Did you know 2.4 billion people use Facebook, monthly? If that is not a clear and powerful reason for you to start showcasing your products and services to larger audiences, through Facebook, I don’t know what is.  If you are currently operating entirely out of your eCommerce platform and neglecting these powerful social media advertising tools, you need to reevaluate and fast! There are way too many potential customers just sitting around browsing Facebook for you to not capture at least some of that traffic. In order to do this, you will need a Facebook Business page.

Unlike the normal Facebook page that you have to communicate with your friends, a business page allows you to function as a company and brings you closer to your customers. They will be able to ask you direct questions about your products or services, visit your website, check your opening hours, pretty much any info you want to share, they can get. You can also post and advertise your best selling products or just keep your fans engaged with your fun and smart content. The biggest benefit of a Business page of this type is you can manage it like a business by assigning Admin roles to various individuals within your company so they can help manage the content.

Sounds pretty great! What are you waiting for?! I’m surprised you don’t have one already. But it’s okay… there’s still time! Here is what you need to do in order to set up your brand new Facebook Business page:

• Go to facebook.com/business and on the upper right corner, click on the “Create a Page” button.

• Now you will be asked to pick what type of business you have, the location, name and the category of products you sell or services you provide. Pick what suits your business best. The list is not completely exhaustive, but it has enough categories that you should find something close to what you do!

• When you finish filling in all the details, click “Continue”. Keep in mind that with this click you are also agreeing to Facebook's terms and conditions for creating a business page. May not be a bad idea to actually read those, or at least skim them, if you want to get a better understanding of how things work. When it comes to your personal life, I’m sure you breeze past them, but when it comes to business, a quick once over might be all you need to feel secure.

• The next step is adding photos to your page. Profile picture, cover photo or video. Make sure these photos very specifically represent your brand identity and showcase your brand front and center. When people are scrolling through these pages, it is important that yours jumps out as yours. Your profile picture will be shown near the page name, so people will interact first with those two items. Pick them wisely. If you already have a logo, this should be the best option for your profile picture. If you are a public figure or celebrity, a photo with yourself would be more suitable. If you have a local business but don’t have a logo, you can use a photo of your most purchased product… although… How do you not have a logo if you are a business? If you don’t have a logo, I certainly suggest creating that before you deal with Facebook. Another thing worth noting is… Your profile photo will be seen as square when you click it, but a majority of the time, it will appear framed in a circle at default when people look at your page, so don't leave vital information in the corners of your profile photo, because it will not be seen. As far as your cover photo, this one is larger on your page, so you should be careful as to what your potential customer sees right away at the top once they visit your page for the first time. You should portray the essence and personality of your brand in your cover photo.

• Start exploring with your page! You will be prompted by Facebook in the beginning to add details about your business in various places on your business page. You want as much info as possible while also staying concise. Give them exactly the information they need, but don’t make them read entire paragraphs, that’s not what Facebook is for. Write a little something about you and your brand on your “Description” field, fill in “Opening hours” or “Contact info”.

• Next, you need to create a username or url for your page. Yes, I know, you already have a name, but you can also create a username, in order to link your business page easier and faster. Even though you can have a username long up to 50 characters, you want to keep it short and easy to remember. Go for the name of your brand or an obvious abbreviation of it. After you establish which username you will be using, it will appear in this format: facebook.com/givenursername. This will be your identifying URL much like on instagram and many other platforms. Once you have uploaded all of your information, updated your username, and set your photos, your page will automatically post these changes in the timeline. You can keep them if you’d like or delete them to make way for… drum roll please… your first post! Before inviting people to “Like” your page, make sure they have something to see once they visit your page. You can always make a post yourself, with your existing creative assets and copy or you can share existing posts from other pages or people, anything that you find interesting and or representing for your business. Keep it neat! Keep it branded! Keep it all in one voice. Once people start following you, they will see each update in their feed, like they do when their friends post, so your voice must stay consistent. Make sure you add value to your fans with each and every post.

• After you take the time to clean up your timeline from any information updates and post a few things, it’s time to start inviting your family and friends to like and follow your brand new page! If you have other social accounts, you can also share your Facebook page there and ask your friends to also follow you on Facebook. Invite as many people as possible to like and follow your page so that when you start advertising and reaching out to people you don’t know, your brand doesn’t look like a scam with no followers. Building a community is the main focus of a Facebook Business page so fill your community with your biggest fans at first, so that they can help you as you develop a bigger and bigger audience.
  That’s it! You’ve taken a huge step in your business! Once you have built up enough followers and content that you feel confident reaching out to new customers you can set up some ads and reach more and more people! A couple of quick tips, make your page more reliable by answering messages from customers as fast as you can, Facebook tracks this time and lets your customers know how responsive you are! Also, when you get messages from potential clients, once you have established rapport with them by doing a great job, ask them to leave you an honest review of their experience. We all know how important reviews are so I don’t have to really hammer this point home!
  There are so many tips and tricks on how to gain a following and find more and more potentially customers on Facebook, but we’ll save that for another blog post. For now, you’ve got some exploring to do!