From finding new customers to expanding brand awareness, Facebook is packed with powerful tools and insights that can help you achieve your business goals. Let’s explore the key components of a successful Facebook page and how to use its many tools to build your personal brand.
First things first: If you’re using Facebook to promote your business, you need a business page. Your personal profile should be reserved for personal use only. Follow these steps to set up a business page (or as a health check for your existing business page).
Go to facebook.com/pages/create, then choose your page type. A Business/Brand page is a good option if you’re focused on selling and growing your customer base. A Public Figure page is better suited for establishing yourself as a thought-leader, with less emphasis on your products or services.
Add a profile picture and cover photo, and enter your business details, including website, address, phone number, hours of operation, and the About description.
Customize your call to action (e.g., Call Now, Send Message, Watch Video, Learn More). This is located under your cover photo and is a great way to guide visitors to take a specific action, such as sending you an instant message or heading to your website.
Once your page is all set up, next comes the big question: What, when, and how often should you post content? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but here are some general guidelines to follow:
What to post: Your best bet for getting high engagement is to post a variety of content, such as videos, knowledge articles from your blog, shared content from other sources, photo updates of a project or event, contests and giveaways, and paid campaigns for lead generation. Whatever you post, make sure it’s authentic, and try to keep it hyper-local. This will not only better resonate with your followers, but can also help you build your reputation within the community and boost your local SEO, which is essential for getting your business found online.
While you can (and should) run targeted paid ads to expand your reach, be sure to balance it with organic (unpaid, un-promoted) content. Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes meaningful, relevant content over promoted content, so it’s important to share the former to increase the chances of it appearing in news feeds.
When to post: Some experts say the best day to post is on Wednesday, others say Saturday, others say Sunday … and so on. The truth is, you’ll have to do some testing to determine which days and times result in optimal engagement with your content. Switch around the days and times you post for a couple of weeks and use Facebook Insights to monitor when people are most engaged.
PRO TIP: Remember to monitor Page Insights regularly to keep track of page views, post performance, engagement, page likes, and more.
How to post: When it comes to posting frequency, consistency is key. You don’t want to have a lot of activity one week and then large gaps of silence for weeks after. Post regularly, at least three times a week, up to once a day. When you post more than once a day, engagement rates go down. To free up your time, schedule content in advance using Facebook’s Publishing tools.
Messenger. Facebook will score you on how quick or slow you are to respond to private messages, and that score appears to visitors on your business page. Helpful hint: To get a “Very responsive to messages” badge, you must have a response rate of 90% and a response time of less than 15 minutes.
Targeting. Facebook has robust targeting capabilities to get your content in front of specific groups of people. For paid posts, you can define your audience by gender, location, interests, age, and even Facebook activity and behavior. Not sure who your audience is? Check out Audience Insights to see breakdowns of Facebook users, including those who follow your page, to better define your target audience.
Advertising. There are two ways you can promote paid content on Facebook: a boosted post or an ad. A boosted post simply promotes content from your Page’s timeline and has fewer customization options. An ad is created in Ads Manager and has more extensive features, including creative control, campaign objectives, ad placement, and expanded targeting capabilities. Both can help you achieve your goals; it just depends on how basic or advanced you want to be with your paid advertising.
Facebook Stories, a feature that’s growing in popularity, lets you post videos and images that disappear after 24 hours. They appear at the very top of the news feed, just under where you’d post a status update. Stories is yet another means to catch people’s attention and get in front of your followers.
Here are a few ideas on how to use Stories:
Create polls and questions to gather feedback and get to know your audience.
Give followers a behind-the-scenes look at a conference you’re attending.
Drive traffic to blog articles or campaign landing pages by sharing teaser info.
Another clever way to boost engagement is by streaming live videos to generate buzz and excitement. Facebook Live videos appear in the news feed and can be up to 4 hours long. While Stories are great for sharing the day-to-day, live videos are ideal for promoting big announcements or major events.
For example, let’s say you’ve just launched a collaboration with a new business partner and want to share the news. You can do this together via live video broadcast, promoting it in advance to create anticipation. During the broadcast, viewers can comment and interact, and you can engage with them in real time. The video will remain on your news feed when you’re done so viewers can still watch it and comment if they couldn’t attend live.
The opportunities to grow your business using Facebook are vast; so vast, in fact, that the platform can seem intimidating to beginners. Remember: Achieving success with social media means finding out what works for you. The most important thing is to start somewhere and be willing to adjust your approach as you go along. Before you know it, you’ll be using Facebook like a pro.