Creative tips to improve your Facebook for business

Facebook is still one of the most important advertising tools, even as younger audiences seem to be more interested in apps like Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. It is a force that continues to grow, offering marketers better opportunities to promote products.

With 1.84 billion daily active users in December 2020 (an 11% increase compared to the previous year), it is still the world’s biggest social network. As we’re sure you’re aware, having a presence on Facebook is a given for any company that wishes to be successful. But merely having a Facebook page isn’t going to cut it in today’s highly competitive online environment.

If you want to attract new prospects, drive them to your site and eventually convert them into customers, you’ll need to know the nuances of optimising your Facebook presence.

Creative tips and tricks for Facebook marketing

We know that you have a lot on your plate, and learning all there is to know about every social network would take up too much of your time, which is why there are creative branding services available online for anyone seeking help.

That said, the tips outlined below can help you build a strong Facebook presence in the quickest and most hassle-free way possible.

Create a business page instead of a personal profile

We’re starting with the basics — you need a business page, not a personal Facebook profile for your brand. Although they look similar from the outside, business pages actually provide a whole set of useful tools you don’t get with a personal profile.

Even if you chose to ignore all of the benefits of a business page, we still wouldn’t recommend making a personal profile for your business, as it would breach Facebook’s Terms of Service to do so. If you’ve already created a personal profile for your brand, don’t worry, you can easily convert it into a business page.

Once your page is created, it will be assigned a URL consisting of a random set of letters and numbers. To make the page easier to find and more shareable, you should create a custom “vanity URL” using your company name. You can find this option in your General Account Settings.

Optimise the cover photo and profile picture

Facebook lets you upload a cover photo to your business page, just like the one you have on your private profile.

As the cover photo takes up a lot of screen real estate, you’ll want to make sure that it grabs your page visitors’ attention and encourages them to explore. You should also make sure that the effect translates to mobile, where most Facebook users are.

When it comes to your profile picture, things are probably a bit more straightforward. If you’re a consultant or solopreneur, you might want to use a headshot, but you should stick to your company logo in most cases.

This is because you want to be recognisable across platforms, and using your logo is the best way to ensure that. Remember that your profile picture is also displayed with each post and update, so it has more reach than your cover.

Focus on the about section

When people who are unfamiliar with your business open your Facebook page, they should have the opportunity to learn what your company is about. This is what the About page is for. You can find a short preview of this section on the left side of the page, right below your profile picture, but users can also open the full section by clicking or tapping the appropriate tab at the top of the page.

Optimising the preview section on the left is critical. You want your users to be able to learn the basics without having to navigate to another tab. The text in the preview section is pulled from the Short Description section of your About tab.

Earn the very responsive to messages badge for your brand

This piece of advice might sound a bit generic, but it is more specific than you think. If you haven’t done too much exploration of other companies’ Facebook pages, you might not know that Facebook gives out a badge to quick responders.

You can earn the very responsive to messages badge if you can maintain a 90% response rate and an average response time of fewer than 15 minutes over the last week. Facebook will show how responsive you are, even if you don’t have the badge, by showing how long you typically take to respond.

While not having this badge will certainly not break your business, being able to show your users that you care about their needs is a huge plus.

While we’re on the subject of messages, we should mention that there are many cool things you can do with Facebook’s Messages tool, so we recommend exploring it.

Add your milestones

If you want to share and highlight some of your most significant accomplishments, such as product releases, award wins, and other significant events, you can use the milestones feature. These will be listed in your About tab, while the most recent ones will be posted to your timeline.

All you need to do is click on your page’s timeline section and navigate to the milestone option in the Offer, Event + dropdown menu at the top of the page.

Add a call-to-action button to your page

Another handy feature you should take advantage of is the option to add a simple call-to-action (CTA) button near the top of your page.

There isn’t too much room for creativity, as Facebook only allows you to choose from seven preset options, and you can only place the CTA at the bottom of your cover photo, next to the like button. That said, the seven options should be enough for most businesses. They include:

• Shop Now
• Sign Up
• Book Now
• Contact Us
• Watch Video
• Play Game
• Use App

You can link the button to your contact sheet, landing page, website homepage, or anything else that aligns with your business goals.

Create custom tabs

Since they are at the top of the page, right below your cover photo, page tabs are very visible. By default, your Facebook page has the following tabs:

• Timeline
• About
• Photos
• Likes
• More

You can, however, create custom tabs, allowing you to create landing pages within your Facebook page. They allow you to create a specific path for your visitors to follow on your page. You can feature many things in these custom tabs, including promotions, marketing offers, job openings, etc.

To create a custom tab, click the More tab and choose Manage Tabs.

Focus on quality over quantity

We’ll end on a tip that you can apply to all your marketing strategies, regardless of the social media platform — do not post for the sake of posting.

The visibility of your posts will rely mostly on their quality. Facebook, and other social networks, use sophisticated algorithms to filter out poor-quality and irrelevant posts, so only the highest-quality stuff is shown to users.

Sure, a low-effort post will squeeze through from time to time, but your best bet is to be more selective about what you’re posting. Spend more time creating each post and making it better, rather than spamming. There are many social platforms there that will help you grow your business and the ever-growing social media trends will continue to make social media marketing a vital part of everyone’s strategy.