Pimp My Fan Page (by having one)

Let’s say you want to create a start-up, or you already sell goods or services, and it’s legitimacy you seek. If you are like most business owners, you weren’t born incorporated, nor is there an “LLC” after your name on your birth certificate. Fortunately, recognizing this simultaneously deoxyribonucleic and juristic deficit in our humanness, our state and federal legislative branches created the legal entities necessary for the American entrepreneurial spirit to flourish, such as Inc.’s and (P)LLCs and Sole Proprietorships, etc... You may be the business, Ms. Plastic Surgeon, Mr. Realtor, but the government wants a delineation, for which there are many reasons both good and cumbersome.


And let’s just assume your business is a baby blanket boutique or a coffee cafe or widget warehouse. Most goods and services vendors require physical space to operate. Before the modern agora, our fore-bearers may have thought, “I already own a hut. I’ll use this space for sleeping AND selling the recently invented wheel.” Nowadays, we have a pretty well-established system separating business and home. While some of us have found amazing downtown work/live spaces, most customers would find it bizarre to shop in our closets or pantries.

These same comparisons hold up surprisingly well in social media, networking, and marketing worlds. Too many businesses create personal Facebook pages despite a well-developed Fan Page system with markedly more business functionality. Not only is it against the Facebook terms of service, but the Social Media savvy are not typically receptive to a friend request followed by a bombardment of unsolicited messages, invitations, and promotions. This business has not only lost a potential customer who has a voice online, but actively turned them off because it demonstrates several factors almost guaranteed to be oppressive to your potential “fans,” including:

Your naiveté and/or apathy for the rules.
“Social” is missing from your social networking.
A talking at-based approach instead of providing quality, usable, or interesting content.
Your disinterest in customer feedback, since you provide no real outlet for it.
An inconsequential connection to your customers.
You are quite probably annoying.

The list goes on...

So you want to create a killer fan page? Great! Here are some excellent resources to give you some ideas...

For the technically savvy, Mashable helps you to build a professional landing page for your fans and provides sound advice about making it successful, but remember, a very basic Fan Page is far superior to a busy personal page. To see some fantastic examples of what other companies have done, check out Baby Gap, Adidas, Dell, and last, but not least, Victoria’s Secret. If you recognize the importance of a great landing page, but are not sure about what features you want to include, check out 30+ applications here and here... Remember, this requires a minimal upfront investment of time, is free, and will payoff in spades in the long run. In fact, the Coca-Cola Fan Page is a result of passionate customers who created it before Coca-Cola even saw the value. It continues today as an Fan-run project. Don’t delay, Fan Page today!

Having said all that, we’re here to learn too. If you have reasons you prefer the personal Facebook page over the Fan Page, we’d love to hear from you.