Why You Need to Make a Facebook Fan Page for Your Website (Yesterday!)

October 15, 2009 in Updates by admin | No comments

By Dave Rigotti

When Facebook announced its Fan pages, there were a number of mixed reviews. Some were hailing this feature and its integration to the new advertising platform and some hated it – claiming it was turning Facebook into a new version of MySpace. Whatever your stance is, here are 6 compelling reasons why you should create a Facebook page for your website or company now.

1. Pages are public. Most of Facebook is behind a login, preventing search engines from indexing it. However, someFan pages are not behind a login and thus search engines can index them. Hopefully, people will stumble on the result in SERPs, visit the Facebook page, and then get to your site via the link (see reason #2).

2. Pages include links. Because the pages are public, you can get some nice facebook.com link credit. You can’t use an anchor text, but hey, it’s free.

3. Send “updates to fans”. One of the greatest features about a Facebook Fan page is that you can send “updates” to fans whenever you want. It’s a nice way of building a database of interested users. Use this functionality to send messages about new products, an updated website, etc.

4. You control the page. Creating your page before a Fan or a competitor does is critical. You want to be able to send the messages, edit or remove sections, and control the information on your Fan page as much as possible.

5. News feed. When someone joins a Fan page, it’s published in their News feed for all of their ‘friends’ to read (unless they have turned this feature off). It makes someone joining your Fan page somewhat viral.

6. It’s free and easy. Making a Fan page takes just a few minutes – add some information and a URL, upload your logo and you’re done!

Dave Rigotti is the owner of Freezing Hot, an Internet marketing company which specializes in SEO and paid search management for small businesses.

A great Facebook example by one of our licensees (www.BermudaHotels.bm) is
http://www.facebook.com/pages/PO-Box-DD93/Bermuda-Hotels/93770671972?ref=share

FYI: Sergio from www.BermudaHotels.bm has also linked himself to Twitter -http://twitter.com/bermudahotelsbm

Now here is a guy that has himself listed on many ‘Social Media’ platforms (have a look towards the bottom of the page at “Rand on the Web”):http://www.seomoz.org/team/randfish

In addition to Facebook, some other social networking sites you may wish to sign up for are: