If you are new to Facebook and Instagram for business, these tips will help you decide if you want to use both these platforms or just one.  It really depends on your business goals and your audience.

A business page for either Facebook or Instagram starts with a personal page.  Business pages are free to set up and essential if you want to advertise in the future.

At the beginning, it is best to start with brand awareness for your company by reaching out organically via your business page.

1. Set Up Your Facebook Business Page

For starters, take a tour of the business page by taking these quick lessons from facebook:  Each lesson is just a few minutes long and covers all the basic areas of your business facebook page.  Take the time to set up your business page properly by filling in all the blanks.  You want to make it easy for your customers to find you.

2.  How to Grow Your Facebook Business Page Organically?

Getting your potential clients to know, like and trust you is easy if you have lots of valuable content to share.  What kinds of things can you share to your facebook business page.

  • Share your facebook business page into facebook groups.  Always check the facebook group rules (usually in the description of the group) before you post.  If you don’t follow the group rules, it’s probably likely the admin will pull down your post and if you continue to abuse the guidelines you could be banned from the group!
  • Share your blog posts, podcasts and videos into your facebook business page.  (make sure you have the share button on your website post pagess) to easily share to your facebook business page.
  • Share your YouTube videos into your facebook business page.

It’s always a great idea to write a preamble as to why you are sharing and why it is helpful for your prospective customers to look at your shared posts.  It helps them determine if it is worth their time to click on your post.

  • Behind the scenes pictures are great to share as it shows work in progress
  • Do you have employees?  Get them to take pictures of themselves, post them in your facebook business page and then share to their personal timelines.   It shows you care.
  • Invite your friends and family to share your facebook business page, because everyone has their own networks and while they might overlap, they are not all the same.

3.  Before you Spend Money on Facebook Ads, Know Your Purpose

  • If your business is brand new, or brand new to facebook, the first thing to create is brand awareness.  What does your company do differently to stand out in the marketplace?  There is usually one thing that you focus on that solves a problem for your customers. Keep the focus on what you do best for the ideal target market.  You can spin this through videos, podcasts, pictures and  blog posts.

What is your purpose?

  • Choose an objective
  • Choose an audience, are they local, or doesn’t it matter?
  • Choose a format
  • Set up a budget
  • Measure your ad response

In choosing an objective for your ad, what are you trying to achieve?

  • Increase brand awareness
  • Promote your app
  • Increase online business
  • Promote your local business
  • Generate leads
  • Retargeting people who have already gone to your website

4.  Who is Your Facebook Business Page Audience?

  • Gender (male/female/both?)
  • Age Group
  • Geography (region, country, state, city or postal code)
  • Interests/behaviours
  • People who like your page and their friends

5.  Where are you Going to Direct Your Audience in Your Facebook Ad?  Where are They Going to Land?

  • Your landing page is very important.   There are some key components that will make your landing page successful.  For tips on how to create a winning landing page, take a look at this post by Robert Dunford
  • Key points:
    • Clean and crisp photos
    • Think about using a 1 minute video
    • A clear Call to Action Statement (CTA) repeated 3 times (beginning, middle, edn
    • Testimonials to create the trust factor
    • A free giveaway for your audience in the first ad followed by your course or paid offer in the second ad

6. Create a facebook Pixel to Retarget People Who Are On facebook and Visited Your Site

What is the facebook pixel all about? A facebook pixel is a few lines of code from Facebook that you copy into the header section of your website.  This code allows the pixel to receive information about the actions taken on your website to make your Facebook ads more relevant to your audience. Here’s how it works

  • Install the pixel in the code on your website
  • Receive insights about visitors to your website, like where traffic is coming from, the devices people use to connect to your page and other demographic information
  • It also shows the actions visitors take on your website like what they purchase and which pages they view
  • The Facebook pixel also allows you to keep track of actions that happen on your website as a result of a paid Facebook ad or free organic reach. This helps you analyze your Facebook ad conversions

To install a facebook pixel on your website there are two ways to do it.  If you have a wordpress website you can install a plugin to do this easily for you.  If you have another kind of website,  you need to go to “Events Manager” on facebook and click on Pixels.   Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/tips-to-create-and-install-facebook-pixel?ref=ahc_lwe

7.  The World of Instagram

  • It’s a visual world, a more casual world more about experiences than product

It is easy to be a little lazy and just reproduce everything on facebook to Instagram, but you should have a different strategy.

  • Include life experiences
  • Show more of the personal side of your business
  • Include where you are showing up, ie trade shows, networking events etc.
  • Make your graphics very appealing for the 1 second view
  • Make your problem solving for customer problems into small bites….spread the breadcrumbs over a week

Hashtag, hashtag, hashtag.

Use a hashtag app to use popular hashtags and then sprinkle in your own.  Post frequently!

Know the difference between stories (24 hour timing) and posts.   Flash sales for stories…use the FOMO approach (fear of missing out).

Use an app like linktr.ee in your bio to direct people to different pages or offer on your website because your Instagram bio can only have one clickable link.   If you are writing an Instagram post and directing any links you put in are not clickable.  The best way to handle this is to link back to different pages on your website by directing them back to your bio and clicking on the linktr.ee tab.

8.  Advertising on Instagram

Instagram’s Algorithm is centred more around engagement.  That’s why influencers have more pull on Instagram because they have an engaged following.

Remember that Instagrams demographics are much younger, their attention span is much shorter and they like the features of Instagram that make pictures unique.  Remember when you are advertising the pull of Instagram.   Use square images to optimize the platform.

  1. Engagement. How many hearts and comments on each post. These show how much engagement you are getting.
  2. Relevancy. Are the post’s subjects relevant to the user?  So watch your hashtags are aligned with the subject
  3. Relationships. Posts from accounts that the user interacts with more frequently are ranked higher. (Your influencers)
  4. Timeliness. More recent posts are ranked higher….the reason you need to post on a regular basis.
  5. Profile searches. Posts from accounts that users search for regularly are ranked higher.  Again this is where hashtags come in.   They help drive people to your account
  6. Direct shares. Posts from accounts the user directly shares with others are ranked higher, and the person who receives the shared posts gets a rank boost on their own posts.  So keep a list of important instagram handles where you can tag influencers
  7. Time spent on post. The time spent actually looking at a post (not scrolling).  What is the value of your content?

9.  Learn from the Pros….the folks at Facebook!

Facebook conducts training in many cities and advertise the free course on facebook.   So make sure you are logged into your location to see whether there is facebook training near you!   You never know when you are going to meet awesome people at a facebook training.   I met some awesome entrepreneurs at the February facebook training in Port Charlotte, Florida.  We are going to meetup again in March.

Want to learn more about the facebook/instagram business pages, check out

facebook.com/blueprint for a full list of  free courses.

If you need help setting up your facebook and instagram for business pages and someone to manage these platforms, contact us for a complimentary call.