Facebook pages have been around for a while and businesses have done what they typically do, and that’s create a Facebook page (without thinking), add content, invite membership, wait and hope for success and then declare that their Facebook social initiative was a disaster.
It doesn’t have to be like that. With the help of Whole Foods, let me give you a step-by-step approach on how to create a perfect and successful Facebook business page.
Whole Foods, with their wholesome products and clever marketing, has captured our imagination in more ways than just healthy food. They’ve been connecting with local communities, their in-store periodicals are neat, they have cooking lessons on site, they have a variety of websites, blogs, videos and podcasts where they try to enrich (and reach) their customers as much as possible.
And, of course, they’re on social networks including Facebook. A social network is a great way for a firm to aggregate all its online marketing programs. Facebook pages help you do just that. The Whole Foods Facebook page is an impressive marketing effort because of it’s completeness and precision.
Let’s understand the steps you need to follow to make your Facebook page as complete as possible as well as the steps you have to undertake to sustain your Facebook page and keep it active and energetic.
Step 1. Make your introduction stand out:
Let’s look at Whole Foods’ introduction page. It’s comprehensive and detailed. Note the outbound links to their web properties as well as a detailed introduction about the company and their core values. Describing your core values and principles is very useful on a social network as people are looking to connect with organizations that resonate with their own life beliefs.
Step 
2. Fresh Wall content keeps everyone interested:
Keep your Facebook wall active. The number of entries on your wall is one barometer of success on Facebook especially for folks contemplating whether to join your page or not. If you’ve just posted a blog entry on your blog or just posted a video on YouTube or created a neat new landing page, post the same on your wall and even ask for comments. Your members will be happy to oblige.
With the Whole Foods Wall, there’s never a dull moment. There’s always new content on their wall to keep the page active and keep members interested. They feed in entries from their videos, various blogs and other online activity to keep the wall vibrant.
Step 3. Ensure that you have some Video inventory:
If you’re creating a page, a big no-no is to leave your videos section empty. So many businesses make this mistake.
If you do not have your own videos, try to invest in efforts to make some. These days, its relatively easier and cheaper too. Create videos that add value to your user base.
Whole Foods’ video section on their page is stocked with a variety of videos about how to pack a healthy lunch for your kids or the activities of an organic farm or a lesson on how to cook some delicious food.
Step 4. Use the Boxes to promote other web initiatives:
So, in addition to all the cool stuff you’re doing on Facebook, you may have a blog, you may have a Squidoo lens, you connect with your customers through email etc. There’s no reason why you cant promote your other initiatives on your Facebook page. Use the boxes section to do just that. For e.g. have a basic descriptor of your blog or Squidoo lens and have a link present if anyone wishes to check it out.
Whole Foods uses the boxes features to promote their blog as well as the Whole Planet Foundation. A Flickr badge is placed strategically alongside the outbound links and the Whole Foods Foundation promos. Additionally, they also have an email capture present there.
From this, we see that Whole Foods promotes their blogs, their photo-sharing web initiative and are also inviting folks to join their email mailing list through the Boxes section.
Step 5. Ensure that your RSS/Blog feeds are current:
Ensure that your RSS is peppered with content from your blogs. If that’s a problem, find a blog that’s connected with the services or products you offer and RSS their feed into your page. Remember, the idea here is to create a page that is complete in all respects. Ideally, it’ s best to have content that created by you but, if that’s not possible, then use the above solution.
No problem here with Whole Foods. Apart from having feeds from their regular blog, the Whole Foods RSS section also has a feed from the Whole Planet Foundation blog. They’ve also utilized the RSS features of their page to keep their members abreast of any new podcasts that they create on a variety of topics.
Step 6. Clarify company/product issues on the Notes section:
If you require to clarify anything about your company or products (new launch that went bad, negative reactions from the marketplace etc) use the Notes section to do just that.
Whole Foods present opinions and ideas on current issues or topics within their Notes section. When their CEO committed a gaffe with his free-markets opinion of health care in the Wall Street Journal, Whole Foods’ progressive customer base was not too happy about it. While the CEO clarified his position on various forums, Whole Foods also used the Notes section of this page to clarify the same to their customers.
Things to Note :
- Creating a Facebook page is like creating one central space for all your online marketing activities to converge.
- Ensure that the page ‘Stays Alive”. At no point of time should you ever neglect it. It’s not a self sustaining organism. Treat it like a goldfish in a bowl. Sure, it’ll stay alive for a while, but it needs food from you to swim around.
- Duplication of the same content is not wise. Whole Foods could’ve used the Photos tab on their page and filled it up with the same photos from Flickr – they chose not to. In this way, they made sure that all the tabs on the top of the page were visible.
- Have fun and patience doing this. You have to have the right attitude while doing this. Once you’re positive about this, good thing will happen gradually. Good luck!
This is a great article. I really appreciate all the useful info you are sharing and the “Whole Foods” example is just perfect.
Thanks Christina! Hope you keep checking out the newer articles from time-to-time.