Creating a Facebook fan page for your business
Published Dec. 14, 2010Creating a Facebook fan page for your business is a relatively simple task.
As a business owner, you simply cannot ignore Facebook. The social networking site, with its 500 million plus members, has enormous potential to drive visitors -- and hopefully new customers -- to your business.
Chances are, you already have a personal Facebook account, so the process of actually creating a business page will be familiar.
To get started, go to the Facebook home page and find the small link, "Create a page for a celebrity, band or business" below the signup form. The link will be in the lower right hand corner.
Make sure you are not logged into your personal account.
I recommend using Internet Explorer version 7 or higher for anything Facebook-related. The Facebook site is optimized for Internet Explorer.
Next, you will see a page titled "Create a Page" with two options, create a community page and create an official page. Select the "official page" option and begin filling in the form.
Select the option "create a page for a local business" (or select from the drop down list if you want something different) and then type in the name of the business. Facebook gives the following examples, "Summer Sky Cafe, Springfield Jazz Trio". Remember, you want to type in the full name of the business because it will be used as part of the Facebook url for your page. More on Facebook urls later. It will also appear at the top of your business page as well as in the Title meta tag, which the search engines will index.
Now click the checkbox next to "I'm the official representative of this person, business, band or product and have permission to create this Page", then click the blue "Create page" button.
You will now need to create a Facebook personal account. It is true that you can link your existing personal account to the new business page, but you have to decide whether you want your personal facebook page -- and all the details on it -- to be visible to your business customers.
(NOTE: I will post a follow-up article discussing this in more detail, specifically creating "admin" access for Facebook personal accounts. This is an easy way to separate your Facebook personal account from your business account, while being able to use only one account, your personal one, to manage both pages. This way you don't have separate logins.)
I don't recommend using your personal account to create the business page. I recommend creating a blank personal account, which can be done very easily and tied to a throwaway email address.
I believe in keeping your professional and personal lives separate.
Following this guideline, you now need to select "I do not have a Facebook account".
You are presented with another form to fill in, the first field being an email address. You need to use a valid email address because Facebook will test whether you are human or not. They will send a "validation" link to the email you provide, and the only way to validate and make the business page "live" is to click the link they send you.
If you have an email address for your business, use it here. If not, create a Hotmail email account. I will be writing a separate article on the subject of throwaway email accounts and Hotmail versus Gmail. Yes, Gmail is a far superior product to Hotmail, but I won't get into that discussion in this article.
At any rate, continue with the Hotmail account creation. I suggest doing this on a new browser tab or having this setup before registering your business page.
Once finished, enter the Hotmail email address in the form, create a password for the Facebook account, select your date of birth, enter in the "CAPTCHA" security word(s) and agree again to the terms and conditions of use.
Click the "Signup Now" button and wait for Facebook to email you. They will send a registration link to your Hotmail account (or whatever email account you associated with the new Facebook page), which you simply click on. It is a good idea to close the original Facebook tab since this email link will open up a new tab.
You are essentially finished with creating the Facebook page. You will now be able to fill in a lot of information about the business including uploading your logo.
You can also start posting things to the "Wall", which essentially is how you inform customers of events, sales, etc.
You are NOT going to have a lot of fans at first. Don't be surprised if it takes a few months to get any fans at all.
One way to start getting them is to place the Facebook logo somewhere prominently on your site along with the words "Become a fan of....". Make sure this logo links directly to your facebook business page.
The link to your business page will look something like: facebook.com/pages/your-business-name/123124342355
It is a longish url, but this is only temporary.
Once you have 25 fans, you can request to change the url to something shorter and much easier to advertise. Example: facebook.com/your-business. This shorter url has huge advantages.
Increasing your fan base is the subject of a separate article. One thing to keep in mind: it's a good idea to give customers a reason to be fans of your page. If you are a local business, offer "fan-only" exclusive coupons, deals, event notices, etc. Not only will they continue to come back to your page, but they will recommend you to their friends, which will increase your audience.
In summary, it isn't difficult to create a fan page for your business. The hard part is getting people to "fan" your page. However, if done right, a business page can have a dramatic impact on your sales.