10 Best Practices for Managing a Facebook Business Page

Facebook is one of the most popular social media websites in the world, making it an essential tool for promoting your business.

But it’s not enough to have a presence there — you need to understand your page roles and how to manage your Facebook business page to optimize its success.It’s a different set of skills from looking after your personal account and takes some extra understanding and knowledge.

You’ll need to know how to create a Facebook business page, optimize it, and manage it continuously. Engaging with Facebook users can increase brand awareness and generate sales, driving your business forward.

So, think of your Facebook page as one of your key business assets — by investing some time into it, you’ll reap the rewards. We’ve put together this guide to Facebook business pages so you can get started with this powerful marketing tool.

Setting up and optimizing your Facebook business page

You’ll first need a personal Facebook account to create your Facebook business page. Log in to it, then go to the Facebook Page Creator.

You’ll see two options there:

• Business or Brand and Community;
• Public Figure.
  

Choose Business or Brand and click on Get Started.

Now, you’ll need to fill in your page name and category. Think about the page name, as you won’t be able to change it, although you can switch categories later. You can then add a few extra details according to your chosen category.

Add your cover photo and profile picture next. It’s important to get the sizes right so they fit the Facebook template and don’t appear pixelated. For your profile image, the size should be 170×170 pixels. For your cover image, choose 820 x 312 pixels.

Your Facebook cover photo represents your goods or services, while your company logo makes a great profile image. Ensure that the important design aspects of your cover photo are towards its center, as it may look different on your desktop and mobile device.

Now finish filling in the About section page information. In this section, select a username that will help customers find you. Be sure to follow the tips that pop up — what you include will influence how you rank in search engine results.

Add collaborators if other people will be helping you manage your new page — you can do this by selecting Manage and then Page access in the page settings menu. From there, you can assign roles for your business Facebook page: admin, moderator, editor, advertiser, or analyst.

You can also add Facebook Business Manager, a tool that lets you manage permissions and keep your account secure.

Defining and targeting your audience

Once you’ve set up your Facebook business page, you need to define and target your audience. It’s essential to have a clear idea of who your audience is so you can tailor content that speaks to them.

To do this, start by looking at your current customers and discovering who they are and what motivates them. Use the Facebook insights tool to help you do this. It will give you information about their age, gender, where they live and what they like. You will also want to identify potential new customers. Facebook Audience Insights will give similar data not just on people you are already connected with but the entire Facebook audience.

This work will help you build a picture of the person you want to target with your Facebook content.

Creating and curating engaging content

When creating organic content (content that’s shared freely) for your Facebook page, start by identifying the goal you want to achieve. Do you want to make a sale? Get customers to sign up for a loyalty program? Or get them to enter a competition? This will form the basis of your content.

You’ll also need to add photos that align with your goal and capture your audience’s imagination. Keep it simple if it’s a photo and short if it’s a video.

Now for the words. Write as you speak to a friend, using everyday language and keeping the tone warm and welcoming. Don’t forget to add your call to action, which could be to click through to your online shop to see the latest stock. Or perhaps you want them to vote on a question you’ve asked the audience.

Curating your content is gathering the information you want to post and organizing it in a schedule of posts. This means you always have something ready-made to post, and your content is linked and coherent.

Responding to comments and messages

Another way to moderate and manage Facebook business page is by responding to comments and messages. Think of it as part of your customer service strategy. You’ll retain existing customers and gain new ones by responding promptly and politely.

You can respond to comments and messages as an admin, moderator, or editor. In your responses, use your customer’s name, answer their questions, and even leave emojis if appropriate.

If you don’t know the answer to a question raised, you can still respond and pledge to get back with a full reply as soon as possible. If you receive negative comments, acknowledge how the writer feels and offer a solution.

Using Facebook Insights to track performance and adjust your strategy

Facebook Page Insights provides valuable data about your page. It’s a free dashboard provided by Facebook that lets you see detailed information about your business page. You’ll find out which of your posts get comments, likes, and shares, what proportion of your audience reads your content, and how many followers you have.

To use Facebook Insights, go to your business page and select the Insights option at the top. From there, you can click on individual tabs to get the data you need to inform your digital marketing strategy.

Using Facebook Ads to reach your target audience

Ad accounts are available for optimizing your business page with targeted advertising.

To get started with Facebook Ads, you’ll need to go to the Facebook Business Manager page and set up Meta Business Suite by clicking on “Create an account.”

You’ll need to give your business Facebook page name and create an advertising account by clicking Ads in the left navigation bar.

With Facebook advertising, you can create individual ads or set up ad campaigns through the dashboard. Follow the instructions on the dashboard and choose your objective, audience, and budget step-by-step.

The key to creating a great ad is to keep it simple. Gear it towards your target audience, write a short and snappy headline, add an eye-catching image, and keep the text to the point. Don’t forget the call to action at the end.

Once your ad is launched, you can also monitor its performance using the critical metrics provided. This will help you measure your ad campaign’s success and plan the next one.

Building a community through groups and events

You can build an online community through groups and events managed by Facebook pages for business. To set up a group linked to your business page, click Groups on the left menu. Follow the instructions to set up a new group and choose a name and your privacy settings.

Add a cover photo and description, and you’re good to go. Now you can invite friends and customers of your business to join. Your newly created group will allow your customers to connect, discuss your product, and learn more about what they can do with it.

Once your group is established, you can create online events such as product demos and question-and-answer sessions.

To create your event, go to the left navigation bar again and click See all, then choose Create event from the drop-down menu and follow the process. You’ll be able to choose whether your event is public or private. 

For public events, you can use keywords to reach as wide an audience as possible, use a Facebook ad to publicize it or share details and links to your news feed to advertise it.

Monitoring and managing your online reputation

Now that your Facebook page is up and running, you’ll need to keep tabs on its performance. This includes monitoring and managing your reputation, which involves knowing what people say about your brand, company, or product on Facebook (monitoring) and responding appropriately to their comments (managing).

You can monitor your reputation manually by trawling through all your Facebook posts and comments in response to them. To streamline the process, you can use business tools like Google Alerts or Mention to flag up comments across all your social media channels.

Managing your reputation involves responding promptly and politely to all feedback — good or bad — and offering thanks or solutions to issues raised. Even when you feel the response isn’t justified, remain calm and professional when responding to users.

Integrating Facebook with other marketing channels

While Facebook is the most-used social media platform, you’ll undoubtedly have other marketing channels you’re also using — for example, LinkedIn or Instagram accounts. You’ll want to integrate these to reach as many people as possible and engage with them seamlessly.

Integration also allows you to deliver a consistent message across all platforms, strengthening your brand and building credibility. For example, you can integrate your Facebook posts into other channels by using hashtags or sharing them directly on your Instagram account.

Share extracts of posts created for Facebook on other platforms.

The same goes for user-generated content. Quote those great reviews on all your channels to reach as many people as possible. Or use a giveaway to generate more followers and reach more people — base competition entry on following you on Facebook and other platforms, too.

You can also use a social media management tool to manage all your channels from a single dashboard, tracking the success of your ads, content, and campaigns. These tools allow you to schedule and automate tasks so your campaign will appear in sync.

Staying up to date with Facebook algorithm updates and policy changes

You’ll also need to stay up to date with Facebook algorithm updates and policy changes. The Facebook algorithm is a guide that decides the order of importance of posts in your news feed. It aims to show Facebook users more items they are most interested in and position these at the top of their feed.

Facebook is constantly working on and updating its algorithms. The current Facebook algorithm focuses on content from posters you’ve interacted with before, the type of content you’ve liked before (Facebook stories, videos, or posts with photos), and posts with high levels of engagement.

You can work with the algorithm to increase the amount of exposure that your posts get.

Facebook prioritizes content that is informative and meaningful to audiences. So, do some audience research to understand what the people you want to reach are liking and commenting on.

Facebook also values authentic and accurate content. This means you need to use clear and simple language when writing your posts and avoid exaggerating or making dramatic claims about your product.

You should also post your content when more of your audience is online — social media management platforms can help you do this. You can learn about the latest updates to the Facebook algorithm and other policy changes on the Meta Newsroom site.