How to set up Facebook for Business: 101
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users and growing, using Facebook for business purposes is unquestionably one of the most powerful digital platforms to create brand awareness, engage with customers, generate new leads, and drive traffic to websites. Start ups, small-sized businesses, and huge iconic brands that have embraced Facebook as a marketing platform are seeing results.
According to the Pew Research Centre’s 2015 Study, 72% of Internet users are on Facebook. Take a look at the breakdown below to see if your target demographic is there. Chances are high that they are. And if they are, then that’s where you need to be too.
Facebook demographics Whether you’ve used Facebook personally or not before doesn’t really matter – Facebook for Business is a whole different ball game. However, if you don’t already have a personal account then you will need to create one first.
Once Logged in to Facebook, you can start setting up your Business Page – also known as a Fan Page.
1) Create a Fan Page
Visit the Facebook Page Manager to create a new Page for your business. Designate your Page as one of the following:
Choose your page type Choose the one that best describes your business and then select the category from the drop down menu and fill out the rest of the fields as required.
2) Design your Page
Before you start populating your Page with Fans and Content, you will want to create a polished, professional, and branded design. Simple often works best here, less is more.
Choose a cover photo I like using Canva, a free design tool, to create profile pictures and cover photos as it’s fairly simple to use and provides you with templates that already have the dimensions and layout in place.
Your profile picture should be representative of your company or brand, a high-resolution logo is perfect. Cover Photos are a great space to use for branding, key messages, and calls to action.
You should also fill out all of your Page’s information in the “About” Section. Click on the “About” Tab to see your Page Info and then fill out as many of the fields as you can. The more information you can provide your audience the better. Make sure to describe what your business is about, choose relevant business categories, and include a link to your website.
2) Invite Your Friends
Your family and friends are one of your best resources for getting those initial Fan Page Likes.
Go to your Facebook Page and click on the “Promote” button at the top right and select “Invite Your Friends” from the Drop-Down menu. You can either Search for specific people or else scroll down through your entire Friends List and click Invite next to each name.
Invite as many people as you can and then hope for the best!
Choose your goal 3) Follow other Fan Pages
One of the best ways to learn about using Facebook for Business is by watching what other Pages do. Use the search bar at the top to find other businesses such as your competitors, suppliers, partners, and other businesses in your industry.
You should take note of posts that perform really well (lots of Likes, Comments, and Shares) as well as those that perform poorly. Write down what kind of post it was (image, text, video, link), what day and time it was posted, and what you liked or didn’t like about it.
Following other Pages is also a great way to find content to share on your Page, which brings us to our next task…
4) Curate, Create, and Share Content
Providing a good mix of self-promotion, information your audience would find useful as it relates to your business or products/services, as well as fun interest and community pieces is the key here.
Creating fresh content is a challenge. It requires thought and creativity which can become very time-consuming if you’re trying to post fresh content on a daily basis. That’s where content curation comes in to play.
Share content from other Pages you are following. Use a news feed reader such as Feedspot or Feedly to find content based on keywords that relate to your industry. Look for content that you think your audience would be interested in.
Videos are currently one of the best performing media types on Facebook so creating and integrating short teaser or promotional videos is definitely worthwhile.
Contests are another great way to engage with your audience, reward them for being a Fan, and provide further incentive to follow your Page.
5) Listen to Your Fans
Listening and responding to what people are saying about your company online is important.
Keep an eye on Visitor Posts to Page, Reviews, Comments on your Posts, and Private Messages. Feedback can be both positive and negative. Reward the positive feedback by thanking them and resolve negative feedback by apologizing and being proactive.
Since Facebook is a very public medium, people will see how you behave online and treat your customers. When resolving complaints, it’s best to take the conversation off your Page and either in to a private message or an e-mail/phone call.
6) Launch Facebook Ad Campaigns
Facebook’s Advertising platform has incredibly powerful and sophisticated targeting options that will allow you to focus your key messages on niche audiences.
There are a number of objectives to choose from and you should experiment with a variety of them to see which are performing best. Once you have a better understanding of how your Ad Campaigns are working, you can re-allocate your budget to focus on those ones.
If you’re not sure whether you should be using Facebook Ads, read my blog post on Facebook advertising to help you decide.
Choose your advertising goal 7) Analyze and Improve
Facebook will only grant you access to their powerful reporting tool, Facebook Insights, when you have 30 or more Likes on your Page.
Once enabled, you can track things like the growth of your Page Likes over time, how many people your posts are reaching, what days and times your audience is online, how many people clicked to call your phone number through Facebook, and much more.
By tracking this data you can continue to refine and improve your social media marketing strategy. Look for trends to uncover what kind of content performs best and worst and when.
Track Your progress To learn more about using Facebook for Business, you can browse through their library of information which is available for free to everyone.
Alternatively, you can get in touch with one of us today to learn how we can help your business achieve social media success!
