The benefits of Facebook Marketing are no secret. However, simply creating your profile on Facebook is not enough. In fact joining Facebook or creating a fan page is only the first step. The steps you take to promote and market your Facebook fan page or profile will play an important role in your success.

There are dozens of techniques that you can take advantage of. Here are 6 Facebook marketing Tips you may not know about.

1. Create Custom Branded Fan Pages

Custom branded Facebook fan pages stand out. It will help re-enforce your brand and make it more memorable and appealing. If the design is inspirational, it will encourage users to also visit your official website or blog. There are hundreds of examples of inspiring Facebook pages. I have included one below.

2. Keep it Fresh but not Too Fresh..!

There is little doubt that if you want to be successful on Facebook, you need to make sure your content is fresh and up to date. In fact lack of regular activity is one of the most important reasons for failure on Facebook.

However posting too many times can also have a detrimental effect as Dan Zarella recently found out to our surprise, in his recent study on the impact on post frequency. He found in his study that the percentage of ‘Likes’ goes down significantly if you posted more than once a day, especially once you go past the 3 posts per day level.

3. Share Graphics & Media

Businesses and marketers often share share links to their web pages on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in order to drive traffic to their website. These are effective and there is nothing wrong with this. However, it is important to mix the type of content you share. It keeps your time line more interesting.

Images are more effective for attracting attention and can be accessed by users long after they were first published.  Try sharing media including images, InfoGraphics or videos relevant to your niche. As you can see in the data below, photos and videos are high up on the list of popular activities across social media.

4. Use Images in place of Links

We have discussed the importance of sharing photos above. You can take this even further by using images in place of standard text links to attract visitors to your website. I first came across this idea on a post by Josh Dunlop from Income Diary who has suggested using specially created image banners as links to your articles instead of standard text links.

Make sure the image is relevant to the article or web page you are linking to so it can spark an interest in the article even before the user arrives at the article.

5. Promote Your Other Social Profiles

These days it is common for businesses to use many social media websites e.g. Twitter, Digg, Foursquare, Stumble Upon, Blogger, Tumblr, or other social sites. Cross promoting your social profiles can help increase your overall reach. It can increase your marketing potential and build a stronger network.

There are many ways to do this.You can add links to your blogs and social profiles in the sidebar or the “about us” section of your profile. There are also apps on networks such as Facebook that allow you to promote content from other social profiles.

Lets study two real world examples below.

On Twilight’s Facebook page below, you can see links to their Twitter, MySpace and YouTube pages prominently displayed. This is one of the simples ways to cross promote your network.

The 2nd example below use App that integrates content from Pinterest on your brand’s Facebook page.

A recent study on EConsultancy has found that a Facebook app that allows brands to integrate Pinterest on their Facebook pages has reportedly achieved a 150% increase in re-pins for its users.  This is a perfect example of how cross promoting content from your various social profiles can work for  a business and improve engagement.

6. Include a Link to Your Facebook Profile in Your Email Signature

This is one of the easiest tips to implement yet the benefits can significant. You will be surprised at the results. By including a link to your Facebook profile in your email signature is an excellent way to promote your Facebok fan page to existing as well as prospective customers.

These are only a few of the Facebook Marketing techniques you can benefit from. There are tons more. If you would like to suggest one from experience, please feel free to add your comment below. If you like this post, please don’t forget to share it with others.