How to create a Facebook fan page?

You're asking a complicated question, but since I have been wanting to create an Ask Dave Taylor fan page (feel free to join, the link's below!), I'm going to go through the many, many steps to create and configure a Facebook Fan Page.

Step zero is to actually have a Facebook account, because fan pages don't live as their own entities, but require one -- or more! -- administrators, who have to already be part of the Facebook world.

I presume, btw, that if you delete your account after you set up a fan page, Facebook will delete the fan page rather than leave it without an administrator...

Anyway, assuming you have a Facebook account and are logged in, then look on the lower left corner of your browser window. You'll see this:

Click on "Ads and Pages", as you can I am doing here. You'll be shown the Facebook ad builder, but that's not what we want! Instead, along the top find the link to "Pages":

Click on "Pages" and, finally, you'll be shown the fan pages you've already created. Like me, you probably don't have any yet, in which case you'll see:

Not surprisingly, you want to click on "Create a Page". Now you're presented with a bunch of different options, starting with the need to define a category for the facebook fan page:

I chose "Artist, Band or Public Figure" and selected "Writer" from the pop-up. Not perfect, but close enough as I clearly type a lot to make this site work! :-)

Next up is to create a name for the Fan Page:

My thinking here is that the Facebook updates from new members are going to look like "John Doe became a fan of ______" so best practice would be to ensure that the name works within that context: "The XYZ Fan Page" works better than "XYZ Fan Page", for example.

If you're still building the page, be sure to click on the "Do not make Page publicly visible at this time". I didn't do that because I figured I was ready to go.

Scroll down just a bit more and it's time for The Small Print:

The most important thing it says here is "you represent that you are an official representative of the business, organization, entity or person that is the subject of the Facebook Page." In other words, don't create the Hannah Montana or Bing Crosby fan page unless you're officially connected with the artist or estate. Not too hard. :-)

All good? Great, click on "Create Page" and you'll be moved to the new Facebook fan page you've just built. Of course, you aren't yet a member of your own group (a bit confusing) so make sure you become a fan of your new page too!

Now let's proceed.

You've created the page, here's what it looks like:

First and perhaps most important step: upload a photograph or picture for your fan page. Perhaps it's a company logo or recognizable graphical element, but something, anything, is better than a question mark!

To change the picture, simply move your cursor over the image itself. A little menu will pop up:

Click on "Change Picture" and choose "Upload Picture..." and you'll see:

Click on "Choose File" then pick the image file you want, click "Upload" and it'll quickly upload to Facebook and be ready to view. At this point I should point out that I had to manually reload the Ask Dave Taylor Facebook Fan Page to see the new image. You might have to do that too...

The next thing to update is the data on the "Info" tab. Click on it now and you'll see that it's just blank:

Not so helpful, really.

Fortunately it's easy to remedy. Click on "Edit Information":

The Info tab information is divided into three areas: Basic, Detailed and Contact information. Step through these to see what makes the most sense for your Fan page.

For my fan page, it's the Detailed Info that seems the best fit. As a result, here's what I entered:

Click on "Save Changes" or, perhaps, tweak your Contact Info section:

Again, click on "Save Changes" and if you go back to your Fan Page and again click on "Info", now there's some data:

One more step before we wrap this one up. We have a "Discussions" tab, let's create our first discussion!

Click on the easily found "Start New Topic" button, then enter a title and discussion body both, then click on "Post" and...

Nice, our first discussion!

There's a lot more you can do with a Fan Page, but let's stop here since this will certainly get you going with your own efforts. I'll write some additional tutorials as I continue to expand my own Fan Page. But then again, if you don't check out my fan page you'll never know what it looks like (hint hint! :-)

Oh, one more thing. When you're looking at your Fan page, the URL of the page is going to look something like this:

That's the address of your fan page! (once you get enough fans you can create a custom, shorter URL, but for now that's plenty enough to get you started)