Creating & Promoting a Remarkable Facebook Fan Page
Today I’ll be focusing on the elements that can help make your Facebook Fan Page for your office/business/organization remarkable and tips on how to promote it.
Facebook Fan Pages used in the most effective way are gateways; one-stop-shops. What do I mean by that? Think of your fan page as the exterior of a house. You want it to look as welcoming as possible; lawn trimmed, a little gnome here and there, a welcome mat, you know what I mean. It sets the stage for people to enter the home, connect, and go deeper. You don’t want to target your Facebook Fan Page to be a destination, but an open door to the separate rooms in your house. Your facebook fan page should be set to point your target audience in the right direction of what they’re looking for and help them connect on a deeper level (whether that means groups, link to your website, social media, etc.).
Before anything is started marketers usual ask the question, “Who’s our target?” I’m going to be honest with you. It kind of matters, but it doesn’t matter. Target everyone, not anyone. The better question organizations can ask is, “Who are we and how do we want to represent ourselves to everyone?”
Look at these numbers:
1. Facebook Demographic Statistics (allfacebook.com)
2. istrageylabs reports: 2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report: 276% Growth in 35-54 Year Old Users
With these numbers and your Facebook Fan Page being a one-stop-shop gateway do you REALLY want to ignore all these users? It’s their choice if they want to enter and go deeper. Let them decide.
What does this mean for the Facebook Fan Page?
The picture you select is more important than you think. It represents your brand to everyone. Do you want to go with a logo, a more organic photograph, simple text? It will be different for everyone. I chose to go with the organic photo route for our office because I think a logo looks too rigid and doesn’t send the right message when representing a volunteer office. Here’s the photo I went with:
I found a picture that I felt could represent service, but not show faces or specific action. Our target is everyone, not anyone. If we focus on a picture of someone serving, we brand what a volunteer looks like, what volunteers are doing, and possibly unintentionally alienate people. Focus on everyone, not anyone.
Important Notes for a Remarkable Fan Page
- Choose your title wisely. It’s what will be a “badge” on profiles and also serve as your keywords for search engine optimization.
- Don’t launch your fan page bare. Facebook has a great feature where you can work on your fan page before you publish it. Use that to your advantage and have everything you can set before you start to promote it.
- Watch clutter. Know your brand and what’s necessary and not necessary. Games may enhance user experiences for some, but not for others.
- Make it easy for others to connect, whether through wall discussion, forward to blogs, pictures, etc. Make it easy to connect and find what they want. It will help convert fans as well as give people a reason to visit your fan page
- Open communication is key. Watch, listen, discuss, and help where you can. People take notice when organizations take time to add to discussions and help. Send periodical updates through the update feature, but don’t be spam.
- Have the mentality that your page is OUR page, not your page or my page.
Applications I Use & Recommend
- RSS-Connect - Pull your RSS Feeds directly into your page
- Static FBML – With basic HTML knowledge you can create custom boxes to cater to your needs. I used them to create a box to direct users to our social media sites.
- YouTube Box – Integrate YouTube videos from your account (*can add to clutter)
- Other then that I use the default applications: photos, videos, etc. I don’t use Notes due to RSS-Connect
Notes on Promotion
While you can’t send mass invites for Facebook Fan Pages to the people you’re not Facebook friends with (use suggestion feature for that), fan pages are easy to build a buzz around. How can you get your word out?
- Tell people your fan page exists. We have an e-mail distribution list we notified & are including some links in our press releases.
- Let others evangelize you. When people become fans it shows on the profile as well as their mini-feed. Post photos/videos of your community. As pictures become tagged (and show up in their profiles) your community will become infused with your fan page. Even just ask people to help out. Some people will do it for free, others may require incentives.
- Be creative. During National Volunteer Week there will be a campaign asking people to donate their status in support of volunteering & become a fan of our page. If you’re a bar run a promotion that cover is free on a certain night if they’re a fan of your page. Give away free things. The possibilities are endless! Use the analytics with the fan pages and see what’s worked for you.
- Transfer members from your group and notify them. Starting a fan page and already have a group? No problem! Collegewebeditor.com outlines some great instructions. *Note: Facebook has discontinued transferring groups to pages.
I hope these ideas help you get started on your road to creating a remarkable fan page. Comment up your thoughts or if you think anything else needs to be added!
Howard, this is great stuff! The connect box is a great feature to have and something all pages should be utilizing. “It sets the stage for people to enter the home, connect, and go deeper,” as you so eloquently put it.
And point three under promotion is a great idea! What a great way to not only get the word out, but also a way for them to feel like they are excited about helping out. And who doesn’t enjoy volunteering?
What can you say to those people who may say that they don’t know ANYTHING about HTML? There may be some departments like the one you are working for who may not have anyone (especially at smaller schools) that have any experience with coding. Are there any types of resources out there for them to be able to utilize?
I’m thinking that I need Howard to work his magic on a CSF fan page!!
Howard, I’m impressed at the amount of insight and knowledge you’re bringing to the table at your age. You’ve really opened up many doors for what we could be doing with our Facebook strategy (small business). We’re taking notes and look forward to more of your posts.
Great blog! My focus is on using Facebook/ Web2.0 in an academic advising setting. I discuss a lot of it on my blog as well. Yeah for Millennials entering the Higher Education profession!
Love it! Been trying to direct people to my Real Estate Fan Page, but not getting far. I’m going to implement many of these suggestions. I’ll let you know how it goes.
This is great Howard! I love the ideas that are going to be happening with the Volunteer Center! And especially this part of your blog:
“I found a picture that I felt could represent service, but not show faces or specific action. Our target is everyone, not anyone. If we focus on a picture of someone serving, we brand what a volunteer looks like, what volunteers are doing, and possibly unintentionally alienate people. Focus on everyone, not anyone.”
Having fan pages be more inclusive of all types of people will encourage community. Your stereotypical “volunteer” photo won’t intimidate that individual that hasn’t volunteered before.
I second Jeremy’s comment. I think this blog has some great input. But for those of us non-html savvy folks, what kinds of “starter” tools are out there to teach us how to make pretty colors on our pages and customize fun designs/pictures into our background? [among other things, haha]
This is fun!
liZ
@Jeremy – The HTML coding was a concern when writing this post. I wanted to include some kind of PDF for download to help, but ended up thinking that there were much better articles that could explain it a lot better than I could. A great HTML cheat sheet is here: http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/download/html-cheat-sheet-v1.png. For our box I just linked the image and put a link.
@gretchen – Hopefully I’ll be able to do that as well!
@James – I appreciate your words very much. Let me know how I can be of more help in the future! Maybe I can write some posts off of it?
@Jillian – Woot! Don’t know where I will be after I graduate, but definitely really enjoying working with electronic marketing and social media!
@Troy – That’s awesome! Please do send me an e-mail and update me on how it goes and what you came up with: howard(at)howardkang(dot)com
@Liz – It sounds like what you’re talking about (in regards to your page) is CSS based. I don’t have much experience there, but something I constantly refer to is the http://www.lesliefranke.com/files/reference/csscheatsheet.html. I haven’t delved too deeply into the coding portion so I wouldn’t be able to help too much with that. There are other great design blogs that maybe could help you out.
Howard, thanks for the tips, I really appreciate it! I could not get RSS Connect to work on my page and continued to receive errors, so settled for Notes instead to pull in blog posts to the page. I did get the YouTube Box to work on my page, so I’m happy about that. The Static FBML app is a little over my head, but I may try to tackle that when I have more time. Keep up the good work with your blog!
@Kathy – No problem! Sometimes the RSS applications are difficult with errors, I’ll try to look into that for you. Have you checked out the HTML cheat sheet I linked?
Howard – this is great information!! I would really love to add the “connect with us box,” to our page, but do not know html. Is this something you could help me with?
Quick question : I have a fan page but I also have my personal fb profile. When I share photos with people from my fan page, it goes to them as I am sending the photos from my personal page with my profile picture. I do not want this to take place, I want it to appear as it is coming from my fan page with the company pciture that I have set up. Help!
@Stephanie tried to send you an e-mail, but received no reply. Hope the info in the e-mail helped out!
I wonder how you are continually reaching out to Facebook fan members and what the end goal of your campaign is: brand awareness? driving traffic to website? building community?
I’d be very interested in how your goals for your Facebook fan page were determined and what kind of milestones you set for reaching those goals.
Great post.
@Jon – Thanks for the feedback! Sent you an e-mail, but will also post here just in case.
First, I think that Fan Pages have different goals for every organization. The good thing though, is that it can do all that you listed. An important thing to remember is that the technology it’s an enabler, but not the force, so you need to read your potential target first. If your main objective is building community? Provide content that people can engage with. If you want to drive traffic, make sure there are appropriate calls to action. It’s important to take a look at the insights for fan pages to see your demographic and get an understanding of what interesting content may be for the fans as well. For example, if most fan are between the ages of 18 – 24 (college students) posting irrelevant information about say – How to talk to your children about X, may not be the best content. Facebook pages can be used to listen, interact, inform, etc. so it all depends on the people. I created my offices strategy by first assessing the people I was trying to reach, then laid out objectives based on their needs.
It’s awesome that you are considering your goals first though! In my opinion, without a solid goal strategies will fail.
Very useful information: How do you keep your fan page off your personal page? How do I get twitter ot go to my fan page not my personal page??
Thanks for the tips, Howard. I’m having similar issues with MyFlickr that Stephanie appears to have had with her photos. I’m trying to connect MyFlickr to my office’s fan page, not my personal page. So far, anytime I update MyFlickr, the results are posted to my page. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. FB: http://www.facebook.com/uciaa
Hi Howard,
I hope you can help =) At one point I was able to share from my website and it would post to my fb fan page. But now it post to my fb personal page! What should I do so that it will post only to my fb fan page?
Thanks!
Hi,
I have a fan page set up on the same account as my personal page. I am wanting to share thing as my fan page and not me personally – is that possible? I can see above that someone else had the same issue and you emailed them a response so i would be grateful if you could let me know too!
Thanks
Philli
I created a fan page for a friend, I am the admin, and I had him be an admin also. I can’t figure out how to blast info to all of his fans. Can you help?
At the moment the visits from Facebook are around the 60% New Visitor level. I only made the change a few days ago that forces them to visit the site to read the full article but I’ll know more over time.
I’d expect there will be some readers that subscribe via multiple methods but I expect the majority will use their preferred reading method as it’s pretty pointless subscribing to the same content in different clients.
I also promote some of my affiliate links on Facebook by making Facebook fan pages and also by advertising on Facebook.`,-