This blog post doesn’t answer the famous question “Should my business be on Facebook”. In my opinion, there is little disadvantage in having a Facebook page for your business, as long as you give it a little love; but that’s a whole other Blog post!
What this does help you with, is how to go about creating a Facebook page. It’s actually pretty easy.
First, you need to have your own, personal Facebook account. Don’t worry, if you’re not a people person, just because you have a Facebook account, doesn’t mean all your high school buddies are going to hunt you down – you can hide your identity if you want to, and even detach your profile from your business page if you need to.
Then, visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php, and follow the instructions. This page will also contain information on Community Pages, and Groups. I’ll write separate posts on these topics, but for most businesses, an Official Page is what you want to create. Take the journey through answering all of the questions, and at the end of it, you have yourself a page.
Create an "Official Page" in Facebook for your business
The first thing you’ll want to do, is update the Info tab – include some detail about your business, so people know a little about the business.
Maybe also load some photo’s of your business – the staff, any products, something that helps your customers and potential customers see who you really are. After all, people are on your Facebook page because they want to learn more about your business – don’t be shy, tell them.
Then get yourself some fans. Facebook recently has replace the “Fan” concept with the ability to “Like” a page. You need to click the “Suggest to Friends” link in the top left, which will allow you to send an annoying note to all of your Facebook friends to all Like your page.
In order to make your Facebook page work for you, you then need to:
- Update it every now and then with useful content. Don’t post rubbish to your page – you’ll get a low Post Quality. Facebook is beginning to create some smarts about how effective the page is, similar to what Google Analytics does for websites, but obviously at a more rudimentary level (so far…). For more on this, see http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/05/facebook-post-quality/
- The sort of things you should post include: new product release, new Blog posts, new staff you may have hired, photo’s about any staff event you may have had, or a successful product install or launch
- Remember to be genuine. Social Media is a way to create transparency for your business – if you’re not genuine, it will show
- Promote it from your main website, link it into your email footer, and include it on your business cards – if you can link someone to your Facebook page, you can communicate with them incredibly easily, whenever you want to
Checkout our page at www.facebook.com/salsainternet
[...] Try setting up a Facebook page. It costs nothing. See this post on how to do that: http://lazarus.salsainternet.com.au/2010/06/howwhy-to-create-a-facebook-page/ [...]