If you want your business – whatever its size – to be on social media, Facebook is probably one of the first social media platforms that you’ll think of. More than 1.4 billion people make use of Facebook every single day. Many of these users do so many times a day. This means that it’s almost certain that your potential customers are on Facebook as well as using it actively in order to connect with their family, their friends as well as their favourite brands.
Facebook remains the reigning champ of social media sites. It is as the #1 spot where friends and family connect and share online. More than just a virtual meeting place, Facebook has grown into a venue for companies to market themselves via interaction with customers as well as self-promotion. It has also been considered as one of the pioneers of emojis. You can now literally show your readers how you feel through using emojies with your posts. For example you can use the facepalm emoji to show your covering your face in a show of dismay to a particular issue.
If you’re running a bricks-and-mortar store, an ecommerce site, a digital marketing agency or a software company, it is possible for you to use Facebook for marketing your business. In this article, we hope to cover everything you should know about putting your business on Facebook, to marketing your business as well as to measure your results.
Facebook isn’t new however a lot has changed since Facebook first entered onto the digital marketing scene. Today, as the world’s largest social network, it can do things that many of us would never have dreamt of 10 years ago:
- Host 360-degree videos,
- Use a chatbot to sell products, or
- Serve as a top news source for the majority of the adult population.
Facebook has 1.56 billion users who are active on the platform on a daily basis. This equates to nearly five times the population of the United States and 20% of the world population. This number is still climbing.
It’s not only the absolute number of people but also the amount of our attention that Facebook owns. Globally, the average Facebook user spends almost an hour per day on Facebook. Considering that the average person sleeps eight hours a day, that means that approximately 7% of our time when we are awake is spent with our eyes tuned into the social network.
How to start a Facebook page – the start of social media marketing on Facebook
The majority of Facebook consists of personal profiles. However, if you’re a business wanting to cement your presence on the social network, you’ll need to create a Page instead. In fact, if you try to set up a personal profile for your page, Facebook will reject this.
Pages are the equivalent of a business profile. These look similar to profile pages but display specific information which is only applicable to:
- Businesses,
- Organisations, and
- Causes.
Where you connect with a personal profile by adding them as a friend, you connect with a business Facebook Page by “liking” the page and becoming a fan.
To get begin with building your own Facebook Page, navigate to Facebook business manager page. There, you’ll have two categories to make a selection from:
- Business or Brand
- Community or Public Figure
Facebook offers the choice of these two categories so that you can better customise the fields on your Page. Choose the name for your Page wisely. Facebook will allow you to change your name and URL, in most cases, however it can be a difficult and tedious process.
If you haven’t already logged in already, at this stage you’ll be prompted to sign into Facebook. Create and operate Pages from your personal Facebook account; however, your personal data won’t appear on the Page unless you manually add it.
Press “Get Started” and this will automatically take you to the section where you can add a Profile Photo as well as Cover Photo for your new Page. (It is possible for you to skip these steps and do them later, however we recommend that you get them out of the way at the beginning so that you don’t forget to do them.)
Crafting an effective Facebook social media marketing strategy, that translates into definitive results for your business, isn’t always easy. The algorithm changes so often which means that your approach needs to be constantly evolving to achieve your goals.