Making a Facebook page for your company is a fairly easy and free way
to jump on the social media bandwagon. You’ve registered your company
and set up the page, your basic information is filled in, now what? In
order for your page to broaden your online presence and attract
consumers, you do need to put in a bit more effort to make it effective.

‘In order to build a compelling Facebook page that yields measurable results, business owners first need to identify their main objectives,’ says Mari Smith, relationship marketing expert and co-author of Facebook Marketing: An hour a day. ‘So many small business fail to fully benefit from all that Facebook offers quite simply due to a lack of clear goals and a strategy to achieve those goals.’

So first things first; what is your goal? Whether it’s to sell more products, improve customer service or build relationships, identifying what you actually wish to achieve with your Facebook page should be your first step.

‘There’s a number ways that businesses can utilise Facebook,’ says Grady Burnett, director of global online and inside sales at Facebook. ‘The world’s always been social and the web has traditionally been fairly anonymous and Facebook is very focused on trying to provide tools and an environment to drive engagement and discussion between people and communities, institution brands, companies and small businesses.’

Follow these tips to ensure your Facebook page is an effective marketing tool:

Use the features:

‘Getting the page right and understanding what content is there is probably the best starting point,’ Burnett says. ‘There’s a lot of different features and if you just focus on one, it might not get the benefit that you need overall.’

Developing the look of your page, and building a solid strategy involves using a variety of features that are available on Facebook; from posting photos, updating your status, announcing new services – combine them all the create an interactive and interesting page.

‘So if you’re a restaurant, sharing a video of a head chef giving a cooking tip or something like that, it’s a great opportunity where that functionality is built into the page,’ Burnett says. ‘If a company is using all of that it provides a great rich environment to engage their user base.’

It may seem like an overwhelming amount of work to take on board, but determining which features to enhance the look of your page will be worth it, when traffic to the site increases.

An increasingly popular feature on many organisations Facebook pages is the option for ‘direct purchase’ – creating an online shop were customers can not only buy, but also interact, connect and build loyal relationships. Adding a product tab to your page allows fans to view all of your products and gives them a direct, simple route to purchase them.

A second feature that can be incredibly useful to your business is a custom page app. Facebook allows you to incorporate an app which can be built into your page to create distinctive quizzes, games or other interactive features.

This allows you to really show off your creativity and individuality – making your business standout. Building custom tabs will set your page apart from your competitors and attract more customer interaction.