Why have a Facebook business page?
The first, and most important question to answer is whether you need a Facebook business page at all. Whilst you might think it’s important to have one ‘because everyone has one’, it’s not necessarily the case. Your product or service might be better suited to promotion on another platform, such as LinkedIn or Pinterest.
It’s worth making sure that your target market is on Facebook, is interested in posts for the type of product or service you use, and that you’ll be able to reach them using this platform. If you can answer positively to all these points, then you can make Facebook work for you.
The key is to see Facebook as a business channel – so ignore everything you do on there as an individual, and get to grips with the fact that two-thirds of all Facebook users visit a local business Facebook page at least once a week – and many of them are far more engaged than that. So your opportunity is huge if you plan properly, have a strategy, stay consistent and review your results.
And remember that it’s free to use! Always a great thing for small businesses, whether you’re managing social media yourself or using a virtual assistant for Facebook.
Our top Facebook business page tips
Do your research– spend some time on Facebook, looking at the business pages of companies like yours. What do they do that is successful? How do they present themselves? Which of their posts get the most likes, responses and shares? Like any new channel, the more you know, the more effective you can be. Our blog social media strategy planning – our guide to success might also prove useful.
Create your page– you can do this yourself, or work with experts, like virtual assistants specializing in wordpress and social media, who can do it for you. You’ll need a personal profile first, if you’re not already on Facebook. Once you’ve set that up, you can create a business page.
To create your page, just sign into your personal account, and click the flag icon next to the Home page icon. This will take you to ‘pages’ and from here, you can create a new page, selecting the page type that describes you best, and then just follow the instructions to add good quality photos, an engaging biography and the best contact details for customers – don’t forget they can also contact you via Facebook Messenger, which is how a lot of Facebook enquiries are managed.
Get your branding right– Facebook allows you to upload a cover photo and a profile photo to your page. Keep these professional and in line with your branding, so that you present a consistent image to your customers. Make sure the pictures you use are good quality so that they are sharp and focused, and are the sizes Facebook requires. Have a look at our blog Improve your profile social media wise – tips to make you stand out online.
Use all the options– Facebook allows you to describe your business, add a link to your website, create a photo gallery, add a button for quick buying and much more. Take advantage of all of these options so that there is as much information about you as possible, and it’s easy for customers to contact you when they want to.
Invite people to like your page– to begin with, you need to ask people to like your page. You might start with friends and family, so that you’ve built up some likes, but also ask your networking contacts, suppliers and customers to like your page too – people usually do it if you ask them nicely! You can also post in shared interest groups or ask other users based on their location.
Like other pages– using Facebook as your business, you can like the pages of other businesses, which raises your profile and helps you to start interacting within the business community. This might be businesses like yours – don’t be afraid to like competitors’ pages – or local businesses you know, work with or go to.
Make a content plan– the key to how businesses use Facebook successfully is the content they post. Many businesses use scheduling software to plan posts in advance, and some of these sites, such as Buffer, feedly and Post Planner will help you to see where there is content you can link to or refer to. You can also set up a Google Alerts for subjects that are relevant to your business, giving you plenty of ideas of things you can talk about and helping you to keep your content engaging. For further info on this see our blogs – Social media marketing ideas – how to keep content engaging and Marketing content strategies for small business or visit our page on content maintenance.
Make it relevant– you need to share content that is interesting and relevant. People use Facebook as an escape, so they want to be entertained and educated – not sold to. No matter what your business, you can find a way to do this. Even if you need a little help from a professional virtual assistant who is Facebook-savvy. Images and videos are particularly engaging on Facebook, so make sure you structure your content around something eye-catching that will make people stop as they scroll down their newsfeed
Used pinned posts – this is a post that you can ‘pin’ to the top of your Facebook news feed so it’s the first thing that new visitors see when they come to your page. This is a great – and easy – way to get your central message across straight away, without potential customers having to scroll down to find out what you’re all about.
Make your content engaging – posts with images see much higher engagement than simple text posts, and videos are even more attractive. It might be worth investing in photography so that the images you use are unique to your business – they will be more attractive to customers and are more authentic than stock photos. Good images or videos, backed by the right messaging, are also great for users to share, helping your company page to be seen by more people.
Interact– don’t put a post up and forget about it. If people comment on your post, you need to be able to reply to them – and quickly. You must be human, whilst staying within your business persona.
Measure– Facebook offers its own analytics and there are other ways of measuring response too. Because you can immediately adapt the way you do things, knowing what your users are up to is incredibly useful information. Measure, analyse and change what isn’t working.
Advertise– you might want to consider boosting some posts, which is Facebook’s entry level advertising; or you might want to look into higher level promotions. It’s worth getting your business page settled first though, with a good number of likes and some good content.
This brief guide to Facebook small business marketing should help you to get started – but if you are short on time and think a Facebook administrative assistant would be a useful addition to your business feel free to talk to us about our social media assistance service. And if you’d like to know more our UK based virtual assistants feel free to call us on 0800 994 9016 or use our contact form in the menu above.
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