A lot of people now use Facebook pages to promote their organisation and engage with (potential) customers. As such, Facebook can essentially be treated as one of your website properties and it needs to be maintained in the same way you maintain your core website - with updates, checking links, removing defamatory posts, managing Q&A and encouraging your followers to communicate with you through engaging content.
Another key area is optimising your Facebook page for search. Optimizing your Facebook page for search is important so you can manage your brand’s reputation online, so you can increase engagement with Facebook followers and your brand’s website, and so you can increase your brand visibility. So how do you make all these possible?
There are three key areas that Facebook themselves have identified:
- Link your website homepage to your Facebook page. Make sure there is a link to your Facebook page on your website, especially on the homepage. See to it that the link text includes your brand name. And also make sure that you link it to the short URL.
- Use your brand name on your Facebook page. Make sure that your Facebook page name is similar to your brand name. Also make sure that your Facebook page vanity name contains your brand name. A vanity name is a customized, memorable short URL to your Facebook page. To create one for your page, you just have to go to the create a username page on Facebook. You used to have to have a minimum number of fans before your could create a vanity name for your page but this no longer appears to be the case.
- Get Likes to accumulate links. Add a Facebook page fan box to your website to drive likes to your page. There are some basic Facebook Like Badges available on Facebook but to get a bit more customised, I recommend using the Facebook Developer Like Box. Just put in your Facebook Page URL, enter the width and height of the box and the border color, and choose the Color Scheme. You also have the option to Show Faces of people who liked your Page, to Show Stream, and to Show Header. Afterwards, click on Get Code and embed the code to your website. It would generally take any web developer about 5 minutes to get this setup for you so it is a really simple way to drive traffic back and forth.
Finally, fresh content drives search rankings so make sure to post updates every now and then on your Facebook page to have active updates in the News Feed. You can also use Sponsored Stories to promote your page and drive likes - Sponsored Stories are random stories that show up on the right-hand column Facebook pages. These can be page likes, posts, post likes, check-ins, or app shares.
