There are tons of reasons why you should have a Facebook fan page to help your own business and website.
First, it's just another way of getting information to your readers and directing your friends and family on Facebook to your website.
You Could Go Viral As an added bonus, you are also spreading your name to all of your contacts' friends and family.
So, every time one person you know likes your page or becomes a fan, all of their friends find out in addition to yours.
That is how any link, video, or post becomes viral.
Not everything is going to explode all across the Internet, but it will get much further if you take as many steps as possible to drive traffic to your website and build your brand.
It can only help to have a fan page.
Increase Your Visibility Not only does a fan page end up in more people visiting your site, it increases your visibility to search engines.
The more places you have with your name and site, the higher you go in the search results.
A fan page is also a great place to test drive material to a select crowd.
Usually the people that 'like' your fan page are fans of your products, services or website.
So, they will be able to tell you what appeals to them.
They will also be able to let you down easy for ideas that don't work.
And you can send things through private messages to certain fans, not necessarily all, if you want.
Unrestricted Views But it's not completely limited like your real Facebook account that only goes to your friends.
If a Facebook fan page posts something that is not great, it usually stays right there.
But you post something people do like- before you even have feedback, it can be viewed by hundreds of people because it is unrestricted.
And you can carefully track the popularity of your fan page and how it affects the traffic on your main site.
So you always know which is doing better and how one affects the other.
And even while you are testing out possible copy or video on your Fan page - it's already showing up in searches.
You can even add links to your latest blog post, so that medium is automatically getting more views as well.
It's About Relationships Having a fan page helps you build up a relationship with people without giving the hard sell right away.
As they grow to like you and your site, you can start slowly offering deals or coupons to your fans and when they eventually become customers, it's a real decision based on knowledge and a positive relationship.
As long as you are posting genuine and helpful information, fans will have a favorable feeling.
You can foster relationships before or after the business and even get feedback and improve your site, service and process with a fan page.
It's not only a way to help drive traffic, but it's a safe place to go for you, where, in the big fast superhighway of the internet, you are surrounded by friends of the Facebook variety.