Facebook Page Marketing 101

I was recently developing a Facebook strategy for one of my new clients and figured it would be a great topic for this week’s post. Anybody can create a business or fan page for Facebook. What you do with the page is an entirely different story.

Where do you begin? You need to start off by asking three questions. What are your goals for the Facebook page? What is your strategy for achieving your goals? What tactics are you going to implement?

I’m going to use a fictional company (Acme Rockets) as my example. Acme Rockets wants to use its Facebook page to drive new people to www.acmerockets.com to purchase their rockets. They also want to use their page as a way to increase brand awareness.

The first things we need to look at are the goals.

• To triple their fan base in 12 months.
• To increase total new fans a month by 10% per month over the next 4 months.
• To increase interactions a month by 20% per month for 4 consecutive months.
• To increase likes per month by 20% per month for 4 consecutive months.

Now that we have goals set the next thing we need to do is develop a winning strategy.

• Increasing your interaction with fans. The interactions are going to show on your fan’s feeds. This is free exposure to people who do not know you. The more interactions you have on your page the more real-estate you own on your fan’s pages. I know this sounds simple but figuring out the types of interactions that will help you reach your goals is not so simple.

The goals are set and so is the strategy. The final step is the tactics we’re going to use.

• Make two to three posts a day.
• Link to articles relating to rockets.
• Interact with fans that make posts on your wall.
• Post pictures of rockets on your wall.
• Create a Coolest Rocket Photo contest. For example, to enter the contest you have to be a fan. The photo has to be tagged by you. The more comments your friends make the better chance you have at winning the contest.
• Create a custom FBML page promoting “becoming a fan”.
• Create a custom FBML page selling your latest rockets. Jay Berkowitz recently coined this type of selling as s-commerce and more and more companies are doing this through Facebook.

Facebook Insights is going to be your gift from God when it comes to figuring out what tactics work and do not work. It’s a great tool to measure user exposure, actions, and behavior relating to your Social Ads and Facebook Page. By understanding activity and performance, fans and ad respondents, and trends and comparisons, you are better equipped to improve your business on Facebook and elsewhere. For example, your fans might like certain types of photos better than others. We want to know which photos the fans liked and commented on the most - Insights will show you this. The same principles can be applied to articles as well.

So remember, you aren’t guaranteed results just because you created a Facebook page. You have to map out an effective plan that includes goals, strategy, and tactics. And remember to use Facebook Insights; the feedback it provides will help you develop better tactics to reach your Facebook page’s goals.