Most of the bigger brands and many smaller ones now have their own customised Facebook welcome page and you may be wondering whether your business should too.

What is a Facebook welcome page?

For those of you who are not sure what a Facebook welcome page is, it’s a specially designed page that visitors land on when they first find your page in Facebook. It’s almost like a mini website within Facebook that they initially land on instead of the usual wall or feed.

First time visitors are welcomed to your Facebook page with this attractive branded page, and can also see any deals or new products that you want to promote on there.

Why should you have one?

There are several good reasons for having a custom Facebook welcome page:

• It welcomes first time visitors with an attractive branded page, letting them know a little bit more about your business and what you do.
• You can add a call to action encouraging them to ‘Like’ your Facebook page and explain the benefits of doing so, which makes it far more likely that they’ll click that button.
• Some businesses use their welcome page to promote deals, events or competitions or to call attention to new products.
• Having a custom page reassures people that you know what you’re doing on Facebook and makes you look more professional, hopefully encouraging them to engage with you.

What should you include?

Your Facebook welcome page should reflect your current social media marketing objectives, so think about what action you want visitors to take when they land on it. This could be to ‘Like’ your page, to engage with you on other social media platforms such as Twitter or your blog or whatever else is important to your business marketing goals. Make sure that your page contains an appropriate call to action that stands out clearly and leads them to this next step as quickly and easily as possible.

Let visitors know what sort of information you share on your wall and how they can join in. Lay out the benefits of engaging with your business on Facebook to increase the chances that they’ll ‘Like’ your page and come back again. If appropriate you can also include links to your other social media accounts and your blog’s RSS feed and encourage them to connect with you there too.

As you can see, a custom Facebook welcome page can improve your ‘Like’ conversions and act as an additional promotional tool. Without one you could be missing out on a lot of opportunities and failing to make the most of your Facebook marketing.

A lot of businesses will set up a Facebook Page but then don’t really know what sort of content to post on it. Here are some suggestions about what (and what not) to publish as well as how often you should be adding updates.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to use your Facebook Page as yet another place to publish self-promotional material. You’ve got to remember that Facebook is a social media platform and is therefore all about interaction and engagement, not advertising (if you want to advertise on Facebook use Facebook Adverts). You need to use your Wall to build a sense of community with your fans and provide a place where they can interact with you and vice versa.

The more interesting and engaging your updates are, and the more comments and interaction you get, the more Facebook will show them, so the quality of your updates is very important.

So what sort of updates fit the bill?

A lot of fans will have “Liked” your page in order to take advantage of promotional offers, and these are the sorts of posts that often get shared with their friends, so take advantage of this by creating special offers for your fans and posting them on your Page.

Content that relates to Facebook itself is also usually really popular with those who use it, so consider posting comments, questions or information about the social media portal itself as it relates to your business or industry.

You can also take advantage of popular topics in general and create content, questions, etc that relate to these to post on your Facebook Page. For example, these can be about popular TV shows that everyone is currently talking about, celebrities or news items.

Once you know what to post about, how often should you be adding updates?

Dan Zarrella at Hubspot found that people don’t want to be swamped with messages all the time and the optimum seemed to be to post approximately every other day. That way you’re not overwhelming them with updates but you’re still keeping in contact regularly. Interestingly he also found that posting in the mornings and on the weekends was best in terms of engagement, as this is when most people tend to be on Facebook.

Ultimately, if you remember that Facebook is about interaction and community you won’t go too far wrong. If you’re an avid Facebook user yourself then think about what you like and what irritates you when you’re looking at your own Newsfeed and bear this in mind when posting content on your business’s Facebook Page.

Well first to the obvious, to grow your Facebook fanbase you need to have something that will make someone want to like your page.  As well as making sure that your posts are not only relevant to your industry, they need to be engaging for the reader too, so much so that they will value your expertise and want to learn more from you.

One of the things that people often overlook is actually encouraging people to like your page in the first page.  By having a branded welcome page you can create call to actions in the same way you would with your website.  Also, when you post, ask people to share it with their contacts.

Don’t forget that you can reach potential new fans in other places too, for example if you have a blog, then why not include a link and ask people to like your Facebook page.  Many websites have social media links on every page to make it easy for their visitors to connect and communicate with them in a number of different ways.

Make sure that you engage with people too, there is no point asking for people to comment or Like your page if all you do is have a continuous stream of posts, make sure if someone comments on your page that you communicate with them, this will encourage more people to like your page and that particular person to share your post amongst their own network.

The more you engage with people, the more you will appear in the newsfeed and the more likely you are to attract new fans.  But a word of caution, this is not Twitter and posting every two minutes throughout the day will have a negative effect, people will get fed up of your posts and ultimately you will lose those people that have already liked your page.

So in summary, to get more Facebook fans you need to create relevant engaging content that is easy to share and be active in communicating with your current fanbase.  It really is that simple, but it can take time so keep at it, it will work for you.

Find out more about Facebook for Business