5 Golden Rules to Creating a Facebook Template

Not all Facebook templates are created equal. There are facebook templates that are so stylish and current that they captivate your attention. Then there are the others that make your eyes bleed.

As a business owner, I bet you would prefer an eye-catching one over an eye-bleeder. Am I right?

The art of creating a catchy Facebook fan page design can be systematized to a handful of fundamental principles or Golden Rules intended for when you use facebook for business, if you will.

By having these elements on your Facebook landing page, you will be far ahead of other fan pages.

Are you crossing off the 5 points on your Facebook template checklist?

Golden Rule #1: Design matches your brand and/or your message

You don’t have to be an expert graphics or web designer to know whether your template matches or clashes. You can tell immediately upon first impression. That is because colors and shapes are as much a communication channel as words. We all know that a single picture is worth a thousand words.

With just one image, you can convey a whole story. This is power that you will want to harness and use to help achieve your facebook marketing goals.

Golden Rule #2: More images than text

In going along with Rule #1, you should have a healthy mixture of images and text. A good rule of thumb is to keep the ratio to 75% images and 25% words. This keeps the attention of your viewer and quickly gives them the sense of what you are communicating.

The text should be quick and to the point. Avoid being too verbose. You can even break the rules of grammar here, as you won’t win a prize for excellent English. But, you will win a prize for excellent communication that results in the visitor taking the desired action from your template’s message.

Golden Rule #3: Always have a Call To Action

Your facebook template must absolutely, without reservation, and in no uncertain words convey the action you want the visitor to take. Without a call to action, your message would merely look like a poster you put up for pete’s sake.

A call-to-action can be to “like” your facebook landing page, a form to capture the visitor’s name and email address, a message to tell the visitor to click on a specified link, etc.

Not only do you control the message. You also control the visitor path. Make sure it is the path you want them to take.

Golden Rule #4: Create engagement: like-ability or share-ability

Engagement is a social marketing buzz word. We often hear that we need to be engaging on our fan pages. But what does that really entail?

Engaging is another way of saying someone is expressing a level of interest to the point of interacting with what is going on on the fan page. And this is what you would want — activity on your page. This activity spurs on more activity, which has the potential to spread and go “viral”.

Creating environments where your fans can participate in discussions is different from industry to industry. Some industries are more social than others and require more dialogue. Other industries can get away with lesser dialogue.

Here are three ways in which you can generate continual interest in your fan page.

• Hold contests or promotions
• Ask questions (survey or poll)
• Honor a fan

Golden Rule #5: Let this be the page first time visitors see

This is an often-missed feature that is essential to launching a facebook template.

Allow me to first say that having a facebook template is a feature that can easily set you apart from other fan pages out there. The social media crowd is a very visual group. A landing page template caters to that need quite well.

Once you have a landing page for your fan page, you simply need to make it the default page. This then is the first thing non-fans see when they visit your page. Once they click on the “Like” button and every time they visit your page after that, they are taken directly to your wall.

If you hold a contest or some other promotion on your landing page, you can set this as your default page. That way, new fans will see this promo right away. This can drum up new fans, if the spread the word to their friends.