Since Shannon-Rose helped Johnstown furniture store Ruby & Quiri grow their Facebook fan base from 60 fans to over 1100, we’ve been keyed in on easy ways to make better Facebook fan pages. There are some out there that are doing this creatively:

The Best Buy Facebook fan page

Having a Facebook account is like having a driver’s license these days—everyone has one. Which is why the advent of business Facebook fan pages and campaigns made sense, and continues to evolve. It’s become more than building a conversation—it’s about maximizing your use of these platforms on different levels. With additions such as Insights into your businesses page and e-mail updates on stats and fans, Facebook has really been stepping it up and making the platform user-friendly.

But what about making the pages consumer-friendly?

Using custom tabs and boxes.

One page that is really making use of custom tabs in an effective way is the Best Buy fan page. Given that this company is nationwide with hundreds of retail locations, the Best Buy page smartly utilized a central Facebook page to push out information. It’s customized with tabs and boxes to help fans find what they need—and functions more like a typical site would.

Best Buy's Store Locator tab.

The store locator tab is about convenience, as is the Shop + Share function and a feed of their Twitter account. Everything is housed in one place, efficiently.

Mix up the landing page.

An example of customizing a Fan Page’s default, landing tab is another way to engage users. By creating a tab like “About Us,” and making it default rather than the Wall, you can treat it more like a homepage, or landing page. It says what you’re about in an instant. Social media/wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk has used his Fan Page’s landing page to tell his story with an interactive map graphic:

This is a part of Gary's About Gary landing page on Facebook.

Effective tabs make page a resource.

It’s important that your page provide some sort of resource or relevant information to fans, or you’re likely to get deleted in a downsizing. Using functions like Events or Reviews involves customers and makes your page useful to them—as a reminder of sales in their area, or a place to get questions answered about your product.

Pottery Barn's facebook page has an In-Store Events tab.

Pottery Barn has great tabs that make it function like a website but without the retail aspect. It’s clean and totally customer-oriented with features like Design Tools and a Gift Registry link.

Pages like Moe’s (which has a main brand page and franchise pages, as well) use sidebar widgets to tell customers about perks of their Facebook Fan Page—free burritos on your birthday, contests, coupons, and a Nutritional calculator (which probably gets purposely ignored, I’d guess). It’s engaging and a great way to build a fan base.

Tags:   Facebook · Social Media Campaign · social networking