Admin Information for a Facebook Business Page
I had the pleasure of teaching Valeri Weidmann, coordinator of circulation and public relations at the Highland Public Park Library, how to set up a Facebook business page. You can learn more about the basics of setting up such a page from Ease of a Facebook Business Page (although some of that post is out-of-date, and I updated it with remarks). If you want to be alerted to some new changes to Facebook business pages, check out Adrienne Smith’s post New Rules for Facebook in 2013.
Details to Know as an Admin about Facebook Business Pages
Here are some details we noted along the way that might help you out when you are setting up your Facebook business page:
- Put information on the page and then tell your friends to Like the page. Wouldn’t your friends be more likely to click Like if there already was a lot of interesting information and imagery posted?
- If you are using an iPad for FB admin, you don’t have a lot of choices. You can either write text or post a photo. There is no place to leave a caption for a photo. So Val and I decided she would upload the photo immediately from her iPad, since she often photographs library events with her iPad. Later, when she is back at her desktop computer, she needs to click on the image of the photo so that the Edit button appears on the right side of the photo. Once one clicks Edit, then one can add the caption to the photo.
- It seems that you can’t have two biz pages at one address. We are not sure why this is so. There is also a Teens page; the library just decided to merge the two. If we find a workaround for this, I will post the updated information.
- Don’t forget to add the 851×315 cover photo. It really brightens up the page.
- How often to update the page? Val says she plans on posting once per day – that sounds ideal! Once per week sounds reasonable, if that’s all you can do.
- What to post? Images, links, videos, straight text. Add short text introductions to your images, links and videos to give a friendly quality to your post.
- Like other pages. To do so, you have to pull down to Edit -> Like as Your Facebook Biz Page Name instead of Like as Whatever Your Profile Name Is. So for example, I would choose Like as Highland Park Public Library instead of Like as Leora Wenger.
- You no longer need to get 25 Likes to get the shortened name. They asked for one immediately.
Your Turn, Please
If you have set up a Facebook business page, what advice would you give? What part was easy? What part was harder? I’m wondering if you find keeping up the enthusiasm of the first day you set it up is the hard part.
My Facebook page has been sorely lacking. I have avoided it. I must admit that learning yet another thing is almost too much, especially as finicky and Facebook gets. You think you know how to do something and then it changes again. Oh well… I still find this information valuable. Thank you so much!
Geek Girl´s last [type] ..And The Gender Is…?
Cheryl,
I find it hard to pay a lot of attention to my FB page as well. Well, more important to keep up one’s blog, anyway – it’s our real estate, as opposed to an FB page we are just borrowing space from FB.
Hi Leora,
I recently started marketing for my new website . I started by creating the facebook page and found that they made things quite easy with wizards.
However I feel that the profile photo is still a lot of trouble because of the size constraint issues. I struggled with it quite for sometime.
As for frequency of posting, I agree one per week is manageable. However we can add links and videos not created by us but taken from youtube. We can add context to make them relevant to our site.
Thanks for all the tips above :)
Ashvini´s last [type] ..Trust, creativity and permission : Three tenets of marketing
“However we can add links and videos not created by us but taken from youtube. We can add context to make them relevant to our site.” – so true
In the case of the library, they have abundant information of their own so they don’t need to add anyone else’s. Although maybe posting a review of an upcoming film they are screening might be a nice addition.
Thanks for the comment, Ashvini.
Have one for my blog that I handle with my left hand. Only promote it on my home page and whoever likes it likes it:-)
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I’m pretty sure I’ve liked your page, Catarina! When you do post, it’s a helpful reminder to go visit your latest informative post.
As an author, FB allowed me to have a professional page with the “author” designation. I like that. I use this page to connect with readers and people who may be interested in my work as an author. The link to this page can be found on bot my blogs.
I also have a FB page specifically for my book on volunteerism, “Before You Say Yes.” You can link to this page from my static website.
I suspect I’ll have to setup a new FB page for my chocolate book when it comes out. I envy people and businesses who have funds to hire someone to keep all their social media fresh and relevant. It takes a lot of time!
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Sounds like you have plenty of experience with FB pages, Doreen. That will certainly help when you set up your chocolate book page.
I have a Facebook page but I have a passive presence. I mainly post information from other sites. For some reason FB won’t pull in my own blog posts but my IT guy is working on that. I’ve had to decide where to spend my social networking time and, for now, FB is not a priority. My market is B2B and I’m more likely to find them on LinkedIn, Google+ or Twitter.
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Jeannette, it’s good to know priorities. I agree, B2B is better on LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter than on FB.
I set up a Facebook page close to a year ago. I feel like since they changed the way notifications and such work now, if you are not actively spending your time promoting the page it isn’t noticed as much as it used to be. I have found I get more for my time through G+ and my personal account on Facebook.
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Jon, all of what you say makes sense … one only has so much time.
I have a Facebook page but do little with it. Is it worth the effort to push it? I’m really not sure. What are your thoughts? :)
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In the case of the library, it makes a lot of sense, because lots of locals here use Facebook.
In your case (and in the case of many bloggers), you could just post your latest post every now and then with a note. It doesn’t sound like it is worth the extra energy to push it, especially with Facebook making it hard to get into people’s streams. It works really well for local businesses when customers and potential customers are already on FB.
Thanks for the suggestion. That is something tho consider for sure.
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I manage two. Both new. One for my business and one for my uncle’s book. I enjoy doing it, although it’s time consuming. And because I’m new I need to grow my likes in both directions. Thanks for the direction on that one.
Great to read that you enjoy it! That will help keep it going. And I’m sure your enthusiasm is catchy.
I do try to get to my page daily. Some times I find something of interest to update it with (or multiple things) and others I find nothing. It is rather adhoc and I really should set about planning my updates a bit better.
Becc´s last [type] ..Welcome 2013!
That’s great, the times you find multiple things to put on your FB page. I should go look for yours …
Like most things I’ve tried, I quickly got in the swing of things with my FB author page. But now that they’ve changed how many people see your posts, there are many days when it doesn’t feel worth it. The typical post now gets far fewer viewers, and it seems like the user needs to think of ever more clever ways to increase likes and comments, or alas, pay to promote the post… Anymore, I find G+ gives me better results.
Jeri, it seems that quite a few that commented on this post are saying Google+ is more worth the energy.
Excellent advice, Leora. Too often businesses don’t realize the importance of effectively using their Facebook page. Their admin settings are important but very often ignored.
There was a local incident here where a Facebook page had derogatory posts about a customer. The business denied operating the Facebook page, but had a link to the page on its own website. Oops!
That’s the way NOT to use a Facebook page. Thanks for showing us the right way!
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As I was setting this up with Val for the HPPL library, I remarked on how an FB page sometimes is a platform for complaints. But I’ve never heard of a business using it to complain about a customer! I would think of it as the other way around. We agreed it’s an opportunity to listen even one can only smooth things over even if the main complaint can’t be fixed.
I’m not on FB yet, found this very useful.
Lubna, nice to hear from you. FB has its quirks – one has to roll with the changes!
Leora – Nice points here and it does help one to have all their priorities mentioned on their business page if they plan to use it for promotional purposes.
I agree that one should first setup the page to its entirety before asking people to “like” their page, or rather, there will not be a need to even “ask”.
Thanks for sharing this and yes, i read Adrienne’s article as well….so not sure if FB is gonna lose some of their business customers to their new policy.
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I’m sure businesses get frustrated with the FB changes. But so many customers are on FB, so it’s hard to ignore.
Nice points. I loved the second last point which is about liking other business pages as page not as profile. Thats a better way to increase likes on our fan page. Good information Leora.
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Atish,
Yes, it may not come naturally, Liking a page as the name of your page (especially when like me you are an admin to at least ten of them). But it does give your page exposure.
Gosh Leora,
I did this over a year ago but I do remember it being really easy.
What I did was I wrote a post around my new Fan Page and that’s how I started getting people to drop by and like it. I believe from that one introductory post I got my first 100 likes by the end of that week.
I post four times a day to my fan page and one of those is asking questions. Get your fans interacting and they’ll really have a good time.
You can always add something positive and uplifting, it doesn’t always have to just be about business. People love that so that’s another suggestion.
Great advice Leora but I certainly wouldn’t expect anything less from you.
~Adrienne
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Yes, Adrienne, I remember when you started! You have done a great job of keeping it up. As for my own, as the year proved very busy for me for both work and family reasons, I mostly just post my posts. But some of my clients are doing great things with their FB pages to develop online community for their offline businesses or organizations.
Very good advice to post a decent amount of content first and establish your page as an actual resource before inviting other people to like it. Also, posting every couple of days should be enough I don’t think its necessary to post something every single day. A variety of items however is important to keep people engaged and interested.
Kelly, yes, variety really adds to the page. Good advice on posting every few days.
I like my FB page. I think it’s important to keep followers engaged and post something on most days. I also try to support fellow bloggers by sharing posts & articles I think are worthwhile. I’ve started doing more with my Google+ but I like the navigation of FB better.
~Kelly
Kelly, good to know you like FB. A lot of people have become frustrated with it, but for others, it works well.
The library that I write of in this post has gotten many new people to like the new library FB page, so that has been a big plus! Nice to see all the enthusiasm over our local library.
Hi Leora,
Been searching all over for the answers to this and hope you can help….
I have been helping a friend set up a new business page but we can’t seem to find where to add extra business details such as:
- additional telephone numbers and fax numbers etc
- another business premises
Your help will be highly appreciated.
Regards
Greg
Greg,
It could possibly be that there is no place for those – I haven’t checked in a while.
You might want to find a group that specifically discusses Facebook Business Pages and ask there. I know Mari Smith used to post a lot about Facebook.
Sorry that I couldn’t be more helpful on this one.
Thanks Leora….