Well-known brands have success turning their fan pages into sites with millions of fans.

Well-known brands like Coca-Cola and Starbucks have had success turning their Facebook fan pages into popular sites with millions of fans. Local businesses are also leveraging the site and can learn from their global neighbors.

Local businesses make up 17.6% of Facebook fan pages, according to financial services firm Wedbush, while companies come in at 6.3% and products at 3%. Interests, musicians and public figures are also high on the list.

Starbucks has 18.5 million fans as of November 2010, and Alexandra Wheeler, director of digital strategy, talked to Marketing Week in the UK about how the brand uses Facebook.

“It’s about making sure that we do our job every day to give those fans some sort of meaningful value,” she said. “Having 10 million people on Facebook who like us would be useless if we did nothing with it.”

Social media marketing agency Cone found 77% of new media users want brands to offer them incentives online. Additionally, 28% would like to be entertained.

Coca-Cola, with 19.8 million Facebook fans, used a year-long social media campaign, Expedition 206, to keep its Facebook page constantly updated with content posted by brand ambassadors.

Oreo launched an interactive game on its Facebook page in September, MediaPost reported, and the brand jumped from 8.5 million fans in August to 15.2 million in November. The campaign continues and was also recently extended offline, with in-person events.

Engagement, interest and constant connection keep fans coming back to a company’s Facebook fan page, and local businesses can learn from these larger examples as they create and populate their own Facebook fan pages.

Via emarketer