I spend a lot of time on Facebook. A lot. Fortunately for me, it’s part of my job. And between browsing pictures of puppies, kids, and Ryan Gosling, I spend much of my time looking at fan pages for businesses of all types. There are many of them out there. So many, in fact, that it has become harder than ever to rise above the clutter and reach potential customers. You, on the other hand, have better things to do while running your business than scouring the world’s largest social network for small business marketing ideas. Fear not, though, I’ve done the legwork for you and put together a list of some of the best fan pages out there and the marketing lessons you can steal (ahem, borrow) from them.

Break the Mold

One big limitation of Facebook, or really any social network, is that the look and feel of your profile is left to the whims of the network’s creators. Instead of viewing this as a constraint, though, think of it as a creative challenge. Bonobos does an excellent job of this on their Facebook fan page. By doing a few simple things within the Facebook profile structure, Bonobos lets their branding truly shine:

  • Picture Pane: The five pictures that appear across the top of your fan page default to the images you most recently uploaded to Facebook. If you don’t pay attention to what these pictures are, it’s easy for the picture pane to start looking like a jumbled mess. Fortunately, by just clicking the “x” on any picture in the picture pane you can remove pictures that you don’t want there. Don’t worry, you’re not deleting the pictures altogether, just removing them from the pane. With this in mind, create a new album on Facebook that has pictures you specifically want to show in the picture pane. Bonobos has a fun series of images that will look good no matter what order they are displayed.
  • Profile Picture: While Facebook limits profile pictures for brands to 180 pixels wide, you can use an image that is up to 540 pixels high. Use this to your advantage and don’t just stick with your company logo. Have some fun and use the space to communicate something about your brand. The Bonobos profile picture does a great job of this by incorporating their square logo (important for the preview that is shown on comments) with an image that works very nicely with their picture pane montage.
  • Wall Content: There is nothing less appealing than a wall full of text-only status updates. Pictures and videos are proven to spur more engagement on Facebook, not to mention the fact that they can be a huge help in improving your EdgeRank and ensuring your posts are actually seen by your fans. In this example, Bonobos repurposes content from their catalog to get people talking.

Sidenote: Facebook is due to slowly roll out the new timeline look for fan pages starting at the end of the month. While this transition will likely be a slow one, it’s a good idea to start thinking about your updated visual branding strategy now. No one will know for sure what the changes will look like until Facebook lets the cat fully out of the bag, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start speculating!

Build a Killer Branded Welcome Tab

Facebook enables brand pages to specify a default landing tab for all new visitors to your page. For vistors that aren’t already familiar with your company, this is your chance to put your best foot forward. A custom welcome tab can say more about your brand than your Facebook wall ever will. How To Market Your Horse Business, a company that, well, helps you market your horse business, pulls out all the stops:

  • Strong CTA: It’s important to make sure any welcome tab you set up encourages your visitors to like your page. Here, How To Market Your Horse Business puts that call to action right at the top with a bold green arrow drawing your eyes to the like button.
  • Video: As mentioned above, using video is a great way to engage your fans. Here, a message from the company’s owner is a nice way to add some personality to the page.
  • Other Social Properties: Some of your customers may find you on Facebook, but want to interact with you on other networks too. Make it easy for them and link to all the social networks that you are active on as well as your website.
  • Social Sharing: By including like and share buttons on the welcome tab you enable your fans to spread the word about your company on your behalf. Again, don’t limit this to Facebook. Some people will prefer to share on other networks so why stop them?
  • Email Opt-In Form: Just because it’s social media doesn’t mean you have to keep it there. In fact, email still remains the ultimate touch point for messaging your customers. Collect email addresses from your Facebook fans and watch your list grow!

Don’t Just Ask, Compel

Whether in a TV commercial, email signature, or anywhere else, have you ever seen a company ask you to like them on Facebook and thought to yourself, “yeah, I get it, you’re on Facebook, do you want a prize?” Maybe that’s just me. Anyhow, as we’ve already established, there is a ton of noise on Facebook competing for customers’ attention. People no longer like pages willy nilly. You have to give them a good reason. Minted uses their welcome tab for just this:

In this case, Minted is incentivizing likes with a discount. Once you click the like button the tab changes to display a promo code for your next purchase. Minted is doing three very specific things here.

  1. The incentive they are offering is centered around their actual product. If you offer, say, a chance to win an iPad in exchange for a like, you’re sure to see a huge spike in fan growth. Who doesn’t want an iPad? The problem is that you want your new Facebook fans to really be potential customers, not just Facebook junkies looking for an iPad fix. On the contrary, give away some of your product as an incentive and you’ll be identifying genuine leads.
  2. The promo code, just like any other sale you run, spurs incremental purchases. You know, revenue. What’s not to love about that?
  3. By using a promo code specific to your welcome tab you can begin to tie back individual transactions to your Facebook efforts and (gasp) start to measure return on investment.

Create a Recurring Feature

One of the biggest challenges for marketers using Facebook is that very few of your fans ever return to your page itself. Your customers may occasionally see your updates in their newsfeeds, but without actually visiting your fan page they could be missing out on the bulk of your messaging. Help combat this by giving them a reason to keep on visiting. Best Friends Animal Society does this with their Pet of the Week feature:

This example works for many reasons. Best Friends Animal Society is appealing to their supporters’ interests by featuring animals that the organization has rescued. While not every business will have as furry or cute of a feature, all companies have something that interests their customers. Maybe you have new projects you can highlight or employees doing interesting things outside of the workplace. Of course, one of the best ways to keep your fans coming back is to feature them. Pick a fan of the week or do a customer profile in the form of a case study. Not only will you be giving recognition, but you’ll also be providing potential new customers with actionable use cases for your product or service.

Have you tried any of these Facebook techniques for your business? Are there any other fan pages out there that you love? Let us know in the comments!

© 2012 – 2018, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.

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