You might have come across companies using Facebook business pages, liked the idea and wondered ‘how on earth do I get one of these’ as there are no obvious buttons to click to set one up.
Why should you have one? A Facebook business page is a fantastic tool for business because it places your company right at the heart of the world’s most popular social network, it will help your business connect and engage with customers, meet new ones and will help spread your business message via the friend network. Plus the search engines love them.
Similar to a personal profile page, you’ll be able to post status updates on your wall telling your ‘fans’ about developments in your service/product offering, provide insight into the people behind the ‘brand’, engage in conversation and light banter. You’ll be able to post company information, links to websites, pages and blogs, post pictures and videos, ask questions via discussions and announce events. It’s like having your very own mobile broadcast vehicle that zips around the world. Best of all because your Facebook business page is ‘opt-in’ your group of fans will be dedicated to your cause.
So how do you go about setting one up?
The first thing to get your head around is that any Facebook business page needs to be created within a personal Facebook profile page.
As Susan Payton in her Mashable post says ‘Facebook Pages are different than profiles. You have a profile for you, Jane Doe, but your business can’t have a profile — it can have a Page. A Page is a place to house all the pertinent information about your company.’
And initially the person that ‘own’ the profile page is the person that administrates it. It’s a good idea at this point to consider carefully who should take this role. For those of us with small businesses that is an easy decision to make as it’s normally just ‘us’ but for a larger company some thought must be given to who will control the profile page.
So to get started…
1. If you haven’t already, join and register with Facebook at www.facebook.com.
2. Once logged in scroll to the very bottom of the page and on the bottom navigation menu click on ‘Advertising’.
3. Then click on the Pages button near the top.
4. Then click on the Create a Page green button.
5. Fill in the form, selecting the options that best suit your business. Please make sure that you’re not in violation of any Facebook terms or policies, click on the link to read if necessary. Press Create Page when ready.
6. You’ve done all the hard work now you can add information to your page. If you click on ‘Edit Information’ you’ll be able to add basic and detailed information about your company, like websites, company overview (perhaps copy and paste some information from your own website). Post a welcome to our business page message in your status, perhaps mention what your intentions are with the page. Write something in the little text box to the left-hand side, think of it as your calling card so make it engaging and appealing. Click on the little + button on the main navigation and add the menu tabs for photos, links, events and so forth, utilise whatever suits your business.
7. If you click on the ‘edit page’ link on the left-hand side menu, you’ll be taken to the settings for your page and this is where you can set permissions on who can post what. Click the little pencil to get to the edit menu’s for each of the options.
8. When you are ready, click on the Publish this Page button to make it go live – the TELL people about it (see consideration 4 below).
Other considerations:
- To log back into your Facebook business page (when you want to update it), first login to the profile you used to set up the page. Then look to the bottom of the browser window and click on the little green and blue F icon on the Applications Menu, this will take you to Ads and Pages, where you will click on Pages, then View Page. And off you go.
- A very useful application to have is Memorable Web Addresses, look on the page settings page (see point 7 above) for applications, click link and browse the applications. You’re looking for a Facebook Business Application and this particular one allows you to have an easy to remember personalised web address for your Facebook business page. There are plenty of other applications that you can append to your page, just make sure they add value to your audience.
- On the settings page, you can add other administrators.
- You aren’t able to ‘share the page’ with all of your friends directly however you could post the link on your blog, link to it on your website, put the link in your email signature, post it on twitter and your personal Facebook status, mention it in client email mailshots – just tell people about it and if you keep it relevant, professional and updated people will come.
Examples of businesses using Facebook business pages
katproductions (me) – http://companies.to/katproductions/
It may appear a little daunting at first to set up your Facebook business page especially when in this day and age we’re so used to getting something instantly at a click of a button but will be so worth it for your business!
Other useful sources of related information for Facebook business pages:
http://www.davechaffey.com/blog/online-pr/using-facebook-for-marketing-10-company-examples/
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages
http://feedfront.com/archives/article002156
