November 25, 2016

Beginners Guide to Facebook For Business

Beginners Guide to Facebook For Business

Beginners Guide to Facebook for Business

Facebook for business is very simple and with user numbers constantly increasing it is becoming essential for businesses to have a presence on the social giant. The numbers speak for themselves; according to ExpandedRamblings there are over 1.52 billion monthly active users and 1.04 billion people log onto their Facebook daily (Jan 2016). This gives your business a global shop window.In this guide we outline how beginners can create a Facebook business page for marketing and some key guidelines to follow. To set up your page head over to Facebook page creation centre.

How to use Facebook

  1. Choose an available name for your page that corresponds with your brand and business name. If you have multiple venues add the location name - e.g. The Slug & Lettuce Spinningfields and The Slug & Lettuce Deansgate.
  2. Add information about your business; including address, website URL, contact details and opening hours. The more details you fill out on the Page Info tab the more your audience will learn about your business. For those in the hospitality industry be sure to add your food and drink menu.
  3. Add a Call To Action button to your page such as “Learn More” “Contact Us” “Book Now”. This appears at the top of your page and triggers visitors to your page too take action.
  4. Add branding to your fan page. To add an image to your profile picture or cover photo; hover your mouse over the image until you see a small camera icon appear which will allow you to upload an image. We suggest that both images include your company's logo. Savvy page owners change their cover image in-line with your marketing campaigns and use it in tandem with the profile image and the tab boxes below. This gives you the opportunity to showcase special offers, events and brand information.
  5. Drive engagement with your Facebook page. Ask friends, family, colleagues and customers to like and share your page. You could also run a Facebook advertising campaign to attract new customers.
  6. Consistently post content that is relevant to your business and the audience you would like to attract.

Facebook Best Practice:

- Keep your posts short. On Facebook, posts between 100 and 250 characters get 60% more engagement than posts with over 250 characters.- Be visual, add images to your posts. Posts with images and videos get up to 180% more engagement. Try posting a link with the article title and URL in the caption, many articles will automatically display the image from the page you're linking to.- Post regular updates to your fans. 96% of your fans will not come back to your page so making regular status updates will consistently reach out to them and garner interactions.- Share content that relates to your business without talking directly about your services. Posts related to, but not directly about your brand perform best. e.g (insert example image)- Find out when your Facebook fans are online to drive engagement with your updates. Find the best time for your customers and explore the insights tab to see when your fans are scrolling through their newsfeed.- Ensure that you develop an effective social media content strategy. Engagement is the key but do not forget to add a clear call to action. e.g. "Like and Share" "Book Now" or "Learn More".- Add links to your posts, for example, your booking page. If you use Google URL shortener it keeps your links short and tidy and you able to track conversions to your website from Facebook. This will assist you with tracking an ROI on your social media strategy.- Have a second eye proofread your content - would you send an email to your database without proofing first? Probably not so the same applies here too.

Facebook Ads

Once you have your Facebook fan page up and running and have begun posting regular, quality content you may want to consider the benefits of Facebook Adverts. Facebook gives you the opportunity to choose your campaign objective and then choose your budget and target audience.- Boost your posts - Boost an individual post with an image and text in the post above to spread your message.- Promote your page - Promote your page to increase your business and organic reach.- Send people to your website - Make it easy for customers to reach your business and your website.- Increase conversions on your website - Send customers to your website to trigger sales and bookings.- Installs of your app/Increase engagement - Advertise your app so new customers can find it and download. Demonstrate features in order to engage customers.- Reach people near your business - Attract local customers to your business to build your business profile and revenue.- Raise attendance at an event - Raise the visibility of your event and trigger ticket sales.- Get people to claim your offer - This is a very popular advert as businesses attempt to capture customer interest by offering their promotions. This works well if you can send customers through to your website to redeem your promotional offer without having to use a third party site.- Get video views - Advertise your campaign with a video that automatically plays in the main news feed of Facebook. Add a clear call to action to the end in order to elevate your campaign.- Collect leads for your business - Collect data from Facebook in order to generate leads for your business. You must be aware that your business will become responsible for the protection and correct use of this data..

Facebook Ads Top Tips

- Make sure your post is correct before boosting the post into a Facebook advert. You cannot change text or an image once an advert is running.- Facebook does not allow you to boost any image that contains more than 20% text- The same 20% rule applies to your videos- Also add a clear call to action - e.g. book now, learn more, click here- Plan in advance as Facebook can take up to 24 hours to approve your advert- Test different Facebook ad options on different campaigns and analysis the results
Facebook Image Sizes
- Profile picture - That appears next to each action you make on Facebook: 180 x 180 pixels- Cover photo - Image that appears across the top of your page: 851 x 315 pixels- Shared Image - When you post an image on your page it should be:1200 x 630 pixelsRemember:- Posts with high visual content gain on average 94% more engagement than those without.- When uploading an image of your business, for example a picture of your food or cocktails, it is ideal to add your logo to the image. This prevents people from using your images and helps the audience to recognise your brand. You can download apps for Android and Apple that allow you to do this mobile.- Do post flyers of your events but remember to be aware you won’t be able to boost these into an advert if it contains more than 20% text.

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