With Facebook becoming more and more prevalent in the business space, we thought it would be helpful to tell you how to set up a Facebook page for your business. It does not matter if you have your own personal Facebook account or not, this is merely about using Facebook as a free platform to interact with people, listen to real time feedback, and give your company a mouthpiece to a potentially massive audience!
Getting started
To set up a fan page for your business it is advised that you set up a business account for Facebook. You are now ready to create your page!
Step 1 – Login
Log into your business account and go to create a Facebook page. If you do not have a business account yet you can go to the Facebook home page and click “create a page for a celebrity, brand or business.”
Step 2 – Create Official Page
You will now see the following page:
Select what you are creating your page for and choose from the drop down options and then give you page a name. It is important to know that you cannot change this name when you have pressed “Create Official page.” Think about how your customers would search for you on Facebook, so do not abbreviate unless people would search for you as that abbreviation. Also, try not to use words before your company name to make sure you come up on the searches.
You can then “Create Official Page!”
Step 3 – Use a strong image
You will now have a blank canvas to start filling in as you choose!
A good place to start would be with the picture. This is important because it is what people will see when they search for you. You have a maximum space of 600×200 so use this space! This will create a longer image down the left of your page and will mean it is more noticeable on the searches. You can then change your thumbnail through the edit picture button, to select exactly which bit of the picture you want to use. This will stream through onto your fan’s pages and therefore it is good to have your brand name or something very clearly associated with your brand on the thumbnail.
Step 4 – Fill in some info
You may now want to fill in some info. This is where people will go to find out more about you so it needs to tell people what you are all about. You can include things like mission statements, lists of products, when you were founded. But you can also put in links to your website/blogs/competitions whatever else you want people to see.
Step 5 – Choose your tabs
You can have 6 tabs maximum in view on your page. If you go to the plus sign you will see you have lots to choose from and you can simply drag them into whatever order you want. So, for example, you might not want ‘photos’ on the front screen because ‘links’ is more relevant. You can also create your own tabs which I will go into separately.
Step 6 – Clarify your strategy
Now you have your basic structure and you understand what Facebook is capable of, you can clarify how you want to use Facebook to get the most out of it. Do you just want a presence? Or do you want to give people a reason to like and share your pages? Do you want to be informative or do you just want to use this as a listening platform? Are you going to respond to queries and post messages on your wall? If so, how often? Who is going to be responsible for this? This is fundamental before you start adding in content and deciding how to interact on your wall.
Step 7 – Create content
Now to start adding in some content! This is the fun bit!
Make the most out of the tabs available. For example, if you have some information you want to share with your fans, top tips for example or “how to’s” you may want to use ‘notes’ to display this in a blog format. If you organise or go to events, you could upload lots of recent photos and give fans the ability to tag themselves meaning your page will be displayed on their walls (this can all be done through the ‘Edit Page’ button and then go to the correct tab).
Step 8 – Invite people
When you are happy with your content you can invite your mailing lists to join you! Send people an email asking them to join your page or if you know they are on Facebook then send them a Facebook message telling them you have arrived! Put a ‘Follow us on Facebook’ link on your website so that people can go straight to your Facebook page.
Step 9 – Spread the word
You have your page and the people you already know are your Facebook fans, now it is about spreading the word! This can be done through great content that people want to share, incentives (competitions to encourage interaction and sharing) or maybe even Facebook Ads!
It is as simple as that! When you are comfortable with your page there are loads more things you can do, create your own tabs, link in RSS feeds for your blogs, message all your fans, set up some Facebook ads! Let us know what you would most like to learn about next!