Pure Protential Musings: 111004 - Putting up a Facebook business page

Woe, oh woe, is me; I just put up a business page in Facebook. It may be easy for some, but it was an effort to me. Here is the accounting of the trials and tribulations, and how I overcome it all, to put up a business page in Facebook. While there is a lot of how to in this discussion, it is not intended to be a technical manual, so "what it looks like" diagrams are limited. It probably would not help to get to detailed, because Facebook is notorious for changing things with telling anyone.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Part 1 - The mission is born
About one week ago, I decided I should put up a businesses page in Facebook for Pure Potential Writing Services. I have found a good number of people live their Internet life on Facebook. If it is not on Facebook, they don't know about it.AOL users are much like that too.

The reason for deciding to put up a business page in Facebook was simple. Facebook is now the second most used site on the Internet, so being present there seemed to be a wise choice. Based on the details on how my business works, I should get more potential notice on Facebook than the yellow pages. In my area, the local yellow pages is sent to only 60,000 people, and opportunities in this local area are very limited. At a cost of $50 to $1,000, or more per month, per directory (city), for just a simple yellow page listing, the yellow pages are not that good for a business that is not tied to a specific locality and does not have a physical shop for clients to visit.

But why run a business page? Here are my main reasons:

Running a business from your personal page is against the terms of service (TOS) you agreed to when you joined Facebook. Failure to adhere to the TOS can get you kicked off Facebook. If you try it, you could lose your investment.
Mixing my personal posts and business does not work well. Facbook was originally designed as a personal share site and most of its behavor and activities still appear to revolve around that assumption. My family and friends do not necessarily want to hear my business related posts, and businesses I deal with do not want to hear my personal posts. Thus, a separation of the activities is needed.
The number of "likes" you make on a personal page limited, and those that can like you is limited too. Business pages are unlimited.
You can advertise a business page.
It is easier to follow business activities when it is not mixed with personal issues, and visa versa.

Not all that tough, I thought
Now I didn't figure it would be so tough. I have been working with computers since 1976. "Couldn't be that hard," said I, as I sat down to my personal Facebook page. I thought, "less technical owners than I have already done their business pages" I already know html, css, php, cgi, and a bunch of other Internet used computer languages, "so what could be that new?"

The first surprise
First, I found that it might be a good idea to check within Facebook (FB) to see if your business is already listed. I found lots of businesses that I knew and liked, already had a Facebook page that was not claimed. I do not know where the unclaimed pages came from, but I found them.

If you have an existing Facebook page for your business, then some of the work behind creating the pages, and what it looks like, already has mistakes waiting for you to fix. You will want to go and adopt the existing page as your page, because you may already have people subscribed to that page. These are people that have clicked that they "like" that page thinking you are maintaining it- like you knew it was there. You will want to try to keep them, because you may not be able to get them back if you try to move them off that existing page. It is a good thing to have a start of FB clients knowing about your page, so don't give them up. You may regret it if you do.

Location of create page as of this writing

Where did that create page option go?
No such luck, or extra work perhaps, for me though. I had to start from scratch. First, I had to find the create page option, which seemed to move around on me within Facebook. I eventually found that at the far bottom, near the end of a page scroll, when the "wall" was showing, it was reliably available.

Once I found a stable spot for the apparently wandering create page link, I clicked "create a page" and began the next stage of the "easy to make a business page project."

The next issue appears in the form of a selection

Business or org select

At his point, I had to select what kind of page was my page. Was it business page such as a corporation or similar, and some other features about it- or was a brand or product within a my business or endeavor.

Product or brand select

The main problem I ran into in this step was that none of the direct service or product options within Facebook fully describes what I do, and what I think the Facebook page should display about the business. I do some consulting, writing is not even listed, and listing as local business is not proper because I can write and consult for someone anywhere the Internet reaches. It is a business, and not a community, so the product or business page seemed to be the issue.

So off I went on a search of learning what others, who do what I do or close to it, selected. My assumption was that if they selected it, it must be what they learned people used to find their type of business. Silly me, I found that was not the case.

Accordingly, I made some searches within my professional database and programmer resources, talked with a few colleagues on Linkedin and e-mail, and came up with some ideas of the directions to pusue.

It took a few hours; but, I amwas then armed with new knowledge of what others had been doing, plus some new understanding of how Facebook navigation takes place. I have also learned that people that make their own pages do not know what people search for. Thus, I came back to this screen and I picked out what I thought were the best choices.

The information tab data shows on other pages

If you put it here, it will appear over there
The next major issue was to fill out the basic business information. This may not be as easy as you think. I found that that the information used in the Facebook information section will be automatically be displayed in various locations throughout the Facebook site, and any applications (apps) you load into it.

Your first impression about what you should enter and where may change based upon the results you receive. For example, I found that modifying my mission statement and putting it as the company overview created a better reading result on the Facebook page displays that use my company page information.

The next to last section is a search section
As best I can tell, the next to last section is not only for viewing, but it is also used in search results. Thus what you put in and how you put it in is a marketing decision. I assumed that the format is similar to that used in the keyword tag for a search engines, so I used that as a guide. This seemed to be what others were doing. With that in mind, I used the products and services performed, separated by commas, as my products. Your investigation of what others have done should give you an idea of what you should put here as well. I have some doubts that Facebook is using search engine technology. Its searches do not appear to be very sophisticated and mainly uses titles. I entered my data assuming that it does behave like a search engine, or will in future. Using general current search engine rules, most of those algorithms give a preference to the first 3-6 items. Thus, the ones that mean the most to your business should be in those first 6 terms. This is not the place to alphabetize, it is a place for marketing.

Your website address
You can post your Facebook site without a website domain. You can put it in later. However, if you do not have a website, you should see my discussion below.

Final steps
Save the results and go through the page and its "tabs" (the links on the left side), and see if what appears is what you expected. At this point, I suggest you stop and "sleep on it." When you come back to check it out the next day, you will notice things that can be improved and can make those changes. You do not have to publish it right away. It is better to make sure your errors, spelling and grammar issues are removed from the page as much as you can make it before your publish.

Publish it
When you think you are ready, publish it; but, do not advertise it yet. I suggest you get some friends and colleagues to look it over and make suggestions. They can use the "wall" for that activity, because no one but them and you should really see it. Remember that if you start getting clients subscribing to the page ("like"), they will get a notice of every little change. They probably won't like that. It is better to get the page stable, and to the point where you do not think you will need to change it much. You will be doing enough changes later as you learn more.

Oh my, it did what I told it to do
It will never be perfect, and if you are making it work for you, it will never stop changing. When you go to a major business page, it often changes everyday. Your business page does not need to be that active, and probably should not be that active. If it is too active, you will drive clients away from your page, and away from your business.

Next article, Part 2 adding content to your page
Add some features that make you page more than just a series of news posts that may be of limited interest to your client. Content will help your page be more than just an ignored resource.

The total time to create my Facebook page without any added tab content features was 16-hours. I could have done it in less than an hour. However, the pages would have been unfocused and, I think, less useful to the visitor, and my existing and potential clients. About half the time I spent was in researching the best way to perform the activity and how it would show. Now that I have done it, it would probably take half as long or less to do it a second time. Thus a designer, should you go that direction, should easily be able to complete what I did in a very short time.

Some special notes about websites

Get a website
If you don't have a website, shame on you. What kind of business today does not have a phone number. A website is like a really big phone number. For many businesses, a hosted website is more important than a having phone number. Facebook has a large number of clients, but the number is small compared to everyone who is on the Internet. Not everyone is on Facebook.As many users as it has, the number is still not a majority of users.

Domains and hosting
A website consist of a domain, content, and a host to place the domain and content upon. Find a good hosting service and pay them to get the domain. Figure $20-$30 for a good domain service and $10 to $30 per month for a good hosting service. Buying cheap usually requires you buy a some extra features that the low price did not include, you need, but did not know you would need, That is what those kinds of services are counting on: the up-sell.

Put some content on that website
I don't understand why some people have a Facebook business page, and a website that just says under construction. In creating the Facebook page, they have already done most of the work. At first, just use what is already done, the Facebook content, in the website. If you are just getting a Facebook business page and don't already have a website, a three page site, that replicates what Facebook does, hosted outside the Facebook world may be all you need on the website. I know of several one page sites that have been working just fine for more than ten years, and bringing in business too, If you have a programmer do it, expect to start at $500. Unless you are selling programming or technology, it is better to not get too fancy in appearance.

Think about hiring a website consultant to guide you.
Using a business website consultant to guide you will run about $500 or more. Since I often work as a consultant, I am biased; but I think good consultants are well worth their cost. The consultant can can help select a domain, pick a website host, generate content, select a website designer, and guide that designer. My experience is that the final website will produce more results when the client has had a consultant help them. It often costs less than not hiring a consultant and allowing a programmer to make the choices for you.

The consultant can guide you to a best solution. Website designers always like a big website site with lots of bells and whistles. Most small businesses end up a website that has too much "fluff" on it, and not enough of what clients want.

What do customers want when they visit a website? Content. They want the hours of business, map of location, pictures of the building, and so on. If you sell rocking chairs, a cute flash program of a rocking chair may get noticed, but what most really want to see is the actual chair they want to buy. You can spend a lot of money on the flash, and get very little "sizzle" that causes the client to contact you.

That's it
Before you announce or advertise that Facebook page, add some features that make your page more than just a series of news posts. News posts are more interesting to the client that knows you. It may be of very limited interest to the potential client. The potential client needs to be sold on why they should receive the business posts. We will cover this in the next article.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Sam Martin
Website: http://www.purepotential.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PurePotentialMusings

Pure Protential Musings

Thursday, October 6, 2011

111004 - Putting up a Facebook business page - Part 1 of 4

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