Chances are that building a social presence for your brand will involve creating a Facebook fan page. If you haven’t already done so, it can be easy to become overwhelmed with the choices you are given as you create your fan page. The post below lays out the steps involved in setting up your fan page so you’ll know what decisions you’ll need to make ahead of time.
Creating a Facebook Fan Page
Step 1. Choose your fan page type. Whether or not you have a “brick & mortar” location will dictate your choice of page type, to a degree.
Your fan page type options include:
- Local business or Place
- Company, Organization or Institution
- Brand or Product
- Artist, Band or Public Figure
- Entertainment
- Cause or Community
Step 2. Choose a profile photo (or choose to ‘skip’ that step for now), add your fan page’s description and website URL, and choose your Facebook vanity URL.
You are then taken to your new fan page!
Facebook walks you through a tour of your new fan page, including how to invite your Facebook friends and your email contacts to “like” your page. You will need to upload a cover photo (different than a profile photo) and can add and customize your apps, too.
Because of the way Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm works, it’s important that you don’t send your Facebook friends and email contacts invites until you are ready to consistently move forward with status updates. Fans will have a high affinity starting from the moment they click the “like” button. But if you receive a bunch of new “likes” and don’t post anything to your fan page wall for a while, their affinity with your page will drop off and the chance they will see your status updates greatly decreases.
I had problems when starting my fan page as I didn’t have a personal account. I could set up the fan page but could not “Like” other pages. It was very frustrating. Had to start from the beginning. Would be an idea if Facebook made it clear when setting up a fan page what the limitations are if you don’t have a personal account.