COMMENTS
Have to be careful about the SEO thing since not ALL of FB Public Profiles (the new name for Pages) are SEO-friendly. For instance, FB slaps the
nofollow tag on all the links on a Page's Info tab. This is where a business would put all their links to their various external sites, by default.
For example, check out this image from one of my clients' Facebook Page Info tab:
nofollow tag on Info Tab
This is a great post Mike...
just getting started with our Fan Page!
Join us...
http://www.facebook.com/pages/businessethos/84023957044
@businessethos
Great post Rory. I regularly have clients ask me about the different ways to set up a business presence on Facebook and this is an excellent synopsis.
One additional piece of information that might help the readers here is that a fan page
cannot have a vanity url unless it has a minimum of
1,000 fans.
That's a pretty high number and it shows why starting now to build a presence makes sense - you never know what will come down the road and you'll want to be ready for it.
Glad you pointed out the nofollow example. The best way to get direct links back to your site from your FB page is to use FBML either on your wall page -- the left column allows FBML boxes or on a separate tab.
Excellent post.
You hit the nail right on the head here and a lot of people will benefit greatly from this.
Thank you.
John Dufresne
Great post.
I have just started a fan page, but having a little difficulty setting it up right, and not sure how to 'link' to it.
BTW you need
only 100 fans now to get a vanity URL, which I think is a must. (100 shouldn't be to hard).
Thanks,
Chris
Chris,
The links below should offer some help in setting up your page and linking to it from elsewhere on the internet.
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages
http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/promo_guidelines.php
Update: Tonight at 11:59P EDT the Great Vanity Facebook URL Landgrab began...
If your Public Profile (i.e. Page) has > 25 Fans you can go to
http://www.facebook.com/username to claim your own vanity URL. Good luck!
It seems to be taking a while to propagate to all servers so be patient and if someone squats on your IP you can use the IP infringement form
here to get your brand URL back...
I asked for a vanity URL for my fan page and got it, without 1000 fans.
www.facebook.com/allthingsjeep But I can't figure out how to get the Information Box on the left section of the page. Is my page not really a fan page?
Thank you so much for this post, as well as everyone who commented. I began using facebook purely for personal reasons, but now am linked to many of my clients and find that it is a great way to show my personality a little more. All the other social networking sites I am on are very business focused and this is a great way to combine both business and personal. Since I am the owner of my design firm who I am, really is who the business is.
Thanks again,
We have just set up our FB public profile - it is slightly confusing but I now realise I need to link a personal profile - thanks for spelling that out.
I just can't seem to get my fan page to do anything. How do I update it, add new albums, show what's new or send out notices???