With over 400 million users, Facebook has become the #1 trafficked and used website in the world! It is also quickly becoming a place where you can reach new customers and even generate sales and process transactions. And, as with everything, it will be the early adopter businesses that will win in the end. The great thing about Facebook and even their business pages is that they are free.
10 Killer Tips for Using Facebook Fan Pages for Business
1. Use the FBML application to create a powerful landing page new visitors land on!
A good landing page should have strong imagery, a specific call to action (always tell people what you want THEM do before you tell them who YOU are), and create an environment where they want to convert to either a lead in your database or a customer. FBML is a less functional version of HTML and while FBJS can extend it to some action scripting, most action scripting is extremely limited. That said, it is possible to integrate contact forms, newsletter sign ups and Google and Paypal “buy now” buttons to create call to action conversion points for your visitors direction on the page.
For Example:
IDC is an interracial dating service that determined their specific goal to be generating new members for their service from Facebook. Their call to action needed to be highly graphical and appealing and the hook we used was their profile search feature on their website. By immediately grabbing the attention of visitors with a photo of an interracial couple, we were able to forgo a textual explanation and drive people directly to action by integrating a functional member profile search onto the page. To provide some indexable content on the page, we chose to place some member testimonials from the site below the fold. This additional content is not only to give third party credibility to the service for members but also to create some keyword rich content for search engines to index the page by.
Tutorials:
2. Use the full height allowed for your profile picture to create a mini advertisement
Turn your profile picture into an ad on both your personal and business pages.
Did you know that you have 200 x 600 pixels of real estate to promote yourself, brand and products on Facebook through your profile picture? Most users only use 200 x 200 pixels of the available profile pic real estate? Personalizing your profile pic to include your brand and services is one way to increase your visibility, brand value and conversion. A while back I had published a skyscraper ad to my DIY FBML Templates Fan Page on Facebook and almost immediately saw an increase in conversion to my product landing page and an increase in sales of about 4 additional sales per day. It is a great place to not just include information about what you do but if you have an offline business dependent upon incoming hone calls, to include your phone number or web address.
Resource:
Before: 200 x 200 pixels |
After: 200 x 600 pixels |
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Example in the Wild
3. Automate your newsfeed with your blog posts through Social RSS or Networked Blogs application.
If you have a blog or a website with an RSS feed, you can easily share your content automatically to your fan page by installing either the Social RSS or Networked Blogs applications. Both applications allow you to pull in your RSS feed, display it on a new tab and even publish to your page wall so you can manage your page more efficiently with automatic updates for your page. If you wanted to get really fancy and share more content automatically to keep your status feed more active, you could also include your Twitter RSS or even custom news feeds from industry related blogs or Google News. I do caution about too much automation and always recommend supplementing the automated wall posts with real updates and comment engagement. If you have a very active social lifestream you think would be useful to share on your page, I like the Friendfeed application. While ineffective as a social network, Friendfeed is extremely effective at aggregating your entire Internet experience from all your social networks including Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Digg, etc and pushing it Twitter and Facebook.
4. Push all your status updates to Twitter with the Twitter application
Again, automating not just incoming content to the page but also outgoing content from the page is another way to become a more effective and efficient social media user. By using the Twitter application on your page you can easily and automatically push all your status updates to Twitter to keep your content stream there more active.
5. If you sell a physical product, use the Marketplace application
If you sell products or even services, beyond integrating your own Google Checkout or Paypal buttons, you can add your products to the Marketplace app and expose your brand and products to the whole of the Facebook community.
Example: Clothing and Accessories for Sale on Facebook
6. If you run special offers or promotions, use the Wildfire apps
The Wildfire apps easily allow you to integrate branded interactive campaigns like sweepstakes, contests and give-aways with the viral features of the social web to create engaging campaigns that spread across the web like wildfire. These tools are great for mid to large brands and do cost money and are most effective when combined with a dedicated Facebook Fan Page landing page, Facebook ads and other forms of PPC/SEM. Also, be aware that ALL PROMOTIONS must be approved by Facebook prior to implementation.
7. ADVERTISE! Facebook Advertising is CHEAP and it works!
Know those ads you see in the sidebar of your Facebook account? Well, you may have noticed, the advertiser quality has gotten a lot better and the targeting much more relevant and you probably have clicked one or two in your lifetime. But here’s what most businesses don’t know, they are ridiculously cheap for PPC and while click throughs are relatively low, impressions remain high and the click through conversion rate can be extremely high if the ad and the landing page are designed properly. For example, I budget a daily spend of $10 on Facebook Ads, receive on average 89K impressions, 42 click throughs, 8 direct sales and 7 inquiries per day that I can directly track to my ads. This translates to a 2300% return on investment. Makes you want to rush right out and try this, right? Here’s another often overlooked trick – if you purchase your domains and hosting through GoDaddy, you automatically receive a $50 Facebook ad credit that you can activate to try out these ads for free.
8. Promote your page!
Have any idea what the most common mistake most businesses make with their fan page? They fail to promote it properly! Always make sure you fill out all the information on the Info tab, add the link to the fan page on your personal profile, add the promote fan page widget to your website, suggest the page to your friends and even ask employees to suggest it to their friends. You can even extend your suggestion network by integrating a suggest to friends box on your FBML landing page that asks new fans to share your page with their friends.
Tutorial
9. Join industry, product or service related groups and pages and regularly share your knowledge to drive others from across Facebook back to your page
Another common mistake more business pages make is that they fail to reach out to where their potential consumer is already aggregating on Facebook. Look for groups and other pages where consumers with similar interests are congregating to share information about your industry sector or product category. If you sell makeup, find beauty related groups and pages, if you sell cars, find specialty or auto modification groups, if you sell online service like web design look for graphic design and developer communities. Join those groups and pages and share information that would be relevant to those communities without pushing your own service and page too heavily. The more relevant and interesting your info, the more people you will drive back to your page that will naturally WANT to “like” your page and engage with your brand.
10. Actively look for applications related to your industry that will extend the functionality and stickiness of your page
There are so many wonderful industry specific applications that can extend the overall functionality of your page and create a stickiness for your brand that it makes sense to spend some time researching the available applications.
For example:
Real Estate: Realtor.com’s See My Listings, Roost – Social Real Estate Platform, My Real Estate Listings, Real Estate Agent Widget, Real Estate – Realtor Listing Application
B2B services: I Endorse, Slideshare, My LinkedIn Profile, Events, Extended Info
Restaurant/Bar/Club: foursquare, Urban Spoon, GiveReal (Real Drinks)
Musicians: iLike, Music, My Band, Profile Song, Last.fm Profile
Popularity: 6% [?]
