A Quick Guide to Setting Up a Facebook Page to Promote Your Business

Most business owners and professional have heard the importance of using social media to help promote their business but are unsure of how to develop these platforms to their advantage. Of these innovations, Facebook is currently one of the hottest platforms available and recently reported having over 500 million users. This article briefly covers the mechanics of setting up a Facebook page to promote your business on the assumption that your presence on this platform will genuinely boost your visibility and other business objectives.

With so many users, Facebook could be an easy, cheap way to boost your advertising effort- but only if you have established that it’s the right platform for your business. Your market research will show you whether a) your target market meets here and b) is open to act on sales messages if the product is appropriate (for example are you selling copier paper, or a holiday retreat in the sun? Which is more likely to be of interest to your customer when they’re spending time on Facebook…?)

The first thing you will need to do is create a fan page. This will be separate from your personal profile, as fan pages promote a business, service or product. You don’t have to have a personal account to have a Facebook fan page.

Go to the Facebook main page and you’ll see on the homepage at the bottom under the sign up button is a link to create a page for a celebrity, business, or artist. You will need to name your page. But remember you can’t use Facebook in the title of your page. You will then choose whether you are creating the page for a business, product, or organization, or public figure.

When you choose “local business” then you will need to choose an appropriate category for your business services. Confirm that you are the official representative of this business. You will then click on Create Official Page and now you are officially on Facebook. Congratulations!

Now you will need to fill in the appropriate information about your business. It’s important that you maximise this opportunity to establish your online brand by including keywords and benefits so visitors know you’re there to help them with their needs.

As you tell visitors about your services and products, just as importantly, provide your potential customers with ways to contact you (phone number, email address and website, twitter name, LI profile and so on) to support your call to action messages. You will then ready to start adding fans.

Once you have 25 followers, you can pick a vanity URL for your site and make your fan page easier to find. Some people choose to ask friends and family to start liking your page to build numbers. This might be an appropriate approach for your kinds of business but if not encourage your Twitter followers and LinkedIn contacts to become fans. Your other contacts can be invited by email and in other marketing material.

To ensure full cross-marketing, add your new Facebook page to your other offline and online profiles and marketing materials as well. You can also set up direct messages in Twitter asking your followers to connect with you on Facebook. All of these things will help drive traffic to your website and increase the possibility of sales for your business.

Don’t be discouraged by refusals as some people use Facebook purely as a personal social media space and prefer not to mix their personal social media life with business. Much depends on the type of products and services you offer as well how you plan to engage with them.

Having established your Facebook presence for your business, now comes the task of keeping fresh, relevant content on the page. Although free, maintaining any social media platform takes time so is prepared for the focus and energy required to keep your page current and relevant to your market. Having made the commitment of inviting your database of contacts to join you on Facebook, you’ll need to honour your fans’ loyalty by providing them with what they need.

These are topics I will cover in future articles and blogs, as they are of key interest to my clients. In the meanwhile, I would be delighted to hear your feedback and experiences.