How well is your Facebook business page performing – do you regularly get new followers, likes, shares and enquiries?
If the answer is “not that great”, today’s post is for you.
As the social media site with the most users, Facebook offers you a great way to connect with your customers and find new ones. So having a page for your business is a pretty good idea – and making sure it’s helpful, informative and optimised for attracting new clients is an even better idea.
Here are 10 ways to make the most of your Facebook page:
1. Brand it
Make sure that your company’s branding is visible on your Facebook page and that the style is consistent with the rest of your branding on your website and other platforms. Keeping a certain degree of consistency, (which colours and fonts you use, your tone of voice etc) is essential to building a recognisable and memorable brand.
Here are a few things to try:
- Use your company’s logo as your profile pic, making sure it’s legible at small sizes. If it becomes illegible try cropping it and use just a small recognisable section; think about how it’ll work best in square format. For example, my own logo is too long to work in a square profile picture, so I just use the icon – it’s got much more impact like that.
- If you’re a solopreneur or freelancer and you’re quite recognisable as the face of your business, you could use a headshot instead of your logo. But use a good quality, professional looking photo, not a selfie from a drunken night out!
- Create a branded cover image rather than using a random stock photo or holiday snap (you can use an app like Canva for this). Make sure it’s relevant to your business and use it to promote your products or services. You could change it periodically to promote different product launches, events or just to inject a little fun into your page, such as giving your page a festive makeover before Christmas. Try to avoid putting important details along the bottom of the image as they’ll be covered by the buttons and info that Facebook places there.
- If you’re adding any custom apps to your page (see tip#5) you can also brand them by uploading custom images.
[Tweet “Brand your Facebook page – use your business’s colours, fonts and images for consistency”]
2. Complete your profile
Many people search for business and services on Facebook, so make sure they can find yours by completing your profile with as much detail as possible. Use the description section to add detailed information about your business, products and services – tell people why you’re awesome!
Add in all your business’s contact details too as people can visit your page to check for things like your phone number, email address, web address and opening hours. If you’re the type of business that your customers visit (café, salon, shop etc) put in your address too so that the map will show and people can get directions.
3. New Services List
Facebook introduced a new feature to let you add even more detail to your profile – a services list. This gives you extra space to add information about each of your services. Once you’ve added some info, it’ll appear at the top of your page, just above your status updates.
4. Call to action button
Facebook added a Call to Action button feature a while ago, and if you haven’t customised yours yet, now’s the perfect time. You can choose the type of call to action, such as “Contact Us”, “Call Now”, “Shop Now” and it’ll appear next to the “Like Page button” (desktop view) or under your cover image (on tablets).
The only (slight) niggle is that you can’t customise the wording – as a freelancer, I’d much prefer it if my CTA button said “Contact Me” rather than “Contact Us”.
5. Add extra features with apps
You can install apps to make your page more interactive – you could add a newsletter signup form, event registrations or add a shop section to promote your products. ShortStack is a pretty handy service you can use to easily add apps to your page.
6. Post regularly
A Facebook page that’s hardly ever updated is a sad looking thing. It doesn’t really create a good impression of your business if your last post was 6 months ago.
So post something regularly. Busy pages tend to post several times a day but if that won’t work for you, try several times a week.
Post a mix of links to other people’s content – things you think will be interesting or helpful to your fans – and some links to your own content. Plus you could share some work-in-progress or behind the scenes pictures or stories to add a bit of extra personality to your page and brand.
7. Find out the best times to post
How often do you check the Insights for your page? (Confession: I don’t check mine as often as I should, but I’m working on it.)
Your Insights can tell you a lot about your page’s fans and the amount of engagement your posts are getting. They’ll also show you when the best times to post are by showing which days and times your fans are most active on Facebook.
Sometimes it seems like the organic reach of your posts is really small so it makes sense to post at these times to help your updates reach more people.
And if you’re creating adverts, you could schedule these for the days your fans are most active to make the most of your budget.
[Tweet “Check your Facebook insights to find out when your fans are visiting your page”]
8. Schedule your posts
If you’re short on time and can’t update your page every day, or if your Insights suggest you should be posting at times that you can’t/won’t be online (like the middle of the night), then scheduling your posts could really help.
You can set aside an hour to create a batch of posts, then schedule them to go out over the course of the week. I like to have a queue of scheduled posts lined up so that if I get too busy to go online, at least there will be something going out on my page. Then I top it up with a few live updates as and when I can.
Check out this post that shows you how to schedule your posts in Facebook.
9. Participate in groups
A good way to drive potential customers to your Facebook page, and in turn your website, is to join Facebook groups and participate in discussions.
Look for some relevant groups where your customers will be hanging out (for example, are there any groups where people can look for businesses and services in your local area?) and join them. Take part in discussions when you can offer helpful advice, and when you see someone looking for businesses like yours, leave a friendly comment with a link to your Facebook page or website so they can check you out.
10. Add the Page Plugin to your website
If you want to encourage your website’s visitors to connect with you on Facebook, why not install the Page Plugin. You can add this to your site’s footer or sidebar and it will show a box with your recent status updates along with buttons to encourage people to like and share your page.
You can customise the box to show or hide your cover image plus a selection of people who have liked your page. By default it will show your timeline, but you can also add a tab to show your upcoming events too.
Head to the Facebook for Developers site to create your plugin, enter your page URL and customise any settings you want. Then click ‘Get Code’ and follow the instructions to add it to your website.
You might also like: How to add the Facebook plugin to your website
Make the most of your Facebook page
Your Facebook page can be a great tool for promoting your business and connecting with your customers so try these 10 tips and watch as your page’s performance improves 🙂
[Tweet “10 easy ways to make the most of your Facebook page”]
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