Social media is evolving faster than could have ever been expected even a few months ago. Used in business, it offers you a chance to introduce your company or organisation to new people and get to know your current customers much better. From a marketing standpoint, it is vital that you and/or someone within your organisation do as much inward marketing as possible such as blogging, getting a Twitter account and setting up a Facebook fan page for your business. Here I would like to tell you how to personalise your business Facebook fan page and ensure your fan page has a professional appearance.
If you have ever looked at a fan page on Facebook, you may have noticed that Facebook’s URL is normally followed by a lot of meaningless text and figures. Somewhere hidden in the mess is the company’s name whose fan page it is. Often this company’s name will have been broken up into pieces. The URL is quite long and would look silly printed in a brochure or on a website.
Thankfully, Facebook has done something about it! You can now get a fan page for your company that is much shorter. This can easily be advertised on promotional gifts such as printed stress balls and promotional pens, corporate literature and websites so your customers can remember your Facebook URL and find you quickly and easily.
Here is how it is done.
First, you need to have a personal Facebook account. You cannot set up an anonymous fan page. If you do not already have an account, go to the site and sign up. It is quick and easy and best of all free. Once you have your account, go to facebook.com/pages/create.php which is where you can sign up for your company fan page. Fill in your details and you have a fan page with a silly URL.
Now it is time to make your Facebook URL yours;
- Get 25 friends and/or customers to become fans of your fan page. In order to have your own personal business Facebook URL, you need to have at least 25 fans.
- When you have your 25 fans, go to facebook.com/username. Facebook will allow you to choose your URL which will be something like facebook.com/yourcompany
- Now work on your logo!
Many companies are lax with this part of their fan page. The problem is there are two different picture icons that appear on the page. When you add your logo, it will most likely look very good at the top of the page. However, when you write a comment a reduced version of your logo appears to the left of the comment. More often than not, this reduces your logo and if there is text involved it could make “Yourlogo” look like “ourlog” which I am sure you will agree is hardly ideal.
To fix this fault, you need to purchase an inexpensive art program such as Paint Shop Pro. You can often download art programs on a 30 day free trial. Ensure that the text part of your logo fits within a 175 pixel x 175 pixel square. Once this is done, go to “image” and then “canvas size” and increase the canvas to 200 pixels square. This will give your logo and details a white 15 pixel border. I realise this is technical talk so if you cannot be bothered to do this, ask a professional. It should not be expensive.
Upload this logo to the logo picture area at the left of your page. Whenever you write a comment, it will be shown to the left of your comment without anything getting chopped off in the process.
Would you like to see how I did it? Then visit http://www.facebook.com/compugift, my company’s Facebook page. While you are there, why not become a fan! It would be great to get your feedback. The page will be updated often with similar articles and special offers.
I hope this article was helpful. I welcome comments on my blog an hope to hear from you soon.
Posted by Dan Toombs
Tags: Facebook, Social Networking
