How To Set Up A Great Business Facebook Page

In last week's blog post, we let you know all about how to set up an Instagram account for your business. Now it's time to get your business's Facebook page up and running. We will go over why you need to set up a Facebook business page and how to get your page off the ground.

Facebook holds a treasure trove of marketing gold. In fact, Here is why you shouldn't be missing out on Facebook:

• There are 2.1 billion monthly active users on Facebook: That's 30% of the world's population. That's a lot of potential customers. Need we say more?
• Facebook is low-cost: It costs absolutely nothing to create a Facebook page, and you get exposure simply from likes and comments. It's almost too good to be true, but it works! The social platform gives you outlet to let the world know about your latest sales and awesome video ads you've been working on.
• It makes customer support easy: Facebook allows you to post your hours, email, and phone number right at the top of your page so people know where to get their answers. They also integrated Messenger with business pages for an even quicker solution to resolving customers concerns (Check out our blog post on how to use Messenger for your business).
• Targeted advertising: Facebook knows it's users. If you're a fashion boutique, you can input the age range you would like to reach and target people who have specifically listed "fashion" as an interest. Are you a martial arts school? Facebook allows you to create ads that target people who live within 20 miles of your school and want to learn self-defense. You can go wide and reach everyone who lives in the coastal western United States or only focus on people who live in Salt Lake City, Utah. These detailed features allow you to have control over who is seeing your advertisements. 

Now that you know why you should be using Facebook for your business, how do you set up the perfect page? Here are some surefire ways to help you out:

• Make your profile picture your logo: We touched on this on our last blog post, but making your profile picture your logo is crucial to the success of your business's Facebook page. It looks professional, it looks clean, and it just looks plain good. Humans are extremely visual creatures, so the more visually appealing your profile is the more people will be attracted to your page.

• Choose a relevant cover photo: Your cover photo should be as descriptive as possible. Use the cover photo to tell the customer all about your business. It's the perfect place to showcase your best work, your newest product, or a current sale or promotion going on. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

• Make sure you add your website to your page: This may seem like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised at the amount of businesses who forget to add their website to their page! The idea of a Facebook page is to be an initial glimpse into your business: A showcase of your products or best work, your contact info, and a short and concise bio. All of these things should intrigue potential customers to learn more about your company, which is exactly what your website is for!
•  Add your team: Your team is going to need to hop on and off your Facebook page for various reasons, and Facebook makes it easy to assign everybody their specific roles on the page! There are 6 different roles that Facebook allows: The Admin, Editor, Moderator, Advertiser, Analyst, and Live Contributor (Here is a link explaining just what each role is allowed to access). All you have to do is go to "Settings" on the top right corner of your page, find "Page Roles" in the column on the left, typer the name or email of the person you want to add, select "Editor" then choose their role from the dropdown menu, then click "Add" and enter your password. After you add them, the person will have to accept the role. That's it! 

Now that you know how to set up a great Facebook page, get out there and do it! Watch your success skyrocket! Do you have any of your own Facebook tips up your sleeve? Let us know in the comments below!

6 Tips for Using Facebook Messenger to Help Your Business

It's a no brainer to use Facebook for your business. You can reach a wider audience and get great customer interaction. But have you looked a little into using Facebook Messenger? Customers are looking to Messenger as a quick and easy way to receive answers from a company, so using this tool will take your customer service/experience to the next level. Messenger offers many useful tools to help make this an easy set-up.

Here are 6 ways you can put Facebook Messenger to work for you:

1. Turning Messenger on: It may seem like a silly step, but you've got to start with the basics! When on your Facebook Business page, simply head to the top right corner of your screen and click on "Settings."

Once in settings, the first option in the left hand column should be "Messaging." If you click on it, a page with should pop up with your messaging settings. Make sure the "Prompt visitors to send messages" option is ON. And voila! You're open for messaging! 

Make sure you turn it on only when you're ready to commit to messaging, because once a customer messages they expect an answer!

2. Turn on instant reply: Instant reply is a great way to let your customers know when they should expect to hear back from you. To turn this on you'll scroll down to the "Response Assistant" section in your Messaging settings and turn on "Send instant replies to anyone who messages your page." 

Once it's turned on, there will be an option to change the message from the default setting to a message of your choosing!

3. Show your responsiveness: Facebook has a nifty little badge for business pages letting customers know how quickly a page usually responds to messages.

It's extremely important to ALWAYS reply and to reply quickly, because that badge is often the first thing customers see. You can choose your own response time, but make sure you're responding when you say you will! Otherwise, you can respond on your own time and let Facebook calculate when your customer should expect a reply.

5. Turn on away messages: It is inevitable that there will be times when you or your customer service team will not be able to reply to a message as quickly as you usually do. That's where away messages steps in. Away messages allow you to let your customer know how long you'll be away and when they should expect a reply. It's very similar to instant reply, but the beautiful thing about away messages is you can keep your responsiveness rating. To use it, turn on the "Stay responsive when you can't get to your computer or phone" option in your Messaging settings.

Just like instant reply, you can change the default message to a message of your choosing.

6. Make a greeting for your conversation: You can also create a greeting that people will see whenever they first open a conversation with you. This is a perfect tool to say hello to your customer while also letting them know anything you need or want them to know right off the bat. To turn the greeting on, flip the switch on "Show a Messenger greeting" in your Messaging settings.

Hopefully this helps your business get started using Facebook Messenger. It's a valuable tool to help take your customer service to the next level. What's your favorite feature of Facebook Messenger? Drop it in the comments below!