The world of Facebook is truly a world in itself. Navigating the largest social network in the world as a business owner starts with improving your Facebook page.
Here are 7 quick ways to bump your page up the rankings for both search engines and your clients.
1. Customize your Facebook Page URL.
Customizing your Facebook Page URL is like getting a vanity license plate. It’s more professional-looking than “facebook.com/1821347876123” as your official Facebook page. Customizing your Facebook Page URL is also helpful for SEO formatting, both in search engines and in Facebook archives.
Follow these steps to change your Facebook Page URL.
2. Be your business, not yourself.
If you have a Facebook Page for your business, there’s probably a good chance that you have a Facebook profile for yourself. A word of advice: don’t confuse the two! This is more than just the obvious confusion, like posting a picture from last weekend’s rager on your Facebook business page will probably affect your business reputation. If you’re posting any content that doesn’t have at least a fairly obvious correlation to your business services, your clients and followers will start to be confused.
3. Ask customers to like your Facebook page.
A good rule of thumb is that there’s no such thing as a former customer… unless someone’s fired you, or you’ve fired them. You never know where your next lead will find you, so be intentional with telling your clients about your Facebook page.
You can do this in a variety of ways: linking to your page from your website, including it in your marketing materials, and mentioning it to clients at the end of a project. Your page can be the gateway for potential clients to learn about your business and current customers can show off your work to their friends and family (translation: potential clients!).
4. Make your posts visible and shareable.
When someone likes your page, it doesn’t mean that they will see your posts. Facebook uses an algorithm named EdgeRank to moderate how much content appears in a person’s Facebook news feed. That means that the chance your page followers will actually see your content is very small (15%+/-) compared to if you intentionally promoted your page through PPC and self-promotion at strategic times throughout the day.
5. Add your brand’s logo and cover image.
Your logo is the cattle brand for your business. People need to equate your logo with what you do, who you are, and what you’re all about. One of the first ways to establish your brand is to make your brand logo visible. Adding your brand’s logo to your Facebook Page will be the first impression for many potential clients.
I recommend using the Profile Picture section as home base for your brand logo. The recommended profile picture size is 180×180 pixels (what’s a pixel?), which then displays at 160×160. Unless your logo changes (and it should only change for very good reasons), this should stay the same. Here’s how to change your profile picture on your Facebook Page.
That brings us to the cover image. If your profile picture is where your logo’s home, then your cover image should be an extremely accurate depiction of what your business is. For example, if you’re an interior designer, show a photo of your decorative masterpieces, not of a paint swatch book. Whatever your business does, make sure your cover image matches what you bring to the table. Your cover image size is 851×315 pixels and can be cropped to fit. Use these steps to change your cover image.
For both your profile picture and cover image, be sure to use high-quality pictures. I recommend web-specific PNG files, if at all possible. Remember, a picture paints a thousand words!
6. Post great content.
This may sound silly to say post great content, but it’s one of the most overlooked parts of building traffic. If your Facebook Page looks pretty, but sound stupid… well, chances are you’ve dated it before. There are six types of content you can produce for social media:
- Questions – Ask about expectations, needs, wants, preferences, anything that can create good conversation and help people engage.
- Comment – Seasonal changes, sales, new products, information that would be helpful for your customers.
- Articles – Have you read something lately that affects and influences your business? Share it with your followers!
- Community – Share about what other colleagues are doing to make your industry better.
- Videos – DIY videos, critique of new products, op-eds on news relevant to your business industry, announcements, the sky is the limit.
- Quotes – Post a quote that resonates with your business industry or mission.
Now you get to use a combination of these to start drawing more traffic. Be smart, edit well, and know why you’re posting what you’re posting.
7. Find what works for you, then do it!
For some business owners, the idea of posting to their Facebook page daily causes them to break out in hives. “Who has time to do that?! I have clients to call, invoices to chase down, and product to develop.” All of those are true, but that response can easily hamstring business owners from producing consistent posts and interactions at a less-demanding pace.
Nobody wants to visit a business with unpredictable hours and openings. The same is true for your Facebook page. If you’re not consistent in interacting on your Facebook page, your traffic (potential clients) will start to direct away from your business and towards someone else’s.
Start small, maybe once a week, and build from there. Take small steps, maybe bump up from once a week to twice a week, then every other day. Whatever schedule or content type you decide to use, stick to it and watch the interest grow!