Facebook is undeniably the most famous social networking site, there are around 2.85 billion monthly active users worldwide. This makes businesses the best place to reach out to people. All large-scale and small-scale businesses have started promoting themselves on Facebook. Moreover, it is free and hardly takes much time to make a Facebook business page.
Going online can help you reach out to the masses and by posting engaging content you can increase your customer base. Even though the benefits are widely known to all business owners some of them are often stuck as they do not know where to begin. This blog is like your cheat sheet and will get you started on promoting your business online.
Step 1 – Make a pretty Facebook page
An impressive and well-maintained Facebook business page will attract customers and will help your business rank higher in Google search results.
1) Apt description in the ‘about’ section
Most of us hate to read long text, ‘About’ section of your Facebook page should be short and yet should describe your business perfectly. If you have a café then keywords like ‘coffee’, ‘hangout’, ‘coffee lovers’ should be added.
2) Change your URL
By default, your Facebook page URL will be complicated and will have lots of numbers, change it and name it something creative and fancy. Do remember you only get one chance to change the Facebook URL, so make sure you do it wisely.
3) Choose the correct category
Facebook offers you to choose the kind of business you own, make sure you take the most care to choose the category wisely. If your business is of café, you need to go in ‘local business’ and then choose category ‘cafés and restaurants. A detailed categorization helps Facebook to rank your page better in terms of relevance to customers.
4) Choose appealing pictures
Humans are visual creatures and a pretty pic grabs lots of attention. For your business page, make sure you choose a suitable picture that is appealing and is of high quality, and needless to say it should reflect your business well. A café can have a cover pic with coffee beans, or the name of the café written in coffee beans, a profile picture can be the logo of your café.
Step 2- Getting people to like your page
Now that your page is all set, it’s time to let people know about it and increase the likes on your page. Follow the below steps to do so
1) Promoting Facebook page through other marketing tools
Use other social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter to let others know about your presence on Facebook. You can add the Facebook link on business cards, email signatures, your website, and any other marketing literature that you own.
2) Let your customers know personally
When you meet your customers, let them know you are on Facebook and ask them to like your page, you can offer them some discount if they like your page in front of you.
3) Add a pop up on your website
Whenever a customer opens your website you can add a pop-up window stating ‘Visit our Facebook page for exciting offers and discount codes. Although make sure you are providing discount coupons if you have stated it.
4) Participate on other pages
Post something on the pages which are similar to your business, you can show some productivity hack, share a funny incident or simply provide useful tips to people; this will drive people to like your page.
5) Never buy likes for your page
There are many people who state they can provide you with thousands of likes within a short period of time, but let me tell you, fake likes will not do any good to your business, you want people who are actually interested in your business and engage with you over your posts. If you have several people on your page, but hardly 10-15 talk to you then it will appear fake to people and downgrade the brand’s reputation.
6) Ask for reviews
Several reviews from people can make your page look genuine and attract more audiences. Seek help from your old clients, ask them to write feedback, or post a picture of them on your page.
Step 3- What to post on the Facebook page?
1) Appealing images
With so much content available to customers, the attention span has become similar to that of a goldfish, no one is going to pay attention to something which is boring. Hence it is advised to add as many images as you can rather than a long text.
2) Offer coupon codes and discounts
Who does not love to save money? Offer weekly coupon codes so that people keep coming to your Facebook page
3) Have a contest
Having a contest can engage lots of people and increase the likes of your page manifold. Facebook app contests can help you track the participants and give the prize to the right person.
4) Engage with your followers
Facebook users love to talk to real people. They love when anybody replies to their questions and queries. If anybody gives you a bad review, make sure you reply to them too and promise them a better service next time, In case of good feedback, it is mandatory to acknowledge and thank them as well. You can also encourage discussions on your page which will provide you with greater insights into your customer’s mindsets. The more you know your customers the better you get at improving your services or products.
Few more tips
1) Don’t be pushy about selling your service
You may annoy your followers if all you post is about your products. There should be a good balance of promotional and educational/entertaining posts on your page.
2) Post and interact often
Maintain a schedule for posting and replying back to people, if you post 10 images a day and never look back for a month then your page will surely be at a loss of followers. Similarly do not post too many things too often; you do not want to be too desperate.
3) Measure everything
No matter how much effort you put in, it is useless if you do not measure its effectiveness, Facebook has tools like insights that will show you the performance of your posts, and accordingly you can alter the things you post. One can also use the advert manager dashboard to see the performance of your posts.
Wrapping it up
Promoting your business is not rocket science, by following the above-mentioned tips you can do pretty well. A little dedication and lots of creativity will help you to have a successful promotion on Facebook.
Using Facebook Business Manager
Apart from these tips and tools, you can also make use of Facebook Business Manager. It is one central piece where you can bring different aspects of your Facebook entities and manage them effectively. This allows you to keep everything organized and secure, rather than shuffling between various business assets. Business Manager can be used to assign roles to your peers for different assets, and also becomes easier for you to revoke access when needed.
It also allows you to control and track all your activities of any marketing or ad activities you may have.
So how do we start?
You can start by creating a Business Manager account and then add pages that you manage to your account. It easy to use dashboard will provide you with easy access to each page and track the activity of each page. This means that you have better control over each asset of your marketing/ad activities. You can also assign tasks or control of your pages to your team.
Facebook has become an integral part of marketing activities for most businesses around the world. So your activities on Facebook will become part of your reports. Business Manager gives you customized options, which will help you compile your reports with ease. It allows you to collaborate with your team and implement new ideas and thoughts to boost your marketing activities. You can set up business campaigns through your Ad Manager and then get started by managing your activities.
When you are a business, experimenting with tools may also yield a lot of advantages to your activities.
Post Planner is a post-scheduling tool that may considerably increase your organic reach on Facebook. The thought behind Post Planner is amazing, in contrast to several other planning tools, allows you to simply notice and post photos that are verified to travel infective agent. we all know that the additional engagement you get on your Facebook posts, the additional Facebook decides to point out your posts to your fans; and this implies additional visibility for all of your posts – not simply your infective agent photos.
TabSite is another great tool that enables you to manage custom apps and promotions on your Facebook Page or website. You’ll be able to provide coupons, hold contests, run Groupon-like deals and simply engraft associate degree email sign-up kind onto your Page.
You may not have expected to search out a picture creation tool on this list. But if you recognize however necessary visual content is you won’t be surprised. Canva is a tremendous tool that allows you to simply produce beautiful graphics you’ll be able to share on Facebook. With their info of over a hundred thousand images, you may positively be ready to notice a picture to fit your desires.
Perhaps the most popular of all social media management tools, and a favorite to many. Hootsuite helps you to schedule posts, monitor the feedback on your brand, and provide you with comprehensive analytics regarding your social media efforts. So if you are a business looking to experiment, this would be a great tool to start with.
Sprout Social offers complete social media management capabilities together with post programing, keyword watching, advanced analytics, team coloration tools among others. This can be a touch pricier than other alternative tools, however, it is a great tool to have in your arsenal.
Buffer is one of the leading social media management tools. It allows you to make a bunch of posts altogether, then has them distributed throughout the day or week. It conjointly provides you with analytics for every link shared, which means you mostly understand what sort of content pieces operates best along with your audience.
If you are a start-up or a small scale business, Facebook can be that one platform that will allow you to create a strong presence for your business. Many of these tools are free and experimenting and choosing the right tool that fits your business needs may help you get on the right track in your business.
Ajay Rathod
Hi!! I am Ajay, and I’m a passionate blogger who loves to write about a variety of topics. I’m always eager to explore new ideas and share my thoughts with others.