How to Create a Business Facebook Page (Guide)

Hi there, I'm AJ from HubSpot, and today I'm going to be showing you how to set up a business account on Facebook. Before we begin, don't forget to like this video and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos about business and marketing. Now, let's begin with an important tip and clarification. Remember to make a Facebook for business page for your company and not a personal profile. Confusing the two could put you at a huge disadvantage and you'd be missing out on all of the content creation tools, package promotional opportunities, and analytics and insights that come with a Facebook business page. Plus, having a personal profile would require people to send you a friend request in order to engage with you. And the last thing you want to do is make it more difficult to engage with customers. And while you're at it, don't create an additional public professional profile associated with your business, like, for instance, AJ from HubSpot. While people usually do that to connect with professional contacts on Facebook without letting them see personal photos or other posts, creating more than one personal account actually goes against Facebook's terms of service. Now let's talk about setting up your page. To set up a business page, go to facebook.com business and follow the steps to set up your page. Once it's set up, you'll want to choose who has access to, edit and control your page. We've all heard those horror stories about folks who accidentally publish personal content to their employer's social media channels. To avoid publishing mishaps, assign Facebook business Page roles only to the employees who absolutely need them. And before you do that, be sure to provide training to those who are new to social media management so they aren't confused about things like when they should be hitting publish or who they should be posting as. To assign these roles on your business Page, click Settings, then click Page Roles. Also, when sharing content on behalf of your brand, make sure you're posting it as your brand and not as yourself. You can check that by going into your settings and clicking Post Attribution. Once you've decided who will have access to running your page, add a recognizable profile picture. Pick an image that's easy for your audience to recognize, anything from a company logo for a brand to a headshot of yourself. If you're a freelancer or a consultant, being recognizable is important to getting found and liked, especially in Facebook search. It's what shows up in search results, gets pictured at the top of your Facebook Page and is a thumbnail image that gets displayed next to your posts in people's feeds, so choose wisely. When choosing a photo, keep in mind that Facebook frequently changes its picture dimensions, which you can find at any given time in their help documentation. As of April 2019, page profile pictures display at 170x170 pixels on desktop and 128 by 128 on smartphones. Next, you'll need to pick an attractive cover photo. Since your cover photo takes up the most real estate above the fold on your Facebook page, make sure you choose one that's high quality and engaging to your visitors, like this one from MYOB's Facebook page. Keep in mind that like profile images, Facebook cover photo dimensions also frequently change, so we advise keeping an eye on the official guidelines as of the shooting of this video page, Cover photos display at 820x312 pixels on computers and 640x360 on smartphones. Now it's time to add a Call to Action or a CTA button. Since Facebook first launched this feature In December of 2014, the options for brands to add Call to Action buttons to their Facebook pages have vastly expanded. These are phrases like Watch video, Sign up or Book now, and each can be customized with the destination URL or piece of content of your choosing. It's a great way for marketers to drive more traffic to their website and get more eyeballs to the content that they want to promote. Check out how Mandarin Oriental uses the Book now button to make it easier for viewers to make reservations. Next, we've arrived at one of the most important sections of your Facebook page, the about section. Visitors don't see a preview of your about text when they land on your page. Instead, they have to click on the about option on the left hand column next to your content. That said, it's still one of the first places that they will look when trying to get more information about your page. However, even within the about section, there are many options for copy to add. Consider optimizing the section that best aligns with your brand, a general description, a mission, company information, or your story with brief yet descriptive copy. By doing so, your audience can get a sense of what your page represents before they decide to like it. You might also want to populate sections that allow you to record milestones and awards, like when you launched a new product or service, as well as the day or year your company was founded or when you hosted major events. Now let's talk about posting photos and videos to your Timeline. Visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content and it's pretty much become a requirement of any online presence. While photos are a great way to capture brand moments, you should also invest a good amount of time and resources into video Watch Video is one of the CTAs that Facebook allows brands to add to their pages for a good reason. It's becoming one of the most popular ways to consume content, but it's not just for prerecorded videos. According to the Social Media Channel's Newsroom, you people spend more than three times more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that's no longer live. So don't be afraid to give viewers an in the moment look at what your organization does. Another important consideration in your Facebook content strategy should be how frequently you post and when. If you don't post frequently enough, you won't look as reliable or authentic. After all, how much faith do you put in a brand that hasn't updated its Facebook page for several months? Post too often, however, and people might get sick of having their feeds flooded with your content. Here's where a social media editorial calendar can be particularly helpful. This can help you establish a schedule for when you share posts according to season or general popularity. You'll probably have to adjust your calendar several times after checking the performance of your updates in your Facebook Insights to see what content posted when performs best. You can access Page Insights when you navigate to the tab at the very top of your page. Now let's talk about scheduling future posts. For your Facebook business page. You can either use an external publishing tool like the social inbox within HubSpot software, or the Facebook interface itself. For the latter, click the Schedule button next to the Share now button where you're creating a post. Facebook allows you to target certain audiences with specific updates, be it age, location, language, or interests, and you can segment individual Page posts by these criteria with Facebook's targeting tools. And don't forget to pin important posts to the top of your Page so visitors see those updates first. Because when you post new content to your Facebook page, older posts get pushed farther down your timeline. Sometimes you might want a specific post to stay at the top of your page for longer, even after you publish new updates. To solve for this, Facebook offers the ability to pin one post at a time to the top of your Page. You can use this pinned post as a way to promote things like a new lead generating offer or upcoming events or important product announcements. To pin a post, click on the top right corner of a post on your Page and click Pin to top of Page it will then appear at the top of your page, flagged with a little bookmark. Just keep in mind that you can only have one pinned post at any given time on your Facebook Page. Once you start picking up followers, Monitor and respond to comments on your Facebook Page. While it may not be necessary to respond to every single comment you receive, you should definitely monitor the conversations happening there, especially to stay on top of a potential sole social media crisis. Finally, don't forget to measure the success of your Facebook efforts. There are a couple ways to execute this step. You can use something like the Social Media Reports tool in your HubSpot software, and you can also dig into your Page's insights which allow you to see and track Facebook specific engagement metrics. Here you'll be able to analyze things like the demographics of your Page audience and, if you reach a certain threshold, the demographics of people engaging with your page and your posts. As I mentioned earlier, the latter is especially helpful to modify your Facebook content strategy to publish more of what works and less of what doesn't. You can access your Facebook Page insights via the tab at the top of your page. Looking for even more help with your Facebook business strategy? Click the link in the description to learn more. Thanks again for watching and if you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it and subscribe to our channel and comment below with your tips for making a great Facebook business page.