The Future of Internet Marketing Lies in the Success of Facebook Fan Pages

If you’re a business owner, it’s likely that socializing feels like something you simply don’t have time for. The practical management of your business is placing great demands on you and this is where your focus is.

However, if you truly want to be a leader in your chosen business, you may have no choice but to turn to social media to achieve this. Many of the booming businesses of today are coordinating targeted marketing through the Facebook Fan pages platform.

It all begins with knowing what your business needs to make both your online and offline presences succeed.

For a business to thrive, it requires, at the very least, a basic understanding and implementation of things like SEO (search engine optimization), community outreach, strong customer relationships, solid communication, and growth based on feedback, analytics to establish ROI, just to name a few.

These avenues provide effective methods for not only boosting your traffic, but also your brand authority, while also creating a link between your business and the customer base it serves.

Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook fan pages now provide business owners with essentially everything they need to help the growth and profitability of your business.

Simply put, if you haven’t been harnessing the power of Facebook fan pages then here are a few reason why you should start:

Note: not all businesses will thrive from the use of a Facebook page. More on that later.

3 Reasons Facebook Fan Pages Will Help Your Business

Humanizes Your Business

Nowadays more than ever, customers want to feel like they are appreciated when they give their money to a business. Whether it’s to lodge a complaint or sing your praises, they want to have full access and an easy means of communication,. Simply put, they want to engage with a “humanized” business — an entity with personality and empathy.

Facebook pages gives customers easy access to their favourite brands, products and services. They can post on the page wall or send private direct messages.

From a business owner's perspective, not only do you get to interact more intimately with your customers and build a strong rapport, but you get to do it for free.

Gain Valuable Insight and Customer Feedback

Think about the Facebook pages you personally like and, more importantly, why you started following them? Chances are it was because you bought something, loved it and sent them a quick testimonial of praise?

Well wouldn’t that be nice if your customers had a platform to do that too?

The feedback you receive from your customers on your fan page can tell you a lot about the service you are providing. If you are receiving loads of requests for a particular product or service, you can now safely expand in that direction because you already know what the customer wants.

If you are getting lots of negative feedback, then now’s the time to take a long hard look at what you are providing and tweak it to give your customers exactly what they want.

These types of insights are invaluable.

Track Your ROI

If you can’t monitor it, you can’t manage it. Thankfully Facebook pages offer an insight dashboard so you can track certain data.

This dashboard lets you track the popularity and engagement of your posts, fan demographics, as well as the ability to spy on your competition.

By using these metrics you can improve your business strategy by developing custom messages that speak directly to your fans needs.

How to Set Up a Facebook Fan Page

If you’re sold on having a Facebook fan page, then here are 10 simple steps for getting started right away:

Step #1:
Once you have opened a Facebook account you will need to choose the most appropriate category for your business.

There are six categories to choose from and each of them has their own selections of sub categories. Take some time to choose carefully, as you want to target the right market. You will always have the option to change your category in the future if you find that you have not chosen the best one for you.

Step #2:
Facebook makes it really easy by providing a virtual wizard to help you build your fan page profile. At this point, you’ll need to fill in your company details. How much detail you have to provide will be determined by the specific category you have chosen.

Step #3:
This is an important step as here is where you will be asked to upload a profile photo, which should be 180×180 pixels. Be sure to add your new business page to your favorites for easy access to it when you log in.

Another important step is to make sure you choose the right preferred page audience. This should be your target market and lets Facebook know who your main audience is.

Step #4:
Now that you have supplied Facebook with the pertinent information for your business, you’re ready to edit your actual page.

At first glance you will notice that your Facebook page consists of just the bare bones. Now you have the exciting task of building it and making it your own. Just remember that at this point your page is now live and visible for the world to see.

If you don’t have time to build the page right now, you can go to the page settings and change the visibility option to unpublished until you have completed it. While you are here in the settings section, review all the other options you have and update them to best suit your needs.

Step #5:
You’ll always want to know what activity is going on with your Facebook page and you can set these requirements under Notifications.

Step #6:
You’ll want to make sure you have control over your page by making yourself the Admin, but you can delegate some of the authority to others by adjusting the Page roles.

Step #7:
Under the featured settings you can choose to have your Facebook page like other pages.

Step #8:
Setting up your cover photo is really important because you want to create a great visual impression. This is the 851 x 315 pixel photo that will sit at the top of your Facebook page.

Step #9:
You will need to fill in the about us information and create a call to action button if you wish. This would include a short sentence asking your new Facebook fan to do a specific action, such as Visit our Website, Buy Now or Sign Up for our Newsletter.

Step #10:
Now you are ready to populate your Business Facebook Page with some content. You are allowed to post text, links, photos and videos. Try to use a mixture of these to keep your page interesting. To save time, look into using a tool to help automate much of this process such as Postradamus.

When Facebook Pages Aren’t Appropriate for Business

We could dive into a series of do’s and don’ts for using your new Facebook page, but that deserves a post in itself.

Instead, let’s touch on why some businesses shouldn’t necessarily be using Facebook.

Depending on the niche you are in, your customer base may not be on Facebook at all. For example, why would a factory that creates car parts need a Facebook page? The answer is, they wouldn’t.

Another example could be businesses that rely on more B2B (business to business) interactions. While it’s always smart to have a website, your actual customer or client base is not likely to reach out to you on Facebook. In this case, having a page would be a waste of your time.

An easy way to determine whether or not your business should be using Facebook is to ask yourself a few simple questions:

  1. Who am I selling myself to?
  2. Is my demographic on Facebook?
  3. Will I spend the time making my page a resource and not just abandon it?

If your target market isn’t actively seeking you out on Facebook, then there is no need to spend the time creating a page. Focus your energy elsewhere.

Facebook pages offers a great (and free!) way for businesses to connect with their audience and build stronger relationships. If you are really looking to scale up your business, you might want to consider taking the time to set up a Business Facebook page. If your business is on Facebook, what Facebook based strategies are you using that are leading you to success? Share in the comments.

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