How to Get Started with a Facebook Page

So, you’ve decided to join the herd and create a business or organisation Facebook page. Congrats—it’s a world full of potential for growing your business and for building better connections with your tribe. 

However, it can also be a little daunting. So, here’s our top 7 steps for starting your Facebook Pages journey on the right foot.

1. Insert the Essential Words

• Name (it’s important that you get this right as it can be hard to change later!)
• Category
• Username (helps people find and tag you)
• Address (crucial for businesses with a physical shop)
• Phone number (again, crucial for people to contact you)
• Opening hours
• Website URL
• About (short summary) and Our Story (long explanation of who you are and what you do)

2. Upload the Essential Images

• Profile image (170 x 170 pixels is ideal)
• Cover image or video (820w x 462h pixels is ideal)

3. Choose a Call-to-Action Button

What would you like people to do most when they visit your site? Shop online? Call you? Message you? Sign up to an email list? Email you? You can choose any of these with the “Add a Button to Your Page” function.

4. Write Your First Post

Many new Facebook page owners sweat profusely at the sight of the dark blue “Publish” button. Here are some quick tips to put you at ease:

• Begin by knowing your audience
• Imagine what they would like to talk about at a dinner party and what words they’d most likely use — that’s exactly what you should be posting
• Aim to engage and be the conduit for conversation rather than just craft a perfectly worded post that you broadcast to the waiting masses (most likely they won’t hear it!)
• And just in case, understand how to quickly edit or delete a post if you do make a mistake (see below)

5. Include Your Team

Most Facebook pages function best when there are multiple people managing the page—all posting, engaging, editing and responding to messages.

So, first, shortlist the people right for the job and bring everyone up to speed with the whys and hows of your Facebook page (including some solid parameters for what is okay and not okay to post).

Second, assign them roles under your Facebook page settings. As below …

6. Invite Friends, Share & Link

After populating your page with all the above content and even doing a couple of thoughtful posts, now’s the time to tell others about it and begin building that huge audience!

Invite: Start by inviting your friends through the built-in function on the right hand of your Facebook page (have your colleagues do the same).

Share: Then share the Facebook page to your personal Facebook profile by clicking the “Share” button just beneath the cover image on your Facebook page.

Link: Add hyperlinks to your Facebook page from your email signature, website footer and other social media accounts. Facebook has pre-coded icons and feeds that you can just drop into your website’s HTML code in a matter of seconds (click here for details), much like the feed below.

See First: Communicate to your biggest fans how they can ensure they always see your posts. As illustrated in the video below:

• send the URL of your Facebook page to your fans,
• encourage them to first “Like” the page,
• then click the “Following” drop down menu (under the cover photo),
• and finally select “See First”.

7. Like Other Pages

Your business might have sister or parent companies or simply suppliers or companies you admire that you’d like to connect with. You can do so by liking these pages “as your page”—head to that page, click the three dots (ellipsis) under their cover photo, and click “Like As Your Page”.

By liking other pages as “Your Page” you will help fulfil the stated mission of Facebook: to spark meaningful interactions between people.

And it’s important to keep this in mind whenever you do anything on Facebook. It’s all about being social, being real, being fun and interesting, and ultimately being that conduit for bringing people together.

If you need a hand with your Facebook or other social media strategies, be sure to get in touch with us. We can help out with anything from guidance and training right up to full account management.

Tee up a chat with our Content Marketing Specialist Hayden Shearman today by email or phone 027 483 5942.