1. The Facebook Page profile picture.

Even if this is a Fan Page for you as a Entrepreneur or local celebrity – it should be more than a picture of you. I am not saying it cannot have a picture of you, it just needs to be “Brand You” . If you do include a photo of yourself it should be a professional shot. Day at the beach pic is fine for your regular profile but it does nothing to help your professional image ( unless your a bikini model). You should have a logo made from your name, have a color scheme, etc..If you have branded yourself other places like your blog carry that over to your Facebook page for consistency. How to properly brand yourself completely is something for a different post.  Look for that one soon. Below are some links to some great “Brand You” Facebook pages.

• Ryan Deiss
  Hey Ryan cool page where did you get the idea?
• Gary Vaynerchuck – Maybe from this guy.
• Mari Smith

If you are a business the profile picture should include your logo -duh? or your slogan. At SuperHero Marketing we chose to use our slogan as it also serves as a call to action and implores curiosity.  Plus our name is really long and harder to see in the thumbnail.  After your logo – you can include other brand identifying elements such as products. I have listed several  Facebook business pages below that use the profile picture area well.

• Gap
• George Foreman Cooking
• Coca-Cola

2. Sidebar

The info box in your sidebar should include at least a “Call To Action” and a link to your main website. Publish photos of people using or enjoying your product or service the latest ones will be added to your sidebar. Post any and all events in your page’s feed even a sale can be classified as an  event. Those events will start to fill your sidebar. The more frequent you have events the better. Visitors will come back to see what events are upcoming or what they may have missed.  If you have videos of your product or service you should post those frequently on your page. I myself respond to more videos and photos than I do to regular status updates. If you post something you should always try to include a link, photo, or video.

3.Facebook Landing Pages

You should have at least one customized tab or as I like to call them “Facebook Landing Pages” . These tabs should once again be branded to your company’s image.  This will give you an opportunity to generate leads from your Facebook page as well as increase engagement.  Below are several ideas for Facebook landing pages as well as links to brands that have utilized them.

• Contest
• Current Promotion
• Events – Just in time for Turkey Day!
• Free Offer – Shameless plug #1

4. Video

I mentioned videos in the Facebook Landing Pages section as well as in the sidebar. Bottom line is videos are hugely popular online. Most people if they are even remotely interested in the content will push play on a video. Video Marketing is a topic that could be gotten into further but, I will not as it would take away from the main point and could get lengthy. I will leave it at this – videos online are much like television commercials in the sense that – for mass appeal they need to be really interesting ( Most Ted videos) or really funny ( like this one from Red House Furniture) or both. I understand that funny videos do not work with every brands image. Every brands videos should at least be interesting and not seem like used car ads ( here is a used car dealer that went the funny route ).  Nuff said for now. I will do another post on Video Marketing in the future.

5. OPT-INS

Liking your page can be considered an opt in. Many companies are restricting are cleverly restricting some of their Facebook content to only those people who like their page. You may need to a hire a hero (shameless plug) to implement the code on your page to accomplish this. In all facets of design and coding on your pages I recommend hiring a pro. We have all seen the I done it myself websites.  You can also include forms that capture email addresses in your pages. Let face it subscribe to my newsletter just doesn’t get it when it comes to lead generation. You need to have a bona fide offer – something that your prospects really want or can use.  I have created another list below of possible offers for your opt in. *note your offer will not have to be as big for someone to like your page as it will be for someone to give up their email address.

• Tiesto
• Levis
• Toys R Us

6. Contact Information – DUH.

You would not believe how many websites we encounter where the only place you find the the contact information is on the contact page (usually the last tab in the navigation). The same principle applies here – put your contact info front and center . How are you going to sell products without a way for anyone to reach you. The one exception being is if you sell directly from Facebook ( look here for how to add a Facebook store) .  In that situation you run into the consumer trust factor. Most (smart) people will not buy from you if you do not display away to contact your business. The more ways their are to contact your company the better. Some people love email while others love the phone or social media.

7. Engagement

I saved this one for last because it is important. Granted when you first launch your page, no one is there to engage with. You should start by inviting your friends and family. You should also implore them to post something nice on your wall about your business. If your friends and family cannot say nice things about you – you have bigger problems than how to put together a great Facebook page. Try to interact with as many people that fan your page. ALWAYS respond when someone posts a comment to your page – Good or Bad. If someone had a bad experience with your product or service this is your chance to win them back and do it in front of all your other Facebook fans. Granted their are some fights you cannot win or even try to. If someone is using profanity on your page it may be best just to delete the comment. I was a manager in the food & beverage industry for a long time and I found that the customers that could not be one back where few and far between. People want to know you care and want to make things right.  I have one more list for you on other ways to engage your Facebook fans.

• Contest – Treasure Hunts, Tell us your product/service story, etc..
• Surveys
• Random Acts of Kindness – Send a fan a Birthday or Anniversary greeting
• Allow them to post their customer service questions on your page

Another Shameless plug #2 – The heroes at SuperHero Marketing can not only create a Facebook page for you that will get you started on the right path with your Facebook Marketing they can put together a complete online marketing strategy for you as well – Give us a call at 843-606-0336 or email the heroes at info@superheromarketing.net

Also we want to know about your Facebook page – feel free to plug it in the comments.  Even if you do not have a Facebook page we  would  to hear your comments about our post or Facebook marketing in general.

Resources:

Incentivizing Facebook Fans: Papa John’s Doubles Fans with Free Pizza

Case Study: Papa John’s Finds New Facebook Fans

JetBlue Launches Twitter Deals – SmarterTravel.com

Build a Social Media Game Plan

Set a Goal

The very first thing you need to determine is what your goal is. Set a clear goal. For example – set a goal like “I want to exceed 10K fans on my Facebook page.” “I want to generate a database of over 25K subscribers I can remarket later. Or “I want to directly sell my products or services to increase revenues by 10%.” Like I said, be specific in your goal, so you can measure results based on expectation.

Allocate Your Resources

Be aware that social media is not some silver bullet that will save your business. It is one element of a successful online marketing plan and realistically accounts for 8% of all online leads according to a recent Hubspot study. So, figure out how much time and money you want to spend on getting this result. Quantify it and know the metrics of existing sales, leads or subscribers generated each month on your website or Facebook Fan page. The next step is to find the mechanism that will generate that result for you. For example – recently Shakira debuted her latest music video exclusively on her Facebook fan page. The goal? To build fan base in a single place online that allowed for easy messaging of fans. To drive fans in volume and within a limited time to that page by providing debut access to content irresistible to her audience. The result? 1.7 million fans visited and fanned that page.

I am not suggesting you are a pop star in need of fans – but what I am saying is find the irresistible offer that your market is looking for. If you are a web services company to small businesses, offer a limited time discount on services or a free eBook on conversion page design and marketing or even a white paper on social media – each requiring registration. My point is, set a clear goal for yourself.

Resources:

Twucked Up Twit in Social Media

Drive Traffic to Conversion Points

OK, so you have a goal. Making that goal a success requires that you drive the traffic from your social media accounts back to places where people can take action and deliver your result. I am a huge fan of single purpose landing pages. These are pages that you direct visitors to that have only one purpose – to call them to action and create a NEED for them to immediate buy or register their information so you can generate a lead.

Measure Your Results

Know how you will measure that goal before you begin the campaign. In the instances I mentioned you can measure the results even without third party tools – simply based on the number of new Facebook Fans, the size of your database or the number of downloads. Clearly you can get more rich data on your campaign from Google Analytics, Mint, Crazy Egg, Omniture or Visistat, but it is possible to prove ROI without them.

Use The Right Tools

Google Analytics Social Media Tracking Plugin | This will display social media metric data in Google analytics. It can display your activity and mentions from a variety of social sites like Digg, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Mixx.

Bit.ly | When you use a URL shortener, it’s always a smart idea to use one that has analytics information, like Bit.ly This will track information like number of clicks, traffic sources, and even at what time clicks occur.

Xinureturns | xinureturns provides a great dashboard overview of your website’s standing in social media. Run a report and you will receive information on Technorati, Googe Pagerank, Diggs, and even backlinks to your website.

PostRank | PostRank provides detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and FriendFeed all in one place. It’s best for blogs and websites with a lot of content.

SocialToo | SocialToo is a comprehensive tool for creating social surveys and tracking social stats. It also will send you a daily email describing follows and unfollows on Twitter.

SM2 | If you are really serious about your social analytics you will use a monitoring service like SM2. SM2 is a software solution designed specifically for PR and Marketing Agencies to monitor and measure social media. As businesses and consumers increasingly utilize and rely on social media, your agency needs the best tools and expertise to stay competitive.

TwitterAnalyzer is one of the most comprehensive Twitter analyzer tools out there. It tracks followers who are online when you are, number of readers that have been exposed to your message, your tweet habits, who is retweeting your updates, twitter follow statistics, growth rates, conversations being made about you, the size of your audience and your followers’ demographics.

Resources:

Top 5 Twitter Analytics Tools

Conclusion

As a small business, you need to hold your marketing campaigns to the same standards enterprise sized businesses do and expect full return on the investments you make into them. Do not fully dive into the waters of social media if you are not prepared with goals and strategy. Results are what matter and using social sites effectively is the key, so plan for your success and know how you will measure that success against your expectations.

Mary McKnight serves as the Director of Internet Marketing for Fuel Records, an EMI Music Group Label and an outspoken blogger on music, social media, SEO and piracy. You can read more of her work on www.sacriliciousmarketing.com.