It’s very easy to set up a professional Facebook page. The more difficult part is maintaining it. The best piece of advice I have for creating professional pages is to stay true to the organization it is being created for. Make sure the page reinforces the organization and is used properly and professionally. In my opinion, it’s best to come up with a plan and a direction for your page before signing on to Facebook. It’s easy to get carried away, so it’s a good idea to have a clearly defined purpose and focus to serve as inspiration.
Advice for posting:
For professional Facebook sites, I would suggest making brief status updates 1-2 times per week. This is just a general guideline -- it really depends on the specific business or organization. One thing to keep in mind is not to overwhelm your fan base with frequent updates (more than once/day), especially if they are similar to each other and/or focus exclusively on advertising. There needs to be some mixture of status updates and posts, so your fan base doesn’t get bored or annoyed by the same things day-after-day.
The Facebook professional updates I enjoy most are ones that ask a question and encourage customer feedback. The Children’s Place uses its page for promotional purposes (like coupons, sales notices, etc.), but it also frequently poses questions. Some recent status updates from TCP:
- Happy Valentine's Day from The Children's Place! How do you celebrate Valentine's Day with your little Valentines?
- You know what goes great with The Children's Place sleepwear? A bedtime story! What's your child's favorite?
- Brrr! Looks like another blizzard is heading toward the Northeast! What do your kids like to do on snow days?
Gap
Although its status updates can be overwhelming and tend to do a lot of advertising, the actual Facebook page and its structure are very appealing to me. They have multiple tabs the user can click through, so the page is not cluttered with different pieces of information. Overall, it is very user-friendly and promotes user-generated content. There are many videos and discussion forums that make this page stand out from other competitors. Gap also promotes many charities and had a donation campaign that donated $1 to a group of charities for every "like" on its donation status updates.
Cedar Ridge Winery & Distillery
This Facebook page focuses more on creating a positive public image, than in-your-face advertising. The page often posts photos of wine tastings and other special events that showcase what the company has to offer at its location. The main thing I really like about this page is that it isn't frequently updated, meaning someone posts maybe once or twice a week. This is infrequent when compared to larger businesses or organizations that can flood a user's News Feed with posts multiple times per day. When something is posted, it captures my attention, and I usually read it when other Facebook "spammers" get ignored.
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