I am continuing on our path to learning how to create an Android app successfully and to help you understand how people will find your app and download it. In order to create an Android app successfully you need to plan every stage of your app prior to creating the app and this includes your marketing and download strategy. We have spoken about the use of word of mouth marketing and also the use of social media. Today we are going to learn how to open a Facebook fan page.

What is a Facebook Fan page?

Facebook is still regarded as a marketers dream platform, almost everyone you know will have a Facebook profile and use Facebook at least once a week or not more. Businesses have taken this free marketing tool and utilized it by creating Facebook fan pages. A fan page is not the same as a profile because it is set up differently, it does not allow the page to like or befriend others, it only allows users to like the page in order to stop pages spamming people.

Setting up a Facebook page is simple, follow these 7 steps to achieve your personalised fan page.

Make sure before you start that you have your own user profile from which you can manage your page.

1. Start – In order to begin creating your Facebook fan page,  click on the link below, this will direct you to the create a fan page webpage: URL https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

2. Set up – This is where you need to determine where your business sits, which classification best suits your business needs. Remember that people may not know of your business and will find it through an organic search, therefore it is important that you target the right audience by choosing the right category.

3. Complete your business details – One important point to remember here, once you have inputted your business name, it CANNOT be changed. Check this information a million times before you click continue.

4. Upload Photo – When your page is shown in a search, or when you leave a comment for others, this image will appear. We suggest that this image should be your company logo. This image is what will represent your business on Facebook, so make sure it’s of good quality. The dimensions when opened fully are 180×180 and will show on your page as 125×125.

5. About your company –  Don’t bore your readers with a million-word description of your business. Keep this short and simple,  2-3 sentences should be enough to describe your company. Remember, the first few sentences appear on your homepage, so make sure it’s a description and relevant and make sure you include your company website in there too. These few sentences will sell your business to potential ‘likers’.

6. Your Admin Panel – From here you will be able to manage your business page, allowing you to edit and monitor the page.

7. Building an audience – The first thing you need to do before you consider building your audience is to ensure the page has content on it. No one will like an empty page after all! The best way to start engaging with others is by commenting on their pages and getting to know people well, get them to comment on your content too. Once the page is being to become alive then start building an audience and inviting people to like your page. This does not happen overnight and you need to be consistent with your posts and your contact with others.

8. Your Content – Firstly pay attention to your cover photo. This is a large eye-catching item on your page that will show once someone has clicked onto your page and come to see who you are. Make sure this image represents your company and tells a story. Make sure your posts show a  variety of content, images, video, text, external links, all content should be relevant to your area of business but not necessarily about your particular company. Posts should not be used to sell directly, your posts are a way to show your industry knowledge and build confidence in your ability. Within your posts, a smaller percentage you can of course link back to your business page, to your sales and so forth.

9. Monitor your page – As with all aspects of business, some things work and some things don’t work. Look at what posts are attracting a larger audience, more comments, likes and look at what time of day more people interact with you too. Utilize your findings to build a larger healthier audience.

That is it – now go and create an Android app Facebook page