Santa Clarita Business Owners’ Guide To Facebook
Of all the social platforms out there, Facebook provides businesses with the most flexibility for targeted advertising, which is especially important for small and local businesses here in Santa Clarita.
Advertising on social media has helped lots of small and local businesses drive traffic to their websites and through their doors, but for those who don’t understand how to use it, Facebook can be a confusing mess.
Although Facebook advertising can be very effective, business owners often have a hard time figuring out how to get started and maintain a social media presence long enough to improve sales.
Unlike Twitter and Instagram, which allow anyone to open an account for any reason, Facebook was originally set up to connect individuals to other people. Because business profiles were not in the website’s original plans, business pages were created as an afterthought and can be difficult to set up and maintain.
Facebook has a history of banning profiles which primarily exist to advertise businesses. Instead, they want business owners to open business-specific pages which are connected to the owner’s personal profiles. These pages can both post content to be displayed on followers’ timelines and run targeted advertisements which show up both in timeline and the advertising sidebar.
Set Up Your Page
The first step in advertising on Facebook is creating a business page. Business owners must first log onto Facebook from their personal profiles (or create a personal profile if they aren’t currently on the platform). They must then click the downward-facing arrow in the upper-right corner of the Facebook web interface. After clicking “Manage Pages” they will then need to click “Create a Page” to get started.
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After creating a business profile by entering their company’s name, category, and address, owners may be prompted to upload a profile picture and cover photo. After this, a small tutorial may ask business owners to invite friends from their personal Facebook profile to “like” and follow the new business page.
Once this is done, owners should start customizing their pages to showcase the best of their businesses and point page viewers to their company’s website.
It’s important for business owners to fill out the “About” section of their Facebook business page. This allows customers to find the business’ physical location, phone number, email, and website. Owners can also create a Facebook username, allowing customers to @mention the business in public posts and comments.
When viewing a business’ Facebook page, customers should be able to find a link to the company’s website at a glance. To make this easy, Facebook allows users to “Add a Button” to the navigation bar beneath the page’s cover photo, which can link to an outside website.
Depending on the type of business and products being sold, owners may add one or all of the following buttons, linking to pages on their business’ website: “Book with you,” “Contact you,” “Learn more about your business,” “Shop with you,” and “Download your app or play your game.” If a business owner decides to use more than one button, It’s best to make sure that each button goes to a different page on their business website, corresponding to the button text.
For owners uncomfortable with setting up own business page, it’s possible to hire a marketing firm to get their business started online. Business owners in Santa Clarita can depend on KHTS Marketing to build their social media presence from the ground up.
Presenting Yourself Online
Profile pictures and cover photos can be changed if a business decides to do a major rebrand, but in general it’s good to pick a good profile picture and stick with it for a long time. Profile pictures are the main thing customers will see when interacting with a business, so it’s important for this image to be distinctive.
Generally, profile pictures showing happy people are more engaging to customers than images of business’ headquarters or products. Cover images are most effective if they don’t have a lot of text advertising sales; save these images for advertisements themselves or for timeline posts.
It’s best to give the customer a seamless experience between their business’ social media pages and their company website. To this end, owners should consider using the same colors and images that are displayed on their website on their social media pages.
If those images cannot be repurposed, it may be useful to ask the same graphic designer from the website to generate some new content in the same style.
Moreover, if an owner’s current company website doesn’t contain professional images and graphic design, it may be beneficial to find a designer who can handle both a website redesign and create graphics for use on social media. Santa Clarita business owners may choose KHTS Marketing to handle both of these projects.
Getting Followed
Getting “likes” and follows will increase a page’s reputation with the Facebook algorithm. The more the algorithm favors a business page, the more often that business’ posts will show up on followers’ timelines.
Some retail businesses and restaurants run special discounts for customers who can show cashiers that they’ve “liked” and followed the business’ Facebook page as a way of building their brand on the platform. These tactics can quickly grow a company’s social media presence while also building goodwill among their customer base.
In order to keep getting “likes” on a business’ page, owners should regularly post content which customers find interesting. Image posts tend to have the highest engagement on Facebook, especially those depicting people.
Business owners should also post about promotions, using professionally designed advertisements if possible. These posts can also be made into advertisements in their own right, but should appear in the page’s timeline at least once as the promotional period begins.
Since content generation takes time and posts should be frequent to drive engagement, some businesses may want to hire a professional marketing firm to handle content marketing on social media. KHTS Marketing can help Santa Clarita businesses build their web presence, generating content for customers’ social media and websites.
Advertising
Facebook allows businesses to target ads to customers on a very granular level. By clicking the “Promote” button on a business page, Facebook allows owners to “Get Started With Automated Ads.” Unless business owners are prepared to take on a second job learning about social media, they should use the guided process provided by this tool to purchase advertising space on the Facebook platform.
This guided tool will allow business owners to use a single image, a slideshow of multiple images, or a video as an advertisement. Above this advertisement, owners can write a 90 character ad copy.
Ads will have a single button which will send customers to the business website or allow them to contact the business on Facebook, depending on which type of ad the owner chooses to run.
Business owners can run multiple versions of ads targeting different audiences. In the “Choose an Audience” section, Facebook automatically chooses the audience it thinks will most benefit from a business’ products based on information page administrators have given them. Business owners can define more specific audiences by clicking the “Create Audience” button.
This lets business owners filter customers by education, finances, location, birthday, and more. Ads can target people who are friends with people belonging to certain demographics, who are newly married, or who are likely to engage with certain types of political content.
Finally, owners must choose a daily budget. Suggested amounts are $2, $3, and $5, but it’s also possible to set a custom amount. Higher budgets allow more people to potentially view a business’ ads.
To get the most out of Facebook advertising, advertisers need to become experts on the platform. Since Facebook changes its algorithm all the time, advertisers need to spend a lot of time keeping up with the latest news and tweaking their approach with every update.
Business owners who don’t have the time to keep up with algorithmic trends may want to consider hiring marketers who have dedicated themselves to understanding social media. In Santa Clarita, KHTS Marketing has been writing web content through 2003. KTHS Marketing knows the ins and outs of Facebook marketing, and have developed techniques to specifically target ads to Santa Clarita residents.
