Matt Brown
Before we set off on our voyage of discovery today I want to give you a bit of background as to why I am writing this article. I have found myself of late being adviser to a lot of people setting up facebook pages for lots of different reasons. Rather than repeat what I have to say ten times I am going to try and summarize it. Where possible I am going to use the Go Beyond MLS page as an illustration.
Now I should also point out that I am not a guru at this sort of thing but a really enthusiastic geek. With that in mind let us look at setting up pages.
What is a page?
A page is a blog.
Don’t look at me like that a page is basically a cross between twitter and wordpress. For plugins you have applications and instead of tweets you have posts with attachments.
All the basics of blogging apply to your page. We will talk about this in a moment. First some basics to make sure we have not missed anything.
Making the page
Most of you that read this article will know how to make a page already but for those that don’t this is the quick version.
1. Go to a page (the Go Beyond MLS Page is good).
2. At the bottom of the left hand column you will see a link that says “Create a Page for My Business” (this link leads tot he same page).
3. Click it, fill out the details and there you are a page. It has no fans (not even you) and is ready for customisation.
Getting the basics in place
There are some things that a page needs before you even make yourself a fan of it. These are simple that it is easy to overlook them.
1. Upload a picture. In fact if you got as far as making the page and did not have the perfect logo then you need to stop whatever you are doing and get one. Now.
Your picture is your only branding that you get. Everything else looks exactly as facebook wants it to look.
A good image can be as tall as you like but is limited in width. Take a look at the Lord Matt fan page (and become a fan perhaps). You will see that it has a customised image that fills down the page and adds my character to the page. I also get to make the public speaker and blogger points boldly while getting two pictures of me on the one space.
If you do not have the skills to make such an image then a photograph might do. Just remember whatever you use had better be yours to use.
2. Put something short and snappy in the about box.
Treat this like the most important tweet you will ever send. I like to end with a call to action (suggest to friends).
3. Find something worthwhile to say for all the fields under the info tab.
If the fields on the info tab are very much not what you need and do not fit in the slightest then you are not to late to delete the page and try picking a better category. Make up your mind now because it’s the work of ten minutes to change things with no loss if you change them now.
Okay assuming that you stick with your current settings write that “about” section and make sure you make it good.
You have around 100 to 300 words before people have to click to see more so just like blogging you must capture people’s interest within as few lines as possible and then keep it. If it takes days to get the “about” perfect then that is what it takes.
4. Consider making the about tab the default landing page because your wall is not going to be very interesting to start with.
There are more advanced things you can do like adding new tabs that people land on but for now let us just stick with the info tab.
To make it the default landing page you are going to have to click “Edit Page” which is found just under the image you set a while back. Get in there and make some changes.
5. Consider making the default for the wall both fan and page so that it is as much like a basic facebook profile as possible.
You can do this when looking at the page proper.
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