Making the most of Facebook: 1/10: Perfecting the Facebook set up.

MAKING THE MOST OF FACEBOOK MARKETING.

1/10: PERFECTING THE PAGE SET UP.

Facebook is the 2nd biggest site in the world. Only surpassed by Google, Facebook has 1.39billion active users, and is growing at 13% yr/yr, with 4.5 billion likes generated daily. That’s a lot of people, and a lot of activity that cannot be ignored. A recent review showed that 50% of people value a brand’s Facebook page over its website. The message is clear: businesses need to be using Facebook now more than ever. To help you take advantage of this social platform, we’re releasing a series of posts giving tips to make Facebook work properly for your business. The first topic is perfecting the page set up.
The set up of a Facebook page isn't that difficult, but it’s worth making sure you've done everything correctly to save headaches later.

• Create the page from your own personal profile. Your profile doesn't show as being connected with the page (unless you want it to) and saves you hassle of logging in via different details every time you want to do something.
• When choosing which type of page to create, know that a ‘local business or place’ will literally put you on the map via the address you enter. However, it will also allow people to ‘check-in’, and rate you. Think about whether this is important to your business, to decide whether it ends up a 'page' or 'place'.
• Give yourself time to get the details right, don’t rush it. You’ll be eager to start inviting your friends to get some follower numbers up, but a little effort now will pay dividends later. Write out what you need in word, spell check and get someone to give it a once-over before you ‘publish’ the page.
• You get an option to choose up to three topics/words to describe your page. When you write the words in the search box, it serves you up other pages & groups that relate to that topic or word. Choose these carefully, you don’t want to associate yourself with a random group with a few people in, or a competitor organisation. Choose ‘interests’, ideally with the most followers.
• If you've set up a company/organisation, you may get the option of adding an Impressum. This is a legal requirement for some European countries but is not necessary in the UK. If you want to add it, you need a sentence that includes the name of your business, address, contact details, name of the owner/manager of the page, and any registration numbers for the company.
• You'll be offered a Facebook URL - this helps to make the page look official, it's tidier than the alternative which is just a series of numbers representing your page, it gives you a neat URL to link to from other pages, and it means people can find the page easier. Make sure you get it right as you only have one chance to change it after!
• To create the perfect logo it needs to be perfectly square to look great. It’ll be shown in news feeds as an icon, so if the detail is too small it won’t be legible. If your logo has text on it, it might be worth using an icon version. Ensure it is high enough resolution too so that it’s not grainy when people visit the page.
• Background images need to be 315 x 851 ;pixels, but Facebook automatically resizes these images so you can just use a good quality horizontal image.
• When you've made the changes to both the logo and the background image go through the image albums and delete those you didn't use, this makes your albums look clean and clear for when people browse.
• There’s a new option to add a Call-To-Action. There’s limited information at the moment as to how successful these buttons are but as it’s there it’s worth setting up correctly. A Call-To-Action, or CTA, is the main activity you want from your page. Do you want them to buy something? Or sign up to a list? Or visit your website? Decide what you most want your customers to do and set up accordingly.
• When your page looks right and reads perfectly, look at your news feed and delete all the activity you've carried out – it’s not interesting for new visitors to see you've added 3 logos or resized the background images twice, so this activity can be scrubbed, giving you a perfectly clear news feed to start posting from.

In the second stage of this blog we’ll be looking at how to start gaining quality followers to your page. Cherry Fusion help set up and manage social profiles for businesses across the UK. To find out more click here.