Its to no surprise that with the growth of Facebook, brands in their hundreds are flocking to Facebook to build or cement their brand presence and digital footprint. For the bigger brands, they can hire the special agency with a plethora of knowledge to get the hard work done for them and go leaps and bounds, but what about the smaller companies that have to do in house? Well, here are some tips collated from around the web to help people to setup their fan page, how the get those fans and how to use Facebook effectively.

A question I am often asked is why a fan page? why not just a group? Good question, one that Mashable has answered on its thread titled: difference between Facebook pages and groups. But for those lazy bones out there he is a summary:

For personal or smaller scale interaction then a group is great for this but Pages are better for brands, businesses, celebrities, bands all of whom want to interact with their “fans” without having them connected to a person account. Remember, there is a 5000 friend cap on Facebook, so you are limiting yourself with a personal account. The great thing about Pages is that you can grow as big as you want whilst keeping the focus on the organisation and sending messages, notifications and updates to large numbers of people, unlimited infact.

Setting it up
One of the many benefits of setting up a page is that you can include everything that relates to your business in one place with a built-in potential audience. For example, in your company overview, you can list links to pages on your website, your newsletter signup form, other social media, or whatever you want.

• Overview of company
• Website and contact info
• Press releases
• Videos
• Blog RSS
• Twitter updates
• Company news and status
• Customer interaction

You can also easily update the information any time you wish too, and the fresher your content the more you will engage people.

**TIP** When uploading your photo or logo, include your website address at the bottom. Although fans cant click on this, your audience will know where to go if they want to visit your website

Enhance your Page
Before reaching out to your fans, try and make something of your page. You can do this by adding applications to your page, giving particular function to your page such a videos, RSS feeds or twitter feeds. You want to provide a reason for your visitors to come back and the best way to do this is to engage with them.

The other option, if you have the budget for it, is to create a custom app. For example the pizza hut app that allows users to order their Pizza from their own Facebook account – genius!

Tab-tastic

Your Facebook should act as a secondary website for your business and the tabs at the op are like your site navigation. Have a tab for your videos, your RSS feed, tab for products or services. You may ask how? Try the FBML application below & don’t forget the sidebar! Anything you can put in your tabs, you can also put in your sidebar. A newsletter signup form fits here nicely. So does a poll (another application you can add), affiliate banner, or set of links.

Getting the most from your Page
If you are lucky enough to be building a fan page for a brand that has a strong following, you have the perfect platform to launch a community. Engage with your fans and start the conversation. Use Facebook to get feedback and give your fans a sense of involvement, if they feel like you are listening to their needs they are more likely to engage. Ask questions like: “what’s your favorite product?” or “what could we do to improve our product?” Post updates weekly, if not daily and point your fans to any off-site promotions, such as giveaways hosted on different web sites.

This can be time consuming, but well worth it in the end. Keep sending out invites to new contacts asking if they want to be fans and constantly promote your page. If you want fans, you have to let people know you’re on Facebook. Put an icon or link in your newsletter, on your website or blog, in your email footer, everywhere.

And keep it fun! Nobody likes straight up business all the time!

**TIP** Do an email blast driving subscribers to your fan page. Post a blog about what’s happening on your fan page with an invitation to become a fan.

Posts & Updates
As with any other social media platform, its all about content and interaction. If you only post a few times a month, your fans will soon get bored and wont bother to interact with you anymore. Post every day or even several times a day to make sure you’re showing up in the news feeds of your fans. This can be links to your blog, product announcements, questions, news items, or anything your fans would be interested in.
Remember to send updates to your fans. The email feature is similar to your emails so be careful, you don’t want to spam and annoy your fans. Use it for your advantage to promote sales, new products and events.

**TIP** Every time someone becomes a fan, comments, clicks the “like” link, or shares your post, it shows up in that fan’s news feed for all their friends to see. So “viral” is built in.

Using FBML
FBML is the HTML editor app for Facebook. Search for the application Static FBML. THis will allow you to create basic HTML in the boxes and tabs on your page. The create thing about this app is you can create a landing page for your brand, to inform and engage the audience when they reach you.  For example, you can give a short description of your organization and tell people to click the “become a fan” button.

**EDIT** Tim has kindly posted below that Facebook is planning to reduce the available screen real estate for these tabs from 760px to 520px. Check out this post over at tutorial for Static FBML,

Get Social
Unfortunately your Facebook page wont grow to thousands or millions overnight (unless you are Nike!)  so plan to dedicate a few hours each week to getting new fans and updating content. You’ll quickly appreciate the instant ability to connect with customers and future customers through this social media tool!
There you have it folks, I hope that help. Thank you for Mashable and the Direct Creative Blog for their tips.