A Guide to Creating a Facebook Business Page

As the largest social media platform on the planet, it is no secret that Facebook is one of the best social networking services that lets you connect with people from all over the world. Launched in 2004 by five students at Harvard University, the webpage aimed out to provide students from Harvard with the opportunity to create online profiles and get to know more people on the campus. The webpage grew quickly in popularity, and after only a few months, more users from other universities received access to the website. Today, Facebook has more than 2.7 billion active users, making it an important platform for any business looking to utilize social media marketing.

In fact, Facebook has become the world’s most popular website: the average user spends more than eight hours each month on the site.

Companies have quickly embraced Facebook as a new marketing channel, and large companies like Coca Cola, Starbucks, Walmart and McDonald’s are investing millions of dollars to promote themselves on the social network in order to grow their customer base.

However, there are still many businesses that have not created a Facebook page. It may seem like an effort, but creating a Facebook Business Page is actually very simple. If you follow our simple guide to getting your Facebook Business Page set up, you'll start off on the right foot.

Table of Contents

• What’s your Facebook Business Page goal?

• Get inspired by successful Facebook Business Pages

• How to create a Facebook Business Page

• Adding your Facebook Business Page to your webpage

• How to optimize your Facebook Business Page

• Improve Facebook Page Performance

• How to promote your business on Facebook

What’s your Facebook Business Page goal?

Before you create a Facebook for business page, it is important that you have a clear goal with your page. Here are some questions to ask yourself when you’re coming up with a Facebook strategy:

• Why should you have a Facebook Page?
• What is your goal with your Facebook Page?
• Who should manage your Facebook Page, and who is responsible for its performance?
• Who do you want to reach on Facebook, and how do you plan to reach them?
• How will you respond to negative comments from unsatisfied customers?
• How will you ensure that you reach your objectives on Facebook?

By having an answer (or at least a great guess) on these questions from the get-go, you avoid many beginner’s mistakes.

Get inspired by successful Facebook Business Pages

There are many companies on Facebook that market themselves in an exceptional way with the content shared on their Facebook page, and you can learn a lot from them. It’s worth spending some time to look at how they’ve built their Facebook for Business page, and examine the type of content that they publish. Here is a list of a few companies that are worth taking a closer look at:

1. Whirpool

How can you create engagement and interest in dishwashers, washing machines and other household products?  Whirlpool succeeds very well with this because of their posts that inspire and inform.  They are also very good at responding to other people’s posts, and they have a very clear policy about what kind of posts they accept on their Facebook Business Page.

2. Pampers

Pampers publishes content that includes quality pictures, curious questions and call-to-actions in order to engage many of their followers.
They have also completed several milestones on their timeline, which gives interested users more information about their company’s history.

3. Maersk Group

B2B companies often struggle with Facebook but Maersk Group is one B2B company that is doing things right. With beautiful images that focus on the brand's global reach and long history, they have managed to get over 3 million followers. Take note, other B2B companies!

4. Buzzfeed

With short but passionate posts all containing great pictures, Buzzfeed constantly manages to create high engagement for their posts. Of course, engagement is Buzzfeed’s currency, so they are extra incented to make sure that their own social channels work for them. And they do: Buzzfeed boasts a lot of new followers each week.

How to create a Facebook Business Page

Creating a Facebook Business Page is relatively easy. You can do this without having a personal profile, but it is highly recommended that you have a Facebook profile of your own before creating a Facebook Business Page for your company. If you don't already have a Facebook profile, take a look at Facebook's guide to getting started. 

Once logged into your profile, you can begin creating your Business Page. The way to create a Facebook Business Page is fairly simple:

1. Select either “Local Business” or “Company, organization or institution"
2. Select a Category that best represents the category or sector that your company operates in
3. Type in your business's or place's name (you will be able to change this later on until you have 200 Likes).
4. Add your company's street address
5. Put in your company's City / State
6. Add in your company’s postal code.
7. Add your company’s phone number.

Now, it’s time to read Facebook's terms where you’ll find more information about what you are allowed to do on Facebook and what you’re not allowed to do. If you agree with the terms, check the box and click "Get Started."

Your new Facebook Page is now created, and it’s time to complete all your business information. In order to get a deeper understanding of why you should complete all the fields in your Page’s settings, check out this blog post: Facebook Graph Search: 6 steps your business needs to take to get the most out of it.

Adding your Facebook Business Page to your webpage

A good way to let your customers know that you are on Facebook is to promote your Business Page via your website. This is also a very effective way to get more followers to your Business Page.

Facebook offers several different social plugins that are easy to install to help you increase your following on Facebook. You’ll find all of these plugins on Facebook’s developer page.

Here are 3 plugin recommendations that you can try:

Like Button

By adding the "like button" to your webpage, you’ll give your visitors the chance to like your Business Page from your webpage. Simply specify the URL of your Business Page in the "href" setting of the button and add the code to your webpage.

Likebox

Likebox is a plugin that contains several interesting elements. By having a Likebox on your webpage you will display a link to your Business Page for your visitors, a like button, your most recent posts and the profile pictures of users who like your Business Page.

Adding a Likebox to your webpage is as easy as adding a like button. Visit Facebook’s Likebox Page, complete your webpage’s information, click on "Get Code," and add the code to your webpage.

Facebook Comments

If you have a blog or a page where you want comments from your visitors, it is recommended that you use Facebook Comments. The plugin is easy to install and one of the many benefits of Facebook Comments (except that users do not need to create a new account to post comments) is that the comments posted via Facebook Comments get posted on your webpage and in the users' Activity Log on their Facebook Profile (this interaction is visible to all friends of the user). With Facebook comments, users can also like and respond to specific comments.

If you want to learn more about how you implement Facebook Comments, read about on Facebook’s development page for Facebook Comments. For more guidelines on Facebook’s plugins, check out Facebook Sharing Checklist.

How to optimize your Facebook Business Page

Marketing professionals have known the importance of word-of-mouth marketing for years, but did you know that Facebook also offers a feature that helps promote referral marketing?

After proving to be a success across the pond, Facebook rolled out the ‘recommendations’ feature in the U.K., making the act of receiving recommendations easier for companies. The feature allows users to easily collect advice by posting an unambiguous status clearly labeled to show they’re asking for a recommendation. When their friends reply with suggestions, if the business has a Facebook page, they will be plotted on a map allowing the user to easily see which location is nearer and find out more about the business.

Facebook recommendations aren’t exactly revolutionary, but not many marketing teams have optimized their Facebook Company Page to support the recommendations. If you're from one of those teams, we have some words of wisdom to get you started!

Interested in growing your Facebook follower count? Check out our blog on How to Get More Likes on Facebook for tips on generating engagement and followers.

Add maps

Since one of the main aspects of Facebook recommendations is the fact that suggestions are then plotted on a map, ensure that your Business Page has the maps section up and running. This can be achieved by setting up a Bing business listing. Amanda Webb, the owner of Spiderworking.com, offers a useful step-by-step guide on how to do so. Once set up, brand visibility and reach will increase dramatically.

Fill out all information on your Business Page

Whether you are a big brand or using Facebook marketing for small businesses, adding your website and company phone number is a given, but there are many other sections you can populate on your Business Page that are just as valuable and sometimes overlooked.

Your visitors want to know all the details about your business: where your office is located, what services you offer, what your working hours are, and so on.

Add a call-to-action button

Adding a call-to-action is a best practice for any marketing campaign, and your Business Page should be no different. Take a look at this post, Calls to Action: 50 That Sell and 10 That Repel, for inspiration for your CTA button text.

Encourage positive Facebook reviews

The truth is, customers are much more likely to air their negative experiences than positive ones, so it doesn’t hurt to ask customers to share positive reviews. Consider running a competition to encourage this.

Learn how to win back customers after a bad experience.

Using a social media monitoring tool to review recommendations and ROI

So, how can you tell if your Facebook page optimization efforts have been worth the time you invested? Using a social media monitoring tool to benchmark metrics such as exposure and share of voice before and after optimization took place is a great way to measure and understand ROI. You can also search conversations by a theme to identify what exactly it is that your audience likes about you, and then highlight this within the content on your business's page on Facebook. 

Improve Facebook Page Performance

Complete the “About” section

An incomplete “About” section can result in decreased Facebook page performance because without one, a visitor may think that the page simply isn’t legit; or professional for that matter. If they've arrived at your profile through Facebook ads, it's even more critical to introduce yourself and make a good impression. Plus, it can even help you gain clout with search engines. 
The type of information provided varies from business to business, but one thing that most pages have in common is the inclusion of links to other sites, such as a website, blog pages, or Instagram accounts. This helps to improve your page's performance by increasing visibility and added value from the content on the websites you've linked.

Tip: Use a link shortener such as Bitly to optimize space and tidy up.

Update the cover image

We all crave visuals. An engaging cover image is an easy win to make our Facebook profiles work harder. The cover photo is the first thing audiences see when they land on a page and you want to make it is as easy as possible for visitors to figure out who we are and what we do. Don’t forget, you typically have three seconds to capture a visitor’s attention and improve your page's performance while doing so.

Tip: Use an image that relates to the product or service you offer. Keep in mind to use the right social media image sizes. Our ultimate guide to Facebook image sizes and our ultimate guide to Instagram profile pictures will help you.

Post at the right time

Most of us don’t speak unless we expect that someone is listening Meltwater's tools can provide you with a Facebook health check and also offer advice on improvement. For example, the search tool can tell when the best time to post content on your page is in order to ensure maximum engagement. For those wanting to know the best time to post on Twitter, take a look at our past blog here.

Tip: Try to include a call to action within every post, like "share to win," "like if you agree," or "tag a friend."

Like other pages

One way to make your Facebook Business Page works for you is to go on a liking spree. Apart from wanting to boost the number of likes that your Facebook page gets, Liking other pages will help increase your reach, that is if we also engage with the page. This can help expand your community and improve your page's performance by getting inspired for your own content based on what is, or isn’t working, on other Facebook pages.

Tip: Learn more by reading our previous post “How to Get More Likes for Your Brand’s Facebook Page”

Add milestones

Facebook is the perfect medium for brand storytelling. The social platform enables you to connect with your audience emotionally, which creates a stronger bond.

Tip: Highlight images more so than comments. Also, call out milestones for your business and find ways to express how excited you are about them. These can include stories about how you started your business, new product launches, and any awards you’ve won or recognition you’ve received.

How to promote your business on Facebook

If you want to create an ad that will drive more traffic towards your website, here's what you need to do:

1. Go to your Facebook Business Page and select "Promote" in the left column.
2. Select your objective by clicking on the "Get More Website Visitors" promotion option.
3. Select your "Ad Creative". You may want to use something as simple as an image and ad text but you can swap these options out for your own choices of image, video or slideshow and text.
4. Create your Audience. This can include setting a certain radius around your business's location and selecting your audience's demographics.
5. Set how much you want to spend on your ad by clicking the drop-down below "Daily Budget". Choose a pre-filled budget or type in your custom budget.
6. Under "Duration", you can set how long you want to run your ad. You can select 7, 14 or 28 days, or set a custom duration by clicking in the "Run this ad until" field.
7. Review your payment method and make sure it's up to date. If you want to make changes to your payment method, select "Change".
8. Once you are finished with creating your promotion ad, select "Promote". The ad will first be reviewed before you are notified of when it goes live.

When it comes to promoting your Facebook Business Page, remember that by doing this, you are introducing your business to people who may be interested in what you have to offer. Getting their attention is one step towards making them your customers so give yourself the best possible chance when promoting yourself.

At the end of the day, beefing up your social media marketing and drawing in your target audience, means giving them the information they need. Take the time to add the necessary details and you'll see your Facebook profile performing better in the long run. Use your social media profile to promote your brand effectively and they will do the job of both providing a useful service and serving as an advertising tool for your business.