As a local business, if you want to reach consumers online, having a presence on Facebook is a no brainer. With over 223 million users in the United States alone, Facebook remains the most popular social network around. And to get the most out of Facebook, you need to start by optimizing your business page.
Let’s dive into eleven ways you can further hone your Facebook presence and maximize the ROI of your social marketing efforts.
Facebook Tips
1. Pick the Right Category for Your Business Page
When setting up your Facebook page, you’ll need to select at least one category to describe your business. There is a wide range of options and you can select up to three for your business. Best practice is to pick the most relevant and specific categories. For example, say you are a chiropractor practice. Obviously, your main category would be “Chiropractor”. But you might also include two other selections, such as “Alternative & Holistic Health Service”, and “Medical Service”.
Categories help your business grow in a few different ways. First, your page will appear when people search Facebook for the categories you selected. Also, Facebook users who have indicated they are interested in the products or services you provide will receive recommendations for your Page. Finally, your page can show up in the “People Also Like” section when people visit pages that are similar to yours.
2. Complete Your Page Information
Facebook provides several spots to fill with all sorts of information about you and your business that your community might want to know. The more information that you include, the higher your chances are of ranking in Facebook’s Discover feed and in relevant searches.
As a local business, one of the things you’ll want to emphasize is your location. First, you want to fill out your business address (and keep it updated). This helps ensure your page appears when potential customers use Facebook to search for businesses near them. You will also want to include your location or service area in your page “intro”. This section shows right near the top of the page, making it one of the first things visitors see.
3. Create a Vanity URL
Another Facebook marketing tip is to create a vanity URL for your page (which they call a “page username”). A vanity URL is a short, descriptive URL used to help people easily remember a specific web address. By default, your Facebook page will have a randomly assigned number and URL, such as facebook.com/pages/businessname/11235813. However, with a vanity URL, you can customize your Facebook page address to something like facebook.com/businessnameandlocation.
Doing so gives you a professional, easy-to-read link to your business page that you can share.
To create a vanity URL for your Facebook page
- Click “About” on the left side of your page.
- Click “Edit” next to your current page username.
- Enter a new username that follows Facebook’s custom username guidelines.
- If the username is available, click “Create Username”. This will update your Facebook page URL.
4. Optimize Your Photos
You want your page photos to showcase your brand to your audience, so have fun with it. Experiment with colors, include a CTA in your cover photo and show off your creative side. In addition to a visually interesting cover photo, you also want an easily recognizable profile image – for example, your logo.
It is important to keep up to date with Facebook’s image specs. Currently, cover photos (i.e. your page banner) are displayed at 820px by 312px on desktop and at 640px by 360px on smartphones. Facebook will automatically format your image to “fit” the cover image area, meaning it might be distorted if not sized correctly. To prevent this, they recommend your cover photo be 851px by 315px. Meanwhile, your page’s profile picture is displayed at 170x170px on desktop and 128x128px on smartphones.
For best results, edit your images using an RGB color mode and keep your file size less than 100 kilobytes. Generally, you will use a JPG file format, but for images with your logo or text, you might get better results by using a PNG file.
5. Set up CTA Button
When you look at a Facebook business page, you’ll see a CTA button near the top. You have some options to play around with what it says, including:
- Call Now
- Contact Us
- Sign Up
- Shop Now
- Watch Video
You can link this CTA to any number of things — such as a landing page, a contact form, a video, etc — it depends on your conversion goals. An important part of optimizing your Facebook page will be testing these different CTAs to determine which one resonates best with your community.
6. Share User-generated Content
Another one of our favorite Facebook marketing tips is to harness the power of user-generated content (UGC). Doing so not only saves you time and energy (since you are not constantly having to produce new content), it also helps build community and build brand loyalty. One of the easiest ways to do this as a local business is to encourage people to share photos/videos of their interactions with your brand. For example, if you are a dog groomer, you might encourage customers to share a video of their dog doing a runway strut after their visit and feature said post on your own page. The goal is to engage your follower, so they feel included and recognized.
7. Post a Variety of Content
Speaking of content, make sure to post a variety of different formats — text posts, status posts, photo posts, link posts, video posts, etc. People go to social media to be entertained, so make sure to keep things interesting.
To start, try using the 70/20/10 rule for content posting:
- Post original content 70% of the time
- Share relevant 3rd party content 20% of the time
- Include self-promotional content 10% of the time
Also mix things up with questions, polls, observations about your industry, and shout-outs to people in your community. After you have been posting for a couple of months, you can then use Facebook Insights (more on that later) to see what types of posts get the most engagement and further optimize your content strategy from there.
8. Ask for People to Recommend Your Business on Facebook
Your page’s rating is based on multiple sources, including the reviews and recommendations people share about your business on Facebook. So, don’t be shy about asking people to recommend your company. Just be aware that when someone recommends a page, they can select an audience to share it with, such as their Friends group. However, only publicly shared recommendations that are shared are counted for your page’s overall rating — something to mention when asking for a review.
9. Earn the “Very Responsive to Messages” Badge
As a small business, it is particularly important to be super responsive to your customers. One way to show this to potential customers is to earn what Facebook calls a “Very responsive to messages” badge. Doing so requires you to have a response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes over the last seven days. Once you have earned this badge, it will show below your Page’s cover photo. If you have not quite earned the badge (say your average response time is 20 minutes) Facebook will still show off how responsive you are to visitors. However, if you are not very responsive to messages, nothing will appear.
10. Add Milestones to Further Build Your Brand
Using Facebook’s “Milestones” feature, you can highlight some of your business’s biggest accomplishments, like awards, product releases, major events, etc.
To add milestones, go to your page timeline and click the “Offer, Event +” option. Then add the date, title, details, and photo for your milestone.
When you reach a milestone, it will be posted to your page’s timeline. Facebook users will also be able to see your milestones under your “About” tab. Milestone posts include larger images and font, making them a great way to catch the eye and tell a story about your business.
11. Measure Page Performance
Our last Facebook marketing tip is to make use of Facebook’s internal analytics tool, Facebook Page Insights. It provides important page performance data, including:
- Page reach and engagement
- Viewer actions and behavior
- Audience demographics
Monitoring your page metrics for trends in engagement helps you understand where to focus your efforts.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
Even with Facebook’s analytic tools, it can sometimes be difficult to determine how your business page fits into your overall marketing strategy.
Fortunately, the Surefire Local Marketing Platform can provide greater visibility into how your Facebook efforts impact your business’s bottom line. With Surefire Local, you get an integrated system that pulls performance data from all of your various channels — Google Ads, Facebook, your website, etc — into a single place. This makes it easy to see what works and what needs further optimization.
Request your free demonstration and learn more today!