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Why your business needs a Facebook fan page
by Salim Benhouhou IT Support Love it or hate it, Facebook has become one of the single most important websites on the Internet today. Fact. It has seen immense success (it is currently the 2nd most visited site on the web) and is used by a massive percentage of the the online population. I have a Facebook account and chances are, you have a Facebook account too. If you don’t have a Facebook account, you may have the muddy idea that it’s pretty much for teens and young adults to keep in touch, to discuss Friday night and tag each other in embarrassing pictures. Okay, true, it is for this but if you are promoting a business or organization, Facebook is much, MUCH more than this.Facebook has become an almost universal social network and it serves both personal and business needs and can do wonders for the promotion and marketing of your business. At the end of the day, it has become an integral ingredient to your business’ web presence and will help you to capture an audience that you might not otherwise be able to capture or promote your business to. This means more custom... This means more money...
We are not talking about your average Facebook account here, though. What I will be showing you today is how to to create a Facebook fan page for your business or venture to improve the online reputation of your website and business and promote your business to an immense amount of people.
You can get started by checking out my blog's very own Facebook fan page. It can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/UrbanGT/173133222747572
You may be thinking ... “Fan Page? It’s a normal Facebook page...”. It isn’t. There are critical differences... Facebook fan pages are indexed (they are crawled by search engine spiders like the noble Googlebot) and are also completely available to the online public regardless of whether or not they have a Facebook account. You, as well as every person on Facebook, can connect with these Pages by becoming a fan and then receive their updates in your News Feed and interact with them. You cannot do this with the “regular” Facebook pages.
It’s really easy to get started...
1) Visit http://www.facebook.com . On the home page, do not enter any details yet. Doing so will just create you a regular Facebook account. Look beneath the sign-up details and you will see a link (it’s pretty small and easy to miss) that says: “Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business.” Click on this and add all the relevant details until your account has been created.
2) Spice up your fan page - Making your fan page interactive and graphically appealing are very important ways to attract new fans...
2a) Making it interactive can easily be done with Facebook’s Application Directory ( http://www.facebook.com/apps/ ) that has very many applications that can be added to your page with just a few clicks. If you have the resources (web developer/designer), or have some experience yourself, it’s not too hard to develop a Facebook application. The advantage of this is that you can put your brand on the application and personalize it the way you want. I’ve seen people develop a facebook application in just a few days. Putting interactive applications on your page gives users a reason to not just become fans, but to continually visit and interact on your page.
2b) It’s important to make it look attractive and give it some personality along with making your fan page interactive. Facebook allows you to upload logos or photos for your fan page, but that just isn’t enough. You should give your fan page some real flare. Put a ***** graphic linking to your website or a flashy banner along the side bar that promotes a contest. Doing something of this type offers fans and potential fans a reason to not only visit your fan page often, but to also visit your company’s website or blog. A great design can do this, I promise. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited a website, just to leave immediately because there was little effort put into the design of the site.
You should check out these very good looking Facebook fan pages for an idea at what you should be aiming for. You should note, though, that these pages have had a lot of money thrown at them.
Starbucks : http://www.facebook.com/Starbucks
Red Bull : http://www.facebook.com/redbull
The Twilight Saga : http://www.facebook.com/twilight
Happily though, templates for Facebook fan pages are available to you for free but you’ll have to do a little searching for them. You can find a few at the URL below as a nice place to start.
http://www.facebookpagetemplates.com/
3)Start inviting friends. Facebook fan pages have the ability to do bulk invites, so invite all your friends in just one go. Don’t stop here though. Add everybody! As many people as you can think to add and just keep adding them. The more people you add the more prospective customers you’ll have access to. I’ll tell you why...
Now that you have your Facebook fan page, it works a like this. Anything you post on your website and reference in a link on your Facebook fan page will appear in the Facebook news feed of your fans. They may like what you have to say ... They may click the “Like” button on your post. They may also comment on your post.
This places a link to your post on their wall and if they comment it will appear in the News Feed of their friends. Their friends may equally like what you have to say and they may also click that “Like” button or indeed comment. This is link building at its very easiest and you’re letting your fans do it for you, wherever you are 24/7. It’s like a snowball effect. If you have 1,000 fans and each fan has 200 (unique) friends then you potentially have access to 200,000 people.
The more links that you get as your fans share your link with their friends will improve the SEO of your website. Always, always remember: The more quality links coming into your website from outside, the better. You will get a higher ranking in Google and as well as more knowledge about your particular brand or service in your Facebook fans sharing your link.
If you are promoting a business, you should definitely have a go at creating a Facebook fan page. It won’t cost anything and you can reap the benefits for yourself and your business. Always be building up your fan page, always keeping it fresh and new, so that your fans always have a reason to come back to it, to befriend it and keep telling their friends about it.
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About Salim Benhouhou 
IT Support
706 connections, 20 recommendations, 2,250 honor points.Joined APSense since, August 10th, 2009, From bousaada, Algeria.
Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.
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Sergio Felix
 IT ProWhile I don't heart Facebook I have to agree that we can't just ignore its importance and role playing in the internet marketing industry and yes, while almost everyone has a FB account, not many have a separate account from his personal one. There's a lot of doubts regarding how to do things as FB keeps changing their policies more often than we have to change a baby diapers so being updated I think it's somewhat to think about. Thanks for the links, will check them out right now. Jul 13th 2011 13:11 |
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AFM S.
 Website DesignerReally good information. It helps me to know more about Fanpages. Thsnks Jul 13th 2011 15:30 |
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Raunaq Rayait
Search MarketerFantastic article,Yes facebook is the second most visited site on the web and we have to take advantage of that.As social networks are the best platform to promote your site and the best thing i like while promoting website into these sites is that they gives you a feel of skilled marketing. Jul 14th 2011 00:49 |
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Don Dousharm
 Entrepreneur, PublisherHi salim, I have been with Facebook since the beginning and never knew that you could create your business profile from the logon screen. The one thing I didn't see in your article is how Facebook has phased out FBML in favor of IFrame. This could be another article and an implication as to the possibilities of the future. I especially enjoy the fact that you can now put your whole blog on Business Pages. This alone takes away clicking on outside links and gives you unlimited potential. I am working on something like that now myself. Very good article and informative. Thank You! Jul 14th 2011 08:05 |
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Ginny Williams
Affiliate and Network MarketingAwesome info here! I love it and how you explain every step thoroughly! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us! BTW, your link for your Fanpage isn't working right, you might want to check it. Jul 14th 2011 08:40 |
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C C Howard
Small Business OwnerYour Article Rocks! Thanks you for this info. I have enjoy reading your article. Jul 18th 2011 18:23 |
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Kelsey Baker
 JournalistHi Salim, Thanks for this awesome Facebook fan page guide Aug 7th 2011 09:29 |
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Great information
Jul 13th 2011 04:44