How to Optimize Your Facebook Fan Page for Business

With Facebook the third biggest country in the world, it’s likely that you’ve thought of setting up a Facebook Fan Page for your business – if you haven’t done so already!

Is your business on Facebook?

The trouble is just going out there and starting a Facebook Fan Page because “everyone’s doing it” isn’t a good enough strategy to start with. From a business point of view you need to think about how it will help you reach your business goals.

When talking to clients a few key goals come up time and again which can be summarised with the following statement: We want to get into Facebook to:

“build community”
“give our business a personal, less anonymous touch”
“drive traffic to our website”
“sell more stuff”

and so on.

Given Facebook’s Terms of Use, you can’t use Facebook Fan Pages to sell directly (yet!) so let’s examine the other categories for the purpose of this post.

Building a Community Around Your Business with Facebook

Facebook is great for building a tribe of fans. Football teams, pop groups, universities, even cute pets have fans so why not your business?

If you’re thinking of getting on Facebook to improve the community around your business there are a few key rules you need to bear in mind.

For starters you have to show up and play – every day. You won’t build a community of fans on Facebook unless you’re there, posting, commenting, liking and engaging. Don’t underestimate the amount of resources it takes to keep a page going and build a community. One of the things people considering joining a Fan Page will do is look at how active it is and if there’s a friendly tone of interaction. If you haven’t updated your Facebook Fan Page for a month, this says something very clear about you. And, No! Not just that you’re busy!

The Rules:

Check in each day.
Respond to any comments or posts that your community have made.
Offer something new everyday: photos, links to cool stuff, videos, bits of news, etc.
Don’t post too often, don’t post too little.
Promote your Fan Page on your website, your offline marketing materials, your online marketing outposts. Everywhere.

Giving Personality to Your Business with Facebook

Even if you’re still stuck on sombre tones on your corporate web site, trying to sell widgets or services, you can bring a sense of flair and personality to a corporate Facebook Fan Page by including content – pictures, video, etc– that shows you in a different light.

Bemz, who help give your Ikea sofa new life, providing replacement covers, have a superb Facebook Page that really engages. They ask questions, turn to the community for help and discuss their products in an open and friendly fashion.

Great interaction by Bemz

Although their online brand already seems friendly and professional, their Facebook Fan Page augments this, bringing a sense of fun and engagement to the team. Their Facebook Page is a positive meeting place for customers to discuss products and have a bit of fun.

The Rules:

Be friendly
Use an informal, chatty tone when writing
Ask questions
Always respond
Vary the kind of posts you add to your wall – think “cool content matters”
Remember your audience can bore quickly
Keep up your stamina and post regularly

Generating Traffic to Your Website from Facebook

I’ve seen numerous Analytics accounts for client sites where the traffic from Facebook is second only to organic search through Google.

A well developed Facebook Fan Page can drive considerable amounts of traffic to your website where you can funnel visitors into a variety of landing pages where suitable calls-to-action result in sales. But be warned: if you overuse this, your fans may desert you if they feel you’re constantly trying to monitize the channel.

I’ve personally found that links to a business blog with a photo illustrating it drive the most traffic closely followed by video content.

As I’ve mentioned before – Cf Is Facebook Killing Blog Comments? – I’ve seen a trend for blog comments to diminish once a Facebook Fan Page community get going as Facebook really seems the place to be to chat informally about things online.

Nevertheless, that still doesn’t mean you can’t drive traffic to particular landing pages on your website with great targeted Wall-post links. Especially if you’ve invested time and energy (and resources) in building your community.

The Rules:

Don’t just use Facebook as a way to drive traffic to your website otherwise it will smack of marketing
You still have to engage and share in a fun way for Facebook Fans to accept you linking out to your website
Don’t try and sell by linking out to your website too much
Link out to other cool sites and resources as well – be generous with links!

Other Things Your Business Can Do with Facebook

Put pictures of your products/widgets in a photo album – learn from the comments you get!
Use poll applications to get a sense of what your community loves/hates about your product(s)
Ask for feedback on new releases, upcoming products, etc
Involve your audience in your brand and value their input
Nurture every fan as someone special and they might just become a brand ambassador for you

(NB: This is a post in-progress that I plan to add to. Please leave links to any successful Business Facebook Fan Pages in the comments. Thanks !)