Why your small business needs a Facebook Page

June 28, 9:58 AMSF Social Media ExaminerMike Mueller

It won’t be anything like the land rush of the first Facebook URL frenzy but starting Sunday Night June 28th at 9:00 PM the gates are open for all.

Facebook was pretty smart in the way they released custom URLs.   You see, most anyone can create a “Fan Page” for virtually any product, group or person.  These Fan Pages usually have little or no fans.  All it would take is for one quick kid with a finger on his mouse to steal away something like http://www.facebook.com/MountainDew

So Facebook slowed the release of Custom Page Names to those pages with 1,000 or more fans and to those created prior to May 31, 2009,  That allowed all those real companies to get in and secure their Facebook Page Name.

You and I didn’t have to worry about that, but we certainly do now.  If you have a Facebook Business Page you’ll want to be in on the new land rush.

Why?

First of all, every business should have a Business page on Facebook.  I’ll take that a step further and suggest every page should also be customized to best fit the business.

Here’s 4 reasons why your business needs a Facebook Business Page.

1. Pages allow a business to "Publish to the Stream" (this shows up on your fans homepage)
2. Pages allow a business to engage fans with Rich Media (video, pictures, events)
3. Pages let a business analyze how fans are interacting with the Insights Dashboard (Facebook has deep analytics)
4. Pages let a business increase SEO (pages show up in higher Google keyword searches)

So you sell Yugos in Yuba City ?  There’s nothing stopping the Yugo dealer in Yreka from setting up http://www.facebook.com/YubaCityYugo and stealing your thunder.  (Does a Yugo really have thunder?)

Chiropractic in Crockett? http://www.facebook.com/CrockettChiropractic would rock!

Dentist in Dublin? Only one person is going to get http://www.facebook.com/SMILE

Real Estate your game?  First one to score http://www.facebook.com/RedwoodCityRealEstate wins!

Catching on?

That also brings me to the next important item.  There’s nothing compelling about a standard Facebook Business Page.   Why drive clients and customers to a standard page?  Nothing at all.

Your Business Page MUST have compelling content that engages your visitors or they’ll leave just as fast as it took the page to load.

What can a Facebook Business Page do?  It might be easier to say what can’t they do? Here’s 7 Facebook Business Pages that work.

Remember, this is just the tip of the iceberg.