effective Facebook pages YOU can create right now7

by Dana VanDen Heuvelprincipal, MarketingSavant Group

www.marketingsavant.com

I'm as much a fan of some of the awesome Facebook pages created for

the world's top brands like Starbucks, Cranium, Threadless and Harley-Da-

vidson, but what about for the rest of us who don't have that kind of budget

or, frankly, the "need" for the level of sophistication that those brands have

applied to their pages. We just need some solid design, some creativity

and an overall engaging experience.

Here is a list of 7 pages that I'm I fan of for just that sort of thing. These are

page designs and ideas that are within reach of nearly every business with-

out the need for thousands of dollars in Facebook development. Whether

you're a small business or a mega-enterprise, there are ideas here for you!

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com1

contentsLake Nona Pools .................................... 2

Ocean City Maryland ............................... 3

AGCO .................................................. 4

AJ Bombers ......................................... 6

Sainsbury's .......................................... 7

Jo to Go Coffee ...................................... 8

Queens Museum of Art ........................... 9

Recap: Top 23 Ideas! ............................ 10

About the author ..................................13

Aside from the fact that these guys need to update their welcome page to comply with Facebook's new 520px page size format, these guys have a great, simple and engaging welcome page that does exactly what it's sup-posed to!

These guys also do some GREAT audience involvement, such as this photo that got 90 COMMENTS! when they asked people to "tag" themselves in the photo based on where they'd like to be in the pool for the "Friday Pool Party". They also answer any question that comes in about pools, mainte-nance, safety and so on. They've positioned themselves as an outstanding resource in their area for pool upkeep.

In fact, they've been so successful on Facebook that they've received one of the coveted Facebook business stickers!

Lake Nona Poolswww.facebook.com/LakeNonaPools

Create an inviting welcome page

Create "Facebook rituals" that engage your audience daily or weekly

Answer questions

Be helpful to engage your audience on Facebook.

1

What YOU can do

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com2

Yes, you're correct, this is a Facebook page for a municipality, and it's one of the more interesting one's I've seen. For starters, they have a great welcome page that they rotate seasonal images through and have used some simple Facebook Connect trickery to get the "like" and comment functionality embedded right on the welcome page.

They also have a very well trafficked and engaging post wall where they answer questions, ask questions and generally stir up interest in Ocean City! They are posting as many as a few times a day on happenings in the town and garner a significant number of comments and likes on each post, further spreading their message.

Their photo page is outstanding. They have over 1200 user submitted photos. Think about what kind of "virtual travel brochure" that makes! Your company/city/department couldn't possibly capture all of the exciting moments that are possible when people interface with your brand. This is truly a great example of letting your customers do your marketing for you!

Ocean City Marylandwww.facebook.com/OceanCity

Integrate Facebook Connect on your website and Facebook page

Sustain a consistent and "often as your audience finds interesting" content

publishing regiment

Do everything you can to encourage photo posting from fans, customers and

everyone who experiences your brand

Share as many of those photos as you can in your own Facebook postings

2

What YOU can do

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com3

This has to be one of my favorite Facebook pages, and it's not just because a few friends run it. I've always loved tractors and AGCO taps into the emotional aspects of their customers' attachment to their farm machinery in a way that few B2B companies have done to date. While the AGCO Facebook site is a collaborative effort, there are some really solid things going on here that you can learn from and emulate.

AGCO does a great job of keeping their page "profile picture" in the upper left updated and relevant based on what's going on with the brand. More to the point, they design it so that the thumbnail im-age (which is a derivative of the large 200 x 600px image) always represents the brand. Right now they have a blog content running that they're promoting on Facebook and across their social media channels. AGCO also does a super job of keeping up with answering questions that are posted and offering guidance to their Facebook fans.

Flexing the muscle of their Facebook tabs, AGCO also keeps their

AGCOwww.facebook.com/AGCOcorp3

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com4

Make the most of your "Page profile picture" in the upper left ― you've got 200 x 600 pixels

― it's often wise to use as much of that digital real estate as you can

Mirror your Facebook page to reflect your offline and other social media marketing efforts

and campaigns

Answer any and all questions that come in through your page

Encourage fan photos, comment on them and make fan engagement a central component

of your Facebook presence

Attend trade shows with still and video camera in hand and interview your customers, dis-tribution partners and everyone in between ― make them slightly famous by posting on

Facebook and encourage sharing

Sustain a consistent and "often as your audience finds interesting" content publishing regi-

ment

Use your tabs wisely. AGCO makes excellent use of the Facebook tabs featuring everything

from new product launches to contests to integrating the blog and video content

Share photos as often as you can in your own Facebook postings

What YOU can do

Facebook audience current by leveraging the power of the tabs to put information on new products and features that would likely be of great interest to their fans which might otherwise get lost on a large corporate website.

AGCO

ww

w.fa

cebo

ok.c

om/A

GCO

corp3

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com5

AJ Bombers is the best burger joint in Milwaukee. Period. While they are "huge on Four-square" their Facebook presence is pretty admirable as well. These guys have done a great job of integrating Foursquare and "location based marketing" into their overall online strategy. They also have a rock solid (albeit a bit more complex) integration that brings their website content into the site through "More AJB" tab on Facebook and offer a link to their gift card site through Facebook as well. If you did nothing but fan AJ Bomb-ers on Facebook, you'd be in the loop on everything they do. Specials, media mentions, cool fan updates and just about everything that happens in the restaurant makes it onto Facebook.

AJ Bomberswww.facebook.com/pages/Milwaukee-WI/AJ-Bombers/54727050805

Make Facebook a one-stop-shop for everything that anyone could want to know about your business. Make sure everything (menu, hours, location, phone) is on the page to make it easy for them to find you

and do business with you.

Mention your other products and programs (like gift cards) on Facebook tabs.

Integration location marketing into your online (and offline, through window stickers and such) strategy to encourage visitorship and to make each visit matter that much

more (turning your best, most connected patrons in a "daily viral visitors")

Mirror your web page in a Facebook tab

Shout out to and connect your best fans by their Twitter handles (add those to your customer database!)

4What YOU

can do

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com6

Sainsbury's is a UK grocery store chain that's done a few really cool things with their Facebook page. They have one of the best welcome pages I've seen in a long time (that changes with the seasons) and make it a point to answer nearly every question posed on their page. Fans know that they can get a response from the brand using Facebook.

Sainsbury’swww.facebook.com/sainsburys

Make an AWESOME welcome page to get potential fans hooked on the immense val-ue that you deliver through your page

If your organization relies at all on any "how-to"information, create and host videos to share with fans. Sainsbury's uses their kitchen facilities to shoot video of things that they'd be doing anyway (testing recipes and preparing deli food) that fans will also find interesting.

Answer every question. Sainsbury's is constantly monitoring their Facebook page for questions & comments and makes a point to get in touch with fans who have concerns or questions, often answering them publically (as shown above) and sometimes privately as well.

Mention your other activities in the community on your page

5What YOU

can do

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com7

I use this example in almost every one of my social media classes as an il-lustration of a brand that's gone all the way with the concept of the "siteless web" in that they've gotten rid of their website and run the web presence for the business using a combination of Facebook, Google maps, Scribd.com and other lightweight and low cost apps. Jo To Go does a good job of keep-ing up with some regular posts on Facebook about happenings at all of their locations. They have also smartly leveraged things like Google maps to map out the locations of their stores.

One area that they have developed that many restaurants and retailers on Facebook have not is their Reviews section. They have several reviews, some positive and some negative, but they've not responded to a single one. We generally recommend responding, and doing so quickly, as some of the other examples in this post do with comments on their pages.

Jo to Go Coffeewww.facebook.com/JoToGoCoffee

Replace your website, or even make your next micro-site out of Facebook

Integrate other cloud apps to augment the Facebook functionality as needed, such as Scribd.com and Google Apps

Solicit reviews from patrons on Facebook (and anywhere else that makes sense for that matter!) and respond to those (both positive and negative) to bolster the community around the reviews.

Offer deals, specials and other incentives to Facebook fans. Another coffee shop/restaurant, the Dessert Gallery in Houston, has some great, proven results in this case study on how valuable their Facebook fans are to their establishment

6

What YOU can do

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com8

Every non-profit and community organization thrives on attention and in the case of a venue like the Queens Museum of Art, visitorship. I love how these guys re-ally rock the events feature in Facebook. They have over 140 events listed! These guys are also really consistent about their updates on events, items of interest to fans, community happenings that their fans might be interested in and so on.

Queens Museum of Artwww.facebook.com/QueensMuseum

Post daily, or even a few times a day. Keep

it focused on things that are of relevance and

value to your audience.

Events! Post all of them. If you have something going on, put it on Face-

book. Facebook events show up for your fans on the right hand side of the

page when you invite them, so keep posting those events!

Use the Extended Info tab to share even more information and background

about your organization.

Use photos extensively. The more visual your product or service, the more

you should use Facebook's photos component (or integrate with Flickr or

another photo sharing site) to get the visual message across.

7What YOU

can do

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com9

Let's Recap:These are some examples that I thought were both smart AND approachable ― stuff that can be done by almost any business with their Facebook page. What smart examples have you seen?

top

23 ie

asrecap

Top 23 ideas1. Make an AWESOME welcome page to get potential fans hooked on the immense value that you deliver through your page Create "Facebook rituals" that engage your audience daily or weekly

2. Answer any and all questions that come in through your page. Sainsbury's is constantly monitor-ing their Facebook page for questions & comments and makes a point to get in touch with fans who have concerns or questions, often answering them publically and sometimes privately as well.

3. Be helpful to engage your audience on Facebook.

4. Integrate Facebook Connect on your website and Facebook page

5. Sustain a consistent and "often as your audience finds interesting" content publishing regiment

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com10

6. Do everything you can to encourage photo posting from fans, customers and everyone who ex-periences your brand

7. Share as many photos as you can in your own Facebook postings

8. Make the most of your "Page profile picture" in the upper left ― you've got 200 x 600 pixels ―it's often wise to use as much of that digital real estate as you can

9. Mirror your Facebook page to reflect your offline and other social media marketing efforts and campaigns

10. Encourage fan photos, comment on them and make fan engagement a central component of your Facebook presence

11. Attend trade shows with still and video camera in hand and interview your customers, distribu-tion partners and everyone in between ― make them slightly famous by posting on Facebook and encourage sharing

12. Use your tabs wisely. AGCO makes excellent use of the Facebook tabs featuring everything from new product launches to contests to integrating the blog and video content

13. Share photos as often as you can in your own Facebook postings

14. Make Facebook a one-stop-shop for everything that anyone could want to know about your busi-ness. Make sure that everything (menu, hours, location, phone # ― everything!) is on the page to make it easy for them to find you and do business with you.

15. Mention your other products and programs (like gift cards) on Facebook tabs.

top

23 ie

as

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com11

16. Integration location marketing into your online (and offline, through window stickers and such) strategy to encourage visitorship and to make each visit matter that much more (turning your best, most connected patrons in a "daily viral visitors")

17. Mirror your web page in a Facebook tab

18. Shout out to and connect your best fans by their Twitter handles (add those to your customer database!)

19. Replace your website, or even make your next micro-site out of Facebook

20. Integrate other cloud apps to augment the Facebook functionality as needed, such as Scribed and Google Apps

21. Solicit reviews from patrons on Facebook (and anywhere else that makes sense for that mat-ter!) and respond to those (both positive and negative) to bolster the community around the reviews.

22. Offer deals, specials and other incentives to Facebook fans. Another coffee shop/restaurant, the Dessert Gallery in Houston, has some great, proven results in this case study on how valuable their Facebook fans are to their establishment

23. If your organization relies at all on any "how-to" information, create and host videos to share with fans. Sainsbury's uses their kitchen facilities to shoot video of things that they'd be doing any-way (testing recipes and preparing deli food) that fans will also find interesting.

top

23 ie

as

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com12

Dana VanDen Heuvel and The MarketingSavant GroupMarketing Consultancy :: The MarketingSavant Group

Are You Looking for a Marketing Firm You Can Trust? One Who Really Gets It?

Not only does Dana VanDen Heuvel and his company, The MarketingSavant Group, have more than 15 years of internet marketing experience, he's been an entrepreneur and business owner since he started his first business at age 13. As a marketing trainer, Dana has helped hundreds of market-ers with their internet, thought leadership and social media marketing challenges.

Marketing consultants are everywhere. Whether you're looking for help now, or just want to bat around a few ideas, why not trust someone who's taught hundreds about the latest marketing techniques, spoken at dozens of conferences, and helped businesses just like yours achieve suc-cess through marketing.

With The MarketingSavant Group, you'll never encounter freshly minted MBA's who've never seen the inside of a boardroom or an inexperienced account manager or a poorly written strategy. When you work with us, you get our best and brightest talent every time, all the time.

MarketingSavant Marketing Consulting ServicesThe MarketingSavant Group will work with you to find a working arrangement that meets your needs. We offer several consulting options for our clients. If you're just looking for access to our ideas and talent, well that works too. You decide how you want use us and when you need us. Our clients appreciate the benefit of adding a nationally-renowned marketing consultant to your team without the overhead of hiring full-time staff or engaging an ad agency.

How We Work With You● Phone consultations - you pick the hours needed and you decide when to use our marketing expertise.● On-site training/consulting - have Dana spend a day or two or ten with your company, evaluating your projects, providing expert advice and making your next mar-

keting project a success.● Remote web training - when you need to train a team of marketers on blogging or go-to-market strategy or whatever, we'll come to you over a Webex meeting or a

teleconference.● Retainer-based consulting - if you know you'll need Dana's expertise for an extensive period of time, you can hire The MarketingSavant group on a reasonable

monthly retainer basis.● Al a carte - What do you need? Tell us what's on your mind and we'll work with you.

Email us at info@marketingsavant.com or learn more about our consulting services at www.MarketingSavant.com.

“Dana’s vision and insight into digital and thought leadership marketing has been a significant contribution to our business. He offers not only the knowledge, but the systems to make online marketing a natural extension of the work we do every day. I rec-ommend him highly.”

- Kyra Cavanaugh, Founder, Life Meets Work

“Dana is one of those people who just “gets it.” His knowledge and granular understanding of how blogs and social media can be used as a marketing tool place him at the head of the pack in this burgeoning field. He was one of the blogging early adopters and someone to whom I looked for insight and information.”

- Paul Chaney, President, Radiant Marketing Group

“I’ve had the honor of working with Dana and found him to be a forward-thinking visionary especially on subject matter pertain-ing to interactive marketing. I turn to him not only for consulta-tion on my own projects and challenges, but also to help enrich AMA member benefits by providing information and insights to our membership. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend him or work with him again!”

- Amy (Komenda) Zelenka, Marketing Manager, American Marketing Association

7 effective Facebook pages YOU can create www.marketingsavant.com13