Facebook Pages: How to Set up and Promote
Facebook pages are a great way to introduce your business to your friends and also give them a place to send their friends when they recommend you on Facebook. It is pretty easy.
When you are on your profile page, the bottom left status bar has a link to pages.
Creating a Page in Facebook
From the following page you can enter your information and create your Facebook page or an add. The layout in Facebook guides you to create an ad once your page is set up. you have to look to the button to create a page.
Create a page button can be found at the top of the page
Once you have created your page you can create ads if you want to. I have creates and run ads with mixed results . Facebook does allow you to broadly target your audience. You will need to decide the desired end result of the ad. That will guide your decision in designing and targeting your efforts. Are you going to sell, promote your blog, create buz around a new product or service? What ever the answer to that, your page should have a call to action. There should be a next step for the visitor to take and it should be toward your goal.
We currently have an ad running on Facebook and I have included some results below. Facebook visitors are notoriously low ad clickers. As you can see form the screen shot below, we have had many page impressions but very few clicks. Our Ad has had over 361,000 views with about 36 click.
Graph of Users on Facebook page
Pay per click or impression ad
You can decide whether to direct the ad clicks to go to your website or to your Facebook Page. Personally, I think the best use of your Facebook business page is to introduce what you do to your friends. If you update it regularly and ask them to visit it when you do, You will build a loyal fan base without advertising.
There is one more important thing to do. Facebook assigns an incredibly long URL to your page. There is an app that will help you shorten and make your public profile page link memorable, and you can also do the same for your business page. This ap is can be installed by clicking on the application link at the bottom left of the screen or clicking here : http://apps.facebook.com/webaddress/
These memorable addresses can be published in your email signature. A great way to gently ask your email recipients to be your friend.
So now you know you can create one, or many business pages on Facebook, create a memorable url, and promote your page to your friends in a non sales-y way.
We have a Linked in Group that discusses Social Media strategies for your business. You can join here.