With more than 300 million active Facebook users, and more than 10 million users becoming fans of Pages each day, it’s difficult to think of a good reason for not creating a Facebook Page for your cultural enterprise, but where to start?
Let’s check out some bloggers’ tips for creating effective Facebook Pages:
In her post, 10 Tips for an Effective Nonprofit or Do-Good Facebook Fan Page on BlogHer, Beth Kanter recommends thinking about your Facebook Page Name, and custom URL before setting your Page up, because you can’t change it. For example, Numi Tea’s Page name is “Numi Tea,” and its URL is http://www.facebook.com/numitea. She also recommends using badges and Fan Box Widgets to promote your Page on your website, or blog.
In her post, 10 Facebook Fan Page Tips for Creative Entrepreneurs, Yamile Yemoonyah suggests using the Networked Blogs application, and the Twitter for Pages application to pull your blog feed and Twitter feed into your Facebook Page news feed. You can also use Facebook’s Twitter application and Facebook’s Notes application to pull in your Twitter and blog feed.
She also recommends placing a Live Stream Box on your Page so that your users can comment while watching streaming video together. For example, a band could stream video from their performance to Facebook, and fans who can’t be at the event can watch and comment, like the Foo Fighters did.
In his post, 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence on Mashable, Steve Coulson suggests creating a publishing schedule for your Facebook Page to help you create the right balance of content (not too much, not too little), and to help you set aside time for responding to comments. He also notes that creating a calendar makes tracking your impact easier when you look at your stats on your Page Insights.
Coulson writes, “By recording all activity on a schedule, it’s easier to map it against exported stats data from your Page’s Insights. This can show you Total Interactions around different content types to gauge which gets the most traction/conversation, and track Removed Fans against certain update types.”
Finally, in his post, 5 Tips for Marketing on Facebook’s New Pages on Fast Company, Kyle Austin suggests watching how big companies like Coca Cola and Jet Blue use their Pages. “They’ll give you a good idea where you should take your page and what you should be doing to grow its following,” he says. I’d add Virgin America to that list as well.
I hope you’ll click through to all of the blog posts above and read the rest of their advice. Please share your own tips in the comments as well. What cultural entrepreneurs have you seen who have effective Facebook Pages?