With around 24 million daily users, it’s not hard to see why you need to know how to optimise a Facebook Business Page. It means that 2 out of every 3 people with an internet connection in the UK are checking into Facebook each day. And there are numerous benefits for your company beyond raising awareness. Regardless of the benefits to customer service, insights and interaction, a large number of potential customers expect to find your business on Facebook as much as they would expect to find it in search results.
[bctt tweet=”If potential customers can’t find you easily on Facebook, it undermines trust in your brand”]
And yet countless companies have made mistakes in setting up their business presence on Facebook. It means that even if time and effort is being put into social media, it’s going unseen by a proportion of potential customers. It’s surprising when optimising an effective Facebook Business Page is relatively easy. If you’ve already set up your page, it’s worth revisiting the set-up and optimisation tips on a regular basis to get the best results.
Facebook pages, groups and profiles:
There are a number of reasons to make sure you have set up a Facebook Page for your business, rather than using an individual profile or group. Profiles are designed for individuals, and you may find your account disabled or deleted if it’s used for a branded business. Groups are great for people to come together around a single issue or topic. But Pages have a number of tools specifically tailored to business.
Benefits of pages include:
- Multiple Administrator Access Levels
- Facebook Insights and Data
- Facebook Advertising Tools
- Appearance in search, including vanity urls and branding
- The ability to use Facebook as each brand you create a page for.
How to create your first Facebook Business Page:
The first decision is to select the right category for your page; Local Business, Company, Brand, Artist, Entertainment or Cause.
If you retail or serve customers from a physical location, then the Local Business or Place option will make sure you have your address and reviews displayed prominently. Otherwise, most companies will be looking to promote a Brand or Product. And it’s possible to change this later if you change your mind.
The next step will be to make sure you list your page in the appropriate category, and it’s a good time to read through the latest edition of Facebook’s terms and conditions for pages to make sure you’re familiar with the rules regarding images, descriptions etc.
Take time to fill in the About information, and all text about your Facebook page. All text should be optimised for both your brand name and the keywords you want to target. Not only will this affect how easy you can be found within Facebook, but due to the authority of the site, Facebook pages can rank prominently in Google and Bing search engine results.
A relatively recent addition is the ‘Preferred Page Audience’, which will target your page to the demographics you specify, including Location, Age, Gender and Interests.
Facebook Business Page: Images
There are two key images to have prepared for your Facebook Business Page. The first is your Profile Photo, which is displayed next to every update and interaction you post.
It should be high quality, and a square image of at least 180 x 180 pixels. Viewed on your Facebook page, it appears as 160 x 160 pixels, but it’s important to remember that it will be much smaller when your updates are viewed in the Facebook Newsfeed, particularly on a tablet or mobile device. Big, bold logos and images work best to be recognisable at any size.
The other key image for your Facebook Business Page is your Cover Image, which will display at 851 x 315 pixels on computers and 640 x 360 pixels on smartphones. The file size of the image should be 100KB or less to avoid slow loading times, and text should be a maximum of 20% of the image.
Keep in mind that the Cover Image will display behind your Profile Image, so it’s possible to integrate them to give a polished look to your page.
Cover Images should be regularly updated and kept current to reflect recent marketing, offers and competitions. They can also be used to stay topical, and each time you update your Cover Image it will appear as an update for fans. Changing things once a month is a reasonable schedule, and it means your page will look fresh to returning visitors.
Finally, brands can now create a Call-To-Action button in addition to Likes.
Options include Shop Now, Books Now, Contact Us, Use App, Play Game, Sign Up or Watch Video, and can be linked to the most appropriate page for that choice. You can also specific different options when the button is accessed via a desktop or mobile device.
Facebook Business Page: About Information
You’ll want to secure your Facebook Web Address (or vanity url) as quickly as possible – this will allow you to have facebook.com/yourbrandexample to appear in search, on marketing material etc. You usually need a minimum of 25 page fans, so use friends, family and colleagues to get enough people to customise your url.
Complete all relevant fields for joining date, Short and Long descriptions, and Company Overview, Mission etc as appropriate. The Long Description is the perfect place to make sure all relevant words and phrases are included for your brand.
Check all Contact Details are appropriate and up-to-date. Customer service can be a major part of social media marketing, and having a phone number or email address which is no longer monitored can be an embarrassment.
Make use of Milestones to record historic dates for your business. This are posted as a normal update (Selected under Offer, Ever +), but also display on your About page to list the notable occasions for your company. This can be as important to establish a new business as it can be to make use of the history of an iconic brand. It’s also a great way to celebrate good news and recognise the work of employees.
Facebook Business Page: Media
Uploading photos and videos to your Facebook Page has always been a great way to engage your fans in addition to text updates and links.
It’s widely known that brands are uploading more videos directly to Facebook than ever before, due to better promotion and engagement. But it’s not just enough to upload them and forget about any optimisation.
Make use of the Photos and Videos pages to organise and optimise photo albums and video playlists to make it easy for fans to not only find content they want, but share whole albums.
The Videos tab allows you to also highlight a Featured Video which will be played first. And Video Playlists and Photo Albums give you an additional text field to optimise, along with the ability to set dates, locations and tag relevant people and brands.
Videos can also be displayed on the main tab of your Facebook page in their own Video box to further highlight your latest and best content.
Facebook Business Page: Events, Tabs and Boxes
Make sure the most relevant tabs are displaying on your page, via the Manage Tabs option. For Events, optimise the name and details, include the location, tickets link and times, and ensure you’ve got an attention-grabbing image to encourage people to attend.
It can also be useful to target events to those located in the right country, county or city to avoid disappointing fans who might live on the other side of the world.
If you manage more than one Facebook Page, ensure you like your other Facebook properties. You can also Like non-competitive brands on Facebook as your page, which will allow you to raise awareness and support for your brand. Interacting will also help to demonstrate the personality of your Facebook page and encourage more people to take a look at it.
The pages you Like will display on your page, showing which brands, charities or pages you support.
This is in addition to making sure you tag any relevant brand or page (using @facebookname) to appear on their page as someone posting about them – a great way to appear in front of their fans, and to alert their Facebook admins to potentially support each other.
Make sure you’re checking for public and private messages to your page, particularly questions and complaints from customers. Responding quickly to a negative comment can defuse the situation and also turn a bad experience into a positive for the customer. It’s much preferable to ignoring such comments, which give the appearance of a brand which just doesn’t care.
Finally, in addition to Facebook Insights, you can also select a number of Pages to Watch. That will allow you to quickly and easily monitor their Total Page Likes, New Page Likes, Posts This Week and Engagement This Week. It’s a great way to see how fast your competitors are growing, and how often they post or engage with their users.
To go through the optimisation of a Facebook page can take between an hour and an afternoon, depending on the need for image and video assets. But once it’s done, you can be assured that your updates and future work on the page will be seen by the most amount of people organically – and you’ll get the best results should you decide to invest in Facebook advertising.
And unlike the funds large businesses can invest in custom functionality for their websites, Facebook Pages are a relatively level playing field in which small and medium-sized businesses can achieve a presence as effective as anyone with the right investment of time and effort. Now you know how to set up and maintain your business Facebook Page, you’re ready to compete with the best of them!
This article was originally published on 11 March 2015, and updated on 08 June 2017.
