I'm all about two things these days, Facebook and Twitter. They are inescapable. If you're a marketer, small business owner, sales person or corporate exec, you must (MUST) have a presence on both. (I'll throw in LinkedIn for good measure. Let's call it honorable mention.)
One of the features of the Facebook Platform that I'm nuts about are Facebook Fan Pages (also known as Public Profiles, though nobody but me calls them that). Since Zuckerberg and company made the decision to make Pages fucntion more like personal profiles, their use as a marketing channel has taken off dramatically. In fact, according to Facebook, "over 8 million users become fans of Facebook Pages every day (emphasis mine) to connect with their favorite public figures and organizations."
That fact has not gone unnoticed by Facebook either. There is now a version of Facebook Ads designed strictly to promote Pages. You create them right from the Page itself. Not only that, the most recent promotional tool is a new widget called the Fan Box.
I call it a "widget" because it's embeddable into your Web site. In most cases, it's a simple copy/paste into an editable area of your site. I created one for my book Page, a screen shot of which appears below, and embedded it on the book Web site, TheDigitalHandshake.com.
I created a similar one for my company's Page, Bizzuka, and embedded it on home page of the company Web site. However, in that instance, I had difficulty getting the page to interpret the embed code correctly (it uses javascript). Facebook provides a workaround for that using iframes. I applied the workaround and it does...work, that is.
I'm very anxious to see what else Facebook has up their sleeve where it comes to promoting Facebook Pages. And, I'm betting third-party developers are falling all over themselves doing the same.
If you're business does not have a Facebook Fan Page, let me encourage you to consider it. If you need help, contact me. The Internet marketing services division of Bizzuka, which we call Bizzuka | Interact, can provide the support and assistance you need.
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