With nearly 1 billion users and Facebook extending its tentacles into more and more of Asia and South America, Facebook attracts advertisers from businesses of all types. When you examine how material is distributed across the Internet, the playing field is somewhat equal. Everyone with an Internet connection has the ability to be a content creator. On Facebook, when dealing with the sheer amount of ad space for sponsorship and the bidding structure, larger corporations will have a leg up on the smaller competition on Facebook, since resources and scale are on the larger firms’ side. To counter this, small businesses need to be innovative in how they create their profiles and craft their advertisements on Facebook.
If you operate a business, you should have a presence on Facebook. It’s as simple as that.
Top Five Tips with Fan Page Creation
1. A Call to Action
Every advertiser out there knows that in order to sell products or services, you need to provide a strong call to action. For the purposes of a Facebook page, you want to provide a graphic image that delivers this call. You need to play to the social context aspect of Facebook, and this means that your landing visitors need to “like” your content and ultimately enjoy your content enough to become a fan.
Providing a graphic image beats out text two to one.
One very effective way to get people to like a business page is to implement a Fan gate (broken-glass solution) between the Facebook ad and the actual Fan page. For example, say that you run a website selling sneakers and you create an ad with a compelling offer on a pair of Nike Airforce-1’s. To reach your Fan page and view the offer, the visitor is required to like the page. This helps to drive sales and grow your Facebook Fan page.
This technique was successfully used for one of the largest hardware chains in Scandinavia and the U.K.
When managing a Fan page, and when advertising for the page, always give the Facebook user a clear reason for liking you, whether this is superb content, a great service or an attractive offer.
Boil your selling points down to a concise, specific call to action.
2. Categories and Subcategories
Prior to Facebook’s major overhauls in recent months, your page was able to have a single, unchangeable category. Now, however, you are able to have a main category and subcategories. By going to the Basic Information tab under the Edit Page tab, you can now select multiple categories and thus introduce a broader range of information to your page, subsequently attracting more people.
This is ideal to use when you’re advertising a specific product or event – an offer that will be available for a limited time only. Instead of having people reach your main Fan page after clicking on an ad, they can now reach a page that only revolves around the offer they sought in the first place.
As a result, you will likely see an uptick in conversion rates. Think about it: When you click on a certain call-to-action, it’s usually that specific offer you want to learn more about, not general information about the brand on the homepage of that brand’s site.
3. Be Careful Using Video
This seems obvious, right? Well, it’s not so much that you simply need video, it’s more about what you have in your video — and what
not to have.
Advertisers trying to play to the social context of the site have a habit of getting a little too “cultural,” in the videos they curate. In other words, he/she aims for popular, unrelated content that confuses their audience. Your video needs to be related to your business. Yes, you can make it entertaining but don’t simply throw a music video on your site to boost views. Ensure that your video aligns with your brand’s message and ideals.
4. Restrictive Content
When you think of restrictive, you should think of exclusivity. The vast majority of your page is going to be available for public view. When it comes to some forms of content, such as new releases or product comments, you may be better off enticing visitors to sign up first in order for them to gain access.
Just like the Fan gate strategy mentioned earlier, this gives the Facebook user a reason for liking you. And when he/she does, and enters a more exclusive area of your Fan page, chances increase that he/she will be more active on the page, contributing comments, content and questions.
As in other areas of social media, when you have real people who are active on the page (i.e. advertising for you) you can become successful on Facebook.
5. Flash Features
Flash content can refer to videos, graphic images, games or a number of other items. Flash content is going to make your page more fan-friendly. You still want to keep a professional look; you just want it to be more of a Facebook-style page and not a bland, dry business-only atmosphere.
.
In terms of creating productive, popular fan pages, these five tips will help to increase your presence on Facebook without having to break the bank for advertising.
About Craig Robinson