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Why should a business use a Facebook Page?
Most people would probably say the word “Facebook”, if asked to name a top form of social media.
VentureBeat.com set out Facebook’s publicly available growth figures: as at Q1 2015, Facebook had more than 1.44 billion active users and 936 million daily active users.
Isn’t that an incredible amount?!
With that many people using Facebook on a regular basis, businesses would be foolish not to tap into that social media and connect with their audience.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to subscribe to Facebook, select the correct settings for the level of privacy required, and create your Facebook Page for business
How to set up an account with Facebook
If, like me, you’re starting from the beginning and don’t yet have a Facebook account, then you’ll need to subscribe to Facebook and create a personal account.
The first screen you’ll see is “Create an account”. Fill out each field and press the green button to create an account:
Facebook gives you the option of linking to your Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or other email address to check which of your contacts are already subscribed.
Once subscribed, Facebook sends you a confirmation email (if you logged in using an email address) or a text (if you logged in using your mobile number). Click on the link to confirm your Facebook account.
Privacy settings on Facebook
On your Home page, click the drop down in the top right corner of the screen and select “Settings”. Work through each of the sections, selecting the settings which are most appropriate for your use of Facebook, deciding how public or private you’d like your posts to be – remember these settings are for your personal Facebook account:
Facebook privacy settings
Select privacy settings and decide:
- Who can see my stuff?
- Who can contact me?
- Who can look me up?
If you want to keep your personal page as private as possible, select these settings in the Privacy section:
Facebook app settings
Still in the same Settings screen as shown above, select Apps from the left hand menu. This has lists 13 categories of information that other people can access about you when using apps, games and websites. Select the ones you would like to be available.
Creating a Facebook Page
Facebook advise you to create a Facebook Page for a business rather than use your Facebook personal page.
Here are some of the benefits in doing so:
- place your post/page adverts in Facebook newsfeeds, rather than just in the right column
- decide your target audience
- call-to-action buttons
- quick messaging access for your audience
- access Facebook Insights for valuable tracking data
To set up a Facebook Page, go to Home, Pages, Create Page:
Select the type of Page category:
- local business or brand
- company, organisation or institution
- brand or product
- artist, band or public figure
- entertainment
- cause or community
As soon as you click on any of the options, a sub-category menu’s available to select. If necessary, click on each Page category one-by-one so that you find the category and sub-category best suited to your business.
For PeasOnToast, I selected “Brand or Product” with the sub-category “website”, and typed in this website’s name in the “Brand or Product” field.
Think carefully what you’re going to choose as, from what I’ve read in forums, it can be a nuisance changing the name of your Facebook Page to something else after you’ve got quite a few Likes. Facebook will probably change the Page name for you, but you’d have to contact them direct, provide reasons and follow-up documentation.
My ideal Brand or Product Name would have been “PeasOnToast.co.uk” or even “Mrs P of PeasOnToast” but unfortunately some of Facebook’s Page name rules don’t allow improper capitalization, symbols or long descriptions. I decided to settle for “Peas On Toast”.
The next screen is the Set Up screen. Add a sentence to describe your Facebook Page and include your website url. That sentence will be publicly accessible in your Facebook Page “About” section, so it’s a good idea to be consistent and use the same wording that you’ve used in your other social media.
Click “Save Info” and upload a profile picture. Your profile picture should be similar, if not the same, as that used on your other social media, but measure 180px x 180px.
Select Next and choose your preferred audience. Type the names of Countries and also select the age, gender and interests of people you’d like to view your Facebook Page. When selecting the interests, you can use Facebook’s “suggestions” as well as type in your choice of interests to apply to your Facebook Page, eg for PeasOnToast I included “household products” “start-up companies” and “financial services” as well as a few others.
Once saved, you’ll see your Facebook page with your profile picture. Above your profile picture, click the option to upload a cover page. As at January 2016, this should be 828px x 314px.
When looking at other people’s Facebook Pages, you’ll notice a darker strip along the lower section of the cover page image. Facebook always shows your Page name and sub-category in white lettering, but there’s no need to manually add a darker strip to your cover page image as Facebook includes it automatically if your background’s too pale for the wording to be seen.
Click on your cover page image to add a call-to-action (“CTA”). Your image will show on it’s own screen with a pop-up box to the right of it:
Click “Add a description” and type in your CTA. This should include all the information you’d like people to see in your CTA as well as the urls leading to the website you’d like the people to click through to.
Congratulations, you’ve now set up your website’s Facebook Page with a clickable CTA.
If you found this post interesting or have a question, please let me know in the comments section below.
Note: This article is intended to be a general resource only and is not intended to be professional advice.
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