Facebook Fan Pages are all the rage in local business marketing right now. If you are not building a following using Facebook, what are you waiting for? They are at 500 million users and growing!

However, there's a right way and a wrong way to use Facebook Fan Pages. Do it wrong and you will waste your time and your money.

If you have followed my other articles, I suggest that you have the basics out of the way before you tackle Facebook Fan Pages.

Those things are:

• Having a website with a  blog
• Having email lead capture systems set up

If you have the basics set up, it's a lot easier to keep up with your Facebook Fan Page. You can post to your blog and the link to that content will go right to Facebook (if you have it set up correctly.) Having a Fan Page that nobody sees isn't going to do you any good!

Next, you want to customize your Fan Page a bit. I like using the free FBML app that Facebook has. This allows FBML (Facebook's internal coding language) on the Fan Page so it looks a lot better.

You need to be encouraging your Fan Page visitors to "Like" your page. Studies have shown that putting an arrow pointing to your "Like" button will increase your "Likes" significantly.

You should also be using your Fan page to direct Fans to your email lead capture system. The best way to accomplish this is by giving away a free report related to your industry. If coupons are used in your business, they make a great incentive as well.

Once this is done, it's time to promote the page. The next step is to invite all your friends to check out your Fan Page. Here an article that shows how to invite all your friends at once to your Fan Page.

Once you have invited your friends, then its time to invite people you don't know to check out your Fan Page. Here are a few ideas to consider:

• Link to it from your profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc
• Link to it from your website or blog
• Advertise the Fan Page it on your business cards
• If you have a store, please a flyer at the cash register inviting people to the Fan Page
• Put your Fan Page link on your credit card receipts
• Buy advertising on Facebook to direct people to the Fan Page

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, you're right, it is. Ask us how we can help you today with your Facebook presence.