Facebook Fan Pages have been around for some time now. Yet, it is only recently that you could personalise the URL’s for both your Personal Profile and Business Fan pages. Facebook has also added several new features to these pages, which bring additional benefits for business. We would like to share with you these benefits, along with simple instructions to create your own fan page.

SITE TRAFFIC

Consider the following;

Facebook is currently ranked the #1 Social Network in the US and the 4th most visited site on The Internet by Alexa, with over 70 million unique visitors in May 2009 (source comScore).  With this in mind it is clear that there is more likely-hood of people visiting and revisiting your site via your fan page updates than directly. As with email, people log in to Facebook at various times during the day, to stay up-to-date with what is happening in “their world” – others have it open all day.

Facebook allows users to Comment, Like & Share any update, link, photo, video etc. This has the opportunity to turn viral depending on the popularity or interest in the subject. To take this further you can send your updates over to twitter via the RSS feed using Twitterfeed syndicating your information to another top 20 ranked website.

Facebook have also just added a great new widget for your fan page which you can add to your website or blog. It allows visitors to become a fan, directly from your site. You can also customise the information you wish to share on the widget eg, your updates and/or your fans, or simply the “Become a Fan” button. This is valuable as it gives visitors another way of returning indirectly to your website. You can access the widget via the link under your logo image on the top left of your fan page.

BRANDING

• Personalising or branding your Facebook URLs aka “Vanity URLs”.  Easy to remember and simple to share;

Facebook.com/yourname or businessname

v

Facebook.com/?ref=tn/profile.php?id=xxxxxxx

• Currently you must have 100 fans before you can create a vanity URL – decreasing the chance of someone ’squatting’ on your brand.
  
• If you do not have a website, your Facebook fan page could be used as an alternative to a website or blog (get a domain name from GoDaddy and re-point to your fan page, for a more professional feel). If you do have a website or blog your fan page could be a great extension to it.
• The process of becoming a fan is simplified – NO friend request to be ‘accepted’ or to view your page. Just the decision to become a fan and at the click of a mouse the avenue of communication is open to you both.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR FAN BASE

As we will always will state, it is so important with social media to build strong relationships with your fan base/customers – So start the communication and let them know your;

• Latest News/Events & Product Launches
• Exclusive Offers for your Facebook Fans
• Share your latest blog posts via RSS
• Market research – get feedback directly from your customers and stay on the pulse of what they want.

Keep the communication regular and make sure you are conversational and not just a one way street.

ANALYTICS

To quote directly from Facebook;

Facebook allows you to engage with your fans in more ways than ever before – and Insights now allows you to dive into the context of those interactions with deep analytics.

We now show you how users are interacting with your page, broken down by Wall posts, likes and comments. Your Post Quality shows you how engaging your posts are to your fans, and your star rating compares your Post Quality to other pages of similar size.

Your Fans Over Time graph now lets you track when users decide to unsubscribe from your posts in their News Feed. And we now provide statistics on where your fan base is located and which languages they speak.