In the modern world of online social media, it is necessary for businesses to make themselves known on all platforms. Of all the options, Facebook, with its high usage and page features, is one of the most vital. As stated in an article on Hubstop by Anum Hussain, “The time has passed when Facebook was a ‘good idea’ for businesses to try. It’s now essential to your inbound marketing strategy.” So how do you market your business on Facebook? Make your own business page.
Making a business page on Facebook is easier if you already have perusal experience with the network, but if not, the process is still quite simple. First, go to the URL https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php, which will give you your options for creating your page. Pick a category in order to get you in the right place for views: local business or place; artist, band, or public figure; company, organization or institution; entertainment; brand or product; or cause or community. After this, select your secondary category, which varies between primary categories, and enter your business name. Be careful and professional in your choices, because they could last a while.
When you’ve completed those tasks, you need to fill out the page profile. Be sure to use a good, clean, and relevant URL name for your Facebook page. Then upload an image for the profile picture, preferably a company logo or something of the like, about 180 x 180, and fill out your “About” information. This will be comprised of two to three succinct and clear sentences describing your business. Add a link to your company site as well!
After this, you can continue to fill out and utilize your Facebook business page. Fill out the full description section by clicking the “Edit Page” option, add some tags and keywords, and pull in administrators of different levels from your company. You can also change settings for notifications and page permissions: who can post what. Then, start bringing in the customers. Give the page some good content to begin with, and then invite brand advocates in to engage and spread the word. Your page should grow fairly well naturally, but you can also use Facebook’s advertising tools to promote the page. This can be done by promoting individual posts, creating a sidebar ad for the page, creating sponsored posts, or working with special offers.
Now, we will focus on your actual page content. First off, you need a Facebook cover, which is another, horizontal photo at the top of your page, dimensions 851 x 315. Make it clever but professional, suited to your personal business. Many business pages use their cover photo for big announcements or promotions. After this, you can start creating tabs. You can create endless amounts of these, but only four will show directly on your page. One of these tabs is a photo tab, which is automatic. The rest can be chosen at your discretion. Common options include events, likes, and notes.
Actual posts can be varied, pictures, events, and text posts, but be sure to make them all fun and suited to your audience. If you want to highlight a particular post, click the star at the top and it’ll become a double-sized horizontal post. You can also pin the post to the top to keep it there longer. Facebook recommends that posts be short (100-250 characters), visual, and optimized to Page Insights. Friendliness and relevancy are essential, and asking questions or seeking input will help with your views greatly. The more engaging the post, the more people will take note. Polls, events, and offers are all particularly good for engagement. You can pre-schedule posts to specific times as well, by clicking the clock icon when creating a post. Be sure to post regularly, multiple times a week being ideal, to keep your views up. A good rule to follow content wise is the 80/20 rule, where 20% of your posts are promotion and 80% are original or added content.
In terms of content, the website Inc provided a list of six best things companies do on Facebook, and the five worst. For the best, Inc talked about deals and bargain buys, humorous and creative posts, companies that converse personally with their customers, visual content, tips and advice from professionals, and special offers and sweepstakes. The worst included constant self-promotion, stock photography usage, rude jokes about current events, long updates, and cute but unrelated posts. These articles by Inc reflect very clearly how companies should work with content on Facebook.
You also need to keep track of how users are working with your page, which is noted in the above-mentioned Page Insights. To the upper right of your Admin panel, which shows at the top of your page, there’s a place for all the private messages users are sending to your page. The upper left and center of the panel show all the posts users are liking and commenting on. Once you’ve gotten 30 likes on your page, you’ll also be able to see a small analytics panel on your page. When you get to 100, you’ll be allowed to post special offers, running either in store, online, or both. Focus in on your target audience and your goals for working with them.
The analytics panel after 30 likes, otherwise known as Page Insights, is a very thorough program that looks at likes, unlikes, views of varied kinds, responses to the page, and the qualities of your users over time. You can also look post by post to see the responses to different kinds and different content.
It’s absolutely essential to respond to the users on your page, in order to give them a personal connection to your company. The conversation is what will get your page up and noticed, and keep the readers interested. According to the site Gartner, failure to respond to users on social channels can lead to up to a 15% increase in churn rate, or clients ending their connection to your business or group. So respond to their comments and keep in touch.
Facebook offers classes and business help to those who have moved beyond the basics with their page through Facebook Business. And of course, you must always be careful with the Terms of Service, to be sure you’re working with Facebook’s rules.
