Before you create your Facebook page, you will want to have some basic information ready ahead of time.

WHO: Who is your ideal customer? Consider the age, gender, job, and income, as much as you can to identify your perfect client.

WHY: Why are you creating this page? (Not just because I told you to, I hope.) Are you hoping to find new leads and customers? Do you want to build a community and loyalty with your existing customers? The page can have more than one purpose, but one should be dominant.

WHAT: What do you want your fans to do at this page? Can they post messages to your wall? Pictures, video, and audio? Just play with some of the many apps available? You want to engage them in a community. I know you may be wary of giving up brand control, but your brand image has always been in the consumer’s hands, anyway. Create the best experience for your customers you can, and the rest will take care of itself.

NAME: What will be the name for your page? If you have an established business name, you will want that to be the name, of course. If you are an independent professional, such as a consultant, CPA, doctor or lawyer, use your own name for your page. It’s OK to have this even if (as you should) you already have a personal profile under the same name.

Have some pictures ready, at least a couple of profile pics. Make them as personal as you can. People connect with people, not corporations, so you will want a human face for your profile pic. You want it to be the face people associate with your business, whether that is the hostess at your restaurant or your delivery driver. Use you own face if appropriate. Don’t let ego get in your way, that’s what your personal profile is for.

To create your Facebook page, go to http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages. There you’ll start on the Overview tab. I highly suggest you download the Product Guide; it will answer a lot or questions you may have.

Click the large green “Create a Page” button to begin. Select the category for your business, and enter the name you chose for your page. You can select the “Do not make Page publicly visible at this time.” if you are worried about people seeing the page before it is ready. Not many people will see the page for the first few days anyway, so I never worry about it.

Click “Create Page” and you’re ready to begin the real work of customizing your page, driving traffic to it, and engaging your new fans.

My thanks to Ed Dale for his wonderful YouTube video; I just want to flesh things out a bit for you, and put things in a slightly different order.

The first thing you can do to help your business is free, other than about 15 minutes of your time. Get it listed with Google Local. Google is the largest search engine in English-speaking countries, and feeds results to many smaller niche engines.

People often prefer to deal with a local company when possible, and online search is fast becoming the preferred method to finding businesses, rather than those old phone books. The internet is more up-to-date and complete, providing more information to them, at a lower cost to you. Everybody wins.

Google will often find your information from other sources, such as Localeze or InfoUSA, but don’t rely on these, as they may be incomplete or inaccurate.

Visit Google Local here: http://Google.com/local/add

In addition, Google checks authority sites like these for ranking purposes. If your information is consistent across these authority sites, your reputation is stronger and ranking is improved. So it makes sense to visit these sites to ensure your listings are up to date and complete.

If you are a member of your local Better Business Bureau, make sure that your listing there is complete: http://www.bbb.org

Some other Local Business Directories Authority sites to visit:

InfoUSA: http://www.license.infousa.com/UpdateListing.aspx

SuperPages.com: http://advertising.superpages.com/spportal/businessprofilebegin.do

Localeze.com: http://webapp.localeze.com/extranet/

Make certain all of your listings at these directories are correct and current. Next: Your Domain