Create a Killer Facebook Page Step 1: Research and Planning

Before diving into your fan page, you need to do your homework. It is a two-step process: research other pages to see what you can do and plan for your own page.

Research

As the saying goes, the best offense is a good defense. When you start any new marketing campaign, you should always look at examples to see how others are doing it. Through the research process, make notes about the pages or features that are really good and that you like and those that are bad or you don’t like. I am not advocating that you add a feature to your fan page simply because you like it or someone else is doing it but use the research process to get your creative juices flowing. See the possibilities and consider how they compliment your brand or marketing strategy (or if they don’t).

Step 1: Get Inspired

To start the research process, I recommend checking out the pages of a few large companies that have well-designed pages: The Gap, Dove, Starbucks, and Coca Cola. Notice how Coke includes their terms of use in the sidebar, Starbucks has a custom landing page (not the wall), and The Gap has embedded interactive Flash elements.

Coke includes their terms of use in the sidebar

Starbucks has a custom landing page (not the wall)

The Gap has embedded interactive Flash elements

These are very large companies with big advertising budgets. You may not be able to do exactly what they have (though you can do most of it pretty easily) but you should now have a good idea of the possibilities for your fan page.

Step 2: Competitive Analysis

Now that you’ve seen the heavy hitters, it is time to look at your competition. Use the search feature to look for your competitors and see what they are doing with their pages (or whether they have them at all). There is a good chance that they have set up a page and nothing more. This is a huge opportunity for you to create something better that will blow your competition out of the water. If you find a competitor with a really good page or lots of fans, study it closely. What are they doing right?

Planning

Now that you’ve looked at some cool pages and analyzed the competition, it is time to plan your page. When planning your page, do not overlook the key ingredient: your call-to-action. After someone visits your killer Facebook page, what do you want them to do—Like or fan your page? Buy your product? Visit your website? Post their own content? Your end goal should be the starting place for anything that you do with you fan page. Without that goal, you work to create a killer page is meaningless.

Besides a clear call-to-action, there are a few essential elements to any killer Facebook page: a custom sidebar banner/logo and basic company info, customized tabs for your social media and blog content, a custom landing page with killer content, and a customized URL. And terms of use, if you will be focusing on user provided content. The rest of this series tells you how to do each one.

Done with research and planning? Take the next step: Create a Basic Facebook Page.