At Chilli, we spend a lot of time working closely with our clients to build their brand presence within the online environment; namely through Facebook. While many businesses have started a Facebook page, others may be new to the platform. Regardless of whether you are starting new or building from an established feed, it’s important to remember a few Facebook business essentials. These tips and tricks will keep your brand consistent and easily recognisable to your customers on social media.
When thinking of how to effectively use Facebook for your business, like any marketing tactic, you should plan a comprehensive strategy first. Ask yourself a few simple questions about your brand, your current recognition, and how you want to see it grow over time through utilising social media. The Facebook Business Community has a few extra points to start you off on the right track.
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Don’t create a personal Facebook profile for your business
In simple terms, a Facebook profile is for people to connect with friends and family at a social level; a Facebook Business Page is for promoting your business and brand to customers within a social space. While intentions may be good, if you set up a personal profile for your business instead of a Facebook business page you will put your business at a big disadvantage! Facebook business pages offer brands an extensive range of content creation tools to help promote your business. Also, if you use a personal profile for your business, that would require your customers to send you a friend request in order to engage and interact with you. Now, that becomes a bit difficult…
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Avoid publishing mistakes – assign Page Roles
It’s a marketer’s worst nightmare – publishing personal content to a business page! We have all heard the horror stories, but fortunately with some extra training, these mishaps can be easily avoided. Under “settings” and then “page roles” within your business page, you can determine who has access to publish on your page, and the attribution against them (this ensure you post as your business and not as your own personal name).
Another helpful way to avoid these publishing mistakes, and something which we heavily endorse at Chilli, is to create a Facebook Business Manager Account:
“Business Manager was created to help advertisers integrate Facebook marketing efforts across their business and with external partners. Business Manager, a free platform for Facebook advertisers, provides a solution for anyone who needs to run, place, or track Facebook and Instagram ads. Business Manager also provides solutions for anyone managing assets such as a Facebook Page, Instagram account, audience list, product catalog. More, Business Manager is Facebook’s best advertising platform for any business working with an agency or marketing partner. By having all your Facebook information in one place, your business maintains control of your Facebook assets, and securely manages user access to the right people and right credit lines” (Facebook for Business, 2017).
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Get recognised! It’s all about your profile picture
Let your customers and followers find your brand easier – set your company logo as your Business Page profile picture. You can get creative with this logo (i.e. changing colours for certain events, milestones, or community engagement activities); however, the logo must still be recognisable as your business.
Your profile picture if the first thing your customers and followers will see as they search for you or scroll past your content on their newsfeed. So it is crucial for your brand to be easily recognisable. Facebook often change the dimensions of their profile picture placement. As of 2017, the current dimensions are:
- 170 x 170 pixels on desktop
- 128 x 128 pixels on smartphone
- Facebook will often assist you in resizing the image
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Engage users with a creative cover photo
Engage your customers with the cover image. The cover should represent your brand just like the logo as your profile image. Utilise a captivating image that is of high quality. If you are offering a promotion, or running a special, the cover image is a fantastic place on your business page to promote the offer.
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Add a CTA button
CTA stands for “call-to-action”. What do you want your customers to do when they are on your Facebook business page? Facebook allows you to design a button for easy referrals and leads from your business page. This could be anything from “sign up”, “learn more”, or “book now”. Prompting your followers to do something will reinforce lead generation from your Facebook business page.
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Post creative photos and videos to your timeline
What does your Facebook newsfeed look like? Is it bright, colourful, full of engaging content like images and videos? You’ll soon start to notice the importance of visually appealing content to communicate your message. Rather than traditional and sometimes stagnant content from previous years.
Video has become a meaningful part of the strategic marketing conversation; it is predicted that in 2017, online video will account for 74 percent of all internet traffic, and already 55 percent of people watch videos online every day. Social media is where video is growing the fastest, with 500 million people watching Facebook videos every day.
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Promote yourself!
Facebook advertising has redefined the advertising space online. If you’re not advertising through Facebook, you are missing out on valuable customers, engagement, and data from this expansive network. We recently wrote a blog about how to optimise your Facebook Advertising spend to increase conversion rates. You can check it out here. The key elements to remember when building your Facebook ads, are your ABC’s:
- A is for Audience
- B is for Budget
- C is for Content
After you’ve established a strong Facebook following for your business, engaged with your customers, and continued to share engaging content, you will soon notice a steady increase in your results and ROI from social media. Keep a close eye on your Insights reporting (perhaps once a week) and adjust your campaigns and content schedule accordingly to continue building your online presence.
Now that you’ve reviewed the basics of Facebook for business, you’re ready to get started! Interested in learning some more helpful tips when it comes to social media and choosing the right channels for your business? Download our eBook to learn all of this and more inside, A Beginners Guide to Social Media, here. Test your knowledge and find out more about the Do’s and Don’ts of How to Use Facebook for Business, here in our previous blog.
