Promoting your Facebook Fan Page From your Website

You finally created your Facebook fan page. Now is the time to get some fans. Your website is the perfect place to promote your Facebook presence. Strangely, it is rarely done well. If you are serious about acquiring fans, this blog post will help you bring website visitors to your Facebook page.

Most of the time, a Facebook icon is placed on a website to advertise a Facebook presence with the hope that they become fan of the Facebook page.  Here are a number of examples, good and bad, of such icons:

3 Key Elements for Facebook Icons

To maximize the effectiveness of Facebook icons on a website, 3 key elements must be considered:

1. The location of the icon;
2. The visual design of the icon;
3. The call to action text.

Icon Location

To maximize exposure, the Facebook icon should be on every page of your website. The only exceptions to this rule are pages in a conversion funnel, for example a shopping cart payment sequence. Also, on a single page, you want the icon to be visible without having to scroll down. Visual Design The visual design of the icon must be such that it can be seen and recognized. That is common sense but not so common. Here are some basic rules:

• The size of the icon and text must be large enough. 
• Try to use the standard blue Facebook icons, if it does not clash with the website color palette. People recognize them easily. 
• Use negative space appropriately. If your page is too busy and cluttered, nothing will stand out.

Call to Action Text

The call to action text is the text accompanying the Facebook icon. It is used to provoke an action from the viewer. Consequently, it preferably starts with an action verb. Here are a few possibilities:

Call to action text	Comments
No text at all	This is the easiest to integrate into the website because it uses very little space but it is also the least effective
"Join us"	Slightly better than no text. However, it does not use a standard Facebook verb. On Facebook, we “like” or we “become fans”
"Like us" or "Become a fan"	Better than “Join us” because it uses standard Facebook lingo.
"Join our 20,000 fans"	Persuasive because the size of the fan base suggest there is value in becoming a fan. There is also the herding effect.
"Become a fan and be notified of our events / promotions"	Persuasive because it indicates the value in becoming a fan.

A quick word on the verb "Connect". I suggest that you avoid using this verb as a synonym for becoming a fan. The reason is that Facebook has a service called Facebook Connect. It allows a website to obtain part of the visitor information kept in Facebook. Some users may hesitate to click on the link, thinking that you want obtain access to their personal information.

Facebook Icon Summary

If you want to bring a maximum number of visitors to your Facebook fan page, it is important to place your Facebook icon in the top part of every page, to design it in such a way that it is easy to see and recognize and to have an accompanying text that will entice the visitor to click on it. Once your website visitors are on your fan page, the job is not finished. To convince them to click on the "I like" button and convert them to fans, you will need to provide them value. But that is another subject.

Tip: To learn how many visitors arrive at your Facebook page from your website, use Facebook Insights. At the bottom of the detailed user view, look at the section "External Referrers". It will show you how many visitors arrived on your Facebook page from your website and additional sources.

Facebook Fan Box

Instead of placing a simple Facebook icon on your website, you can present a widget called the Facebook Fan Box. The main drawback is its larger size, making it much more difficult to integrate into your website design. Here is what it looks like for the Mic Mac Mall fan page:

Its main advantage is that it will show Facebook friends of the visitor and increase the probabilities of a "Like".

You may also be interested in this article: Website Promotion 101.