So you are starting a business and maybe doing it solo. You keep hearing about the power of Facebook to promote it, but need some sort of beginners guide? You’ve come to the right place. Facebook is bigger than ever, and creating a Facebook Business Page is about the best marketing investment for the money (none) today. So how do you go about creating one of these magical hubs of salacious social swagger? Here is a quick step by step guide to setting up a Facebook Business page.
Head on over to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and begin.
1. Choose What Kind of Business You are
This is pretty self explanatory, just pick the the classification that best suits you.
- Local business or place – Usually a brick and mortar place and you promote to a certain region. Awesome for a local bakery as an example.
- Artist, band, or public figure – Great for those promoting a personal brand like the band you put together and now hoping for stardom.
- Company, organization, or institution – Just your normal company that deals with various sectors.
- Entertainment – Do you see your business as an entertainment provider? This may be for you then.
- Brand or product – Do you sell something? Are you a brand like that can be obtained? Then this one is for you.
- Cause of community – Non profits, organizations with a cause and those that do good can go for this category.
Once you’ve picked your classification, they will ask you to choose a category and fill some information (It varies slightly depending on the classification you choose.) The local option also asks for further address information. Make sure that you take your time choosing a category though, as you will not be able to change it after the fact.
2. Complete Basic Information
Once your done choosing a category and all that jazz, you will be taken to your brand new Facebook Business Page! Wooohooo! It looks pretty bare when right now. It’s your job to make it pop. A good place to start is to pick a profile picture. If you have a logo for your business, you should put it here. If not, pick a picture that you feel best represents the essence of your company, and looks cool to boot. Then choose your cover photo, making sure that it meshes well with your profile picture. Now it’s time to hit up the about section, where you will fill in the details of who you are, what you offer etc.
3. Editing the info
After your done filling out the about section to your satisfaction, it’s time to go a little more in depth. Click the “edit info” button and fill out everything that applies, such as the hours you are open (if you’re a local business). No matter what kind of classification you are, you should fill out the description section thoroughly. And be descriptive. If someone is going to your info page to find out more about your company, it be a damn shame if they left bored. So spice it up a little. Show us just how charming you are!
4. Invite Friends to Be Fans
When you first start your business page, it is not going to have any fans. A good way to get started on building your fan base it to invite all your friends to like your page. This will establish a foundation that will give you a little more credibility to outsiders than if you you had no fans at all.
5. Start Socializing
Now that you have somewhat of an audience, it’s time to start engaging them! Post a status update announcing that you are now on the scene. Call your friends and ask them to like you status so that your reach extends to their network. Don’t be distressed if you don’t have a million fans in the first day. It takes a fair amount of time, effort and patience, to build a loyal audience for your brand, but once you do the results can be all kinds of fruitful.
6. Consider Advertising
To get some exposure and help build your fan base, you may want to consider doing some paid advertising on Facebook. Don’t fret, it’s really not that expensive, and you can control how much to spend on a daily bases. They allow you to target Facebook users with a demographic you choose, like within a local area, age or gender even an interest or a fan of your competitor with ads. You only pay of they click on the ad and thus its totally yours to control.
Last I recommend doing some more research, read up on Facebook engagement, sweepstakes and marketing promos you can take on. There are endless marketing tactics that work great for Facebook and Google has them all at your fingertips.
Brendan Sevack is a social enthusiast and a blogger for Wazala.com specializing in Facebook commerce and social media marketing . Studied audio engineering, but soon after realized he prefers to share with words rather than sound.
14 Comments
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Michael Davis
August 25, 2012 at 4:24 am
Thanks! This has been very helpful and easy to follow.
Brendan
August 25, 2012 at 11:32 am
Glad to hear that Michael 🙂
Jazz Zangeres
August 27, 2012 at 7:15 am
Nice and short overview, thanks! One thing is not clear though – how do you get from 10 friends to 100+ fans? Is that through the likes of my friends?
Brendan Sevack
August 28, 2012 at 10:45 am
@Jazz
At first asking your friends, and your employees friends to Like your page will give you the initial boost you’re looking for in Likes. I also suggest trying a small advertising campaign that is directed towards your niche. Let’s say your page is about Jazz & violins, then only targeting users that are already interested in Jazz and or violins can be done. Facebook allows you to control your budget, and only pay when you actually get a click, so you never over pay.
After you have a good following, you may consider a contest of some sort that would allow others to share your page with others in their community. Hope this helps you out.
Jazz Zangeres
August 29, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Thanks, Brendan. I’m not prepared to pay for ads (yet :), so I guess I’ll just have to ask around for getting likes. I expect the start to be easy because of all the members of our orchestra, but after that they’ll have to ask THEIR friends and so on. And I’m not sure if that will work out, but it’s definitely worth a try.
Thanks again for your answer!
Lakshmi Balu
August 28, 2012 at 10:00 am
I just set up a facebook page for an NGO that am volunteering. I was successful in creating a fan page but missed sharing it out with my friends. This post was a gentle judge to go the social media marketing methods more effective!
Cristian Stan
August 28, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Hey, Brendan! Great recommendations! I’d like to add that Facebook ads are like Google ads (Google adwords) so everyone familiar with Google ads won’t have problems with Facebook campaigns.
Raghav Thakur
December 27, 2012 at 11:53 am
Pretty well discussed and thought of article..
Really simple.. Thanks for the easy share
Saipraveen
January 31, 2013 at 12:50 pm
Perfect article mate. But I don’t why Facebook charges more money when compared with Adwords. I think it would vary on the selection of keyword. Thanks for the share 🙂
Rob Calhoun
March 12, 2013 at 8:27 pm
This is a good tutorial on setting up a fan page for free. A good bit of the feedback had to do with the important part of having a fanpage, getting likes and interaction.
I didn’t mean for this to be a pitch for my new app, I was actually just looking to promote a new post but since it’s what people are looking for it makes sense.
If you have a business and a facebook page, you’re really looking for customers more so than likes. RC Social coupons gets you both. You can learn all about it at: robcalhoun .com/sc
Umer
April 6, 2013 at 1:18 pm
I think Facebook is a great platform to take your business to a new height. Thanks for sharing tips on how to make a business page on facebook.
Efukikata
May 17, 2013 at 12:07 am
Nice Business Post, keep it up Bro.
Suhas
July 9, 2013 at 12:34 pm
This seems to be a very useful Facebook page start up guide. It is really essential to have basic idea of what Facebook pages are all about before actually starting its use.
Ade
October 5, 2013 at 8:51 am
This seems to be a very useful Facebook page start up guide. It is really essential to have basic idea of what Facebook pages are all about before actually starting its use.