Optimization Step By Step) and I show them how they can follow me on Twitter for more news and updates.
They can then go to the Wall, where they can read tips, advice and links that I have posted.
You need to take your page a step further and create compelling “landing pages” to further draw people in. Otherwise your page just looks like another page and doesn’t do as much for you as it could.
Who Can Build A Fan Page
Anyone can set up a Fan page, but to get the most out of it with the added features, you need to know HTML and work with graphics.
Who Should Build A Fan Page
Anyone that is looking to create more exposure and generate more leads for their business. You don’t have to play games or make friends and waste time idly chatting with people. Look at your page as a source of publishing good information and generating a base of followers.
The key takeaways are that you have to know your audience, you have to engage and compel them first and foremost or they’ll leave. Once you’ve done that, you have to provide quality content regularly and encourage discussion and engagement.
There are thousands of brands on Facebook in addition to the thousands of small – medium sized entities that have no brand awareness – you need to stand out from that crowd!
How will you do that? Glad you asked <wink>. We can help….
Special (limited time) Offer
If you want us to set up your Fan page for you, the regular price is a onetime fee of $175.00. The following is included:
• Banner design for your page that has a similar look and feel to your website (so people feel connected to your brand and your site through familiar imagery)
• Set up of simple profile page, if you don’t already have one. (Remember you don’t have to waste hours on Facebook, the simple profile that is connected to the page is just so you can get the full benefits of the page – they don’t allow FBML if you don’t have a profile)
• Creation of Fan Page with SEO and marketing strategies in mind.
• Introduction text for Fan Page – professionally copy written.
• Blueprint for promoting the page.
For a Very Limited Time (until Friday April 16, 2010) you can save 15% on your fan Page and pay only $149 for the design and creation of the page.
If you already have a Fan Page, we can jazz it up and add custom FBML tabs to increase your results.
Take advantage of our special limited time offer by clicking here:
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We all know the massive growth and popularity of facebook but if your are a company who is considering a facebook page and have no fans, why spend money attracting them to your facebook page when you can spend money attracting them to your Blog?
This is the comment I get most from my B2B clients and sometimes I struggle to create a compelling argument for facebook especially when their target market is 40+ business people.
Perhaps you ahve some thoughts on this.
Hi Jennifer, nice article….and good tips, thanks for sharing!
I just want to add one more, maybe you know it already…once you have reached the number of 25 fans you can choose your own url name, which can be the name of your company or a lovely keywords for your business. I have done this with my fan page recently and it boosted traffic enormously !!
Michela,
Yep I know that but thanks for letting everyone know!
But I think you need to have more than 100 Fans before and not 25. Could be wrong though, haven’t looked lately!
Yvonne,
Not everyone is going to find your Blog or site so why not tap into people in every way you can.
If someone is looking for info and pages on Facebook, I’d rather them find mine than my competitors.
With the number of people “fanning” pages on Facebook it definitely shows there is interest so the question to your client is “when someone is looking on Facebook, do you want to be found or no”
It’s not an either or – you need to promote all your properties (Blogs, sites, Twitter profile, FB Fan page etc)
Just my 2 cents!
Michaela – My bad – you are right. It’s only 25 fans!!