How to Set up and Promote Your Facebook Business Page

Having a Facebook page is a must for any serious blogger or a business owner: After all, it is a powerful community builder and lead generator.

As Facebook is rapidly moving to integrate e-commerce features, maintaining your presence there becomes more than a marketing channel. It's part of your sales funnel.

Setting up your Facebook page takes under two hours. Here are all the steps you need to take:

Research Pages in Your Industry

Start by looking up business pages by other related businesses and competitors to see how they have theirs set up. Look specifically for what category they chose for their page and how they titled it for professional branding.

It is a good idea to use Buzzsumo to get more insights into your competitors’ Facebook presence. The tool offers a handy searching functionality allowing you to find top-performing pages in your niche:

Fill in Your Basic Information (with Links)

Make sure to do your homework: fill in everything you can, making good use of your allowed character limits.

Don’t just add a link in your About information and the designated website area. Add details, and yes put links everywhere you can.

• Link to your website and your privacy settings
• Add your description (The limit is 255 character)
• Choose two categories
• [For local businesses] Add your address and (if applicable) your service area
• Add your hours and price range
• Describe your products

Be sure to fill out your Products section carefully. I found out the first time I shared my page link on Facebook that field was used as the description for my page.

Go into More Details in “Our Story” Field

Another static text field that is available for you is the “Our Story” field where you can talk about people behind your site, your business story, etc. This is where you can put up a header image and explain your selling point.

Take some to create an engaging copy for this section. Do add your keywords. Avoid keyword stuffing but do keep in mind that you want the page to rank in Google, so keywords are important. 

One tool that may help you create a relevant copy is Text Optimizer: Run your biggest competitor’s brand name though that tool and it will identify key concepts that are associated with your competitor’s brand and that you want your own brand to be associated with.

[Here are Google’s semantic associations with the “Moz” brand. If you are into SEO, you may want to get your brand associated with these too, so include some of these into your story!]

Create a Video Cover

Facebook allows us to put a video to act as a page cover which is something I strongly recommend doing. These cover videos start playing immediately as you land on a page, which is incredibly engaging. I cannot actually tear my eyes off those videos, especially if it is done well.

You can see it in action here: facebook.com/viralcontentbuzz

There are a lot of free video editing software that allow you to create funny and creative videos in a few minutes.

Using InVideo I have created a quick video featuring our users’ reviews and some cool screenshots.

InVideo is an online video editor that does not require any special training or software downloads. You can use it to re-purpose text testimonials into video reviews to publicize them further.

InVideo comes with music you can use inside your videos, photos, transitions and templates. You can also upload your own creatives.

CTAs and Facebook Messenger Settings

One of the best things about Facebook pages is the ability to add custom content including welcome, a CTA button, and contact form tabs.

Don’t forget to set up your Facebook messenger to send auto-replies whenever your page follower is trying to get in touch.

Go to Settings -> Messaging and there set up automated greetings and automated responses:

Facebook Messenger has turned out to be a great lead generation tool! I received two inquiries within an hour of announcing my page! There are also lots of ways to integrate its live chat functionality with your site, so this is something you may want to consider.

Team Members

This section is not to be missed. Make sure to add all your admins and managers, so that your followers know who to personally reach out to.

This way, even if people leave your fan page, they will hopefully be on the move to your other Facebook profile.

Announce Your New Page

Once your page is ready to go, be sure to announce it everywhere. 

When you first create your fan page, you have some sharing options that will be lost once your page is more established.

The most important one is the Suggest to Friends option that allows you to recommend your new page to your friends.

This is a great way to get new followers for your page, so suggest your new page to the people you think will be most likely to be interested, then continue through your friends list.

From there:

• Sharing it with your Facebook friends, Twitter Followers, and any other social networks you have a nice size audience on.
• Add your page to your email signature. If you have employees, you can also get them to add your official page to their corporate email signature using WiseStamp's free email signature manager.
• Invite your site visitors to follow your Facebook page. It is also a good idea to repost your Facebook updates to your site. This will also generate extra engagements and follows.
• Link to your Facebook page from your other accounts and pages. Here’s your checklist were to link your Facebook page to:

Conclusion

Setting up a Facebook page takes no more than 2 hours but it will make a real difference to your lead generation and community building efforts. Your job is not done when you have it set up though.

You need to add engaging content on a regular basis and login daily to welcome new followers, reply to comments and talk back to your community.