Marketing Small

Businesses with Facebook

 Marketing Small Businesses with Facebook

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 Marketing Small Businesses with Facebook

Introduction
Do you have a Facebook page for your business?

Is it regularly updated and maintained with interesting and useful

information for your customers? Do you know how to take advantage of all the
new features that Facebook pages for businesses hold – and are you?

If not, you’re missing out on a huge marketing opportunity, and

giving your competitors an easy – and huge- advantage.

But how do you even make a Facebook page, if you haven’t already? And
how do you keep it maintained and updated? Not just with posts, but so that you
really get noticed?

It may seem easy at first but truthfully, creating a Facebook page for your
business that truly stands out among the millions that are out there can be a time-
consuming and tedious process. And it can all become a little confusing after a
little while, too.

This report is here to guide you through not just creating a Facebook
page, but highlighting each feature and showing you how to make the
most out of each and every one.

Inside you’ll find not just a link to creating a page, but the actual process of
doing it – step by step.

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 Marketing Small Businesses with Facebook

Once your page is all set up, we’ll make sure you have the tools to keep it
going, too.

With the “Best Business Practices” that you’ll find at the end of this
report, you’ll have enough to get your page going, keep it going, and soon make it
so that yours is one of the top most-visited pages on the entire social network.

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Creating a Business Facebook Page

Two of the biggest problems business owners face when they consider
creating a Facebook page for their business:
a) They don’t think it will make a huge difference in their bottom line, and
b) Facebook is always changing, and they don’t think they have time to
continually make changes to go with the updates.

While the second problem one is a legitimate one (and one we’ll deal with
momentarily,) overcoming the problem of simply not knowing is an easy one.

Facebook is changing the way people do business – it’s as simple as

that.
Even business owners that have no interest in being on Facebook or having
a page, do so because they know that’s where their customers are, and that’s
what’s going to give them an edge over their competitors – which could be you!

In order to get over the hurdle in your mind that Facebook simply doesn’t
bear any importance on your business, consider these facts:

 Facebook has more than 800 million users as of 2013.

 One out of every 13 people on the planet is on Facebook.
 More than 71% of Americans use Facebook.
 About 50% of Facebook users logon to the website at least
once a day.
 Facebook has become the number one choice of social
networks.

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 The average Facebook user spends more than 13.5 minutes

each day on the website.
 About 48% of Facebook users aged 18-34 check their Facebook
page as soon as they wake up.
 Over 1/3 of professional marketers call Facebook “critical”
or “important” to their business.

Get the idea that Facebook is important, and that it’s one of the best ways
to reach a huge audience in a very short amount of time? That still doesn’t do you
much good if you think that you don’t have the time or the capabilities to do it.

The process of actually creating a Facebook page for your business is

very easy and in total takes about five minutes (ten if you really hem and haw
about it.)
But actually maintaining it, and keeping up with the different changes
Facebook is always making? That can be a little tougher.
And while most business owners have the ability to research each change,
and find out how to best use it to their advantage, still many more find it much
more beneficial to hire a marketing consultant to do it for them.

This in itself is a very easy process, and you’ll find questions at the end of
the report that will make it even easier.

For now, let’s look at what you need before you even log on to Facebook, or
even start creating your page.

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Before You Begin

One of the biggest benefits that comes from creating and owning a
Facebook page is that you don’t really need that much to get started.

Facebook pages are free to businesses so unless you want to do additional

advertising on Facebook, you won’t even need your credit card!

Still, it’s always good to be prepared and you may want to arm yourself with
a few things before you set about building your page.

A personal profile page

Your personal profile page has nothing to do with your business’ Facebook
page. You can place a link to the company page on your own personal page if
you’d like, but that is it.
This is not the place to promote, sell, or market your business; and
Facebook may even ban you from the site if you do.

So why have a personal profile page at all? It’s important to have this before
you create your business’ page, especially if you’re not familiar with Facebook, so
you can get used to all the different features and know what’s available. Plus, once
your business’ page is up and running, visitors might want to check out your own
profile page – and that kind of interaction between the two pages is definitely
okay!

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Two photos or images

With the new Facebook pages that include the Timeline, instead of
having just one picture displayed, you get two!

Along with the standard profile picture that Facebook has had since Day
One, you now also get a cover photo. This photo is much larger than your profile
picture and looks very similar to a banner ad displayed across the top of your
page.
But to be very clear – this is not to be used as ad space!

Facebook is very clear about that and placing any kind of advertising
or promotion here is sure to get you booted from Facebook.

We’ll get into the specifics later on when discussing the step-by-step process
of setting up your page, but do make sure that you have two general photos
in mind. It can be discouraging to be extremely motivated to create your page,
only to find out that you can’t find two photos that you want to use.

A vision, theme, or idea for your page

Just as it can be frustrating to be ready to create your page and be left with
no photos, it can be equally frustrating to be left staring at a white screen because
you don’t know what you want to say.

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Go into your Facebook page creation process with a clear vision or

idea in mind of what you want it to look like, what you want it to say,
what links you want to display, what videos and pictures you want to
share, and what the main theme or topics of your posts will be.

Not knowing this ahead of time can make for a very confusing page or
worse, one that’s boring with little on it – and one that doesn’t get many visitors.

Whether it’s based around the products you sell, giving helpful
information to customers, or helping people in their daily lives, know what
you want to do with your page and it will be much easier to create.

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Core Framework
Once you’re armed with the few things you’ll need beforehand, it’s
time to get started and create your Facebook page.

Here’s the step-by-step plan that will not only have your Facebook going live
in just a few minutes, but that will also help you take the fullest advantage of all
the benefits the new Facebook page with Timeline has to offer.

First Steps

Visit www.facebook.com/pages and click on the button that says “Create

Page.”
You can find this in the upper right hand corner. This will take you to the
next page where you’ll need to choose a category for your page.

Currently the six categories you can choose from are:

 Local business or place

 Company, organization, or institution
 Brand or product
 Artist, brand, or public figure
 Entertainment
 Cause or community.

After making your selection you’ll then be taken to another page that will
ask you for some very basic contact information about your page.

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Once you’ve filled in your name, address, and phone number; as well as
agreed to Facebook’s terms of service, it’s time to really begin.

Select your cover photo

Cover photos are one of the biggest benefits that the new format for
Facebook pages brings.

Instead of having the photo strip (in the old format,) which constantly
changed pictures every time you uploaded new ones or your fans did, the cover
photo remains static and does not change unless you intentionally change it.

Luckily, you already have your perfect cover photo in hand; but there are
still a few tips you’ll want to follow to make sure you’re realizing its fullest
potential and that you don’t get banned from Facebook.

 Again, make very sure that your cover photo does not contain
any promotional material. This means no arrows pointing to the
“Like” button; no ‘40% off!!’ banners, and nothing that
encourages visitors to use you or your business. Contact
information, URLs, phone numbers and addresses are also out,
so tread carefully. To make sure that you’re following all of
the guidelines, check out all of Facebook’s rules for cover
photos here:
https://www.facebook.com/help?faq=%20276329115767498.

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 Try to use an image size of 851 pixels x 315 pixels. Your

photo doesn’t have to be this exact size, as Facebook will
crop it anyway; but the closer you get to that image size, the
less your image will be stretched – something that may make it
look very different than you intended.

 Use a very high-quality photo. Remember, this image is very

large and if you choose a photo that’s of poor quality, the
whole picture will look grainy and out of focus.

 Don’t include any important information or images in the

bottom left-hand corner of the photo. This area is going to be
covered by your profile picture.

 Once you’ve positioned your cover photo where you like it,
simply click on the space and it will automatically fit into
that space for you. You can then reposition it, pulling one
side out of the picture altogether if you choose, by simply
dragging the picture to the desired spot.

 Editing your cover photo is easy. Simply hover over it with

your mouse until “Edit cover photo” appears. There you’ll be
able to choose from past photos you’ve placed on Facebook,
taking a new photo, or uploading one from your computer. Your
cover photo should be changed regularly, and you should try to
be creative when using it!

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Profile Picture

Typically you want your profile picture to remain fairly static.

A business logo or picture of the sign outside of the office is often a good
choice. When you first create your page, after you’ve chosen the categories and
filled in the basic information, your profile page will be displayed as a blank
square.
Hover over it and “Edit profile picture” will appear.

Click on that and you’ll have the same choices as you did with the cover
photo: to choose from past photos, take a photo, upload a photo, remove
the photo, or edit the thumbnail.

This process should only take a few seconds but again, there are some tips
you want to keep in mind when doing so:

 The profile picture will be 180 pixels x 180 pixels when it is

displayed on the site.

 Choose wisely – this won’t only appear on your page, but also
any posts you comment on or any other activity you participate
in while on Facebook and logged in under your page’s name.

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 Marketing Small Businesses with Facebook

Fill in the About section

The About section is not a new section in Facebook, but one that has
changed and that you might want to update.

When you look at the About section on a Facebook page, it can no longer be
viewed in paragraph form, going on for as long as the owner of the page would
like. Instead, it’s now limited to just a few lines so explain fully what your
business and page does and definitely include a link to your website – but
that’s it.

Organize apps

With the new layout for Facebook pages you’ll find different apps for your
photos, videos and the like located at the top of the page, instead of along the
left-hand side as they used to be.

As an admin you’ll be able to choose which apps are found first, in the
priority of how important they are to you and your customers. You can have a
total of 12 apps but they likely won’t all be displayed up top. Instead, visitors to
your page can choose from a drop-down menu to see all of your apps.

Instead of just listing out different apps though and prioritizing them, you
can use this area to benefit the entire page.

Livestrong’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/livestrong) is one of

the best examples of how to use the apps that are displayed in the page’s overall

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theme and look of the site. To have your apps appear this way, you can change
the images shown for each app by going to the Admin Panel and clicking on
“Manage;” from there go to “Edit Page” to make the changes.

Set some Milestones

With the new layout you can set “Milestones” on your Timeline.

These Milestones will be flagged on your Timeline and will appear just as
the highlighted items do.

To create a Milestone you must first establish the day your business,
company, or organization was started, established, or launched. Then you
can simply click on “Event Milestone” at the top of the page (where you would
typically post a status) and choose “Milestone” from the options given.

It’s also in this area that you can choose to post a question or an event.
Once you’ve selected milestone you can then upload a photo or a video to go
along with the event and once you hit “Save” it will appear on your Timeline.
Images for milestones are set at 843 pixels x 403 pixels.

Use milestones to show major events for your company, and to highlight
major Facebook events for your company – such as when you reach 100,000
Likes!

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Star, Hide and Pin

One of the best features in the new Facebook layout for pages is that
the owner of the page has much more control over what’s shown, and
how long it’s shown for, in the Timeline.

It used to be that all you could do was post to your page. If you didn’t post
for a long time, that post would still be the last one up. If you posted about a huge
sale you wanted customers to know about, and then kept posting regularly after
that, the sale post would soon get lost and go off the page entirely. You would
have to keep manually reposting the same post if you really wanted to reach a
large audience.

Now though, with the Timeline, you have full control over how long a post
stays up, or if it stays up at all.

Hover over any post along the Timeline you’ll see two icons appear – a star
and a pencil. Click on the star icon and that post will be highlighted. When that
happens, the post will widen itself across the top of the screen, and on top of the
other posts, while those posts under it remain their regular size. This “highlights”
the post by making it one of the main features on the page. This can help you
really draw attention to something you think is of particular importance. If you
click on the pencil icon, you’ll have a few more options.

The pencil icon is the tool you use if you want to: pin it, change the date,
hide from the page, delete it, or report the post as spam.

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Pinning the post allows you to place any post you want at the top of the
page, where it will remain for seven days, if you choose. This allows you to write a
post about that sale and keep it up all week long – so that anyone who visits your
page any time within that seven days will see it. This is one of the biggest and
best new features of the new Facebook Timeline!

Clicking on the star icon will also give you the option to delete the post or
report the post as spam as well. This latter option you’ll of course only use on a
post written by someone other than yourself or any other admin; but you might
want to delete your own post if it’s no longer relevant, or if you made a mistake
and didn’t correct it before publishing it.

Tour around the Admin Panel

The admin panel isn’t necessarily a new feature to Facebook pages, but it
does have some new features that Facebook page owners are bound to be
interested in. From the Admin Panel you can reply to comments, make
changes to the layout of your page, create ads, and access Page Insights.

When you click on “Edit Page” at the top of your page, you’ll be able to
update the information on the site; manage permissions such as who can see
the page, your blocklist, your profanity blocklist, or you can delete the page
entirely.
Also in “Edit Page” you’ll be able to change and add admin roles,
manage notifications, see a list of banned users, or use Facebook as your
page, which will show your page on all of your comments, posts, and other
activity – even when it’s done through your personal profile page.

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It’s also in your Admin Panel that you can create ads and promote your
page; and you can do this by clicking on “Build Audience”, located beside “Edit
Page” at the top of the page. From there you’ll be able to choose from a drop-
down menu whether you want to invite contacts from your email list, invite
friends, share the page, or create an ad.

Page Insights will give you a full breakdown of the Facebook analytics for
your page, such as how many visitors you had in the past week, how many
people are talking about you, and how much overall interaction there is
with your page on Facebook. Through the Admin Panel, you can even change
the name of your page if you’d like.

Enable messages

Another one of the biggest changes to Facebook pages is the ability

to enable private messages. It used to be that if someone wanted to contact
you through your page, they had to post it on the wall and it was fair game for all
to see. Now with the new layout though, people can send administrators
private messages, viewable by the admin only.

This is a huge benefit to businesses as customers can now contact

companies about issues and concerns, without airing it out for everyone to hear.

You should never disable these messages, as it’s essentially cutting off
another form of communication between you and your visitors. If you mistakenly
do though, you can turn enable them again by going to the Admin Panel,

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clicking on “Manage” then “Edit Page”, and the “Manage Permissions”. It’s under
this menu that you’ll find the “Messages” box, which you can uncheck.

Managing the Activity Log

View, manage, and organize all of your hidden and public posts
within the Activity Log.

Here you can look at all the stories posted on your page – by yourself and
others - and you can even filter them depending on what you want to look at. Sort
them by comments, posts from other users, posts from other admins,
pictures, and more. If there was activity on your page and you want to manage
it, the Activity Log is where you do it. Get to it by going to the Admin Panel,
clicking on “Manage” and then clicking on “Use Activity Log”.

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Best Business Practices

So you’re all set up and you’ve even gotten your Facebook page for your
business looking and feeling exactly how you want. But how do you use it most
effectively?

Recent research collected by Buddy Media investigated some of the biggest

questions business owners had about their Facebook business page: When should
they post? How often should they post? And other questions just like these.

Their findings can be applied to your own page, and can help you determine
when and how the best ways are to post onto your Facebook page.

 The research showed that the best times to post were when people
were not typically at work. For example- first thing in the morning,
between the hours of 8pm-7am, on weekends, and on holidays. This is when
your fans will be most likely to comment and “like” your posts.

 The research focused on pages that were updated regularly

throughout the week, including weekdays and weekends. Wednesday was
the very best day to post, with 8 per cent higher engagement than any other
day. Sunday was second to that, but by a long shot at 4%.

 As long as the posts are useful information, posting one two times a day
showed a rating of 40 per cent higher user engagement.

 So one or two times a day, but how often per week should you post?
According to Buddy Media, cluttering up your fans’ News Feed with a ton of
posts throughout the week is not the way to go. The study showed that

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publishing to your page yields a 71% higher user engagement than

pages that had five or more posts within any one retail brand.

 Now you know how often, but how long should your posts be? The research
showed that the shorter the post, the sweeter it truly is. Posts that
had fewer than 80 characters (not words) received a 66% higher user
engagement than those that used more than that. Posts that contain only 1
to 40 characters have the highest user engagement of all at 86%; but only
5% of businesses make their posts this short.

 Ask questions! The study also showed that question posts receive twice as
many comments as non-question posts.

 Make them fill in the blank! The research also showed that when you ask
your visitors to fill in the blank (i.e. “My favorite thing about summer is
_____)” people are nine times more likely to comment on the post and to
“like” it.

 Know your keywords and how to use them. Facebook is very SEO and
keyword-oriented so you might need to research which keywords best fit
your page and industry and focus on those. The research from Buddy Media
showed that for the retail industry the best keywords to use are “$ off” and
“coupon”.

 Keep it simple. Buddy Media says that posts that contain only text have a
94 per cent higher user engagement than those that include links, photos, or
videos. If using some type of media, be sure to only use one per post.

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Using a Marketing Consultant

You know how to create your very own Facebook page for your business,
and you even know how to effectively use it once it’s up and running. The only
problem is, you don’t have the time or the energy to want to spend time actually
doing it. And you definitely don’t have the time to keep with Facebook’s ever-
changing policies and formats.

For this problem there’s also a solution, and that’s to hire a marketing
consultant.

While there are several things you’ll want to ask any firm or consultant you
hire, these are the most important when it’s time to focus on your Facebook page.

 How long have you been using Facebook? Why did you start?

Here you’re looking for one of the first people to jump onto the Facebook
bandwagon. You want to know that they understand where Facebook has
been, where it’s going and most importantly, that they can adapt to all the
changes always being made.

You also want to know that they didn’t create their first profile yesterday in
an effort to boost their own business.

 What do you use your personal Facebook page for?

It’s okay if the consultant uses it to upload pictures of family events, or even
pictures of the party they attended last weekend. But you also want to know
that they are marketing-minded all the way, and they also use their personal
profile page to advertise their own business.

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 What background do you have in social media, other than Facebook?

Any good consultant will tell you there’s an entire world out there beyond
Facebook when it comes to social media. By understanding all the sites and
all the networks, your consultant will be able to tell you how to effectively
incorporate all of the ones you’ll be using.

 Do I need to be on Facebook and every other site?

You are definitely not looking for a resounding “Yes!” here – that would take
an entire team of consultants alone. Instead, the consultant should explain
which ones are best for you considering your industry, your business, and
what you’re trying to achieve from your page.

 How do you measure your own results for your own page?

You want specifics such as “My business has improved by X amount of

dollars…I’ve gained X amount of new PR opportunities….I’ve met X amount
of new people.” Any consultant worth their salt in social media will be fairly
obsessed with it and will know the detail down to the exact number. They
also won’t be afraid to share it with you; it is after all, a huge achievement!

 What exact results can you promise me?

You’re not looking for specific. No one can guarantee that 1,000 more
people are going to “like” your page, or that you’re going to get 500 more
comments per week. Instead your consultant should talk to you about
different strategies, the ones that will work best for your business, and the
results you can expect to have – not that you’re guaranteed to have.

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 Can I cut out my offline marketing now that I’m on Facebook?

Of course, here you’re looking for a resounding “No!” You can’t stop all
other forms of advertising. Facebook is good, but it’s not that good. Still ask
the question so that you can get an idea if the consultant is trying to help
your business, or help themselves.

 How much will it cost to set up my Facebook page?

Truthfully, setting up a Facebook page – and only setting up a Facebook

page – isn’t very difficult, and doesn’t take that much time. Because of this,
no consultant should be charging you a fortune to do just that. Now, running
and updating your page on a daily or weekly basis? That’s different and it
will cost a little more, but it still shouldn’t eat away at your profit margin too
greatly.

 Have you written online content before?

This question only needs to be asked if you plan on having the consultant
post to your page for you. And of course, if you want them to do that, you
want to know that they have a bit of experience in doing it.

 Will this fix the problems my business is having?

Do not make the mistake of marketing on Facebook in order to solve your

business’ problems – it will only emphasize them rather than solve them.
Any consultant that tells you otherwise isn’t interested in genuinely
helping you.

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Conclusion
There you have it!

There are all the reasons it’s so important to have a Facebook page, all the
ways it will improve your business, and all the things you need to do in order to
create and maintain one – whether you want to do it all on your own, or hand off
the task to someone else.

The only thing left to do is for you to log on to Facebook (or create
an account, if you haven’t already, and get started!

Create a page easily and start playing around with all the different options,
or start calling around to different marketing consultants to ask questions and find
the one that’s right for you.

Now that you’re armed with the proper tools, there’s nothing to stop you
from tapping into the huge marketing potential that lies right within Facebook!

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