How To Create A Facebook Fan Page For Your School

It’s likely that 90% of your school community (students, parents, teachers, staff) are on Facebook. With more than 300 million active users, and thousands joining daily, the power of this social networking cannot be overlooked. As a ‘small business’, your school must be on Facebook.

Facebook fan pages are the best place to start a school community for a number of reasons including:

1. They are currently the only pages indexed by Google, so by adding keyword specific content, and posting regularly, you can increase your search engine optimization and google ranking.

 

2. You can customize the look of your facebook fan page with static FBML and pull dynamic content from your events calendar or school blog.

 

3. Facebook provides you with statistics and insights into your visitors and demographics, and you can add Google Analytics to further track user activity.

10 Steps To Creating A Successful Facebook Fan Page

1. Title: Determine what you want to call your fan pageSounds easy, but take some time and think about this. The title could be your official school name, acronym, personal name or a few descriptive words. Typically, the shorter the title, the better, because each time you add content to your fan page your long title will append to each post. It’s important to note here, that once created, you cannot change the title of your Facebook fan page

    

2. Photo: Choose a picture that popsA larger image will help you brand your Facebook fan page. A bookmark shaped 200 pixels wide by 600 pixels high photo works best, but remember to check the thumbnail view too. This is the small square that appears beside any of your posts or comments. You can select the thumbnail view you’d like to use by clicking on the edit profile picture tab and scrolling down to ‘edit thumbnail’.

   

    

3. Username: Secure your username or URLAs soon as you get your first 25 fans, you’ll be able to register your unique username or URL at www.facebook.com/username. For example, instead of being a cryptic, complicated link, you can shorten the link by using your school name or a keyword (for example: www.facebook.com/OurKidsGoToCamp).

    

4. Landing Page: Create a custom welcome pageWhen new visitors land on your Facebook fan page, your job is to make sure they click that “Like” button at the top. Use a custom “landing page” with images, keyword-rich text, links, even video to help them understand why they NEED to become ‘fans’. To create a custom page, you’ll need to add the Static FBML application, paste in your FBML code (very similar to HTML), and select your fan page settings to select the specific tab you wish non-fans to land on.Some good examples include: www.facebook.com/cocacola and www.facebook.com/redbull

    

5. Bio: Write a catchy About UsJust below your fan page photo, there’s an area for a short description about your page. Write something about who you are, who you help, and how you’ll help them, using personal, engaging language. Facebook is not a formal sales pitch. You can also include a call to action such as visit our website at… (be sure to include the “http://” so it will be an active hyperlink).

    

6. RSS Feeds: Import your blog posts and events calendarsThere are a number of ways you can dynamically post content to your Facebook page, including. A couple are listed below.
   1. Notes Application: Simply copy and paste your blog URL and start importing. Every time you write a blog post, it will appear as a note on your page, consistently adding content to your fan page and keeping it fresh and engaging. (www.facebook.com/notes.php)

    

   2. Networked Blog Application: This application will post your blog article on your wall. You must first register your blog with the application, and then you can pull it into your personal page or any Facebook fan pages you own. Others can also do the same, so you can encourage students who may be blogging for you to post their feed on their personal pages too. (www.facebook.com/networkedblogs)

 

7. Privacy: Show posts by ‘page’ and ‘fans’Facebook is a social medium, and you want to encourage students and visitors to post items. Every time someone posts something, it is highlighted on their wall as “Agnes wrote on “YOUR FAN PAGE” wall. As a school, you may have strategic reasons for showing posts only by you on the fan page, but it’s been highly recommended by many experts to set it to show both. That way, anyone who comes to your page can see the interaction from both sides.
   

    

8. Fans: Encourage your fans to add contentFirst you have to make the decision if you’ll allow fans to post photos and comments on your wall. If you do, you’ll drastically be increasing the viral promotion of your school name. Encourage fans by asking questions, such as “What is your favorite class?” or “Predict the score of today’s soccer game”. Off topic questions such as “What’s your favourite sport (movie, etc.)” has also shown to be effective by allowing students to share a bit of their personal self.Allowing and encouraging your fans to add their own content will make them feel more a part of your online Facebook community, and when they tag themselves that content goes out into their feeds creating more visibility for you.

    

9. Communication: Respond to your fansDon’t just post content. Facebook is a two-way, three-way, four-way, or ‘multi-way’ conversation. Providing interesting and engaging content is just one aspect of building a successful Facebook fan page. Another critical aspect is communication. By actively responding to your fans’ comments, questions, suggestions, ideas, etc., you show that you’re a company that cares, listens, takes action, and engages your community.

    

10. Share: Broadcast to TwitterThere are many applications that allow you to post something once and it will send it to both your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The ‘Facebook fan page to Twitter’ application allows you to post Facebook status updates (up to 420 characters) that will go out as a tweet on your Twitter account. The message will be truncated at 120 characters with a shortened bit.ly link back to your fan page. The Twitter Hootsuite.com dashboard allows you to post Twitter messages to your Facebook wall, and schedule posts for later in the day or week.

Do some research and browse other successful fan page designs before you get started. We suggest you have a read of this Mashable.com article that includes 5 case studies of successful Facebook fan pages and get your social media creative juices flowing.

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