I could never really get into Facebook.com as I felt it was a place to gossip; for the kind of people who like to gossip and then, kids as well. It has changed and a portion  of the people doing business with us are talking about us on Facebook. Why not make it easy for them  to spread more good news. We all know that is massive social network.

Just recently I asked a friend, to tell me how to use a FaceBook page. Before his story, let me give you some background:

A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.

I decide to start my own Facebook page. You should become a fan. But how, where and what was a real problem. That's not all. Getting people to become fans is not an easy job.

Asking my friend Garth, who runs a Free South African Accomodation Listing website (become a fan), to share his insights helped a lot. Here's Garth's email to me with my ideas included in brackets:

The facebook page turns out to be a bit of a gem. 

Even though, I also find it very confusing ;)

 The main reason (in my opinion) that Facebook pages work so well are:

• Free Advertising.
  

The page icon and catcher phrase pops up on the news feed window (at the top right under ‘Suggestions’) on ALL people who are fans of your page.   So all of the friends of my page’s fans will see something like “Bob Jones is a fan of Online Social Media Marketing” so it’s free advertising. (And the reach is huge if there are 50 fans of your page and they have 50 friends each that’s a reach of 2500 people and the suggestions pop up often so it’ s actually 2500 * ? ).  Your content and ideas are good so after time people will find it.

•    Social Proof.

By the page popping up in other’s suggestion’s windows you get social validation as most people rely on their peers on what decisions to make.

• It’s VERY interactive. 

If a page fans interacts with my page (in any way) then if anyone else interacts with that thread then they all get a message. So there are lots of triggers pulling them back.  

I expected the fans of my page to only be friends of mine (as I’m asking them directly to join my page and on my birthday I asked people to join as a present to me ;) ) however I’m finding in the space of 7 days that 50% of the people that are fans are not direct friends of mine. I hope this grows but I don’t know.

 As far as getting more people to join I am not sure.  My current plan is to drive traffic to my facebook page (i.e. what I would have aimed at my blog).  For example when I put up a nice picture on the page (the public can see it without logging into Facebook) then I tweet it. The public can view it but to interact with the page they must become a fan (a fish in your pool).   My blog (which needs a lot of love) will be to snag google search phrases.

Here are some handy widgets you can put on your blog to promote your page:

http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/?ref=pf

Some Suggestions:

• Control: Let your fans have as much control as you can give them. It’ll make it more interactive (just keep an eye on it in case anyone abuses this, which I doubt). I have given fans full control of the wall: “Just under the ‘share’ button click ‘Options > Settings > Set: Default View for Wall  = “Posts by Page and Fans” and check everything”

• Photos:  Track down a bunch of awesome pics and put them up there. These pictures (I’m not 100% sure about this) I think pop up on the fan’s wall when you post them. So if I have 100 fans and put up an inspiring or funny picture then it’ll get pushed onto 100 people’s news feeds.  

• Make it causal.  I’m not sure what your tone will be but I’d say do whatever feels comfortable.  It is my belief that your intent and persona come out in whatever medium you use (even carving into stone) so trying to stifle that gives mixed messages.

• Trickle Feed your pics. This works so well!  If you upload 10 pictures then facebook previews 3 of them on the wall and on everyone else’s news feeds.  So instead of uploading 10 pictures to an album I upload 3 at a time over a timespan of a week or so (so as not to bombard too many pics) AND you now get 3 times the coverage. I realised this from two of my friends who went to Mexico and uploaded 60 photos into their album and then moaned cause no one went through them.

• Put a call to action everywhere (but I try not to make it obvious, which is tricky). My feeling of how the web works is you give 80% away for free and that reserves you the right to put a call to action. If I post a pic of Cape Town I have a link to the cape town venues on my site underneath

• Create a User Name for your page: Look at my page name:   http://www.facebook.com/SearchAccommodationSouthAfrica

I changed it. Here’s how to do it:

o   Go here: http://www.facebook.com/username/

o   Click “Set a username for your Pages”   (it’s not that obvious but it’s there)