Setting Up a Facebook Fan Page

by Kendall Mesker from Budget Social Media

Setting up a Facebook fan page sounds like a very easy process, however there are many things to consider before you set out to start your own. Many people do not realize that many of the settings you start your page with cannot be changed after you set it up, that means that one mistake, and your marketing efforts until the time you figure out the mistake could go in vain! Follow these guidelines and you will leave a much smaller chance for error in the future.

1) Type of Page – Facebook has several page types, there is a community profile, which doesn’t belong to any one person, a group page which is a closed off section for a group of people, a personal page, which as the name suggests is for people, and a fan page. Fan pages can be signed in to them through your current Facebook account so no logging in and out; they can also be updated and moderated with ease. The other ones have some limitations or disadvantages. Groups can be closed off, and seem private, so people tend to shy away from joining those. A personal page has a limit of 5,000 friends, and if you want to get ambitious with your marketing, you can reach that quickly. My pick – Fan Page

2) Naming your Page – Once you name your page it cannot be changed later on, when thinking of a name consider several things. First thing you will want to do is pick something that people will want to click on. When you have people joining your fan page, it will be showing up on their news feeds, so picking something interesting would get more people to visit your page, which leads to more fans. Also, try not to make your page name too long, often people try to pack lots of keywords into their title, while this may help with searches for pages, it certainly won’t read very well when you provide updates to your fans and they have to read through an 8 word title first.

3) Picking your Image – Picking a profile image may not seem like a big deal, and while you can change these as often as you like, I do not recommend doing so. After you build up a following, they get to know your image on their news feed and will look for it VS the page name, changing that up, could confuse what your biggest fans are looking for in their feeds and could cause some of your posts to be over looked. An ideal image would be a logo if you are working on branding or perhaps a picture of your store front or your restaurant if that is what you are creating a page for. Tip: One thing I try to do is create an image that is taller than wide. I put the logo at the top, and at the bottom, I usually put some text like “Suggest to Friends” with an arrow pointing down. When in the default profile picture position, the arrow will point straight down to the ‘Suggest to Friends’ link which will entice people to share your page.

4) Landing Page – Facebook has its own little version of HTML that is called FBML, and with this you can create a landing page that everyone to your page who isn’t a fan will land on when they go to your Facebook page. If you have a coupon you give out, or a free sample that you can send, this is a great spot to advertise that. Big graphics that catch attention work very well on this page. When coding it, be sure and put in a like button into the FBML and get people to like your page before you let them get your offering, this will help drive up your fan numbers!

5) Starter Updates – Before you begin marketing your page, you will want to make some starter posts on your page so that it looks active. A dead page with no posts often times will turn people away as it looks abandoned, and making 4-5 posts on it before sending it out to people usually will fill up the top part of the screen so that the page looks active and busy.
Before marketing you will want to make sure your page is perfect, or as near perfect as you can get. Keep in mind if you do these steps and miss something, you can delete your page and start over when there are no fans on it but becomes much more painful and harder to do when you get an active group of participants going.

Kendall Mesker is a Social Media Marketing Expert with 12 years of experience marketing online. He is the owner of BudgetSocialMedia.com which provides professiona, low cost marketing solutions to small businesses.