Facebook provides a huge opportunity for ALL companies to cultivate their community of fans. With that said, it's critical to promote your fan page if you are serious about having success. But, how do you promote your company's Facebook page?
1. Make it Easy for Audience to Like your Fan Page
About ten years ago companies started promoting their website on various marketing mediums, materials, etc. However, today more and more companies have replaced their URL in these promotions with their Facebook fan page. Look at the upcoming Super Bowl commercials and see how many companies are asking the viewer to like them on Facebook.
Why are they doing this? Well, it's simple... internet users spend more time on Facebook than any other online platform.
Promote your Facebook fan page with ads, on your website, your blog, and any other online channel, network, or directory you may own.
2. Create a Custom "Like Us" Landing Page
Several years ago most forms of paid search ads linked visitors to a marketer's website home page. Marketer's soon realized it was a much more effective to drive visitors to a landing page that was more relative to their search. Well, Facebook is no different. Instead of driving traffic to a company's wall on Facebook, it makes more sense to drive them to a custom "like us" page. After all, isn't your goal to get visitors to like your fan page?
3. Build your Brand on Facebook
As stated earlier, promote your Facebook fan page everywhere, but make sure to keep your branding consistent. Facebook affords companies various opportunities to build their brand via impressions. So remember, treat it with respect to branding the same as you would your other traditional marketing efforts.
4. Share, Share, Share
One of the primary benefits of Facebook is that it enables companies to not only share information on their products and services, but also it allows them to make announcements about job opportunities, awards received by the company or its employees, or any other press release that has been created.
Companies can share their mission statement, corporate initiatives, community involvement, charitable contributions, etc. Be creative and make sure to link the above items back to your website.
5. Create Events and Exclusive Offers
Creating events or exclusive offers for your fans is another good way, its one thing to share information about your company, however if you want to increase your audience, you will need to make it worth their while. Creating events, establishing reward programs, and posting any job openings can increase the interest of your fan or visitor. Remember, your Facebook page is an extension of your website.
6. Use your Fan Page for Cross Marketing
Cross marketing and promoting of your company on other online platforms is one benefits of using a Facebook fan page. Adding buttons with links to your other social networking pages or channels such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, etc. is a great way to increase your impressions. Also, you can create links to your blog, articles, banner ads, directories, reviews, etc. Make it easy for your visitors to find you.
7. Maximize the Most Valuable
You must maximize the most valuable real-estate of your fan page. Research has proven that the area of your Facebook page that receives the most attention is the logo pane. Most companies automatically insert their logo as instructed by Facebook. However, it makes more sense to not only include your logo, but also add your tagline, URL, or anything else that you want to convey to your audience.
8. Links Links, and more Links!
I've mentioned several times the importance of creating links on Facebook. It can't be overstated that it is critical for your content to include links, buttons, and images that drive your fans where you want to take them. If your fan page doesn't have links, your visitor in all likelihood will get bored and leave your page. Links creates opportunities for your visitors to surf across your internet platforms and learn more about your company.
9. Use Insights to Better Understand your Audience
The analytics that Facebook Insights provide may not be the most comprehensive, however it does a relatively good job of providing you with volume stats as well as illustrating the demographics of your audience. This tool allows you to clearly see your fans age, gender, locale, etc. Use it to measure and track your progression so you can learn what works and what doesn't. A little research can provide the information needed to better promote your fan page, not to mention saving you time and money. BTW, you can also expect Facebook Insights to become much more robust sometime in the very near future.
10. Understand your Mission and Purpose
Although it's listed at #10, Understanding your mission and purpose before you begin should actually be the first thing you should do prior to creating and publishing your Facebook fan page. The old saying, "Failing to plan is planning to fail' applies here.
Ask yourself a few questions before you get started such as, Is Facebook going to be a marketing tool to help promote our products and/or services? Is our goal to create awareness about the good will, community involvement, charitable initiatives, and outreach programs that are taking place within our company?
Do we want to be engaging with our fans thus providing a voice for them in our (and their) community? Is it for informational purposes only (such as a brochure site)? Is it merely a tool to drive traffic to our website? Maybe it's a combination of these things, but whatever it is... it needs to be defined.
Again, Facebook can be an outstanding tool to assist you in your marketing efforts; and if you're able to implement these ten best practices, you should be well on your way to creating a successful Facebook fan page.
