Some Helpful Tips on How to Use a Facebook Page

It may be beneficial for you to set up a facebook page for your company or Nonprofit.  

Why set up a facebook page?

1. Utilizing a facebook page will allow you to share specific information with friends who are interested, rather than using your personal feed.  
2. On the other hand, your page can contain much more professional, specific information than what you ate for dinner last night (ie - personal information).
3. Having a page allows you to easily set up facebook ads to direct people to your page, and discover new people who may be interested in your product or service. (Note: My highest recommendation is that you direct your facebook ads to your facebook page rather than an outside page.  If they visit your website you "fed them for a day" but if they become a fan of your page, you get to "feed them for a lifetime," and have obtained permission marketing.  Make sense?)

You have a facebook page, now what?

1. Many people don't realize that the icon of your profile picture on your facebook page, that shows up in your fan's news feeds can be centered.  Scroll over your picture on the main page and "Change Picture" will pop up.  Click on this and say "Edit thumbnail."  This will allow you to "drag image to adjust" how you want this to appear in your friend's news feeds with each status you post.
2. Once you have 25 fans of your page, you can set a personalized URL.  Login to your personal facebook account and type in facebook.com/username.  This will allow you to set your personal facebook URL as well as any pages you are an admin for (that have over 25 fans).  Pick a name and select "check availability."  Note - once this name is chosen, it can NOT be reset to anything else.  And you should know that moving to a different page is ridiculously hard, so choose wisely.  I highly recommend choosing the same name/URL as your company Twitter account (as well as vimeo, YouTube, Flikr and others), if this is available.  It's best to choose the same for all accounts for ease of sharing that information with others on your materials.
3. On the information block below your page's profile picture, you can write up a short blurb of information.  I like to put links in this section to the website and other items (ie - registration, etc).  Make sure that all links you put in this section and in your statuses have http:// in them.  They don't need www. just http:// and fans will be able to click on them.  If you have long website links, go to ow.ly to make a shortened version.  I almost always do this.  Don't confuse people with long links in your statuses - use ow.ly or a similar service.
4. Once you have a page with more than 25 fans and you've chosen your personalized URL, you can make a "facebook like" button for the page to put on your website, in your communication emails, etc.  Go to the developers page and enter facebook.com/whateverURLyou'vechosen.  Add this code to your site, and all people do is click "like" and they become a fan of your page and you are connected with them when you post statuses and feeds through facebook.  Wala!  Permission marketing.
5. If you have a web designer for your company or ministry (if you don't, hire our guy to do it) you can utilize facebook FMBL to make specialized tabs within your facebook page.  The best way to use this is to have people land on the "Welcome" page when they are not yet "fans" of the page for an introduction.  Here are two great examples (Praise FM and Home Depot).
6. Another item you may want to consider for you facebook page and even your twitter too, is a special website landing page within your website for people discovering you through facebook and twitter (Check out an example of a twitter landing page by Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, and a facebook landing page here at Thinke).
7. Finally, be clear, simple and remarkable in all your content on your page.  Cut out any content and wording that is unnecessary and stick to the point.  In your statuses, make it about your fans, ask questions and find only the best content, article and links to repost.