I think Facebook fan pages are an excellent way to market your organization. The magic of Facebook is that you are setting up a place for people to go to find out more about you. However, it is not purely informational, like your website, because unlike your website, Facebook allows other people to add comments, post pictures and recommend your page to their other friends. The best part is that the recommendation does not require any extra effort. This happens because every action someone makes, on Facebook, shows up in their newsfeed and all of their friends can see their newsfeed. So, when someone becomes a fan of yours or makes a comment or posts a picture they are promoting you. And this is what I want you to capitalize on.

If you have already set up a personal Facebook page, setting up a fan page should not be very challenging. To set up a fan page you will need a Facebook account. Once you have one, click here to set up your fan page.

The first step, to popularizing your fan page, is to contact your friends and family (via Facebook) and ask them to become fans of your page. It’s not any sort of commitment on their behalf. They just need to click “become a fan.” Facebook has added a new feature. It recommends people and fan pages based on what your other Facebook friends are doing. So, for example, if you and I are both fans of GMT, Facebook might suggest that your coworker also become a fan of that page. This will expose more people to your page.

Next, you should advertise your fan page on your website, in your newsletter and at your events. Part of your goal is to get people to become a fan of your page. The rest of the goal is to get people to post content. It’s one thing for you to post pictures of a successful event. However it’s even better to get attendees to post their pictures on your fan page. Most people are going to post their pictures on Facebook anyone way, so ask them to put pictures on your page as well as their personal page. Because when they post pictures the pictures will show up in their newsfeed and their friends will be directed to your fan page to view the pictures.

Another way that I have seen groups use fan pages is by making it a place for people to go to find out what bloggers are saying about your organization. I blogged about a National Wildlife Federation (NWF) initiative and later that day a link to my post showed up on their fan page. Fans of NWF know to check their fan page for current information.

There are many ways to benefit from a fan page. They are a form of "word of month" but they require so little effort because the newsfeed does all the work.

Tell us about your successes with Facebook fan pages.