Facebook Business Page

Here are some really handy tips to keep in mind when creating your Facebook business page.  Written by Carole Billingsley for Social Media Today, these 10 ideas are something you can incorporate also into your LinkedIn Profiles, your About Me (profiles on Blogger), etc...

In my opinion, number 10 is extremely important and RARELY done well.

1. Businesses must have a business Page. It’s a violation of Facebook’s TOS to run a business page on a personal profile. How do you know the difference? The easiest way is this: If people send a ‘friend request’ to be part of your community, your page is set up as a personal profile. A business page’s fans ‘Like’ the Page.

2. Claim your vanity URL. A vanity url looks like this: www.facebook(dot)com/yourcompanyname. This is important so that you can easily direct people to your Facebook Page.

3. Include your website URL in the visible portion of the About section. Facebook doesn’t allow for the URL to be included on the cover photo, so it should be in the next most visible spot. This will allow visitors to click through to your website as soon as they visit your Page. Note: You do not need the http:// before or the / after the url.

4. Use all of the space in the visible portion of the About section. There are 155 characters visible in the About section on the Timeline. Use them all to give an impact statement about your company.

5. Fill out the Description and all other information that is allowed for your type of Page. The available entries vary depending on the category of Page you’ve chosen, but don’t leave anything blank.

6. Delete any empty/unused apps. Since the advent of Timeline for Pages, tabs have been discontinued and replaced with apps. These apps are just to the right of the About section. Don’t send visitors to a blank or outdated page.

7. Add custom app covers. This is more of a cosmetic issue, but important nonetheless. It just gives the Page a more polished look.

8. Add YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest apps to your Page. This makes your Facebook Page an all-inclusive destination for your company’s web presence. All of your online real estate should be linked so that visitors to one site can easily find your other properties.

9. Move the “likes” app to the second row. It’s easy to move the apps around. The only one that can’t be moved is the Photos app. Now that your Page’s likes are shown under the company name, it’s redundant to have the Likes app showing. That’s valuable real estate, so use it for something else like a link to your YouTube channel or Pinterest page.

10. PROOFREAD!!! This should probably be number 1 on the list. No matter how beautiful your cover photo or how much your company rocks – misspelled words and bad grammar will drive customers away. I, for one, will not do business with a company that has typos or uses poor grammar on their Facebook Page, website, or any other written communication. Sadly, there are many Pages, websites, etc out there that contain these types of mistakes. Don’t let yours be one of them.

And, some examples of stunning (and well done in a communications sense) FB small business pages:

Chocolate for Breakfast is the business page for Sue Ann Gleason, a culinary nutritionist and marketing strategist.

Fans: 9,858

Earthegy is retailer of ancient gems and modern jewelry.

Fans: 10,169

Read more about why these pages are done so well and see more examples here at The Social Media Examiner.