Is fan page on Facebook free?

While the amount of friends you have on your personal profile page is limited and capped at 5,000, your Fan Page can have an infinite number of fans. This is probably one of the most important reasons that you should be using a Fan Page and not your personal page. Why would you ever want to limit the amount of fans your brand can have?

2. You Have The Option To Keep Your Personal Life Private(-ish)

In creating a Fan Page you are, essentially, keeping your personal page separate and not connected to it. For those who want to keep Facebook for friends and family, this is an important feature. It's vital. You can control the privacy settings on your personal page and optimize publicity for your Fan Page. It can become incredibly annoying to your friends and family who are constantly seeing business updates from you. This option is a great way around it.

3. Search Engine Results

Facebook Fan Pages are indexed, which means that some of the public content is indexed as well. As a business, you want to show up on the search engines. Of course, you want to direct traffic to your website first, but having a social presence is very important.

4. Tagging Your Brand

Your fans and other Fan Pages can tag your Fan Page. Only your friends can tag your personal page. As you want to show up on as many newsfeeds as possible, you definitely want the option to be Tagged in photos and posts by others. This increases your engagement, not to mention your fan base.

5. Facebook Insights

Facebook Fan Pages have great analytics. You can tack the amount of views a post receives and monitor your weekly reach all within the Facebook Insights. To be a smart marketer means knowing how to maximize each post and learning which posts work best for your brand. This is the insight you need to deliver the right content to your fans.

6. Facebook Tabs

Facebook tabs are only allowed on Fan Pages. Enough said?

7. Facebook Contests

Facebook contests are often seen in tabs. You can't host a successful contest on your personal page because the software and third party apps are just not there. Contests build engagement and engagement is your friend.

8. Profiles Look Like You Don't Know What's Going On

Plain and simple. A brand that directs to a personal page just looks amateur. You only get one first impression. You don't want it to be this one.

9. Advertising

Facebook advertising, while expensive, is very targeted. Advertising to a Fan Page is more effective than an outside landing page because Facebook wants to keep the traffic within the network. You can promote your Fan Page through ads, but not your personal page.

10. Admin Connections

By granting select people access to your Fan Page, you avoid giving out your password to multiple people. You can chose what rights they get to finagle with and what they can do within your Fan Page. This also allows for a pretty nice checks and balances system for your brand.

11. Check-Ins & Location Services

You can allow people to check into your brand through your Facebook Fan Page. You can't do anything like this on your personal page. If you have a location for your business, this is crucial for social proofing and newsfeed marketing. You always want to get people to interact with your brand. They can do so by checking in.

12. Promoted Posts

Okay, you can promote your posts now on your personal page, but they aren't as strong. Your personal page is often less targeted than your Fan Page. In being able to promote certain posts you are able to garner more exposure for whatever it is you're trying to push. You'll also have analytic access to this promoted post. If you promote posts like I do, you'll notice a definite leap in Likes.

13. Showcase The Other Pages You Like

Fan Pages give you the option to like pages and showcase them on your page. These should be brands that you have relationships with or brands that have a similar following. See tip #15 for more on this.

14. Newsfeed Marketing

Newsfeed marketing is the basis of social media marketing. By having a regularly updated Fan Page, you'll be seen and noticed on the newsfeeds of your fans. When they interact with your posts and brand, you'll show up on their friends' newsfeeds. This is your key to gaining new fans.

15. Comment As Your Brand

This is great branding. As long as you Like pages officially to your Fan Page, you can comment on their content and posts as well. In doing so, you're increasing exposure for your brand and providing valuable (read: priceless) insight and conversations with a new audience.

Do you use your personal page for business? What other benefits are there in using a fan page instead of a personal page?

You already know that a Facebook Fan Page is a great marketing tool for businesses of any size, nonprofit organizations, independent contractors and freelancers, celebrities, musical groups, and even politicians. The fan page will help you connect with Facebook users. These pages have different attributes than a standard profile page and are powerful tools to build a following.

Creating a Facebook Fan Page

Navigate to Facebook using your favorite method and sign in to your existing account. The most direct way to begin to build a fan page is from the blue control bar at the top of a Facebook page. On this bar, next to the Home button choose to Create. You will get a drop-down menu listing several options for your page. The first option on the list is Page. 

Choose Page and you will be brought to another screen showing two options.

• Business or Brand
• Community or Public Figure

Categorize Yourself

Choose between these two and you will be prompted to enter the name of your page. You can include keywords for which you'd like to rank well for in Google or other search engine results (SER) pages.

The next field requires you to choose a Category for the page. Facebook has literally thousands of categories for you to choose from. The list is alphabetically sorted with subtitles below each major category. You can click each item and navigate to a list of other pages under that same listing. Shop around and find the one best suited for your purpose.

If you decide later you would like to change the category on your page you can do that from the edit menu of your fan page. The edit menu is located under the About tab for the page. You can change the category as often as you would like.

Images for Your Fan Page

The next step is to upload the page's profile picture and the cover photo. You can skip one or both of these items and always go back and edit them later. You can also change these items as often as you would like.

The profile image is the small icon that will appear next to post or comments you make. The cover photo is a larger, banner-like, image that will appear at the top of your fan page. The best size for this image is 820 pixels by 462 pixels in width and height.

Settings for Success

Once you complete—or skip—the image work you page will automatically load. Now you need to set the administrator and other roles for the page. Since you built the page you are automatically listed as an administrator. As the admin, you'll have total control over the page. You can add others to your admin. For example, you can have your virtual assistant help you manage the page.

Besides administrator, roles include editor, moderator, advertiser, analyst, and jobs manager and each position is allowed varying levels of control on the page. Facebook does not limit the number of people you can assign to these roles. You can also add or remove people at any time. To make changes go to your fan page and click the Settings tab in the white bar at the top of the page. Settings are located just below the Notifications icons on the primary blue bar.

Once you click Settings it will bring up another page showing several options that you can set for this fan page. Navigate through all of these and customize your page.

Be sure to read Facebook's terms before proceeding. You do that by clicking the Review the Facebook terms link. Violating Facebook rules can get your page terminated, so be sure you know the policies.

Build Fan Pages on Mobile Devices

To build a page using a mobile device open the Facebook app and sign in. Use the hamburger menu and choose Pages next to the orange flag. This will allow you to create or view already existing pages.

You will name and categorize your page as discussed above. Categories will be in a scroll-down list. Choose next when you are done. You can add a website link, profile photo, and cover photo or skip these steps. When you are done you can tap Visit Page to navigate to the new fan page.

Delete a Facebook Fan Page

As an administrator, you can decide to delete a page at any time. To do this go to the fan page and choose Settings located at the top of the page. Look in the General Tab. At the bottom is the option to remove the page. Make sure the correct page displays, click to delete and confirm.

Customizing Your Facebook Fan Page

Before you start gathering fans, make sure your fan page provides all the important information about your business including:

1. Link to your home business website
2. Fill in the About information related to your business
3. Integrate other social media such as Instagram, YouTube, or Pinterest

What to Post on Your Facebook Fan Page

While the goal of making a business Facebook fan page is for marketing, you want to avoid posting only "buy now" type messages. Remember, social media is social, and this is called a fan page, so your goal is to build a community. To do that, you need to not only post helpful information but also messages that will attract followers and have them engage with you. Some ideas of what to post include:

1. Posts from your blog
2. Blog posts or articles from other sources
3. Images with quotes or memes
4. Ask questions
5. Give behind the scenes look into your business
6. Give advanced access to your content 
7. Special offers for fans only
8. Videos
9. Contests or giveaways
10. Anything that your fans would be interested in knowing about

You might consider adding a group, which Facebook can help integrate with your fan page. Click on Community in the left-hand menu and Facebook will have a box that says Groups, with information on creating a Facebook group around your fan page. 

Like other social media, you need to do more than post messages to your page. You also need to respond to comments and interact with your followers.

Creating a Custom URL

Before you can have a custom URL (i.e, facebook.com/mybusinessname/) you'll need to get 25 fans (people who have clicked the "Like" button on the top of your fan page). You can start by telling the people who are friends on your profile page know about the fan page. You can invite them specifically or you can post about the page on your profile feed. Be careful about inviting people to like your page, as sometimes this can annoy people. Make sure that whoever you invite is someone who is interested in what your fan page has to offer. 

Does a Facebook fan page cost money?

How do I get a Facebook fan page?

What is a fan page on Facebook?