Ten Steps To Creating A FANtastic Facebook Fan Page

With its 400 million strong active userbase, Facebook is a goldmine for marketers. By building out a compelling Fan Page, driving targeted traffic to it and creating buzz, you can easily create measurable results for your business.

When a potential fan clicks on to your Facebook Fan Page, your goals are to (1) immediately grab their attention and make them feel they are in the right place, (2) inspire them to become a fan, (3) draw them in to engage with your page and (4) keep them coming back – often called “stickiness,” in other words, your fans keep coming back to engage with your page.

Facebook Fan Pages are (currently) the only feature fully indexed by Google. By inserting keyword-rich text throughout your Fan Page and updating regularly, you can create tremendous search engine optimization.

Using Facebook’s Social Ads, you can then drive very targeted traffic from the entire Facebook site directly to your Fan Page.

Following are ten elements of dynamic Facebook Fan Pages that will help you stand way out and keep your fans coming back for more!

1. Title Your Page

When first creating your Fan Page, you need to choose a title that could be your brand name, personal name, or business name and possibly a few descriptive words. Typically, the shorter the title the better because each time you add content to your Fan Page, your long title will append to each post. There could be some SEO benefits to that too, though.

2. Choose A Picture That Pops!

Facebook’s recommended size for your Fan Page image is 180 px wide by 540 px high – it looks rather like a bookmark shape. (The optimal size used to be 200 x 600 but Facebook are introducing new dimensions shortly). Whenever you post on your own Fan Page, the thumbnail is a section of the main picture; you may need to experiment with your graphic artist to get the image just the way you want it.

3. Secure Your Username

As soon as you get your first 25 fans, you’ll be able to register your unique username (often called a Vanity URL) at http://facebook.com/username. For example, instead of being a big long unmemorable link, you can shorten and choose your brand name or company name to be what appears after the facebook.com/ part

4. Set A Landing Tab

You can create a fully customized “landing page” for your non-fans, with images, keyword-rich text, links, even video. How? Just add the Static FBML app, paste in your FBML code (very similar to HTML), then edit your Fan Page settings to select the specific tab you wish non-fans to land on. For a detailed tutorial, see this post: http://bit.ly/fb-landing-tab.

5. Write an Appealing About Us/Bio

There’s a small text box area just under your Fan Page picture; use this area strategically to summarize what you do, who you help and how. Even better, include a call to action with a hyperlink (be sure to include the http:// so it’s clickable).

6. Import Your Blog Posts

Using the Networked Blogs app, import your blog feed so that each time you publish a post on your blog, you Fan Page automatically updates and your fans can read and comment on the post. This also helps to add consistent content to your Fan Page and keep it engaging.

7. Show Posts by Page & Fans

There may be strategic reasons for only showing posts by yourself as the Fan Page or only by your Fans, but I highly recommend setting to show both. That way, anyone who comes to your page can see the interaction from both sides.

8. Encourage Your Fans To Add Content

Your fans can add their own photos, videos and comments on your wall using the publisher. Allowing and encouraging your fans to add their own content will make them feel more a part of your online Facebook community and that content goes out into their feeds creating more visibility for you too.

9. Respond to Your Fans

Providing quality content is just one aspect of building a good Facebook Fan Page, or any social networking presence for that matter. Another critical aspect is engagement. By proactively responding to your fans comments, questions, suggestions, ideas, etc. you show that you’re a company that cares, that listens, that takes action and engages your community. For my two-part post on fan page engagement, see http://bit.ly/fan-page-engage1 and http://bit.ly/fan-page-engage2.

10. Broadcast to Twitter

Using the new Facebook Fan Page to Twitter app http://facebook.com/twitter you can write status updates up to 420 characters that will go out as a tweet on your Twitter account and truncate at about 120 characters with a bit.ly link back to your Fan Page. Great for cross-promoting and extra visibility!

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Author Info:  Mari Smith is President of the International Social Media Association. She is an in-demand Social Media Speaker and Trainer, and has been a passionate leader in the social media industry since 2007. FastCompany.com describes Mari as “a veritable engine of personal branding and a relationship marketing whiz.” Her next book Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day is due out May 3, 2010 published by Sybex/Wiley.

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