by Michelle Conaghan, 25th November 2011
10 Point checklist for your Facebook page
1.
Customize your url
Customizing your url is easy and will take less than thirty seconds. Once your username is confirmed on Facebook you will receive a vanity url, which can be used on your email signature, business cards and offline print material. This will make it easier for your customers to find you on Facebook.
2.
Claim your Facebook Place page
The Place page is Facebook's version of Google+'s Place page, which has a dramatic impact on your search results. The chances are that your guests have already set up a page for your hotel in Facebook Places and you are simply unaware. Never fear, you can claim the page as a business owner and integrate this with your master Facebook page.
3.
Complete the basic information section
By including more details in the basic information section you will not only add helpful information for your Fans but also benefit from the relevant keywords which will boost your web visibility.
4.
Review your permission section
The permission section of your Facebook page often goes unchecked once the page is initially set up. It is important you revisit this section, which is located under the edit page option on your page, and check the permissions are set to suit your property.
5.
Edit your profile image and thumbnail
Ever wonder ed why some hotel's pages have a longer profile image than others? This is because they have uploaded an image. This space is a blank canvas for you to cusomise so do ensure you provide a powerful image along with your logo, branding, one key message and your site address. To edit the thumbnail, which appears on all your posts, go to the profile section on your page and then edit thumbnail. You can adjust how the image is cropped accordingly.
6.
Notifications of wall activity
This feature added to Facebook recently means you will now receive an email notification each time there is activity on your page, from a comment to a new Like. To verify that you are receiving these, visit the 'your settings' section of your page.
7.
Page security
When is the last time you checked how many people had administration access to your page? Page security is paramount as there is no way to secure complete ownership of your Facebook page. It is a good idea to set up a standard operating procedure for new employee additions or resignations, and assign overall responsibility of the management of this to one person.
8.
Facebook insights analytics
'Insights', the Facebook version of Google analytics for your page, are a source of tremendous marketing intelligence if you have an active and engaged fan base. Under 'insights' you can use this information to determine the female to male ratio, ages, level of engagement, which campaigns or messages where the most popular and much more. The information found here can be crucial to your marketing department and strategy.
9.
Contest and promotion guidelines
Running contests and promotions is one of the most frequent activities undertaken by hotels today. Are you aware of the do's and don't according to the world of Facebook? If the answer is 'No' then you need to make sure you consult their promotions guidelines.
If you do not adhere to Facebook's guidelines you put your page at risk of being removed for non-compliance. In addition to this, in my experience, running contests and promotions through applications has provided a far bigger return on investment than those run through the wall.
10.
Recommendations
The earlier review module that Facebook introduced is in the process of being removed from all pages due to lack of use. Some hotels were quite successful in their use of this tab as it had allowed users to review a hotel, give a rating out of five and leave a comment. Hotels could also respond, so this was an excellent showcase of reviews from Facebook users on your hotel's page.
However, this was underutilized by business pages, hence the emergence of 'recommendations.' The arrival of recommendations somewhat coincided with Google removing third party reviews and adding their own. The importance of reviews and their connection to revenue should not be understated.
