The Complete Guide to Creating the Perfect Facebook Page for Your Business
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Transcript of The Complete Guide to Creating the Perfect Facebook Page for Your Business
The Complete Guide to Creating the Perfect Facebook Page for Your BusinessAs small business owners and brand managers, you’ve probably heard
that you need to be on Facebook.
Great! So where should you start? And is there an easy blueprint to
follow?
We’ve experimented a lot with various Facebook marketing tips over the
past several months, and we’ve enjoyed figuring out the best way to
create and manage our Facebook page here at Buffer. I’d love to share
with you how the process has worked so far!
Since things continue to change regularly with Facebook and its
algorithm, consider this A to Z guide as a great jumping off point. Start
here, test what works for your individual business and brand, and make
changes as you learn.
Related: How to Effectively and Accurately Use Data to Inform Your
Social-Media Decisions (Infographic)
How to Create a Facebook Business Page in 5 Simple Steps
Step 1: Fill out your basic business info
Open the following URL to create a business page on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Once there, you’ll choose one of the following six categories for your
page:
1. Local business or place
2. Company, organization, or institution
3. Brand or product
4. Artist, band, or public figure
5. Entertainment
6. Cause or community
Keep in mind that you can change the category and name later on if
needed.
Also, at this stage, it might be helpful to know that a physical address
figures prominently in the setup of a local business or place, and the
actual Facebook page will appear differently as well.
Here’s the look for a local business:
Here’s the look for a company or brand:
It’s something to think about when choosing a category.
Following the category selection, the next setup screen will ask for a
descriptive sentence or two about your page, a URL, a Facebook page
URL, and a profile picture. If you’ve selected a local business, you’ll also
have the ability to select category tags to further define what your store
sells.
About your page - You get 155 characters to describe your page. This
description appears prominently near the top of your Facebook page on
both desktop and mobile. Be as descriptive and helpful as possible.
URL - The web address for your store, company, or brand.
Facebook URL / username - You may have the option to choose a
custom vanity URL for your page, i.e. facebook.com/yourbrandname.
(In some cases, Facebook will ask that you reach 25 fans first before
you can unlock a custom Facebook URL.)
Profile picture - Upload a main profile picture/icon for your page. This
photo will appear as your icon every time you comment on a post or
publish in a news feed. Square dimensions are best. Facebook will force
rectangular photos to be cropped to squares.
Profile pictures should be at least 180 pixels wide by 180 pixels
tall.Here is a full list of the sizes that Facebook uses for your profile
picture in various places around the site:
The main profile image on your page - 160 x 160
In a news feed - 100 x 100
In your timeline - 86 x 86
Next to comments - 43 x 43
The final two steps in the setup process include adding your page to
your main Facebook menu (so you can access it quickly and easy each
time you log in) and setting up a Facebook ad to promote your new
page. These options can be skipped for now.
Step 2: Create an awesome cover image in a snap (no designer required!)
By this point your page is live for all the world to visit. Let’s see if we can
make it look even snazzier.
First thing, add a cover photo. The cover photo appears across the top
of your page and is a great opportunity to deliver a visual element that
supports your branding, draws attention, or elicits emotion from your
visitors.
The dimensions for your cover image should be a minimum of 851
pixels wide by 315 pixels tall.
You can certainly hire a designer to make you something fabulous, or
you can go the DIY route. Many photo editing apps like Pic
Monkey orBeFunky can help with creating images of just the right
dimensions.Canva is another super helpful tool for Facebook cover
photos as it comes with several premade templates that look great right
out of the box.
Here’s an example of a Canva template you could choose. You can
upload your own image to use as the background, and you can edit the
text to say whatever you’d like.
Once you have created your cover image, upload it to your page by
clicking on the “Add a Cover” button.
If you happen to upload an image that isn’t quite the exact dimensions of
the Facebook cover, you’ll have a chance to move and edit the image to
fit the available window. When you’re happy with the final look, you can
click “Save Changes,” and you’ll be set!
Here’s a pro tip: When you upload a cover photo to your page, the
photo is added as an update to your timeline. If you edit the description
of the photo, you can add a message to the update. Click on the photo to
open up the photo viewer, and you’ll notice a link that says “Add a
description.”
You can add description, tags, location, and date to your photo. Once
you’ve finished, the update to your timeline will be changed to reflect
your edits.
Step 3: Fill out your profile completely
Next, you can fill out your profile even more by adding information to
your Page Info section. To access this section, click on Settings in the
top menu bar on your page, then click Page Info.
Your name and category will be filled in already. Some of the most
helpful bits of information to add next might be:
Start Info - You can choose when your company or product was
founded, created, started, or launched. This information will appear on
the history timeline to the right of your page’s feed and as an update at
the very bottom of your main feed.
Related: Ultimate Headline Formulas for Tweets, Posts, Articles and
Emails
Address - Enter this if you want people to be able to check in via
Facebook when they’re near your place.
Long description & Mission - Add additional details that explain your
business or brand even further. This is a great way to go beyond the 155
character description that appears on the main page.
Phone number / Email address - Add additional contact information.
All of these details will appear on the About tab of your Facebook page.
Step 4: Add collaborators to your page
If you plan on sharing your Facebook marketing duties with a team,
you’ll want to grant access for various folks and various roles.
Here are the roles that you can choose from:
Admin - Complete and total access to everything (you are an admin by
default)
Editor - Can edit the Page, send messages and post as the Page,
create ads, see which admin created a post or comment, and view
insights.
Moderator - Can respond to and delete comments on the Page, send
messages as the Page, see which admin created a post or comment,
create ads, and view insights.
Advertiser - Can see which admin created a post or comment, create
ads and view insights.
Analyst - Can see which admin created a post or comment and view
insights.
To add collaborators, go to your page settings and the “Page Roles”
section. You can type in the name of any Facebook friend or person who
has liked your page. Alternately, you can type in an email address
associated with a Facebook account.
Step 5: Publish your first post
Add content to your page by publishing a post--a status update, a link, a
photo, a video, an event, or a milestone. New, fresh content on your
page will make it look all the more enticing once new visitors come over
to check it out.
Keep in mind that visual content does exceedingly well on Facebook.
Facebook posts with photos receive 37 percent more engagement
than those without photos.
How to gain your first 100 fans to your Facebook page
The temptation might be to share your Facebook page right away with all
your Facebook friends. Not so fast. Take a moment to think strategically
about your plan and to seed your page with content so that it looks
inviting and engaging when visitors do stop by.
Publish three to five posts before you invite anyone.
Then try out one of these strategies to get to your first 100 fans.
Invite your Facebook friends
Facebook has a built-in feature to tell your Facebook friends about your
page. Click on the Build Audience link in the top right corner of your
page, and choose Invite Friends from the dropdown.
You can then pick and choose which friends you’d like to invite, and you
can drill down into specific sections of friends, filtered by location,
school, lists, and recent interactions.
Once invited, your friends will receive a direct message with an invitation
to your page. You won’t have a chance to edit the message they receive.
Invite your coworkers
One of the best sources of social media promotion for your company
could very well be your coworkers. Ask everyone who works with you to
like the page and--if willing--to recommend the page to any friends who
might be interested.
Promote your Facebook page on your website
Facebook offers a full complement of widgets and buttons that you can
add to your website to make it easy for website visitors to like your page.
One of the most ubiquitous plugins is the Facebook Like Box. With the
Like Box, you can show faces of those who like the page and even the
posts that you’ve recently published to your page.
Promote your Facebook page in your email signature
One of the most visible places you might find to promote your page is in
your inbox. Edit your email signature to include a call-to-action and link
to your Facebook page.
Hold a contest
Facebook contests can be huge for gaining likes on your page. One of
the best apps for creating a contest is ShortStack, which helps you
create custom campaigns to drive Likes to your page (or email capture
or fan engagement or any number of different ideas you might have).
What to post and when to post it
In general, there are three main types of posts you’re likely to publish on
your Facebook feed:
Photo/video
Text update
Links
As mentioned above, posts with photos garner 37 percent more
engagement than posts without photos.
Definitely make visual content a huge part of your Facebook strategy.
As far as the frequency with which to post, Facebook’s algorithm
changes have made research into the topic rather difficult. The
consensus seems to be to publish more often. An Edgerank Checker
study posted on the Moz blog determined that one way to counteract
algorithm changes might be to publish more frequently--as often as you
have fresh, compelling content to share.
Koby Conrad, a Facebook page manager who makes his living off
referral traffic from Facebook, has found a few additional tips that work
to combat the algorithm changes at Facebook. Here are some highlights:
Use admin tags. Sign off as your page. This is a
great way to increase how viral you are because it
increase the amount of places people have to click
on your post. This will mean your post gets more
clicks/interactions overall and you get ranked higher
on Facebook’s formula. The picture below shows an
example of an admin tag.
Ask questions. Create posts that are designed for
involvement--and by this I don’t mean “share if you
agree!” Ask actual questions, and give replies to
people’s responses.
Post more often, but don’t spam! Most business
pages hardly post one thing a day, and then if they
do that, it’s usually about themselves. You want to
post content every three hours, 24/7. Make sure this
content isn’t about yourself either.
Conrad’s last bit of advice--posting often, as much as every three hours--
might seem like a daunting task. You certainly don’t need to have the
same frequency as he suggests, but rather I think there’s value in his
advice to make your posting schedule consistent.
Social media scheduling apps like Buffer help make this easy by letting
you schedule posts ahead of time. You can add to a queue so that your
page always has fresh content being posted automatically on schedule.
Ideal length and timing of Facebook posts is another area you might
want to experiment with.
TrackMaven analyzed 5,804 Facebook pages and over 1.5 million posts
to determine the attributes of the most impactful Facebook posts. Their
takeaway for the best time was to post late in the day, after work hours.
Similarly, they also found that posting on off-peak days of the week was
best.Posts on Sundays receive 2.72 interactions and are 25% more
effective than a post on Wednesday.
Related: 189 Words That Get Your Customer's Attention Every Time
As far as ideal length, Jeff Bullas studied brands on Facebook and found
that shorter posts were better. He measured engagement of posts,
defined by “like” rate and comment rate, and the ultra-short 40-
character posts received 86 percent higher engagement than
others.
How to tell what’s worked and what hasn’t
After sharing posts, you’re likely to want to know how they did. Your
social media management tool would figure to have some built-in
analytics that can help you better understand how your posts performed.
Here’s a peek at what the Buffer for Business analytics look like:
You can also gain a huge number of stats and numbers from Facebook
Insights.
Once you’ve shared several pieces of content to your Facebook page,
you’ll see an Insights tab at the top of your Facebook menu, between
Activity and Settings.
At the top of the Insights page, you’ll see your Page Likes, Post Reach,
and Engagement stats for the week, along with a comparison to the
same stats from last week.
Another neat area to check is the demographic information on the
people who visit and engage with your page.
Click on People from the Insights menu, and you can drill down into
demographic information of your fans, the people reached by your posts,
the people who engage with your post, and the check-ins you receive at
your physical location.
Here’s an example from Buffer’s page insights about the people reached
by our posts.
One of the newest features of Insights is the “Pages to Watch” section at
the bottom of the page. You can add other pages that you want to
monitor--a great way to grab some competitor research and take
inspiration from the way that other pages market themselves.
To add a page, simply click on the Add Pages button at the top of the
section.
Search for the name of the page you want to watch, then click to add it
to your watch list. Once a page has been added, you can click on the
name of the page from your Insights dashboard, and you’ll see an
overview of their best posts from the week.
Even more tips - What would you recommend?
I came across so many great Facebook page tips while researching this
article. I couldn’t fit them all in! Here are just a couple more that slipped
through:
Reply to all comments with either a response or a
Like.
Tag other people and pages--especially your
community members--in your posts.
Consider adding your first name as a signature to
the posts you write.
Repost the evergreen content from your blog,
regardless of the original date of publication.
Now I’d love to turn it over to you! What Facebook page tips and
advice do you have? What have you learned along the way? Is
there any part of the Facebook page creation and management
process you’d like to know more about?
Excited to hear from you in the comments!
Oh, and by the way: Buffer can help you drive more Facebook traffic and
engagement in less time. Sign up for free and see how it works for you!
Related: An Expert Guide to Idea Curation: How to Get More Ideas
for Great Content
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PERRY MARSHALL, KEITH KRANCE, AND THOMAS MELOCHE
CONTRIBUTOR
Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising, 2nd EditionADD TO CART
Social Media Marketing
A Day in the Life of a Successful Social-Media StrategyERIC SIU
Facebook Marketing
What Facebook’s Crackdown on 'Click Bait' Means for BusinessesCHRIS BENNETT
OCTOBER 21, 2014
In their book Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising, online marketing
and Facebook ad experts Perry Marshall, Keith Krance and Thomas
Meloche explain the game-changing tactics of paid Facebook Ads and
how you can gain more on your investment—in clicks, customers and
profits. In this edited excerpt, Marshall describes the four types of
businesses that might do well advertising on Facebook.
Can every business benefit from advertising on Facebook? The truthful
answer is: Not really.
Is yours a local business with a physical location where consumers
regularly come to purchase your goods and services? If so, then
Facebook is for you. Dentists, doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, physical
trainers, gyms, specialty shops, cupcake stores, specialty groceries,
beer and wine shops, restaurants, mechanics, theaters and music
venues are highly likely to benefit from locally targeted Facebook
campaigns.
Facebook allows you to advertise to people who live within a few miles
of your location, to advertise directly to your known customers, and to
advertise directly to your customers’ friends who live nearby. These
features, and the nature of Facebook, make Facebook a great candidate
to fill your advertising needs if you have a local target market.
Some types of products or services are a natural fit for selling on
Facebook. So natural, you can set up a campaign and start finding new
customers in a few short minutes. Other types of products and services
will be a harder sale. The more the following four statements describe
your product or service, the more Facebook is for you.
1. Our stuff is unique. Facebook is the worldwide capital of individual
expression. It’s the perfect place for selling unique, customized and
personalized products, items that express a person’s own tastes and
preferences or engage potential customers on a human-to-human level.
You won't maximize Facebook’s marketing potential if you're selling
products that could be listed in the “commodity” category or if your
customer can easily find your product at big-box retailers and national
chains. If people can easily buy your product elsewhere or can compare
prices easily online, then selling your product profitably on Facebook will
be difficult. When you advertise on Facebook, always lead with those
products that are most unusual, unique and eye-catching.
2. We sell to consumers. Facebook is for you if you sell to consumers,
not businesses. Facebook is a place for individuals to connect with
friends and family. It's best used by businesses as a place to find and
connect to individuals and individual consumers. It's not a good place to
sell to other businesses. Although corporations have pages on
Facebook, their presence there is as a sales presence to market to
consumers, not as a purchasing presence to buy from your business.
3. We sell fun products. Facebook is a place where people go to
connect, to play, and to socialize. It's a great place to sell events,
memberships, experiences, personal improvement, travel and
entertainment.
Facebook is a great place to advertise products that are fun and appeal
to a person’s core identity, which is why a membership in a group or a
club is a great sales opportunity on Facebook. Events, travel and
entertainment are full of fun and positive emotions. These subjects are
naturally social, and people love to ask “Where have you been?” “What
have you seen?” and “Where do you want to go?”
If you provide personal improvement products, especially anything that’s
new, trendy, hip or cool, Facebook is also a great fit. If your product
involves some form of training, accent the social advantages more than
the academic aspects, such as how learning a new language can make
travel more fun.
On the flip side, if your product is technical, academic, complex or
requires deep thought, it may be hard to sell on Facebook. It can be
done, but you'll need to create additional materials outside of Facebook
to get your buyer educated on the benefits of your product.
4. We harmonize with identity, personal beliefs and
convictions.Facebook is for you if your business harmonizes with a
person’s identity—political affiliations, religious convictions, beliefs or
social movements. On Facebook, it’s a significant advantage if your
company and your target customer lean in a particular direction
religiously, politically or socially.
Regardless of which way your company leans, there are lots of people
who may be predisposed to do business with you for that particular
leaning. And you should take advantage of it. There are very simple
ways you can target your customers on Facebook and communicate
with them so that you connect to the things they care about.
If you appeal to a variety of such backgrounds, then you can design
specific marketing campaigns to cater to each of those preferences. You
may have different pockets of people within your customer database,
and the better you understand those pockets, the more you can target
your ads and the more you can sell.
If this isn’t immediately obvious, don’t give up. You might want to survey
your customers and see if you can identify any political, social or
religious preferences. Better yet, get your customers to “like” your
Facebook page, then review their profiles for “likes and interests” and
the summary reports that Facebook provides.