I started using Facebook for marketin’ some of my websites/businesses recently and wanted to share a few tips to help you create a great Facebook page, quickly and easily.
Step 1: GO TO THE FACEBOOK PAGE CREATION URL AND SELECT THE TYPE OF PAGE YOU WANT TO CREATE.
Which page type you choose, depends on your situation and needs:
- Local Business or Place: Things with a physical address and actual store-front that people can visit and buy stuff.
- Company, Organization, or Institution: Education providers, corporations and other organisations.
- Brand or product: Brand or product that people can buy.
- Artist, Band, or Public Figure: Professions.
- Entertainment: Sports, media or content and the entities that organise them.
- Cause or Topic: Community Pages for things no one actually owns.
STEP 2: PICK AN APPROPRIATE CATEGORY AND ENTER YOUR COMPANY NAME.
STEP 3: YOU WILL BE ASKED TO ADD A PROFILE PICTURE AND FILL-IN SOME INFORMATION. I SUGGEST SKIPPING THIS FOR NOW AND ENTERING IT LATER ON.
STEP 4: CREATE/UPLOAD A COVER AND PROFILE PHOTO FOR YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE.
- Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it on xyz.com”;
- Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s information;
- References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features; or
- Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”
With that out of the way, you can think about the perfect cover photo for your page, which can include:
- Company tagline or short phrase that explains what your business does.
- An impactful word that embodies your brand.
- Inspiring quotes.
- Names of people in your photo.
- Candid photos of customers enjoying your products/services.
- Your most popular products.
- Icons of awards won.
- Employees in action.
- Company founders.
- Store interior or exterior.
- Extensions of your profile photo.
Cover photos need to be of a particular size for them to look nice. If you just select an image and try uploading it, chances are it will look stretched or funny in some way. At the moment the maximum size is 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. The image you upload must be at least 399 pixels wide. However, it can be more than 851/315 pixels and when you upload it to Facebook, the size will be adjusted. Uploading a larger image works better, in terms of how it looks after Facebook adjusts the size, as compared to smaller images.
Profile pictures need to be at least 180 pixels wide. Most often used profile pictures are head-shots and brand/company logos.
You can either use your own pictures or get them from sources such as coverphotoz, Cover Photo Finder and Fotolia. Once you have some ideas and images ready, you can create your profile/cover photo using these tools:
- Pic Scatter: Generates photos based on your friends, likes or pictures.
- Timeline Cover Banner: Makes covers with collages, text and profile/cover blends.
- Cover Canvas: Great designer which lets you customise several elements of your profile and cover.
STEP 5: FILL IN YOUR PROFILE INFORMATION
You can then complete your profile, with information such as name, start date, contact details, about and description.
The most important of these are your Facebook page name and the About field. This is because when people search for your company/offering on Facebook or Google, the information in these fields will be used to check if your page is relevant. Also these fields are displayed prominently on your Facebook page, so it makes sense to put them to good use.
Your page name should definitely contain your company/product name. If it’s missing and people search for your company in Facebook, then your page will not show up. That happened to me and I had to request Facebook to change my page name (Note: till you get 100 likes/fans you can change your page name as many times as you want. After that, you can only change it once, by sending a request to the Facebook support team). The page name can also contain some of your main keywords.
The About field, can contain your keywords and also a link to your website, so that it’s easily accessible to visitors.
STEP 6: PICK YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE URL/USERNAME
When editing your page profile, in the Basic Information section, you will notice a field called username. This let’s you pick the URL for your Facebook page i.e. www.facebook.com/kidnapcustomers. I think it’s good to have your brand name here and maybe a few keywords. I typically don’t include keywords in the URL, since I want to keep it short and sweet, with a focus on my brand.
STEP 7: ADD SOME APPS TO TABS
Tabs are a great way to add different functionalities to your Facebook page. This includes things like a contact form, mailing list subscription form, your latest blog posts, your YouTube videos, polls, surveys and contests.
You get the functionalities through the use of apps, which can be added to the tabs. You can search for apps in the box at the top of the Facebook screen and then install them. Some free apps that come to mind are Tweets To Pages, RSS Graffiti, ContactMe, Livestream and YouTube Video Gallery.
STEP 8: ADD SOME FILLERS AND HUMANISE YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE
So your new page doesn’t look totally empty when people start visiting, add a few posts with articles/videos you like or have created.
Visitors love to know more about the people behind a page and also like to learn more about your company/service/product. So include an album with some pictures of yourself (and your team) and add a few milestones such as when your venture was founded, your first office, events you’re proud of and so on.
That’s it – your Facebook page is good to go!
