I recently read a great blog post from AppStorm, a web focused technology blog, that identified there top 35 Facebook pages, owned and operated by some of the worlds leading brands. From reading through the blog post it offered a real insight into the potential in which Facebook can offer brands looking to generate interest in there products/services, building a strong customer network, spreading your brand message and using additional functionalities available to actually generate revenue.

Whilst the majority of these cater for US/Global consumer markets it provides key insights into areas that can easily applied to any brand looking to create a presence online within the UK. To give you a starter I’ve listed some areas to bear in mind when creating your own Facebook page, whether it be for your company, client or brand:

Offer a call to action – There are too many pages on Facebook that are on there for the sake of being there, give people a reason to come back! This can be achieved by providing fresh and exciting content, hosting pictures and videos, running competitions & polls, integrating web apps, stimulate discussion, offer downloads and allowing users to actually purchase exclusive products through the Facebook platform (by no means an exhaustive list).

Engage with your users – If your customers are looking to talk, talk back…

Create Consistency - Whilst Facebook offers great potential to companies you should not underestimate the greater opportunity of having a presence across other influential social media platforms (Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr etc). Simple ways of doing this can be achieved by creating a similar aesthetics in designs across platforms but can be developed to actively promote the other social media platforms that you cater for to act as a captcha for those people who are unaware that you may be active on Facebook but engage with you elsewhere on the web.

Create the viral effect – Social media platforms make it really easy for users to syndicate your message across, being that they ‘like’ what they see (excuse the pun).

Understand your network – Facebook Insights offers a good analytics platform to help you understand your network and how they are using your page – however, if you notice that your network becomes quite large you may want to look at some paid for solutions that offer greater depth analysis (e.g. WebTrends) to ensure you are maximising activities that have a positive impact and curtail those that don’t.

Keep your eye on the ball – If you are looking to ramp up your Social Media activity in Facebook you can guarantee that your competitors are too. Take time to understand what they are doing not only in Facebook but across the social media landscape to identify potential avenues that you may have not thought were big as you thought.

Traditional/Online/Paid For Channels – Its important support your efforts on Facebook with more traditional/paid for channels such as Advertising (both on and offline), Marketing & PR.

Are there any UK based examples of pages that are currently doing well? What makes them stand out?