The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport, Wrestling, PHP, SEO, Social Media & Networking

The latest bit of cool addition to come from Fortress Facebook is the creation of “Fan Pages”. There’s a good reason for this, as there are – still – hundreds of “Facebook Appreciation Societies” on The Group Pages. Some of them – such as the one I’ve linked to – are amazing, but Groups aren’t really the right place for these now. For one, you can’t track how popular you really are, or it’s not great to keep in touch, plus cowboy facebookers could create them, and you don’t really have control over them.

Groups are better for things like people who share a common interest, people who shared an experience, or – my personal favourite at the moment – people who believe their ex’s lower their standards after themselves. Fan Pages are for appreciation societies.

So, why should you create one, especially if you’ve already got an appreciation society?

A few reasons. Firstly, unlike groups, it’s publically searchable a so can appear in things like Google. I wrote my page a few days ago, and it’s already getting a few hits. It’s not much, but it’s nice to get something.

Also, if you add the link to your blog, it’s a linkback from a strong domain (which is apparently a good thing).

Finally, the best thing is that it’s promoting your blog to facebook. It’s largely an untapped resource, and – providing you’re not shy about it – getting your friends as regular readers is a very, very good thing. There are tons of ways in which people I know as friends have discovered my blogs (through RSS Integration), I know because, whilst they don’t comment, they tell me. It all ads up to more people reading your site and linking to you.

So, are you going to create your blog’s facebook fan’s page? Mine’s feeling a little lonely, share it in the comments!

The facebook fan page for my blog is here.