With more than 400 million users, Facebook has come a long way since its inception 2004. Facebook is no longer just a site for high school and college students as the site has created some incredible advertising opportunities that small business owners should consider taking advantage of. Facebook now gives small business owners the ability to build brand recognition, drive people to their pages, keep customers updated on the latest happenings, and get them inside their stores.

These are only a few of the reasons your company should have a Facebook Fan page, but once you have a Facebook Fan page, how do you build your brand and get fans? Here are just a few tips to get fans interacting with your page.

1. Provide your fans with offers and discounts. A lot of people will “friend” a brand just to get a discount or offer. This could be a onetime discount for liking your page or you could offer several discounts to your fans throughout the year. To get them in your store, have them print the coupons to bring them in. Check out http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/vspink for a good example of utilizing Facebook offers and discounts.

2. People prefer images over videos so provide posts that contain a mixture of media types including both images and texts. You may even want to consider enabling the feature that allows fans to post photos on your page depending on your target market. Visit http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/DERF-Magazine/7503022508 to see how images can bring fans on board.

3. Post a question with every post and then sit back and allow your fans to comment without interruptions. Let the conversation unfold among fans without commenting on their posts or keeping your comments to a minimum. View http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/cincymusic to get ideas on some conversation starters.

4. Put the Facebook or “Like” icon on your website and blog. This will drive new customers, referrals, and previous customers to your Facebook page from your company’s website and allow them to become fans of your company. Refer to the bottom of http://www.isoc.net/Page.aspx/1/home.html to see how this link works.

Of those 400 million users, over 50% log on every day. This means you should log on every day as well in order to maximize your exposure. To build your brand and make it well established, you want to put it out there in front of your fans as much as possible. Your fans are more likely to remember your company when they or someone they know is in need of the services you offer when they see your logo frequently.