I thought I try a facebook page

Hiya Kip.
Centurion Fire Protection Services is the business.
How would you seriously recommend them setting up and actively promoting a Facebook page? How would you get anyone to be a fan?
I am ready and willing to have my thought patterns re-aligned.

Well as millions of DM's are on facebook all day, whether for pleasure or work, it is an extremely viral place to market ANYTHING.

Someone clicks like, all of their contacts online at that moment see the notification, and some get nosey, when the click the same, all of their online friends see it. Its a no brainer, its wildfire. Three new customers this week, all from a flyer I posted for a client, all of his gang liked it, 3 wanted more info, all after graphics and websites.

Of course if you have a pants facebook page, you will get pants results, I set these up quite often for a very successful SEO company, of which many on here will know, ran by a certain woman, and when I design them there are certain rules and tricks that create a higher chance of being "liked", for instance the salon i mentioned earlier, appears higher than her website, so people logged into facebook would probably see it and click it.

I will not pretend to share what i do on here, as it is my bread and butter, but it works, and most top SEO and Marketing companies are climbing all over SMM because of the algorithms and shifts towards SM, ergo, I do not see you as this I am afraid.

I can see a salon benefiting from the approach Kip. Agreed.
I would not dispute SOME types of business can benefit.
But a Fire Prevention Service?
Its not a design issue, its a business issue.

If there are businesses, employees, directors, managers on facebook that need to prevent fires, then its needed.

I have clients on facebook all day long, signed in, chat here and there, and some are major players, like

by now you could of built one lol!

Sorry Kip, I just do not see the compulsion for a string of senior managers signing up on Facebook to find out about preventing fires. (I can see them going to Google)
I also find it difficult to see how Centurion can come up with sufficient ongoing information/chat to keep the whole package alive and interesting.
Can you give me a creative idea/example? What can Centurion do on its page to generate fans?
As I said, I can see a beauty salon finding topics very easily. I use Facebook for a some salsa clubs - a great way to keep a few hundred people immediately updated on a regular basis.
Wetherspoons does a oood job with Facebook - I can see the logic.
But . . . . Fire Prevention? Seriously, help me out here - I am willing to realign my thoughts on this.

Nope, if you think it won't work, then it won't.

If you think it will, it will. Can't spend all night convincing a sceptic, lifes too short, and I am not getting paid!

Sorry Kip - I thought this was a debating/help forum.
Fair enough.

Yep, and what a great debate!

There are some great points raised, and I'll freely admit to changing my views after pooh poohing facebook after so long. But I'm still not 100% convinced over fan pages. I can see them working for certain biz types as already said, but there is more to Face Book than fan pages.

Looking at our own implementation of the FB "recommend" button on our sites (works the same as the "like"), according to Facebooks stats page, we are currently getting 25 "likes" a day.

But the beauty is, our link is then put onto Facebook, which sends people direct to our site, and not a fan page.

So all of a sudden, FB has become a traffic generator. Now I haven't yet done any analysis on how well that traffic has been monetized, but it's cost nothing than some initial dev time to accumulate it, with no further ongoing costs.

Plus if particular pages are getting repeated "likes", then hopefully this will be relayed to the search engine algorithm signals, and maybe give us a shove up in the traditional search indexes.

25 likes a day goes on 25 peoples FB walls. Imagine those 25 people each have 25 friends each, then thats a potential brand exposure of 625 people per day, or 18,750 per month.

If just one of those people decides to use our directory, or even list their business, or tell one of their mates, then thats not a bad return.

If Centurion Fire Protection Services had a "like"/"recommend" button on the web site, and the content was compelling, eg baby abc could have been saved if only his parents had installed a fire alarm, make sure you have one fitted blah blah" and in my recent father receptive state, decide to click the recommend button and leave a short message, then thats blasted across my FB wall and can be seen by my 200 "friends". A nice bit of marketing for CFPS.

I see it as an update to the age old argument, write compelling content, and people will link to you. Now they can also recommend/like you

OK Steve - good points.
Interesting that you have already metamorphosised into a Facebook appreciator.

Let me therefore ponder further !!!!!!!