Social networking tools like Facebook are great for increasing the visibility of your site on the web, as people who “like”, “recommend” or post to your Facebook page will automatically share it with their own network of contacts via their wall every time they interact with your page. There are, however, some important things to bear in mind before you start using Facebook as a way of linking to your website.
A Facebook personal profile is for people, not websites
A lot of beginner webmasters make the mistake of creating a regular account for the website’s Facebook profile. Using a standard profile for your personal Facebook account is perfect, but it’s really not adapted to a brand, business or website:
- personal profiles are limited to 5000 friends
- have no statistics
- have a single account administrator
- need to approve “friends” who want to connect
- have no centralized “homepage”
- have private content
- can’t be used to target specific regions or languages
Use a Facebook “page” instead
Fortunately, Facebook has a type of profile that’s perfect for websites, companies and brands: a Facebook page.
Using a Facebook page means you’ll automatically “feed” the walls of people who interact with your posts: ideal for increasing the visibility of your site and helping new visitors to discover it. Each interacting to a Facebook page is recorded, and summarized in statistical graphs, providing valuable insight into the number of views of each of your posts, and the number of “likes” each attracts.
To set up a Facebook page for your site, head to this page, and choose the type of page that best suits your website’s theme or core activity.
Provide a name for your page...
...and personalize the page profile, by including relevant information about your website (don't forget to illustrate the page with an image or two).
And that’s it – you’re ready to start using your page to promote your website!
If you don’t already have Facebook personal account, you can create an account specifically for managing your Facebook page. Whilst this is particularly useful if you like avoiding exes and childhood acquaintances, integrating your page stream into your own wall by using (or creating) a personal profile to manage your page helps get it off to a good start, as it’s content will automatically be visible to your friends.
Once you’ve created your page, it’s easy to integrate it into your site using the website builder tools in your site manager – see our Facebook tutorial for ideas on adding links and Facebook sharing tools to your website.
