Facebook Customization – Should You

What’s the difference between a Facebook Page and a your website and why should you have both?

To begin with, I believe that most website’s (content providers like magazines not withstanding) are best considered as “pre-customer” centric. That isn’t to say that you can’t service your customer at your website, its simply to say that your website should be considered the first handshake and introduction to a potential customer and client.Â

On the other hand, a Facebook Page should be current-customer centric. This should be the place where your brand’s identity and voice shine..as do the voices of your most engaged and passionate customers and clients. Its true that simply becoming a fan of a page isn’t the most acute measure of passion, but if those people are engaging, actually taking action, then they are passionate. Facebook Pages give you the opportunity to increase that passion.

PS – here’s a piece I did about the difference between Facebook pages and groups, in case you are still asking yourself the difference.

Retail outlets, restaurants, politicians and content providers (magazines, radio stations, etc.) should all have active and interesting Facebook Fan Pages.  But the list doesn’t stop there, if your clients/customers are scattered around the world and the country – you should have a Facebook Fan page.

Your likely to find that Facebook Fan pages in and of themselves aren’t the best representation of your brand. The “Wall” which is the default landing page is boring and it does nothing to encourage fan growth and it certainly isn’t a reflection of your brand. BUT! There is a solution. You can customize your Facebook landing page to do many things, all of which are consistent with your brand and allow your fans to engage.

\For example. Would you rather have your fans see this:

or this:

By customizing your landing page, you have a better  “welcome” to your guests and a branding opportunity.  Notice how this page encourages people to “like” the page before diving into the engagement section. In this way, you increase fan growth and know who your fans are and reduce the number of “lurkers” to your page. You can also modify this entry page to include an email form and add benefits to “Fan Page” members to further increase engagement and communication.

You can take the idea of branded “welcome” Fan Page by designing one that creates opportunity for engagement and event pulls contents from your WordPress website. This is perhaps the most exciting element – imagine being able to control some of your Facebook content through the very easy interface of WordPress! For small businesses without programming staff on hand, this is a dream come true!

In this example, we have a page with “sharing” built right in as well as content (the pictures, which are on a carousel), and the What, When/Where being pulled right from the already developed website.

While the opportunities for this type of welcome page are endless, I wouldn’t tackle this without an engagement strategy and some thought to how you can really use your Facebook page to ENGAGE people once they become fans.  This might be through contests, conversation, even brain storming with your Fans on future products. Engagement is the key on Facebook or any other social media platform.

If you’ve done something similar to this for your Facebook Fan Page, please share with us your experience and how you took this idea to the next step and used it to engage fans.

If your looking to do something like this and don’t know where to start, drop me a note, I can help you define what a page like this should do for you and how to engage your fans on Facebook!

PS – if you’d like to see these pages yourself, here are the links:

Example #1 – Brand consistent Facebook Welcome Page Template

Example #2 – Facebook Welcome Page with WordPress Integration and Sharing