Using Facebook to Grow Your Business: A Simple Guide

Whereas some social media platforms are more suited to a particular demographic, Facebook, with nearly 3 billion active users, is almost guaranteed to be used by your customers whatever your business and whoever your target customers are.

This concise guide will help you to grow your business using Facebook whether you already using the platform for your business or whether you are yet to get started.

Why Use Facebook to Promote Your Business

• It’s free.
• As already mentioned, there are 2.9 billion current active users. Of those, nearly 2 billion will visit a local business page every week.
• Facebook will help you build relationships with existing customers and draw in new ones.
• It is a great tool for improving customer service; people can comment on posts or message you directly as well as find your contact information quickly and easily.
• Having a business page on Facebook boosts your SEO.
• You can use your Facebook business page to direct traffic to your website.
• Facebook Marketplace allows you to sell your products or services directly on the platform.

How to Set Up a Facebook Business Page

1. Head to Facebook, sign in using your personal account and go to Create Pages then select the option for ‘Business or Brand’ by clicking ‘Get started’ in the relevant box.
2. You will be prompted to choose a page name, this will be your business name, nothing more, nothing less. This cannot be changed at a later date so make sure you get it right, with no typos.
3. Choose your category, although you should always choose the option most suited to your business, this can be changed at a later date. Depending on which you choose you will be given different fields to complete but will include contact details, business hours etc.
4. Add relevant and on-brand pictures for your profile picture and cover photo. Your brand logo would be ideal as a profile picture and you can think about what would make the best cover photo, perhaps an artistic shot of your product/s, or a picture of your team. Don’t panic if graphic design is not your area of expertise, click here for our short guide.
5. Don’t rush the description. You have only 255 characters to describe your business; use them wisely.
6. Don’t dismiss changing your username as pointless, it will help people find you and it looks more professional than the randomly generated numbers your page will initially be designated.
7. Get some content ready to go before you hit publish. Not sure what to post? We’ve got you covered below.

Creating Great Facebook Content

• Mix it up! Make sure you are using a variety of media; videos and stories tend to get the most views, but pictures and even text-only posts have their place. Not everything has to be polished and serious too, off-the-cuff videos are often very popular and help to show that there’s a human behind your brand. But polished videos have their place and will demonstrate your professionalism.
• Ensure anything that you post and comment on is in line with your brand strategy. Not sure what a brand strategy is or how to create one? Click here.
• Remember that the more engagement your posts receive the more people it will be shown to, so try to include questions or something that will encourage a response.
• Check out your competition, see which of their posts are getting the most engagement, and what’s working for them and what’s not. Don’t copy – that’s plagiarism and it is a very bad look but you can be inspired.

Need More Help?

We hope that this quick and easy guide to growing your business using Facebook has inspired you and given you enough to get started but if you would like more help and advice or you would simply prefer to hand over the Facebook reins to someone else, then get in touch with us at Approved Business and we can manage your social media for you.