Facebook is one of the biggest if not the biggest social platforms on the planet. You would have to be mad if you are a business not to take advantage of this enormous audience waiting to see your brand, products or services. Plus it’s free, so why wouldn’t you? In this post, I’m going to show you how to get a business page set up in easy steps.
Firstly, let me get a few things straight. Too many businesses use Facebook purely as their business platform, why? Because it’s free. One thing you have to understand, Facebook owns you, not the other way round. Well not literally, but your profile, they control your profile, decide what functionality you have, and can close your profile down in a heartbeat! As soon as you realise this, you’ll start to use it more professionally and respectfully for your business. It is a huge information churning, advertising powerhouse. And, if used correctly, can be an amazing platform to help grow your business.
It used to be a little easier to create a business facebook page, but a while ago the powers that be, as I mentioned before, they own you… …decided to link the pages to personal profiles forcing you to join the facebook community.
Why having a Facebook business page is good for business.
Firstly, if you set up the page correctly, people can see your page without having to be logged into Facebook which strengthens your brand image. The page can also generate visitors to your website and potential sales, which is another reason why you shouldn’t rely solely on a Facebook Business Page to promote your business. Think of it as a mini extension site to your main website.
However, the main thing I see is a business being promoted using an incorrect profile or a facebook username profile, which I will explain in more detail shortly
What you need to get started
All you need to get started is to sign up as yourself to Facebook with a personal profile. I’m not going to explain how to do as the majority of the population already have this, so I’m presuming you’ve already got your own personal profile account. If not, just sign up to the page as shown below and create your own personal account.
Step 1: Sign up to Facebook and create your own account
If you don’t have an account the first page you see is the Facebook sign up page. Fill in your details and create a personal profile, so you can access the pages and features Facebook can offer you.
Step 2: Create a page from within your personal profile
Click the button create a page or the button on the top menu bar, then select business or brand to create your page.
Step 3: Enter the business or brand information
You should then be presented with a form box to fill out the relevant information regarding your brand or business. Once filled in just click continue.
Step 4: Setting up your Profile Image and Cover Images.
The next following screens you can skip through these unless you have an image and a logo ready to go, but I will explain the sizes in the next few steps. You should now be seeing your clean business page, ready for you to start creating a branded page. Facebook continually changes things so this guide could change, but I’ve tried my best to be as thorough as possible without hopefully confusing you too much. There is also a lot of information out there, the information I have incorporated is what I have found via Facebook and other online sources. Plus, I created images purely for this post to test them out.
Profile Image :
This is the little logo area in the top left corner, a while ago it was square, but now its a circle so keep this in mind when creating your image.
Below is what Facebook currently recommends for the Profile Image size, but you can see from my image is doesn’t work very well at the 170px x 170px
Displays at 170×170 pixels on your Page on computers, 128×128 pixels on smartphones and 36×36 pixels on most feature phones.
Facebook stores a maximum resolution file of 2048px by 2048px. Simply put this size should look good on pretty much any screen. As you can see by my second image the quality change is significant.
So my recommended size would be 2048px W x 2048px H
Page Cover Image :
I’ve read quite a lot of mixed information about this. So I’ve devised my own image to test it out. Don’t get confused with the personal profile cover image which is different to a business page cover image. Below is Facebooks information.
Displays at 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on your Page on computers and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on smartphones.
Some people suggest 851px W x 315px H, but as you can see the size doesn’t seem to quite fit. Plus notice the smartphone size is 360px H which is taller than the 315px? Confused… …so was I, so what I did was make it the correct height for smartphones. And as if by magic it works.
What happens on a smartphone is the window will shrink down to 640px wide, so make sure the main information sits within this area so nothing gets cut off when it shrinks down.
So my recommended size would be 851px W x 360px H
I read that the maximum resolution is 1958px by 745px that Facebook will store but you may notice things are differently placed on-screen when viewed on a smartphone. Test it out and see.
Step 5: Make sure the page information is correct
Make sure all the information on your page is correct and include your website URL, email address and contact telephone number. The About button takes you to your profile page that you can fill out which includes a story section about your business. This can be very useful because you can add a story image. You can also add ‘call to action buttons’ which can increase engagement from visitors to your page, plus, you need to invite people to like your page.
Tip you can view your page as a visitor would see by selecting the option below
Lastly, make sure you’ve secured the correct username URL that represents your business or brand. The sooner you do it the better because if someone already has it, you will have to alter it. Facebook has a very long and strange URL if you don’t.
My example is www.facebook.com/testbusinessnameuk
This is the URL that I can use to promote the page, check it out it’s real.
The other advantage is that the name is more easily searched from within the Facebook search bar, which again means more people can more easily find your page.