Facebook Friday: How To Use Facebook Pages

This post comes from our Inside Facebook series that aims to cover everything you could ever want to know about Facebook, how to best promote your company and events on the platform as well as tips and tricks for Facebook marketing.

Facebook pages are public profiles for businesses, public figures or organisations to talk directly with Facebook users. Unlike Groups, which are designed for small groups of people like book clubs or football teams, Pages are a public domain that are used to publicise events, people or products on Facebook and across the web.

The recent changes to Facebook Groups mean that it’s now more important than ever to start using Pages to promote your business. More than 20 million people connect with Facebook Pages every day so now is the time to make sure those people are connecting with you too!

Let’s look at some of Facebook’s Page Features:

Unlimited Fans
Unlike Profiles and Groups, Pages allow an unlimited number of fans. This means your company can expand beyond the 5000 person or fewer member limit of Groups and well beyond the 2000 friend capacity of personal Profiles.

Custom Design
Facebook Pages can customised to suit and company or individual by adding new Tabs or applications to the Page. One of the most powerful Tab to add is the Static FBML application, which can add functionality to a Page such as specialised content, newsletter sign-ups or a landing page for sales activity and ticket links.

Newsfeed
Since Pages are open to all Facebook users, recent updates from these are published fans’ news feeds. The Newsfeed is a useful marketing tool to spread the word about your Page by encouraging your existing fans to help promote your Page and entice other to interact with your company.

Insights
Facebook Pages provide detailed insights that allows administrators to track membership, activity and engagement.

Insights data includes:
- Monthly Active Users
- New Likes
- Post Views
- Post Feedback
- User Demographics

Targeted Updates
Pages let your target your updates based on location and language – if you’ve got a party only happening in London, then you can target this post only to people who live there. You can also send mass updates to all your Facebook fans at any time, these appear as Updates within the Messages section of user Profiles.

Vanity URLs
You can create a customisable URL for your Facebook Group to help people find it easily and to use in any external marketing material. For example www.facebook.com/bullseyehub

How do Facebook Pages compare with Facebook Groups?

One of the few benefits of groups over Facebook Pages is the ability to restrict who can access them, but if you’re trying to promote something to as many people as possible then you should definitely create a Page.

All of the latest Groups features are about restricted access to a small number of people and creating a better environment for existing friends or acquaintances to organise groups outings or share information. The best way to publicise your information and events to as many people as possible is to use Facebook Pages.

How to Promote Your Page Outside of Facebook

You can also use your Facebook Pages to promote yourself outside on other websites, outside of Facebook.

1) Facebook Connect
If you own a website or blog you can implement Facebook Connect so site users can log-in with their Facebook ID and can easily share and distribute their activities on your site with their Facebook friends.

2) Facebook Share
Add a Share button to your website or blog to make it easy for your audience to spread content to their friends on Facebook.

3) Comment Box
Use Facebook Connect to add a Comment box on your own site. This lets users comment on your site content, post those comments to their profiles, and share them with their friends on Facebook.

4) Like Box
Installing a Like box next to individual articles is a quick and easy way for users to approve your content and events, which feeds directly into the Faceboook stream.

5) Facebook Badges
Promote your Facebook page on your site, through customer emails, or with Ad banners on other sites using the “Find us on Facebook” Badge.

6) Tell Your Fans
Spread the word about your fan page to your email lists by uploading you contacts and finding them on Facebook.

Still not sure if you should be using a Page or a Group? Check our Inside Facebook guide to Groups! Meanwhile, get more tips and tricks about marketing for the entertainment industry by Following Bullseyehub on Twitter or Liking Bullseyehub on Facebook.