Regardless of how you feel about Facebook, the fact of the matter is– Facebook is a social media juggernaut.
Chances are, just about everyone you know is on Facebook. The brands you love are on Facebook. What this also means for your business page is: your target audience is most likely on Facebook right now.
A Facebook business page totally makes sense for your brand, especially if your market spends a lot of time online.
And while the use of Facebook has sort of evolved through the years, as a business owner, you need to know all the best practices to help you stand out head and shoulders over your competition.
Surprisingly, one of the most common mistakes small businesses make with regards to their presence on Facebook is that their page isn’t set up correctly.
First off, use a Facebook business page, not a personal page. A Facebook business page allows you to do several things that you can’t do on a regular Facebook personal page:
- Content creation tools
- Insights and analytics about your audience and how they interact with your page on Facebook
- Paid promotional opportunities
- An almost limitless cap on followers or fans. People can follow your page without you having to approve them.
Another tip while we’re on the subject matter of business pages: you can keep your own personal page, and even keep it private, but do yourself a favor and keep it totally separate from your business (i.e. don’t name it anything like your brand or business).
2. Highlight your branding
Another missed opportunity for many businesses is inconsistent (or sometimes absent) branding. Your brand is the image and voice of your business, and your branding conveys what you’re all about to your target audience.
Some quick branding tips to consider:
- Figure out your company’s brand colors and the fonts you will be using.
- Your logo: have a high-resolution copy available on hand, as well as variations for a square orientation and a horizontal orientation, perhaps even monochromatic versions, and one with a transparent background.
- Have a guide on hand with your tagline, brand message, core values, even other basic things like your mission statements, and more.
- Your Facebook Business Page’s profile photo should be your logo– instantly recognizable and highly prominent. It’s OK to throw in your tagline and website up there as well.
- Your cover photo should speak about your brand as well, somehow, with the goal of drawing visitors into your Facebook business page and telling them what you’re all about.
Incorporate your branding and other related design elements into your Facebook
3. Complete your sections
Facebook will love your business page if you have all your sections completed. Again, you’ll be surprised just how many small businesses don’t have the basics nailed down.
Some of the more commonly overlooked sections include:
- The “About” section. There are a lot of items here that many Facebook business page owners leave blank. Don’t make that mistake:
- Your updated contact details: address, contact number, and email address
- Links to your social media accounts
- Your business hours
- In the “About Us” section: tell your audience what your business is all about in one sentence.
- Under “Company Overview”: you can expand a bit further on your products and services, your company history, your coverage area, and so forth. Two or three paragraphs should suffice.
- Directions on how to visit your office.
- The “Our Story” section. Remember, people love a good story. So expand on the “About Us” section by talking about how your business came to be. Keep it real and relatable!
- Have a good number of photos showcasing your products and services, as well as your events, promotions, and other activities. In fact, use your photo albums to organize your visuals, or tell a story, or somehow group together similar photos and other graphics.
4. Maximize the use of your CTA button
The CTA, or call-to-action button, is located right there at the top, just under the cover photo towards the right edge of the page.
Question is: what one action would you want your visitors to do after they come visit your site? Depending on what your business is, you may want them to:
- Browse through your website (to get more information)?
- Give your sales team a call?
- Make a booking?
- Email you?
- Download an app?
- Shop through your online store?
Your CTA button then connects to your website or landing page, webinar video, online store– pretty much any URL you’d like, depending on your marketing objectives.
This way, you have a clear objective in terms of generating (and then nurturing) leads.
Your Facebook page, after all, is just one of your many online marketing tools, and everything you’ll be doing in terms of content and promotions can measure success by the number of page visitors clicking on your CTA button.
5. Optimize your images
Thanks to free online services like Canva, you don’t need to have mad graphic skills to make impactful images on Facebook.
Of course, you’re free to use just about any tool you’re familiar with like Photoshop, Faststone, or some other similar service for cropping your photos.
Facebook does change its prescribed image sizes, however, and knowing what the current sizes are for each will ensure that you can come up with images that don’t come out blurry or abruptly cut somehow.
- Profile photo for your business page: At least 180 x180 pixels.
- Cover image size: 820 x 312 pixels. Feel free to inject a bit more personality if you wish by using a slideshow or a video instead of a static image.
- If you’re sharing a link: 1200 x 628 pixels. If you don’t set one yourself, Facebook will pull an image from the web page, article, or blog post you’re sharing.
- If you’re sharing an image: 1200 x 630 pixels. Larger sizes could work, but make sure you test your images before publishing. Facebook will auto crop or resize when you go over limits so you want to make sure your image looks OK.
- If you’re promoting an event or activity: 1920 x 1080 pixels.
Remember to check the latest updated image dimensions for Facebook (as well as other social platforms, if you need to).
Take the time and effort to make all your images as captivating and attention-grabbing as possible. Facebook, after all, is a very visual medium, so give your own visuals the opportunity to convey to people exactly what you do and what you’re all about.
6. Post awesome content regularly
The best way to get your target audience to engage and interact with you is by means of a series of thoughtfully-crafted (or curated) content that they find relevant and helpful, or entertaining at the very least.
Don’t just limit yourself to one type of content, or stick to just promoting your own products and services. There’s a recommended content mix you should be following when it comes to developing content:
- 70% of your content should be your own original material
- 20% of your content should be curated items relevant and helpful to your target audience
- 10% of your content should be self-promotional material
This content mix for your Facebook business page has been specifically designed to keep your visitors interested and engaged. At the same time, it encourages them to start a conversation with you, as you showcase your knowledge and expertise within your space.
Feel free to experiment with different content types and content formats to see which ones your audience responds the best to.
7. Post at the right times
As with any social media network, the challenge for anyone marketing a brand is knowing when the best time is to publish posts to capture the attention of your target audience.
Keep in mind that people use Facebook on both mobile devices as well as desktop computers, whether at work, at home, or in transit.
Different audiences, however, might use Facebook differently. But here are a few generalizations in terms of Facebook usage across several market segments:
- One of the best times to post on Facebook is around 9:00 AM, just when people are about to start their work day and go online for the first time.
- Another good time is between 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, when folks are just about to take their lunch break. Facebook sees an increase in engagement as clickthrough rates somewhat increase at this time.
- The best days to post on Facebook: Thursday to Sunday.
Take note that, if you’re using Facebook together with your other social media channels, each and every social media channel has its own best times to post, and will vary from market to market.
8. Check Out Your Page Insights
If you want to figure out when YOUR audience is using Facebook so you can figure out the best times to post, check out the “Insights” tab located at the top of your Facebook business page.
This section gives you a wealth of information as you keep publishing content and as your audience interacts with your page. Here, you can find:
- Specific times for when it’s best to post updates for your audience (i.e. when most of your followers are on Facebook during the day)
- How well certain pieces of content are doing in terms of engagement
- How many people have clicked on your CTA button
- How many people you’ve reached on Facebook with your content during a given period of time
- How your five most recent posts are doing in terms of reach and engagement
- A snapshot of how your competitors are doing via the “Pages to Watch” section.
With Page Insights, you can make adjustments to your overall Facebook content strategy to maximize audience engagement and get more CTA responses.
9. Post more videos
With video consumption on mobile exploding 233% since 2013 and more than half of video views taking place on mobile, there’s no wonder that Facebook has been positioning itself to hack away at the dominance of YouTube on the online video market.
As it is today in 2019, 100 million hours of Facebook videos are viewed daily. This means marketers are looking for more ways to leverage video into bringing in more business through the sort of content their target audiences find relevant.
Here are a few tips when it comes to video on the popular social network:
- 85% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound. So don’t forget to use text overlays and subtitles on your video as well.
- People spend thrice as much time watching a live video than a pre-recorded one.
- Video ad attention is 75% less for ages 18–24 than 65+
Studies show that this trend of increased video consumption on Facebook persists even today. As long as you have a unique story to tell, you can use that to come up with a compelling series of stories to delight and engage your audience.
Bonus Tip: Consider Signing Up for a Chatbot
If you haven’t yet, one thing you might want to invest in is a Facebook Messenger bot (or a Facebook chatbot).
Essentially, a chatbot is an automated messaging software that uses A.I. (yes, artificial intelligence) to talk with your visitors.
Especially if you’re a small business, think of your Facebook chatbot as an extension of your customer care team, as it is able to answer most basic questions, provide information when asked, and operates tirelessly, even while you sleep or go on vacation.
With a Facebook chatbot, you can:
- Reach your audience directly via Facebook Messenger
- Save time and money on customer care
- Identify (and start nurturing) leads
- Handle transactions
- Re-engage customers
Some of the more popular self-serve chatbot-building tools you might want to explore include Streamchat, Chatfuel, MobileMonkey, and ManyChat.
Final Word
Facebook might keep on tweaking its algorithms, but there’s one thing you can be sure of: the social media giant will continue to be a viable, much-sought-after marketing platform for many years to come.
The keys to success for any business on Facebook are:
- To cover the basics
- To have an end objective in mind (via your CTA button)
- To keep coming up with content to attract new page followers (to improve your reach) and keep your target audience interested (so your brand stays top of mind)
- To keep monitoring your performance on Facebook so you can always make adjustments to your approach to achieve your marketing goals.
There are a lot more resources online to help you get the most out of your Facebook Business Page, but these tips will help you get a leg up on your competition.
