With over 300 million active users and 10 million users becoming fans of pages each day, Facebook is one of the most effective community building social networks for businesses. Not sure where to start? Here are five basic tips for managing a successful Facebook page:
1. Spread the Word
In order to create a fan page, you must have a valid personal profile on Facebook first. There’s no indication on your personal profile of its association with the brand page, but using your personal profile to spread the word about your company’s page to friends and colleagues can be helpful at the start. Pick people from your personal profile that would be interested in knowing about the brand’s page and invite them to become fans by using the “Suggest to Friends” link located under your page’s profile picture. It’s the only direct way to promote your brand page to users within Facebook other than the Facebook ad platform (which you have to pay for). That’s why it’s important to also promote your Facebook presence on your company’s website, email signature, newsletters or other forms of branded material. Let people know you exist!
With the incorporation of unique URLs for Facebook pages, it’s become a lot easier for people to organically find your brand’s page by searching on Google or Facebook. So be sure to customize your fan page URL as soon as possible using your brand name. Facebook requires that your page have at least 25 fans before they’ll allow you to secure your unique URL.
2. Update Consistently
So now you have some fans and you’ve secured your unique URL, now what? There’s no specific rule about how often a page should post updates or news but the key is to stay consistent. Most likely you won’t have the time or enough relevant and interesting content to share something every few hours or maybe even every day, but you should develop a schedule or expectation for how often to post updates to the newsfeed. This way your fans know when to expect future postings and are reminded of your presence regularly. Posting too often (or too much at one time) will often annoy your fans, so a good rule of thumb is to stick with quality over quantity. Better to post engaging and interesting updates every other day than only semi-relevant content every day just for posting’s sake.
3. Incorporate Outside Sources
While it’s nice to give yourself a pat on the back, social networking is about being social and genuinely so. Part of that means taking the spotlight off of yourself and putting it on others every now and then. Are you collaborating or working with other brands to accomplish something awesome? Did you find an interesting post on another site related to your company’s industry that you’d like to share? Watch an entertaining online video that you think your fans would get a kick out of? This is all content that can be used on your Facebook page (via the link application) to show that you’re out there surfing the web and playing well with others.
Another way you can give props to other brands or organizations is by favoriting other pages on your page. To do so, search on Facebook for the brands or companies that you like that are relevant to your business. If they have a page, under their picture is a link to “Add to my Page’s Favorites”. Now your fans can see the brands and businesses that your company likes on your Facebook page.
4. Give Incentive
Want to increase your brand awareness on Facebook? Give people a reason to become your fan. Whether it’s providing them with exclusive information first, running contests for free products or prizes, or posting printable coupons for your company’s services, giving incentives is helpful for growing your fan base. It keeps your existing fans engaged and also gives them a reason to share your page and talk about your brand with their networks online and offline.
5. Monitor Results
If you’re going to be spending any time at all on social networks for your business, you should track your progress just like you would any other marketing strategy. Although interactions with your fans may not translate directly into dollars or increased sales, consider ways in which your presence on Facebook can be measured and valued. Are you answering customer questions or gaining valuable feedback on your products/services? Getting new business from exclusive Facebook coupons? Finding more traffic coming to your website or other social network profiles? The results of your efforts may not be immediately apparent, but keep an eye on the ways in which your involvement on Facebook has given you insight on how consumers are interacting with your brand and online content.
Facebook also provides their own system or “insights” for measuring meaningful interactions on your page, available to all page administrators on the left-hand column of your page (not viewable by fans). It keeps track of things like interactions (activity on your page), total fans and unsubscribers and interesting demographic details on who your fans actually are (age, sex, location, etc). All of these things can be used to get an idea of how engaging your posts are and what types of fans you’re attracting.
In Closing…
Following these five easy steps should help you to at least get your page off the ground so you can start posting content produced for your brand on one of the Internet’s most popular social networks. Of course, this is only the beginning of what you can do with a Facebook page. If you’d like more help with how your business can get in on the Facebook action (and all social media for that matter), send us a shout!
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Category : Social Media
