Facebook for Small Business 101

How to promote your business on Facebook

Facebook business pages can improve every aspect of your business. Social media marketing is effective for reaching new people and generating sales, but it can also help you improve your customer service response time. Advertising your business on Facebook requires you to consistently create quality content. Once you know the types of content your audience responds to, you can market on social media effectively to reach more people.

Here are a few steps to help you use Facebook for business:

1. Create a business profile

To create a new page, start here. Follow each prompt and fill in as much information about your business as possible. The more you provide, the better it is for both Facebook users and the Facebook algorithm. You never know what someone may be searching for, such as your business’s phone number, hours of operation, or other details.

Your profile picture and cover photo are important visual aspects of your Facebook business page, so take some extra time to make them stand out. (And be sure to use more than just your logo.) You can even use a video as the cover image to make the page feel more interactive.

Once you’ve finished the initial setup, your page will be created. To complete your small business’s Facebook profile, however, there are other features you can add:

Page Info: Find the “Settings” tab and click on “Page Info.” In addition to some of the information you’ve already supplied, you’ll see a lot of empty boxes. This is where you can include your website, privacy policy, hours, price range, and other important details users need.

Short Description: This is where you tell your audience about your company. Since you can only use up to 255 characters, think critically about what info and keywords to include. (Keywords are words or phrases commonly searched on the internet.) A mission statement can work here, but because this is social media, try to make this section fun and easy to understand.

Username: Right now the URL of your page has your business’s name and a jumble of random characters. To clean it up, create a username for your profile. Not only does a username make it easier for people to discover your business on Facebook, it also changes your page’s URL to facebook.com/yourusername.

Button: As you’re editing your profile, you may notice a long, blue bar to “+ Add a Button.” This is your call to action (CTA). When you start creating one, you’ll be asked what actions you want your customers to take: book an appointment, contact your business, etc. Under each category is a number of prompts you can select from to add a CTA button to your business page.

Templates: Most Facebook business pages follow the standard template that the social media platform provides. But if you want to structure your profile differently, you can select a different template, rearrange the tabs, and make the page’s structure your own.

Your last step is to go through all of the settings, info, and other nooks and crannies of your business profile and make sure everything is correct. You don’t want to mistakenly restrict customers from being able to message you or accidentally make your content only visible to certain people.

2. Gain followers

Now that your Facebook profile is finished, the next stage is to gain followers. To alert your existing customers that you’re now active on Facebook, you can add an announcement in an email newsletter or even put a sign in your store.

Some small businesses use Facebook-exclusive discounts to further entice customers to follow the page. People like deals, so these offers are a nice perk for your followers.

The hard part is building your audience beyond your existing customers in order to attract new business. This is where your content and keywords come in to play. Here's some advice on how to advertise on Facebook successfully.

3. Create eye-catching content

Another critical component of Facebook 101 is high-quality content. Creating engaging posts is the key to demonstrating that you’re committed to consistently providing your followers with new content to consume.

Posting content, however, needs to be strategic. People have a lot of other things vying for their attention (and clicks). If your content doesn’t stand out in users’ feeds, it’s not going to add any value to the social media experience you create.

Your strategy needs to include what you’ll be posting as well as when:

What: This is the harder dimension of your content strategies. Your audience can eventually grow tired of an endless stream of how-to guides and lists. To keep things fresh, you need to adopt a diverse posting strategy with different types of content. Sometimes the least common types of content can actually be the most interesting because people aren’t exposed to them as often.

There are many types of social media content you can use to engage your audience, including:

• Photos: Photos are always a good option because they’re engaging and give your customers something that captures their attention when scrolling their feeds.
• Videos: Videos are arguably more engaging than photos because many people prefer to watch something rather than read it.
• Polls: Polls help you engage your customers while learning more about them.
• Event invites: Event invites allow you to engage customers by inviting them to events like virtual grand openings or the celebration of a new product launch.
• Text-only posts: Text-only posts are the least engaging type of post on social media, but they can be a great way to inform customers about company news and updates.
• Live streams: Live streams tap into your followers’ fear of missing out (FOMO), allowing you to reach more people in a short amount of time. They’re ideal for announcements when you have news to share or want to showcase your products.
• Linked content: Linked content from your blog can increase web traffic by showing followers previews of what they’ll read about.
• Facebook Stories: Facebook Stories also tap into FOMO because they’re only available for a short amount of time. They’re great for videos and photos when you have news to share.

Experiment to find what works best with your audience. You can run tests to assess how different types of posts perform.

When: Timing is important on Facebook because people browse it intermittently. Share your content during time slots when your target audience is most active so that more viewers see the post and hopefully engage with it.

4. Run ads

Running ads on Facebook is a cost-effective method for increasing your reach and generating leads and sales. Ads on Facebook are available in various formats, including lead generation, photo and video, and interactive ads. You can let Facebook help you choose the right ad for you based on your goals and budget.

When developing Facebook ads for business, don’t try to reach as many people as possible. Instead, use the information you know about your audience to narrow your focus and reach users who are most likely to make a purchase. You can also run A/B tests from the Business Manager to determine which design elements and advertising copy perform best.

5. Host giveaways

Hosting giveaways is an easy way to increase engagement on your page while generating leads and growing your audience. The items you choose to give away should relate to your business offerings. For example, if you sell products online, you might choose to give away a free product.

Facebook has rules for how you can run contests and host giveaways. For instance, you can't ask participants to share your giveaway on their personal timelines as a way to enter. Therefore, you should familiarize yourself with the guidelines to prevent strikes against your business page.

6. Evaluate the competition

If your competitors are on Facebook, take a look at their pages. If you’re not sure what content to post or how to structure your page, gaining some insight from other pages is a great way to get inspired.

Your customers may also follow your competitors, so knowing what types of social media content they’re posting (and when) can help you adjust your own strategies accordingly. If a competitor’s feed does inspire you, be sure to make anything you post uniquely your own.

7. Review data

Your activity on Facebook creates data, like how many people interacted with your latest post or checked your page in a day. This data holds vital information about their social media browsing behaviors, such as when they’re active, what types of content they like best, and what offers are most relevant to them.

You should also keep an eye on the data that your Facebook page produces. Not only will it help you learn how to use the platform more effectively, but it can also provide insights into how to run a better business.

Tips for promoting your business on Facebook

When promoting your business on Facebook, try to devise a plan that's effective at increasing your reach and engagement. Using poor-quality photos and posting at the wrong times could hinder your efforts. Instead, try some of these tips:

• Know your audience: Use Facebook Insights to learn more about your audience and the types of posts they engage with most. You can also run A/B tests with advertisements to determine what types of content perform best.
• Post at the right time: Post at times when your followers are sure to be online. For example, you may not want to post at 9 am on a Monday when most of your audience will be at work. Instead, you may choose to publish during their lunch breaks when they're more likely to scroll through social media feeds.
• Stay on brand: Every post must be consistent in tone, messaging, and visuals. Your posts should assure customers they're in the right place if they ever choose to visit your business profile instead of reading your posts from their feeds.
• Plan posts in advance: Using a content calendar can help you plan posts in advance, so you don't have to worry about posting daily. Instead, you can create all your monthly posts over the course of a few days to free up your time.
• Use CTA buttons: CTAs can encourage your followers off social media and onto your website, where they can convert into paying customers.
• Ensure photos and videos are high-quality: Customers expect high-quality imagery on your social media posts. As such, make sure all images and videos are high-quality and look good.
• Test different ads: Testing different ads can help you determine what types of content your customers enjoy. You can perform A/B testing on every ad campaign, and Facebook will pick a winner based on engagement metrics.

Benefits of posting on Facebook

Facebook is just one of many social media platforms where your audience spends their time online, so you might wonder why you should focus more of your time and energy on Facebook. There are approximately 2.9 billion monthly active users on the Facebook platform. Even if you don't need to reach every single one, you still have the opportunity to engage with thousands of users.

Additional benefits of posting on Facebook include:

• Easily engage with your audience. Facebook allows you to engage with your audience in real-time. As soon as someone posts a comment on your page, you can respond to them, making customers feel like you care about their opinions.
• Increase your reach. Facebook makes it easy to increase your reach and engage with new customers with organic posts and advertising.
• Drive traffic to your business. Using various organic and advertising strategies, e-commerce and local businesses can use Facebook to drive traffic to their businesses.
• Build loyalty. When customers feel like you're making an effort to show a more personal side of the business, you can increase loyalty..
• Quickly respond to reviews, comments, and concerns. Customers expect a quick response when they send your business a direct message on Facebook. Facebook allows you to take a personal approach to every customer inquiry to improve their experience with your business.
• Lower marketing costs. Organic social media marketing costs you nothing but your time. Additionally, Facebook advertising is cost-effective, and you can get results with as little as $1 per day.

Start posting on Facebook with Mailchimp

Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, giving you the opportunity to reach customers where they spend hours of their time. Of course, when promoting your business on social media, you must consistently develop engaging, informative content.

With our social media management tools, you can determine the best times to publish content, schedule your posts in advance, and run effective, targeted ads. A social media calendar makes it easy for you to plan your entire social media strategy in one easy-to-use dashboard. Get started today to enhance your Facebook marketing.