The benefits of a custom Facebook tab for your business

If you’re on Facebook chances are you have a Facebook business page. If you don’t, you must! Once you have the page the next step is to showcase it well with a custom Facebook tab. Building a custom tab for your Facebook Fan Page has many benefits. Unlike a personal page, the Facebook Business page allows you to measure the number of visitors to your site, as well as see the age, location and activity of the people in your community. With Facebook’s continual updates to how data is recorded, you can now even know how many people are sharing your page and viewing it in their feeds. When someone is not yet a subscriber of your page you can have land on a special tab on your page which can be used to encourage them to subscribe or to promote your products, services or events. Let’s take a deeper look.

The first benefit is that the custom tab welcomes visitors to your page and invites them to join the community. Facebook is always making changes and it’s important to be active in order to really reap the benefits of marketing on Facebook. Business pages used to have “Fans” and now they have “Likes” or, people that like them. It’s a weird translation, but essentially the same, as long as someone is agreeing to become a part of the community, it doesn’t matter much how they define it.

The second benefit to a custom tab is that you add personality to the page. Facebook provides a great opportunity for branding. You get to choose a custom URL name, embed it with your custom colors and even include your logo. Without custom branding when you visit someone’s page you’ll see the same thing so it’s important to inject a bit of personality into it. The only way to do that is through the profile photo and custom tabs.

The third benefit is the ability to embed forms, photos and videos. This is perhaps one of the most impressive features of the custom tab. There are services online that will do this for you, and charge you a monthly fee for the life of that tab, which can become really expensive, as well as services that allow you to build a page for free, but offer very limited templates (which defeats the purpose of branding, right?) so my recommendation is that you have your web designer or brand manager handle this for you.

The forth benefit is that you can update your tab to reflect growing trends, make special announcements and promote events. Another great use of the custom tab is that it doesn’t have to be static. It becomes your brand ambassador. You can use your tab to provide time sensitive information and updates. You can even create several custom tabs and allow new users to land on whichever one you choose.

Highlights:
1) Create a custom graphic that says “Like This Page.” It’s a good idea to put this at the top.
2) Introduce yourself, and let people know who you are and how you serve them
3) Offer them something special for exchanging their time with you
4) Encourage them to engage in the conversation by posting questions and useful information
5) Acknowledge them on a daily basis

Need help building your Facebook Tab? Had challenges with yours? Let us know in the comments below:

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