FAN PAGES ON
FACEBOOK A GUIDE TO FACEBOOK PAGES FOR COMPANIES AND BRANDS
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CREATE A UNIQUE AND EYE-CATCHING PAGE IMAGE
PUBLISH INTERESTING AND RELEVANT CONTENT
UPDATE REGULARLY
CREATE EVENTS AND SPREAD THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAGE
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
DON’T LET NEW USERS LAND ON THE WALL
DEVELOPMENT OF UNIQUE TABS
DIRECT USERS TO VARIOUS UNIQUE TABS
REGISTER YOUR FACEBOOK DOMAIN NAME
GET FANS THROUGH YOUR WEBSITE
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CREATE A UNIQUE AND EYE-CATCHING PAGE IMAGE The page image is an important part of the Facebook Page, since it is the first what users see, and thus gives the opportunity to make a good impression from the start. Instead of just showing your company’s logo, you should create an engaging photo, or at least show the logo in an appealing or different way. The illustration to the right is Jyske Bank’s page image. Instead of only using the bank’s familiar green logo, Jyske Bank has chosen to insert an image of a catfish, which has been Jyske Bank’s brand ambassador for many years. Furthermore, it is possible to change the framework of the profile picture, so you do not need to stay within the simple and quadratic 200-pixel box, but you can change the altitude up to 600 pixels. Get inspiration for creative solutions in Rob Banangale’s article (All Facebook).
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PUBLISH INTERESTING AND RELEVANT CONTENT Even though a boring Facebook Page won’t do good for your business, it is of course better than no presence on Facebook at all. However, we always suggest companies invest some time here in creating interesting and appealing content that users finds appealing. As in other social media such as blogs and Twitter, it is extremely important to give the readers interesting content. Facebook is no different. By regularly updating the Facebook Page with relevant content your fans will more likely return to your page. Users who return regularly are more likely to become paying customers, and even more importantly; they will become existing customers who return to your profile time and time again. Those customers in particular are the ones who are more likely to stay loyal to the brand and to the product rather than choosing the competitors’ one.
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UPDATE REGULARLY While it’s very important to monitor the conversation that users are having within your Facebook Pages, it’s also extremely important to help spark the conversation. There are different ways through which your company can engage users in conversations, but they may want to engage them by asking direct questions for example, through a status update which will instantly appear in the many fans’ News Feed, every time they log on to Facebook. So, a company’s status update to the fans work the same way as the users’ status updates that are shown in friends’ News Feed. Besides putting questions to users via the status update it might also be a good idea to ask questions or post comments on the wall, create new topics within the discussion forum, or launch new activities which in itself create dialogue and get users to respond. If your company has a blog you can automatically import your post to your Facebook Page, and in this way you can constantly keep your users updated with your business. Users are more likely to follow the link to the company’s website if they feel involved with the business and current happenings, and this often results as a subsequent way for increasing traffic on your website. If you are not keen to publish all the blog posts on Facebook you can alternatively create Notes, located in a tab itself on the Facebook Page. There you can write text, attach a picture and link to the most relevant messages. When the note is published it will appear on the Wall of your Facebook Page and at the same time in every fans’ News Feed. In addition, users are able to add their comments, say if they “like” it, forward it to their friends or publish it on their own Wall. The illustration below is an example of a Note on Roskilde Festival’s Facebook Page. Subsequently, many of their fans wrote comments and stated that they liked the post.
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CREATE EVENTS AND SPREAD THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAGE A good way to get more users to visit your Facebook Page and become fans is to regularly create events. This is a golden opportunity to spread awareness of the Facebook Page through the existing fans, and on to their network. The event may for example, be an event organized by the company, a competition, a user survey or something else that you could send an invitation to. When the many fans sign up for the event they will spread the message about the event to their networks, and therefore also advertise the Facebook Page as linked to it. The more fans that respond to the invitation, the greater the chance of getting the event distributed via multiple networks and ultimately attain more fans to your Facebook Page.
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JOIN THE CONVERSATION Facebook Pages create a unique opportunity to be a major part of the user’s conversation on Facebook so you should take advantage of this. Each time users comment on a company’s status update, a photo, a video, participate in a debate or anything else, it is very important that the company is aware of comments that requires a response back, or sets the stage for discussions.
No matter whether you’re a small or a large company; it is essential that you engage your existing and potential customers and open up two-way dialogues with them. Just as users are able to post questions to you, you can also post questions to users, which can be a very useful way to get feedback on your products and/or services, and additionally, to gain suggestions on what can be improved so that the customers’ experience with the company is increased. This can also be a very useful tool to help build a closer relationship with your target audience. This standpoint can prove to be viable to your business. It is without a doubt time-consuming to manage these contacts as the discussions and conversations with users can be quite demanding, but in the longer term, it undoubtedly will be worth the effort.
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DON’T LET NEW USERS LAND ON THE WALL When a new user visits the Facebook Page, the Wall tab is the default landing page. The Wall is a very useful approach for companies to engage in discussions with their users and allow them to post their comments on company’s products and/or services. However, we do not recommend that new users land on the Wall tab when they open up the company’s Facebook Page, but we suggest that you change the landing page for new users to other, more valuable tabs. In this way, you can manage that new users enter a controlled environment at first, and afterwards navigate to the pages with less structure. At the same time it takes the skill to manage the first information available to the new users and thus immediately grab attention of new users by putting interesting and relevant information related to the product, service, company etc.
The simple solution is to make the Information tab the landing page for new users, or alternatively the Notes tab if it is filled with content. The more advanced model is to develop a unique designed tab as the landing page where there is greater likelihood that users engage in the fan page and ultimately the company. Read more about this in the next section.
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DEVELOPMENT OF UNIQUE TABS If you don’t think that the regular options on the Facebook Page are sufficient to cause the user to get involved in your brand or message, then there is also a solution to this. Facebook has made it possible to develop your own unique set of tabs on the page, which can be created with design and functionality just for your needs. In order to develop these tabs, one requires a good understanding of coding on the Facebook platform; this can be quite technical and complex to carry out, on the contrary to our advice in this guide, and in all other guides published. If you don’t have the skills inhouse we can at Fanbooster develop these unique tabs for you. On the next page is an example of a unique tab that we developed for our partners Facebook Page, Komfo. This tab, called “Start”, is the landing page for new users and gives the Facebook Page a markedly different expression, than if the users for example land on the Information tab.
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By using unique tabs for your Facebook Page you can create a uniquely designed universe for your users, and tabs as these can help to develop a dynamic and involving Facebook Page, which attracts more users and fans. What the tab in concrete shall contain, of course, depends on the individual company (hence unique) but as a general rule you should design it so that the content is dynamic and involving, and so that it encourages users to act in the moment they enter your Facebook Page. Fanbooster is an application suite that provides custom designed tab for your company’s Fan Page at a low cost.
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DIRECT USERS TO VARIOUS UNIQUE TABS Unique tabs can also be used for more than landing page for users who accidentally enter your page. It could be, for example, that one could see advantages in having different landing pages for different audiences. This option is especially useful if you use Social Ads to advertise the Facebook Page, as it then can control which tabs different users view by default, based on the ad that they clicked on. For example, if you would like to target two groups of users in different geographical areas, you can create two different ads, that each is shown for only one of the groups (it is possible to segment on geography, age, sex and many other parameters in the ads). Afterwards you can specify which tabs the two different user groups will land on once they click on the ad.
If you want to advertise an event or competition, and only address it to people in Copenhagen, it is possible to control that Copenhageners (which enters the page through the ads) have their own unique landing-page. This could for example, include information about the event or competition, and other relevant “call-to-actions” for this group.
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REGISTER YOUR FACEBOOK DOMAIN NAME A company can choose to register a domain name of its own preference on Facebook, and do it completely free of charge. This domain can be useful in promoting the Facebook Page, and in other cases where you need to communicate the way to the Facebook Page in a simple way. For example: http://www.facebook.com/fanbooster Despite being simple to create, it requires the following: 1. That you are the admin of the page. 2. The domain name is at least 5 characters long. 3. Your Facebook Page has at least 25 fans. When these 3 conditions are met, you can register your domain here: http://facebook.com/username
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GET FANS THROUGH YOUR WEBSITE Facebook has recently launched Like Box, which is a small box (widget), you can integrate on your website so visitors can become fans of your Facebook Page with one click - without leaving your website! The Fan Box can also show the latest status updates, and fans of the page. In that way you can convert some of the many visitors of your website to become fans on Facebook, and thus create the possibility of a prolonged relationship. If you have a static website, it might be a good opportunity to integrate some dynamic content, as well as give visitors an insight into the most recent updates in your business right now. The Like Box can be integrated anywhere on the website. The only requirement is that you should have Facebook Connect installed on your site, which is straightforward to carry out. The example on the right is from the website of Threadless (a communitycentered online apparel store) where the integrated Like Box shows what happens on the Facebook Page “Threadless”.
SHOULD ALL COMPANIES HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE? This question is quite obvious since it is so easy to create a Facebook Page for your business. In our point of view, it is quite clear that all companies can take advantage of one or more of the facilities offered on Facebook. We believe that Facebook Pages are an excellent tool for companies to vigorously engage in discussions with their users through which they are able to obtain a large number of new clients, so this should be every company’s intention and predominant objective. The decision to become a part of Facebook with a Facebook Page might not seem very important, and some companies often wait for a long time before realizing what a real impact a Facebook Page might have for them. But if it becomes a success and you succeed to launch a dialogue with your stakeholders, then the cost of not investing enough in the area will be substantial. We’re not talking about 10,000 random users that you will disappoint but more likely 10,000 of your loyal customers. Therefore, we believe that it is necessary for every organisation to make a number of considerations before launching your Facebook Page, and we hope that this guide has given a clear outline of how Facebook Pages can be used to attaining new clients, together with a clear concept of how to create and keep it blooming. You are always welcome to get in contact with us for a brief consultation and find out more about your options with Facebook. 10- http://fanbooster.com – info@fanbooster.com
Fanbooster is an application suite that boosts your Fan Page and makes it stand out in the crowd on Facebook. Your custom Tabs can include: -
Campaigns Polls Contests Coupons Embedded video PDF Magazine Viewer RSS Inquiry forms
Feel free to contact us for an unconditional conversation about your Fan Page: info@fanbooster.com
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