Facebook now Meta.
You are aware of Facebook and you are also active on it since few years aren’t you?
Most of the people use Facebook just to upload photos of there were abouts and to watch videos of others.
But Facebook has much more than just entertainment, it can be used to promote your business also.
Everyday people upload some thing on facebook, thus increasing the data on facebook in tons each day. Facebook is aware about the future of internet is metaverse and to keep with the pace changed its name to Meta.
This change in name has not affected any user nor facebook changed its layout in any section, i.e everything is same.
Do you like to know more about Facebook and how it is useful in business?
I will explain about Facebook business page and its various features in few series of blogs.
Let’s start with the first Blog.
What is Facebook?
Facebook is a social Networking site originally created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 at Harvard University.
It was designed originally for college students but now people use it to discover and share new ideas, for social networking to remain connected with family and friend online and to support the business they like, and to know the events happening around the globe.
Facebook is used by businesses to find and get discovered by new type of audiences to accomplish their goals, build long lasting relations and turn their contacts or followers into customers and finally consumers who ultimately will use Facebook business pages, posts, pages to share their stories.
Why Facebook?
Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site, with more than 2.45 billion users across the globe.
As per worldpopulationreview.com
The following countries have the highest number of Facebook users:
- India (251 million)
- United States (240 million)
- Brazil (139 million)
- Indonesia (136.96 million)
- Mexico (78 million)
- Philippines (71.76 million)
- Vietnam (66.72 million)
- Thailand (46 million)
- United Kingdom (44 million)
- Turkey (44 million)
You can see that India has the highest number of Facebook users of nearly 251 million followed by USA nearly 240 million.
Features of Facebook
- Businesses can build their virtual presence on Facebook by creating business pages.
- With Facebook business page, businesses can mention their personalized information to get connected with their customers and help them in their need.
- Using Business suite businesses can share their stories on their pages and can even manage and schedule posts.
i.e., they can create the posts very well in advance and schedule when to post them as per the festive calendar.
- Facebook has the feature for paid advertising.
- With Facebook you can select the desired audience as per your requirement and promote your product or service to people who are likely to be interested in it.
Facebooks ads and Google ads
Both google ads and Facebook ads reach a good number of audiences over the internet and focus on quality and user experience delivered by advertisers.
Example: If you want to find best restaurant in Delhi, then google will give you some reply about good restaurants, whereas using Facebook you advertise your restaurant on Facebook page and target some audience.
In short you can understand the Difference between Google ads and Facebook ads
| Google ads | Facebook Ads | |
| 1 | Help new customer to find you | Helps you to find new customer |
| 2. | You target users on “what they search for.” | You target users based on “who they are.” |
| 3 | They are “Inbound” advertising and it aligns with SEO. | They are “Outbound” advertising and it aligns with social media, they are considered as “paid social |
| 4 | They are text based | They are visual with images, videos and also social with likes, comments and shares. |
| 5 | “Who your customer is” doesn’t matter because their intention is clearly understood with their search query. | you specify to whom you want to show your ads. Because ads shown to wrong person will be waste of money. |
| 6 | Targeting is done via Keywords. | Audience targeting is important. |
Why Facebook Business page?
You cannot create a Business account on Facebook for your business but you can create a Facebook page for your Business.
The Facebook page built for your business helps you to get connected with your customers who are already spending time on Facebook.
This Page helps you to provide information about your business to your audience in the following ways.
- Building a community: You can develop connections and build relationship with the customers. You can promote your products within this community or ask them about their likes to develop product around it ultimately you can get your first customers within this community itself thus increasing your sales.
- Tell your business story: Business can tell their unique story through posts, which helps them to connect with people interested in their products.
- Find customers: You can get your business discovered by customers who visits your page to explore products and share their experience and ideas.
Creating a Facebook Business Page:
Let’s understand the prerequisite before creating a Facebook page.
Your business name: You have to be ready with your business name, that people will use to search your page.
A detailed description: You can add information about your business in the About section
A profile photo: Select a profile photo, many people use their logos as profile photo.
A Cover photo: Select a best photo which describe your business which could be a store photo or product photo or marketing campaign you’re using currently to market your product.
Contact Information: Enter your contact information in the required space provided.
Let’s create a Facebook Page
On google Go to facebook.com/pages/create
Choose Business or Brand and click get started.
Login to your Facebook account and then click pages and create new page.
(You can directly create this page by login in to your Facebook account)
- Page Name: Enter your business name i.e., company name.
- Category: Enter the category of your business that helps people to it on Facebook in their search.
- Description: Write about your business, service or product that you provide or the purpose of the page.
- Click Create Page. (You can upload the images only after you create the page.)
- This will create the basic Facebook page. You can edit the page to add further information.
- Once you create your Facebook page upload the cover photo, as cover photo makes your page clickable and likable.
- Add profile photo which could be your photo or logo of your company.
- Click Save
Connect Facebook page to WhatsApp.
- After your clicked save in the above step it will ask you to connect Facebook page to your WhatsApp.
- Enter If you want to connect your Facebook to WhatsApp, then enter your phone number and click send code .(you can connect both at this moment only, if you click cancel you cannot connect them later)
3. Enter the code you received in your WhatsApp.
4.Click add button to add WhatsApp button on your Facebook page.
Thus, your Business Facebook page is now connected with your WhatsApp account.
Edit the Page
You can edit your Facebook business page to keep people updated about your business, by using various buttons on your page.
1) Cover photo: There is an Edit button which can be used to change the cover photo any time.
2) Call to action: You can edit this button for the action you want your customer who visit your page there are variety of option you can set such as call you or book an appointment etc.
3)Page username: This appears below the profile picture and on every post from the page, you can choose so that your business is easily recognizable by your customers.
4) About Section: You can enter the information about your page, your contact information, your website etc., if you have a store than can mention store working hours.
5) Profile Photo: Profile photo can also be edited as per your choice.
Facebook Tools for Business
Facebook provides various tools on Facebook page so that you can increase engagement with your existing customers and potential customers which will eventually help you to increase your community or tribe.
1. Page Posts
Page posts are the easiest and quicker mode to communicate with your audience, such as existing and potential customers and to increase likes to your page. There is various option available such as message posts, status posts Feeling or activity posts.
- Status post: Share quick updates in short and text-only form.
- Message posts: Send messages and ask customers to give feedback and suggestions.
- Feeling or activity posts: Update audience with activity of the day.
2.Keep your customers Engage.
- You can keep your audience engage with stories, live, events and more
- Facebook Stories:
With Facebook Stories you can share exciting news, photos, videos and text that remains visible only for 24hrs.
- Live Option:
Facebook Live helps business to go Live with the events, gatherings which audience can view on their phone, Laptop and other devices
- Event Option:
Facebook allows you to host events personally or virtually. If your event is Live then you can ask your follower to join the events by paying fees which can become a new source for business to earn money.
- Groups:
You can create various groups for your business where people can share their photos, videos, do chats to share various information and more, This helps your business to remain connected with your customers and engaging with them in private forum based on common interest.
Offer Products and Services
- Offer:
Attract customers by providing early bird discount, first purchase discounts and deals of the day, customers will receive notification before the expiry of the offer if they click and save the offer.
Click create new offer
In Create New offer page write about the offer you are about to provide and also enter the description.
Appointment
You as a business can manage appointment through Facebook business page and inform people about the service you are providing and your availability for the same. You can also send remainder via Messenger or SMS to clients for their upcoming appointment with you.
Jobs
Facebook Job service can be used to post job openings in your business for new positions which can be tracked and managed within Facebook until you find perfect candidate for the position.
Ads
Facebook offers you to advertise your business by creating eye catching ad, Facebook take charge for such paid ads. You might have seen such ads as sponsored ads on your Facebook account many times. I will tell more about ads creation in my next blog.
Facebook Insight
As you go on adding content to your page, you can check the page performance in page insight, which is found to left of page navigation bar
The Page Summary tab:
In the page summary tab of your page. you can find detailed information about the way people got engaged with your page. You can get the information about how many people have reached your page, kind of action they took after visiting the page, likes you received on your page, recommendations, post engagement, followers and many more.
You can use the above information and create your Facebook page for your business.
I will write more about the concept of Facebook ads and how you can gain more customers using Facebook Ads in my next blog
So, keep on reading.
Thanks
Digital sushilk
3.5