Have you ever wanted to know how to create your own URL on Facebook? Or how to make one of those welcome tabs? What about is it possible to send a message to all of your page’s fans at once? This is the blog to answer the questions for you, and more !
Facebook is swiftly becoming one of the best ways to advertise your business online- and at no charge.
It offers businesses the chance to put their product online and to interact with their customers at the click of a button! Because of this, as a business you can talk directly to customers from anywhere in the world about your product or service.
Facebook allows you to have a picture with your logo as the default picture of your page, along with albums which can be full of pictures of your product range.
Facebook offers businesses the opportunity to create a ‘page’ or ‘group’. For a business, a page is recommended over a group; it is unlinked from your own profile. This means that if you create a group then you as an individual are seen on the groups Facebook site. When you create a page, people on Facebook do not know who the person behind the site is, keeping yourself separated from the page, but in control of it.
Thanks to a Facebook Application named FBML, you are able to create custom ‘tabs’ onto your Facebook page. These tabs are differentiated from the wall page that Facebook users see when they log onto your businesses page. When you take advantage of the Facebook FBML Application and create different tabs, you can create a ‘welcome’ tab and make this your pages default tab. This means that when somebody clicks onto your Facebook page they go to a ‘Welcome’ page instead of your wall. This is similar to a home page on a website. The link for FBML can be found here. FBML can be used to create more then one tab; a business can create tabs including tabs for competitions and products. You can have the tabs you create feature on the wall page if you wish. To do this is simple, all you need to do is click on your pages ‘boxes’ tab and find the box you want to appear on your wall. Click the ‘x’ that is on the top-right of the box and select ‘move to wall’. From there, you are able to move the box into the position you’d like it to be on the wall page. This is a very good way to promote polls on your page.
Another feature that Facebook has is that you can personalise the url to your page. You can only do this once your Facebook group has over 25 fans. i.e. people who have liked your businesses page. It makes it simple for you to promote your businesses page when you are able to send a direct link to it (www.facebook.com/businessname). If somebody has taken the url you are after and you have it registered, you are able to request from Facebook to give you that url as your businesses is registered / trading under it.
If you are having specials on any products in your business, you can promote these on your businesses wall. This is beneficial to your business as, by promoting the product or service on your wall, all of the people who like your page will see it. For example, if you have 1000 fans of your page, and choose to promote a special on your product, when you publish information about the product onto Facebook, the ‘newsfeed’ of those 1000 fans will be updated to see your new promotion. This is the best way to promote any deals you have as it costs nothing.
If you would rather send all fans of your page a message, you can do this also. All you have to do is click on the ‘edit’ section for your page and on the right-hand side (about half way down) you can see ‘message all members’. By doing this, messages will be sent to fans of your pages’ inbox rather then just their wall. This is better then updating your post, as it is a sure-fire way that all members will see your promotion.
Facebook groups come with a great feature so that you can see how many people have been onto your page and left comments or liked posts you have created. It even gives you a 5 star rating and ranks the quality of your posts. This is beneficial to a business as they can find out what type of post receives a greater response from fans.
