Facebook’s growth as a social network has been phenomenal this year. 300 million active users and counting. But it’s not just individuals any more. More and more businesses have hopped on the Facebook bandwagon and are setting up Fan Pages.
Before you hop aboard, think about what you want to accomplish as a business owner. If you’re intention is to network with executives in certain target industries, you might want to consider using LinkedIn instead.
But if you want to reach out to potential customers, find out what they’re interested in, cultivate relationships, and best of all, not pay a dime to do it, then you should consider creating a Facebook fan page for your company.
It’s not a hard process to get a fan page set up. You just need to select a category:
- Local
- Brand, Product or organization
- Artist, Band or Public Figure
Then, you need to give your page a name. After that, it’s a matter of customizing it, as you would do with your own personal page. You can provide links to your Website, include images, and background information about your company.
Now, you can start interacting with your audience. Start by inviting your current contacts to become fans. Then, start to conduct surveys, share important updates, hold contests, promote events you’re attending and include helpful resources.
The more useful information you provide, the more likely it will be that your fans will return, interact with you, and maybe even suggest your fan page to their connections.
Don’t forget to take advantage of Facebox’s Fan Box widget either. You can place this icon on your own Website to gain more fans and share your Facebook updates.
Remember – be careful what you post. Facebook frowns on spamming, Make sure you follow the social network’s Write-up on Warnings and Terms and Conditions. You don’t want to accidentially misuse the site and have your content removed, or worse, your account disabled.
You might find it daunting trying to find the time to manage your Facebook fan page. There are two ways to go about this. You can dedicate 30 minutes a day to monitoring the page yourself or hire an administrator to review the site, and post new content to it. As with any marketing strategy, the key to making your Facebook fan page successful is to be consistent.
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