As the largest social media platform by active users (3 billion), Facebook is still one of the best social networking platforms for promoting a business, allowing you to connect with people from all over the world. In fact, the average user spends more than eight hours each month on the site. Given it's popularity, Facebook is an important channel for businesses to include in their social marketing strategy. This blog will help set you up for success, with tips for creating a Facebook business page that converts.
Table of Contents
What is the Goal of Your Facebook Business Page?
Get Inspired: Successful Facebook Business Page Examples
How to Create a Facebook Business Page
Adding a Facebook Business Page to Your Site
Optimizing Your Facebook Business Page
Improving Facebook Page Performance
How to Promote Your Business on Facebook
What is the Goal of Your Facebook Business Page?
Before you create a Facebook business page, it is important to have a clear goal in mind. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Why should you have a Facebook Page?
- Who will manage your Facebook Page and be responsible for its performance?
- Who do you want to reach on Facebook?
- How do you plan to reach them?
- How will you respond to negative comments or reviews from unsatisfied customers?
- How will you ensure that you reach your Facebook objectives?
By answering these questions, you can avoid many beginner’s mistakes when setting up a Facebook business page.
Get Inspired: Successful Facebook Business Page Examples
There are many companies on Facebook that market themselves in an exceptional way with the content shared on their page. It’s worth spending some time to look at how they’ve built their Facebook for Business profile and examine the type of content that they publish.
Here is a list of a few companies worth taking a closer look at:
1. Whirlpool
How can you create engagement and interest in dishwashers, washing machines and other household products? Whirlpool succeeds very well at this, with posts that inspire and inform.
They are also very good at responding to other people’s posts, and they have a very clear policy about what kind of posts they accept on their Facebook Business Page.
2. Pampers
Pampers publishes content that includes quality pictures, and interesting questions in order to engage many of their followers.
They have also completed several milestones on their timeline, which gives interested users more information about their company’s history.
3. Maersk Group
B2B companies often struggle with Facebook but Maersk Group is one B2B company that is doing things right. With beautiful images that focus on the brand's global reach and long history, they have managed to garner over 3 million followers.
4. BuzzFeed
With short but passionate posts all containing great pictures, BuzzFeed constantly manages to create high engagement for their posts. Of course, engagement is BuzzFeed’s currency, so they are incentivized to make sure that their own social channels work for them.
How to Create a Facebook Business Page
Creating a Facebook Business Page is relatively easy. You can do this without having a personal profile, but it is highly recommended that you have a Facebook profile of your own before creating a Facebook Business Page for your company. If you don't already have a Facebook profile, take a look at Facebook's guide to getting started.
Once logged into your profile, you can begin creating your Business Page. The steps to create a Facebook Business Page are fairly simple:
- Select either “Local Business” or “Company, organization or institution"
- Select a Category that best represents the category or sector that your company operates in
- Type in your business name
- Add your company's street address
- Put in your company's city / state
- Add in your company’s postal code
- Add your company’s phone number
Now, it’s time to read Facebook's terms where you’ll find more information about what you are allowed to do on Facebook and what you’re not allowed to do. If you agree with the terms, check the box and click "Get Started."
Your new Facebook Page is now created! From here you can complete all your business information. In order to get a deeper understanding of why you should complete all the fields in your Page’s settings, check out our blog post on Facebook metrics.
Adding a Facebook Business Page to Your Site
A good way to let your customers know that you are on Facebook is to promote add a link to your website. This is a very effective way to get more followers to your Business Page.
Facebook offers several different social plugins that are easy to install to help you increase your following on Facebook. You’ll find all of these plugins on Facebook’s developer page.
Here are some plugin recommendations that you can try:
Like button
By adding the "like button" to your webpage, you’ll give your visitors the chance to like your Business Page from your webpage. Simply specify the URL of your Business Page in the "href" setting of the button and add the code to your webpage.
Likebox
Likebox is a plugin that contains several interesting elements. By having a Likebox on your webpage you will display a link to your Business Page for your visitors, a like button, your most recent posts and the profile pictures of users who like your Business Page.
Adding a Likebox to your webpage is as easy as adding a like button. Visit Facebook’s Likebox Page, complete your webpage’s information, click on "Get Code," and add the code to your webpage.
Facebook comments
If you have a blog or a page where you want comments from your visitors, it is recommended that you use Facebook comments. The plugin is easy to install and one of the many benefits of Facebook comments is that the comments get posted on your webpage and in the users' Activity Log on their Facebook Profile (this interaction is visible to all friends of the user). With Facebook comments, users can also like and respond to specific comments.
Optimizing Your Facebook Business Page
Marketing professionals have known the importance of word-of-mouth marketing for years, but did you know that Facebook also offers a feature that helps promote referral marketing?
The "recommendations" feature on Facebook allows users to easily gather advice by posting a status clearly labeled to show they’re asking for a recommendation. When their friends reply with suggestions, if the business has a Facebook page, they will be plotted on a map allowing the user to easily see nearby locations and find out more about the business.
Facebook recommendations aren’t exactly revolutionary, but marketing teams should make sure their Facebook Company Page is optimized to to support the recommendations.
Interested in growing your Facebook follower count? Check out our blog on How to Get More Likes on Facebook for tips on generating engagement and followers.
Add maps
Since one of the main aspects of Facebook recommendations is the fact that suggestions are then plotted on a map, ensure that your Business Page has the maps section up and running. This can be achieved by setting up a Bing business listing. Once set up, brand visibility and reach will increase dramatically. Check out this useful step-by-step guide for tips.
Fill out all information on your Business Page
Whether you are a big brand or using Facebook marketing for small businesses, adding your website and company phone number is a given. But there are many other sections you can populate on your Business Page that are just as valuable and sometimes overlooked.
Your visitors want to know all the details about your business: where you're located, what services you offer, your working hours, and so on.
Add a call-to-action button
Adding a call-to-action is a best practice for any marketing campaign, and your Business Page should be no different. Take a look at this post, Calls to Action: 50 That Sell and 10 That Repel, for inspiration for your CTA button text.
Encourage positive Facebook reviews
The unfortunate truth is customers are much more likely to air their negative experiences than positive ones, so it doesn’t hurt to ask customers to share positive reviews. Consider running a competition to encourage this.
Learn how to win back customers after a bad experience.
Use a social media monitoring tool to review recommendations and ROI
How can you tell if your Facebook page optimization efforts have been worth it? Use a social listening tool to benchmark metrics such as exposure and share of voice before and after optimization took place is a great way to measure and understand ROI.
You can also search conversations by a theme to identify what exactly it is that your audience likes about you, and then highlight this within the content on your business's page on Facebook.
Tip: Learn more about Facebook monitoring!
Improving Facebook Page Performance
There are several quick hits for maximizing your Facebook business page performance.
Complete the "About" section
Update your cover image
Post at the optimal time
Like other pages
Add milestones
Complete the “About” section
An incomplete “About” section can result in decreased Facebook page performance. Without this, visitors to your page may think that the page isn’t legit. If they've arrived at your profile through Facebook ads, it's even more critical to introduce yourself and make a good first impression. Plus, it can even help you gain clout with search engines.
The type of information provided will vary from business to business, but one thing that most pages have in common for their About section is links to other sites, such as a website, blog pages, or other social media accounts.
Update your cover image
An engaging cover image is an easy win to make our Facebook profiles look more polished and inviting. The cover photo is the first thing a visitor sees when they land on a page so you want to make it is as easy as possible for them to figure out who you are and what you do. Don’t forget, you typically have three seconds to capture a visitor’s attention!
Tip: Use an image that relates to the product or service you offer. Keep in mind to use the right social media image sizes. Our ultimate guide to Facebook image sizes and our ultimate guide to Instagram profile pictures will help you.
Post at the optimal time
While there are certainly many variables when it comes to the best time to post on social media, if you can hone in on when your audience is online, it can do a lot to maximize engagement and visibility.
Tip: Expand your post reach even further by experimenting with CTAs like "share to win," "like if you agree," or "tag a friend."
Like other pages
Apart from working to to boost the number of likes coming in for your Facebook page, you should spread the love as well by liking other Facebook pages. This helps increase your reach, especially if you also engage with the page. This can help expand your community and improve your page's performance and provide you with inspiration for your own content.
Add milestones
Facebook is the perfect medium for brand storytelling. The social platform enables you to emotionally connect with your audience, which creates a stronger bond.
You can celebrate milestones for your business, including stories about how you started, new product launches, and any awards you’ve won.
How to Promote Your Business on Facebook
If you want to create an ad that will drive more traffic towards your website, here's what you need to do:
- Go to your Facebook Business Page and select "Promote" in the left column.
- Select your objective by clicking on the "Get More Website Visitors" promotion option.
- Select your "Ad Creative". You may want to use something as simple as an image and ad text but you can swap these options out for your own choices of image, video or slideshow and text.
- Create your Audience. This can include setting a certain radius around your business's location and selecting your audience's demographics.
- Set how much you want to spend on your ad by clicking the drop-down below "Daily Budget". Choose a pre-filled budget or type in your custom budget.
- Under "Duration", you can set how long you want to run your ad. You can select 7, 14 or 28 days, or set a custom duration by clicking in the "Run this ad until" field.
- Review your payment method and make sure it's up to date. If you want to make changes to your payment method, select "Change".
- Once you are finished with creating your promotion ad, select "Promote". The ad will first be reviewed before you are notified of when it goes live.
When it comes to promoting your Facebook Business Page, remember that you are introducing your business to new people who may be more likely to make a purchase. Getting their attention is one step towards making them your customers so give yourself the best possible chance when promoting yourself.
At the end of the day, beefing up your social media marketing and drawing in your target audience, means giving them the information they need. Take the time to add the necessary details and you'll see your Facebook profile performing better in the long run.
Curious how Meltwater can help you optimize your Facebook marketing efforts? Fill out the form below to schedule a demo!
