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These days, Facebook can be used to do a lot more than share baby pictures and send invites for a weekend BBQ. With a Facebook Business Page, your company can build a community around your brand, talk with customers, share store hours and specials, and get to know your market — all while improving your local SEO.
It’s not hard to set your business up for success with a properly optimized Facebook Page for your business. In fact, it’s easy — here are six steps to get it done right.
1. Fill In Your Company “About” Info
Your Business Page features an “About” info tab with more than a dozen fields that can help prospects and customers find you and deliver pertinent information. Hours, website URL, company overview, store menus, product categories, and more, are possible.
Your goal here is threefold: provide up-to-date and useful contact information, give Facebook users a quick sense of what your business is all about, and please the search engines.
To tick that last box, make sure you enter your brand name, address, URL, hours, mission statement, tagline, etc., exactly as you have elsewhere across the web and on your owned web properties.
2. Solidify Company Branding
You know your branding is important on your website, and the same is true on your Facebook Page. Solidify and reinforce your branding with your copywriting style and content, cover and profile photos, and brand personality in your post feed.
It’s worth taking the time to get this right. Cover photos, profile photos, and other Facebook media assets have specific resolution and size requirements that you’ll need to follow if you want everything to look just right. Remember to test that your content looks good on desktop and mobile.
Feel free to get creative. Do you have product photography that’s contextualized and engaging? Use it. Have a special campaign, brand event, or content piece you want to show off? Create a custom cover photo to do just that.
3. Add a Call to Action
The Facebook Business Page setup allows you to designate one call-to-action at any one time for your page. Think about what you most want to accomplish with your Facebook social media presence and then set this up. Align with your landing page on your website. You can always replace it with a different CTA later as needed.
Options include: Shop Now, Sign Up, Learn More, Request Appointment, Book Now, Use App, Play Game, Send Message, and more.
As your CTA button will be situated near your cover photo, some businesses like to connect the two. A custom designed cover photo can point or otherwise draw the viewer’s eye to the big blue button you want them to click.
4. Pin a Post
Your Business Page on Facebook is of course far more than a directory listing and a CTA button. There’s the whole social post feed element, as well. Post some great content for your Facebook Followers, then remember to “pin” your most important recent post to the top of your profile.
Pinned posts are a fairly new feature cropping up on social media. The idea is that the first post your profile visitors see doesn’t have to be your most recent. You can continue to post fresh content after you’ve advertised your latest sale, white paper, daily special, etc., by choosing to pin your desired post to the top of your feed. This is perhaps the easiest optimization, taking just two clicks to set up.
5. Fill In Your Company Milestone Timeline
You may already have a milestone timeline on your website, touting the founding date and details of your business, product launches, major successes, feature rollouts, etc. But as your Facebook user is on Facebook, not on your website, take the time to fill in the same info on your Business Page.
Remember to think like a marketer, and realize these milestones can be far more than just dry facts and dates. Did you reach a million sales? 100,000 downloads? 60 billion served? Become a chain? Survive a famous local flood or fire? Make sure you tout any of these impressive and humanizing details that apply to your brand in your milestone timeline.
6. Add Custom Page Tabs
Facebook is unique in offering business owners the ability to organize and display a series of left-side tabs (About, Photos, Videos, Events, Reviews, etc.) as well as allowing Page admins to create and display their customized tabs. Make sure you take advantage of this unique Facebook feature.
If you have great photos, consider moving that tab higher up the list. If you have uploaded video content, you might want to prioritize that. With a developer on hand, you can get much fancier. For example, many auto brands have included a “Design Your Own” tab, typically linking to the vehicle customization widget on their main website.
Closing Thoughts
Facebook today provides businesses with one of the largest potential audiences on the planet. Your Business Page has the potential of being seen by a lot of people, some of whom may want to buy just what you’re selling.
These optimization fixes are free, fast, and too easy not to do. You can probably take your basic Page setup to fully optimized in less than an afternoon. For Facebook visitors, this is a good investment. Many people look at your Facebook Page as though it’s a virtual storefront. If it looks good, they’ll step in and consider buying something. For search engines, having your info populated on Facebook and across the web in the same standard format is a big plus.
You may even consider using a directory tool like Yext to keep your info on Facebook and your other profiles up to date. Once you’ve optimized, you’ll start hearing customers say they saw you on Facebook and decided to come down to the shop.