Getting Started with Facebook!

Facebook is the most visited social media site in the world, pretty much everyone you know will be on there and they could be viewing your business page! It’s easy to sign up but ensuring your page is as successful as possible needs an edge of digital savviness.

Emphasise your brand

No one will be attracted to a blank canvas Facebook profile and with everyone’s timeline extremely busy with endless pages and posts you must stand out from the crowd! Choose an effective profile picture with the thumbnail in the right place (edit by hovering over your profile picture). Ensure your cover photo sells your business well using a high quality photo or get creative and use Photoshop to make your own cover picture possibly combining your logo and a photo (correct dimensions: 851 x 315 pixels).

Connect with users

If you already have a personal Facebook account, invite friends, family and those you think will be interested to like your page. This will really boost numbers and get the word out there. To increase your exposure follow and post on related pages that are likely to have a similar target market, for example a bike shop might follow the Tour De France page. Share interesting content you think your users will be interested in, links and other social media connections are a great way to improve your exposure and therefore your following. You are able to monitor new connections, page and post reach and recent activity very easily through instant Facebook notifications.

Engaging posts

It has been found that the big bosses at Facebook HQ have ruled everyone?s timelines to be filtered, unfortunately this means not all your followers will see your posts. This emphasises the need for your posts to be as engaging as possible ? the more interaction (shares, likes, comments) it gets the more people will see it. A good tip to increase engagement is to add an eye-catching picture to every post, particularly if it has some meaning behind it so the users will understand it without reading anything. Photo collages or montages which can be easily created using an appropriate app or software are particularly appealing to users.

Reply and like any interactions with your posts this encourages people to Like the page and take an interest in your business. Asking questions in your posts are a great way to strike up a friendly conversation with existing and potential customers and if you users have a real passion for your industry they’ll love to get involved.

Conduct a competition

Everyone loves a freebie, perhaps there is a prize that your business could offer to one lucky winner as part of a Facebook competition. They are easy to conduct simply upload an attention-grabbing image that states the prize, end date and instructs users to, like the page and share the post. The engagement these simple competitions generate is astonishing, by each user sharing the post all their friends will see it and, if the prize is tempting enough, will also get involved. By asking competitors to like the page as well you have made a lasting link with them so they will be exposed to future news and announcements from your business.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook offers the enabling of boosted posts and page advertisements for a daily fee, from £3 a day upwards. This can lead to increased exposure, likes and much-desired online traffic through your social media sites. The ads service allows you to target specific demographics (location, gender, age) tailoring the advert to be exposed to your intended market. Combine a Facebook competition for your business with a boosted promotion and you?re onto a winner!

Facebook might seem like the most straightforward of the popular social media platforms but it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure all your followers are even seeing your post. The key word to solve this problem is engagement. Produce creative and interesting posts coupled with eye catching images and follow them up with prompt and friendly interaction with your users. Remember to keep content fresh don?t always post the same thing, ask questions, conduct competitions and prepare to engage with an ever-growing audience.