If you have an online presence, whether it be a business or a personal blog, you should have a Facebook page to go along with it.

The Benefits of a Facebook Page

1. Provide Interraction With Your Exsiting Clients: Facebook pages allow you to communicate directly with your fans to let them know a little bit more about your business. It is a great customer service tool as well. Customers can give you feedback on your products or services and, in return, you have the opportunity to reply back to their comments. Your Facebook page can create credibility with your existing customers and keep them updated with your latest announcements.
2. Gain New Fans: Having a Facebook page will create a new fan base for your business. Potential customers can become a fan by “Liking” your page. They can ask you questions directly or watch your updates to see how you are different from your competitors. If you take a look at Facebook’s statistics, you’ll notice that there are about 250 million people using Facebook every day. That’s a lot of potential customers!
3. Provide Credibility For Your Business: When people see that you have a public presence, such as a Facebook page, it gives your business more credibility. They can see how you handle your business and converce with your clients. They also know that there is a public forum available to them if they have any problems with your products/services.
4. Create Traffic To Your Website: Yes, you can get traffic to your own site through your Facebook page. Your Facebook page should contain all of the information where you can be reached and your website address should be listed wherever possible. When you update your fans, include a link to your website or latest blog post, where applicable. Don’t overwhelm your fans with your link though, you don’t want to look like you are only trying to generate traffic through Facebook.

How To Setup a Facebook Page

If you don’t already have a personal Facebook account, set one up now. Some people setup Facebook accounts with their business name. However, that is not only against Facebook’s terms, I don’t recommend doing it. Not linking your business to your name may lead some visitors to think you have something to hide. If you are worried about tons of people finding your personal information, looking through your family photos, etc, don’t worry. Facebook’s privacy settings can help you control who sees what information.

To being setting up your Facebook page, follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/browser.php#!/pages/create.php. If that didn’t take you directly there, click on the Facebook logo to get to the home page. From there, look for the Link that says Ads and Pages. That will take you to the Ads page and you’ll see another link for Pages. You should now be at the Page Manager (http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage). Click on the Create Page button and you should see this:

Choose the category that best fits your business and fill in the details it asks for. Note: the brand or product category contains a Website option. Once you’ve completed that step, it will bring you to your new Facebook page. Of course, you’ll want to customize it.

Getting Started

I suggest going down the list of things Facebook has suggested to do. If you get redirected away from this page, you can find it again under the Get Started link on the left side of the page.

Upload an image. This image will be shown on the left side of your page. This is usually a logo, but can be a larger image that contains more information. The size limit here is 540px x 180px.

1. Invite your friends. Don’t hound them though. Invite them once and don’t pester them with continuous invites if they don’t join.
2. Tell your fans. If you have a contact list of people that you keep in touch with already, you can import it so that Facebook can send them a message about your new page.
3. Post status updates. Post something so that you can see what it looks like on your page’s wall. I usually go for something as simple as “Setting up my page.”
4. Promote this page on your website. You can click on the Add Like Box button to get a few html codes that you can place on your website. Adding this will help your website visitors find your facebook page. There are a few different choices in what you can have display on your site. Go through the links under the Plugins menu to see them.
   
5. Set up your mobile phone. You can update your Facebook page by email or text message through your cell phone.

Further Customization

1. Like your page: Don’t forget to like your own page. Click on the Like button at the top of the page.
2. Edit the page’s information: Click on the Edit Info link below the page title and fill in the information about your page.
3. Change your Thumbnail: Once you’ve gone through those recommended steps, head over to your page’s wall by clicking on the Wall link on the left side of the page. You should see the post that you made earlier. The picture next to the post is what will be displayed for all of your posts. This is a portion of the image you uploaded earlier. If you don’t like the way it shows on your wall, you can change it. Hover over the image and a link should appear that says Change Picture. When you click on that link, you are taken to a page similar to the one in the photo below. You can change the picture here by clicking on the Browse button. To change the thumbnail, click on the Edit Thumbnail link and drag the small image in the box around until you get it how you like it. This is a square image, so if you don’t get the results you like, try using an image that has your desired thumbnail inside a square portion of the image.
   
4. Get a Vanity Facebook URL: When you edited your page’s information, you may have noticed the line that says, “Username: Your page needs at least 25 fans to have a username.” Once you get 25 fans, I highly recommend going back into the page information area and giving yourself a vanity URL. Personally, I would try to get 25 fans as soon as I could just so that I could get the vanity name. This will take your page’s URL from: http://www.facebook.com/pages/your-business/123456789012345 to http://www.facebook.com/yourbusiness. A vanity URL is not only easy to remember, but it will give your page better rankings in the search engines.
5. Use Apps: There are tons of apps available for your Facebook page. They expand the possibilities of uses for your page. For example, I would recommend creating custom pages for your visitors. You can make a special landing page to tell the visitor what you are all about. You can also connect your blog feed directly to your page. I’m sure I’ll do some posting later on the ones I recommend, but I want to keep this specific article limited to what should be done right away to get things up and running.

Getting People To Like Your Page

Ok, so you’ve built your page up to the point where you are ready to interract. You need people to like the page for that to happen. You’ve already sent out a request for all of your friends to like the page, right? If they are really good friends, they may even suggest the page to their friends as well. However, some ways to get fans are:

1. Send requests. You can suggest the page to all of your friends. Again, don’t suggest it to the same person more than once as they may not want to join. Some people recommend asking your friends to suggest it to their friends as well, but you should use your own disgression about whether or not you want to do that.
2. Content. Like everything else online, your fans will most likely come after you have begun posting quality content. Just make sure you post often with topics related to your business.
3. Sharing. Everytime you post a link or a picture, share it on your personal profile as well. You will notice that other people may share your posts on their walls as well. If they do, you may get a few more likers out of it. You could even ask your fans to share your posts.
4. Website links. Put a link or a like box on your website.
5. Exchange. Find other pages that you like or that may be relevant to yours. Post a little hello on their page and mention your own. To mention a page, use the @ symbol and then the page name. For example, I use this when I like a page: “Hello! Liking you from @WAHM Hosting. Come by and say hi anytime!” Of course, try to make sure this is welcome before you do it. I like to scroll down the page a bit and see how they interract with their fans.
6. Link Everywhere. Put your page link anywhere you can. Of course, I recommend doing this after you have your vanity URL. Put the link in email signatures, business cards, forum posts (if allowed), etc. Basically, anywhere you can stick your link, do it.
7. Ask Us. If you need an extra fan, head on over to ours: WAHM Hosting Facebook Page and leave us a message letting us know you need a fan. We’re more than happy to help!

Of course, there are tons of ways to get people to like your page, but this should help you get started.

Additional Tips For Your Page

• Provide other content than just what you are selling. Let the visitor get to know about you as well as your product. You’ll see that the more personal you get, the more people will want to interact with you.
• Keep your fans updated. Whenever you are doing something new with your website, announce it on your facebook page. Updating often will keep fans interested, but don’t overdo it.
• Encourage fans to post on your page and participate in discussions.

Don’t forget to join our Facebook page for more tips. Feel free to ask questions on our wall: http://facebook.com/wahmhosting