How to Create a Facebook Page For Your Business
I’ll walk you through the important basic steps to get your business on Facebook.
Facebook is one of the most important ways for artists and entrepreneurs to market themselves, communicate with clients, and sell products. It’s free, easy, fast, and used by so many people locally and across the globe, that it really is a requirement for any business, whether online or brick and mortar, large or small.
A Facebook page should never take the place of a website! You don’t really control your content on Facebook. They can (and do) make changes to formats, content and their algorithms that determines who sees your content on Facebook. With your own website you own your content, and you control how it is used, and it can be repurposed for many different marketing platforms other than Facebook. (More on this topic in a future post.)
Creating a Facebook page is easy – you probably have all of the initial content you’ll need, especially if you have an up-to-date website.
Note that to create a business Facebook page, you need to start with a personal Facebook account. They are separate but connected. Your personal and business Facebook pages will not “share” information, which is good – you don’t want to share personal pictures or updates with potential clients. If you don’t have a personal Facebook account, you can easily create one and just use it as a starting point (with minimal content, and no need to actually use it) for your business page.
Here are the main initial steps of building a business Facebook page. Once you’ve created a basic page there are many enhancements you can improve your page with, and Facebook does a good job of walking you all of this, so I’ve covered just the basics in this post. My instructions are written for following on a computer; if you are using a mobile device the steps are similar and I’ve noted the main difference in how to find Create a page in the main mobile menu in parenthesis:
1. Content you’ll need before you start: a business profile picture, a business cover image, a description of your business. You can add more info later, but this will be a good start.
· Profile picture – This is the image that displays in searches. You can use your logo, your business name, or an image of yourself, depending on the type of business you have. Size – small, about 170X170 pixels. PNG or JPEG format.
· Cover photo – The cover photo is the top banner of your Facebook page. It can be an image of your business, products or services. Make sure it’s high quality; some stock photos could work, depending on your business. Recommended size - 820 pixels wide X 312 pixels tall. (Must be at least 400 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall.)
· Description – 1-2 sentences (255 characters) that clearly describes what services your business offers.
2. Log in to your personal account. In the upper right corner, click on the + sign, and then click Page – see red arrows below. (Mobile: Click the upper right 3 horizontal bars, then Pages, then Create, then Get Started.)
3. Fill in the Create a Page form.
· Page Name – Your Business Name
· Category – start typing in your main category of business (Artist, Restaurant, etc.). Category names will appear as you type – select the correct one. Don’t worry if you make a mistake – you can delete easily. Select up to 3 categories.
· Description – As noted in Step 1, type in a brief description of your business (1-3 short sentences, up to 2
· Click Create Page (which will turn blue once you have correctly added all info).
4. Add a profile and cover images – hopefully you prepared these in Step 1. If not, create these now. They’ll be blank if you don’t add anything and you can update later. Click Save.
5. Your page is created! You can – and should – add contact info, including your website and email at the very least. You can also invite people to like your page, and start posting.
Your next big step is marketing on Facebook. Facebook offers a lot of free and paid marketing resources for businesses – check them out to see which features work best for your business.
Most important is to simply post – either original content, photos, videos, content from your website or blog, and/or repost other relevant content. The goal is to engage people and get more likes.
Additional resources for more information
Facebook Business Help Center – Create a Facebook Page for Your Business
Facebook Marketing in 2020: How to Use Facebook for Business (Hootsuite)