With nearly a quarter of the world’s population of 1.47 billion people logging onto Facebook every single day, it should be easy enough to draw some of those to your online business, right? Out of the 1.47 million online Facebook users every day, it should be a walk in the park…
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the answer is NO.
Simply having a page can be compared to opening up a shop in the middle of nowhere, regardless how good it looks.
Running an online business is a serious affair. You should have an all-inclusive strategy to get noticed, to receive Likes and draw visitors to your site. Without any of these, you don’t have much of a chance to generate leads and draw customers willing to spend their hard-earned cash.
A picture tells a story in a thousand words, so you can’t pick anything. You need a picture that has all the boxes ticked: the proper dimensions, the right resolution, vibrant colour and something that truly represents your product.
That’s only the start.
Here are 12 tips to help you create an appealing Facebook page that takes control of anything and everything you need for active Facebook marketing:
1) A Facebook business page is not a personal profile
Business is, well, business. You are not looking for friends; you are looking for customers. Creating a personal profile rather than a business profile puts you at risk. You need a serious Facebook Business Page. You will not attract exciting content creation tools; you won’t receive paid promotional opportunities. You will miss out on Google Analytics and Google Insights.
A personal profile would rather attract friend requests, and you really don’t want to make it more difficult for your clients.
Also, stay away from a public, so-called “professional” profile linked to your business. You probably already have a personal profile on Facebook that should be kept private. Don’t create a personal profile to connect with professional contacts on Facebook – more than one personal account goes against Facebook's Ts and Cs anyway…
2) Be careful not to publish the wrong content
You’ve all heard of unthinkable horrors of people sending an intimate picture meant for one person to the wrong person – or even worse, a group! It happens on Facebook as well – personal content published on your company’s social media channels. The word “nightmare” doesn’t even start to describe this. Make sure your Facebook Business page roles are assigned to only those who need it to do their job. First train everybody properly to manage social media so that they know exactly when to hit the "publish" button, what to post, what should be scheduled first and who it should be published as.
See “Settings,” then click “Page Roles”.
When you need to share content on behalf of your brand, post it as the brand – not as yourself.
Go to “Settings” and see “Page Attribution”.
3) Use a profile picture that can be easily recognised
International brands spend millions on a brand logo that consumers can recognise instantly. Choose a profile picture that your target audience can recognise easily, such as a logo or even a photograph of yourself if you are a freelance journalist or professional consultant of some kind. This is important if you want users to find you and Like your page – especially those doing a Facebook Search. That is what shows up in search results, the contents at the top of your Facebook Page. Remember – it includes the tiny image next to your posts in other feeds, so make sure you choose wisely.
When it comes to an image, keep in mind that Facebook changes its picture dimensions from time to time. According to Facebook’s help section (dimensions of my page’s profile picture):
Your page’s profile picture:
- Displays at 170x170 pixels on your page on computers, 128x128 pixels on smartphones and 36x36 pixels on most feature phones.
Your page's cover photo:
- Displays at 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on your page on computers, and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on smartphones.
- Must be at least 400 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall.
- Loads fastest as an RGB JPG file that's 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall and less than 100 kilobytes.
Keep in mind that your Page’s profile picture will be cropped to a circular shape in ads and posts, but will remain the same square shape when people visit your Page.
4) Draw the attention with an engaging cover photo.
Think of the front page of a print magazine – you need an attractive cover photo. As this will take up most of the top space on your Facebook page, pick one that has a high quality and will you’re your visitors, like this one from the Wealth Creators University.
Don’t forget that, as with profile images, page cover photo dimensions also frequently change. Keep an eye on the official guidelines.
5) Don’t forget your call-to-action (CTA) button and your all-important “About” section
Call-to-action buttons are exactly what they say – they call on your visitor to take action.
“Watch Video”, “Book Here” or “Place You Order” are examples of Call-to-action buttons with a built-in destination URL or any content you wish.
Marketers use CTAs to get more traffic to their websites or more views on their Facebook content they are promoting.
Here is an example of how The Wealth Creators University uses its “Learn More” button in this way, making it easier for visitors to take a look at what they offer.
One of the most important sections of your page should be the About section.
Visitors don’t see a preview of your “About” text when they land on your page, but need to click on the “About” option to open the content.
This remains one of the most important places customers will look when trying to find out more about your page.
You can easily add or change the content.
6) Photos and videos on your Timeline
Seeing is believing. Nowadays this is an absolute requirement of any online presence, including social media. Visual content has a 40 times more likelihood of getting shared than anything else.
Although photos and graphics are a wonderful way to introduce your brand, video has become the “main disruptor” with nearly 25% of marketers putting it at the top of the list.
As a CTA, the words “Watch video” form one of the CTAs that Facebook allows brands to add to their pages as it is becoming one of the most popular ways to consume content. However, it is not pre-recorded videos only – visitors spend three times more time watching a live Facebook video compared to a video that is not live. Give your visitors a live look at what your business does, but be prepared.
7) What is the best time and frequency for posts?
This is an important question, but not a million dollar riddle. If you don’t post frequently enough, you don’t come over as reliable or authentic. How much faith would you have into a business that hasn’t updated its Facebook Page for a few months? But posting a bit too often might scare people away.
Set up a social media calendar that can help you establish a schedule for when to share what posts. Think of seasonal or general popularity, sport or cultural happenings, historical or natural events, etc. You might have to regularly adjust your calendar, but once you have get to know popular times and other analytics for your first posts, you can adjust your posting frequency and strategy.
8) Make use of Facebook's targeting tools
Facebook helps you target different audiences with different updates, whether it is social status, age, nationality, adventure, location, language or other interests – you can segment individual page posts any criteria.
Just click the small bull’s eye symbol on the bottom of the post you want to publish, and set metrics for your preferred audience as well as those you think might not want to see your content.
9) Put the most important posts at the top
Older posts get moved down tour timeline when you post something new. However, you can pin a specific post at the top.
Facebook offers this ability to keep one post at a time at the top of your page. These pinned posts can be used to promote new offers or upcoming events or any other announcements you might want to make.
Simply click on the drop-down arrow in the top-right corner of the post you want to pin, and click on ‘Pin to Top’. It will remain at the top of your page until you replace it. Remember – you can only pin one post at any given time.
10) Privately messaging
Without publishing your email address for the world to see, you can allow your visitors to privately message you through your page by enabling the messages feature. You can do this by going to “Settings” and click on “General”, then “Messages”.
Don't forget about comments that you can monitor and respond to via the “Notifications” tab at the top of your page.
11) Promote your page
Nothing happens by itself – you need to promote your page.
Create an ad promoting your page. Click the three dots at the top menu bar above your posts and select “Create Ad”. Facebook will allow you to create an ad from scratch based on your goals, including reach, traffic or general awareness.
Then, choose your target audience, where on Facebook you want it to be placed, and your budget.
As you will be paying for this, choose something that will grab attention, but also has high quality and represents your product.
12) Last but not least – measure your Facebook success
This can be done in different ways. You can use different tools or go into your page's Insights, which will allow you to track Facebook-specific engagement metrics.
Here you can analyse things such as the demographics of your audience and posts. As mentioned before, this is especially helpful to modify your Facebook content strategy to publish more of what works, and less of what does not make the cut.
You can access your Facebook Page Insights via the tab at the top of your page.
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