Getting Started | Managing Posts | Tips

Getting Started

One of the most important considerations in using any social media platform is to keep your goals in mind. Ask yourself what you want to do are you looking to increase your number of fans, sales, traffic to your web site, awareness about your business, products or services? Set goals. How many fans do you want in three months, six months, a year? Keep in mind those first 100 fans might be the hardest to capture.

Once you know the answers to those questions, create your Facebook business page. We suggest a page instead of a group. Many people ask whether you should set up a Group or a Page the vast majority of the time, a page works best. You can share more easily, have more of a viral marketing effect, and your information is more public. If you have a business that is members only, or you only want limited people to see information, you can set up a group and invite people to it, and share only information with those people.

Create your page based on your organizations structure. Once you have created your page, you can give it a domain name that is easy-to-remember and market. We use Facebook.com/TelegraphDigitalMarketing for our Telegraph Digital Marketing page. If you have a simpler name, definitely use it, as it will be easier for people to remember when typing it in. For example, Dudleys Bakery is Facebook.com/DudleysBakery. You want to claim your Facebook name sooner rather than later so someone else doesnt take yours! If someone does have yours, you can add NH or some other differentiator to your name. Try to keep it simple, and take time to think about it, because Facebook only allows you to change it once.

After youve created the page, claimed your name, youre ready to get started! You want to upload your profile picture. We recommend uploading a legible logo or easily identifiable icon for your business in this space. After youve uploaded the profile photo, you want to think about what you want for a cover photo. This is essentially the sign youre putting out in front of your business. It cannot have pricing, discount information, contact information or a call to action according to Facebooks cover photo guidelines. The cover photo will work with a variety of photos at least 720 pixels wide, but if you want to make a photo / image to fit, the size should be 851 x 315 pixels. Keep in mind while designing the cover that the profile photo does go over the cover photo slightly on the lower left side.

Now that youre visually looking good, its time to add in some information about your business. In the about area, you have about 140 characters that show up on the page at all times, so use those first set of words carefully. Be sure to include other information after, and include contact information.

Managing Posts

After your page is set up and looking good (visual aspects of Facebook pages are much more important with the timeline setup), you want to go back to thinking about what your goals are and what you want to promote on Facebook. Here are some things to keep in mind and ideas on what to post.

Facebook users love contests. Look around at what other pages are doing for contests your local and national competitors, and businesses in other industries. Be sure to keep Facebooks Promotional guidelines in mind as they are picky about what they allow for contests on the pages you may choose to risk posting contests on your pages, but realize it is a risk and Facebook can pull your page. The safest way to do a contest is to use a third party vendor through an app on Facebook to stay in line with their rules. Some fun contests include promotions following themes like the 12 Days of Christmas, Makeovers, simple enter-to-win contests and more.

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