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Managing a Facebook page for Your Business: An A-to-Z Guide

10 May 2016

You probably know that social media is a great marketing tool for your business. It’s important to know all the platforms and choose the one that is the right one for you, but it’s more important to make time to keep up with them. One of the largest social media sites that businesses of all sizes are using today is Facebook.

The purpose of today’s blog post is to help you learn how to manage a great Facebook page for your small business and turn your Facebook page into your most reliable social media marketing tool. Let’s start with a few basic steps you should take when creating your page:

  1. Create several different timeline cover images. The purpose of a cover image is to help promote your brand. It can help market your company name, a particular product, and help you connect with your fans. Having several different cover images prepared allows you to keep your page fresh and inspiring. It’s important to know what the Facebook guidelines are and what content you’re allowed to display. For example, you can brand to your heart’s desire and use colorful, visually pleasing graphics (as long as you have the rights to the images), but you can’t add your price, contact information, or calls to action like “Share with Friends.” You want each cover image to create a connection with the public you are trying to reach.
  1. Use a unique URL in place of landing tabs. Facebook no longer allows default landing tabs, and, in fact, has made all tabs into their own apps. Since each app has its own unique URL, you can use these URLs to make the traffic flow to and from each one rather than just the main page. By purchasing your URLs, you can not only direct traffic to a specific app, but you have one or two URLs you can use on a regular basis regardless of how many changes Facebook makes.
  1. Create custom thumbnails for your apps. Make these visually appealing so your fans want to explore them. These should be different from your cover images but no less appealing. Post Planner offers detailed, user-friendly instructions to guide you.
  1. Know your image sizes. This is a simple, yet important, tool to maximize the visual appeal. Grab a post-it, write these dimensions down, and stick it on your monitor.
  • Cover photo: 851 x 315
  • Profile picture: 180 x 180
  • Thumbnail image for apps: 111 x 74
  • Highlighted and Milestone images: 843 x 403
  • Images within the wall posts display as 404 x 404

Some other things to consider when setting up your Facebook page are adding milestones that highlight key events or release dates, highlighting important posts, pinning posts with general FAQs or other important information to the top of the page, and developing content pages to keep your fans up to date. Take a look at bobile‘s Facebook page if you want to get inspired.

Now that you’ve set up your Facebook business page, you need to manage it daily to keep it fresh and inviting. Too many companies fail because they don’t understand how to manage their page effectively. In addition to the steps listed above, here are a few more things you should do:

  1. Post Regularly. An active and engaged community requires consistency. You should post at least once a day and test to see what frequency generates the most traffic and brings interaction. You don’t want to overdo it, yet you want to establish reliability.
  2. Plan your content in advance. This helps you achieve the ability to post regularly. You can even schedule your posts using the Facebook Post Scheduler function, but you need to make sure that they are relevant when they are live. You don’t want to post about sunny day adventures in the middle of a snowstorm. You also don’t want to hog the spotlight. Follow the 80/20 rule when planning the content you’ll share, in order to keep your page inspiring and friendly.
  3. Learn how to use Facebook Insights. It provides you with valuable data on content. It helps you understand how people are engaging with your page, which posts works and which doesn’t.
  4. Control your featured likes. Liking other business pages helps build business connections, but you want to be in control of which pages are the first your visitors see. Each time the page refreshes, if you haven’t set up what is displayed, five different likes can appear. By setting up your preferences, you can cater to businesses similar to yours or feature pages that interest your visitors. The best system is to feature businesses relevant to yours that your visitors would like.
  5. Assign administrator roles. Facebook allows five administrator roles: manager, content creator, moderator, advertiser, and insights analyzer. There’s no limit to the number of admins you can have on your page, however, you want to place the right people in the right roles and eliminate employee/posting conflict. It is best to establish some company guidelines. Here are some things to consider:
  • Have regular Facebook training sessions. With the way Facebook changes on a daily basis, it’s important to stay updated and aware of their guidelines. This is also a useful way to assign admin roles, address expectations, and discuss the new tactics you’d like to implement.
  • Give your page a definite voice. Everyone has their own unique style of writing, so establishing a general voice for your page is essential. It allows creative freedom while sticking to a format such as utilizing bullet points, or keeping it light-hearted, or going with a topical or promotional theme that all can follow.
  • Keep a shareable document that outlines company social media policies. This is useful as a go-to resources for employees to know what and what not to post. Be sure to include recommendations for interacting with the fan base and allow access to employees for suggestions and feedback.

These are just a few ideas to help you sell your brand and make your Facebook business page successful. If you have any Facebook tips to share with our readers, please share your comments