Facebook Page: What It Is and When to Use It | Facebook Academy

In this lesson we’ll talk about the Facebook page, a useful and highly recommended tool for doing business.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this lesson:

• what a Facebook business page is
• the differences between a personal profile and a business page
• when to use a Facebook business page
• how to create a page on Facebook

Once you understand what Facebook business pages are and when it makes sense to use them, we’ll move on to how to create a Facebook business page — which isn’t complicated in itself, but you need to do it right to build a successful Facebook page.

Let’s get started!

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The Facebook business page is a tool Facebook gives you to get your company in front of as many people as possible, build engagement, and gather your fans on this social media platform.

A business page is a great resource for a company that wants to grow its brand awareness and reach specific business goals, whether that’s sales, engagement, or something else.

This Facebook feature is recommended for anyone who owns or manages a company or business, sells products or services, runs an organization, as well as for public figures, artists, and the entertainment industry.

You may be wondering: does a Facebook business page cost money? The answer is that opening a page costs nothing!

We strongly recommend opening one if you want to drive extra traffic to your website, or if you want to get better results than the ones you’ve achieved so far.

In this section we’ll look at the difference between a personal Facebook profile and a Facebook business page.

Facebook lets us open a profile, a page, or even both. It all depends on your situation and your goals.

Here are the differences:

• A personal profile shouldn’t be opened for commercial purposes — it represents an individual. A Facebook page, on the other hand, is used for business and offers tools dedicated to exactly that.
• A personal profile is connected to the people you accept as friends. If someone isn’t logged into Facebook and isn’t your friend, they won’t be able to see anything about you (unless your privacy is set to public). A Facebook business page, however, gets indexed on Google, so anyone can find you.
• A personal profile has a limit on the number of people you can add: 5,000 friends. A Facebook business page has no such limit on the number of fans.
• On a personal profile you can see the content your friends publish, and vice versa. On a business page, anyone who gives your page a Like will see your updates in their feed.
• On a personal profile you can tag any friends and pages you want; on a business page you can only tag other pages.
• A personal profile has built-in chat. A page doesn’t let you chat with your fans.
• A personal profile can send private messages to both profiles and business pages, while a business page can only reply to messages it receives from users and message other business pages.
• With a personal profile you have no way to see profile stats and analytics, unlike a business page, which lets you know who visits your page, at what time, what they prefer to look at, and much more.

Screenshot from facebook.com

A Facebook page can help you spark interactions with your business on social media and get people to discover and follow you on your website too. The key is to plan your activities well and stay consistent — post at a good pace to keep your users engaged. A page with no posts is actually counterproductive.

The Facebook business page is used primarily for marketing purposes:

• you use a business page to build visibility;
• you work on making other users aware that your brand exists;
• you aim to hit your sales targets.

It’s worth using a Facebook page for business because:

• Facebook gives you access to paid ads (Facebook ads), which you can only run after opening a business page (ads are paid sponsored posts that let you reach your target audience);
• your business page is your business card and helps people get to know you, so it deserves care and attention to what you want to communicate;
• you can offer customer support and assistance by integrating Facebook Messenger bots into your page — automatic responders that handle requests for help.

Creating a page on Facebook isn’t complicated at all! It only takes a few simple steps.

The first thing you need to do is go to Facebook. Once it loads, at the top right you’ll find a downward-facing arrow ↓ — click it and a dropdown will open where you’ll see the option: Create a Page.

You can also go there directly by clicking here.

This screen will open:

Screenshot from facebook.com

What do you need to do in this first step? You need to choose which type of Facebook page to open.

The 6 boxes you see are the types of page you can create on Facebook. Let’s look at the categories in detail:

1. Local Business or Place: lets you create a Facebook page for, say, a bar, a pizzeria, retail shops, or venues.
2. Company, Organization or Institution: this is the exact category for anyone who wants to create a Facebook business page.
3. Brand or Product: if you have a website you can link it to this type of page — same goes for a blog. If you have products to promote and sell, or a brand of your own, this is the right category for you!
4. Artist, Band or Public Figure: this section is hugely popular with fans who create fan pages for artists or famous people with a large following.
5. Entertainment: a section dedicated to books, TV shows, and theater productions.
6. Cause or Community: a section dedicated to supporting a community or a cause.

Once you’ve decided which category your business belongs to, click on it and a window will open where you’ll fill in the fields based on the type of business you have.

Continue by clicking Get Started.

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After clicking Get Started, a window with several sections will open:

1. Information
2. Profile Picture
3. Add to Favorites
4. Preferred Page Audience

Let’s go through what to do step by step:

• The first step is to give users an idea of what your Facebook Page is about, so provide a Description and a Website to earn a better position in search results. Enter a UNIQUE username that will identify your Facebook page and make it easier for users to remember and find you.
• Add a profile picture and a cover image that represent your Facebook Page. You can import them from your website or upload them from your computer. Save and continue! You can change the profile photo of your Facebook page whenever you like, and then add the cover image. Just click on it and upload the photos/images you prefer.
• Facebook immediately gives you the option to save your Facebook Page to your Favorites, making access much quicker. You can add it to your favorites and confirm by pressing the green button, or skip this step and move on to the next one.
• Now enter the information about your Page’s target audience — the people you’d most like to interact with. You can choose where these people are located, their age, their gender, the interests of the people you want to attract, and the languages they speak.
• Now go ahead and finish creating your Facebook Page.

Now that you’ve created your Facebook business page, you can optimize it.

One optimization option is adding buttons to make it easier for users to contact you or to buy a product you sell — and depending on the type of page you’ve opened, one button might suit you better than another.

To add a button, all you have to do is go to the top right of your Facebook Page tab and click Add a Button.

A dropdown will appear with the various options you can add as a button — just select the one you prefer.

On the left-hand side you’ll find the sections in the order they’re displayed to the user.

This order can be changed. Just go to Manage Tabs and drag the various items you see (information, photos, people who like the page, videos, posts) into the order you want.

Now that you’ve created and optimized your Facebook business page, the next step is to let your friends know about your page by inviting them to like your Facebook page.

Inviting friends is really easy to do!

Under the cover photo you’ll see three sections, the third of which contains the label: …More

So what do you do? Select More and you’ll see an option called: Invite Friends. Selecting it opens a window with the list of friends you can send the invitation to.

You can also Share your page, for example on your personal profile.

One extra tip for you: you can edit and manage your page’s roles, privacy, messages, and notifications by selecting the Page Settings, which you’ll find right on the page, at the top right!

Once you’re in the settings you’ll see all the options I mentioned above, and by going through them one by one you can fine-tune your page even further.

Conclusion

In this Facebook Academy lesson you’ve learned what a Facebook page is, you’ve understood the difference between a Facebook business page and a personal profile, and you’re now able to choose which type of profile to use. We’ve also shown you how to create a page on Facebook, so no more excuses. Head over to Facebook and open your own successful Facebook business page.

As you’ve seen, it’s all fairly simple — but if you don’t know Facebook very well, creating one might not be so obvious!

In the next lessons we’ll tackle increasingly advanced topics. One of the topics coming up soon is how to promote your Facebook business page. Keep following us and move on to the next lessons!

Want a Facebook consultation? Contact us! We’ll design the best Facebook strategy to do whatever it takes to reach your goal.

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