How to set up a Facebook Business page

Our independent reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers.

Some 66% of the UK’s population (approximately 44.84 million people) are active Facebook users. It is the world’s most popular social media network (yes, still!) so whether you like it or not, having a Facebook business page is integral to your company’s marketing strategy.

While it’s incredibly likely you’re already familiar with (and probably have) a personal Facebook profile, it may be that you are new to the concept of a Facebook business page, and trust us the two do differ! So we’ve put together this super helpful step-by-step guide on how to set up and run a business page successfully, and included any helpful tips from the experts on how to make the most of it.

However, to make life easier for yourself as a busy business owner, we’d recommend you work with a digital marketing professional who can manage your Facebook Business page for you, at least at first.

Getting social media support for your business is cheaper than you might think. If you’d like to know exactly how much it would cost you, simply fill out a few details using our one-minute quote comparison tool. It is easy to use, and there are zero obligations on your part — oh, and it’s 100% free!

Or read on to learn more about how to set up a Facebook Business page.

In this article, we’ll cover:

How to create a Facebook page for your business
How to make the most of your Facebook Business page
How to measure the success of your Facebook Business page
Next steps: should you outsource your Facebook Business page management?

How to create a Facebook page for your business

Luckily, it is super easy to set up a Facebook Business page. Simply follow the steps below to get started!

Step 1: Register and create a Facebook Business page

To begin with, you’ll need a personal profile in order to create a business page. Once you’re logged into your profile, do the following:

Select ‘Menu’
Choose ‘Pages’ from the shortcuts
Select ‘Create Page’ and then click ‘Get Started’
Pick your page name (the name of your business)

Step 2: Select categories

This is an important step, as categories help Facebook users find particular Pages they are looking for in the search results.

You can select up to three categories, so choose them wisely and ensure they are relatable to your business. For example, if you are running a beauty salon, you would select categories such as ‘beauty, cosmetic & personal care’.

Step 3: Add the basic (but essential) information

Next, you need to add the finer details that will form the foundations of your page, and help inform audiences:

What your business is about (briefly) including what products/services are on offer
How customers can contact you
Your businesses location
Your opening hours

Imporant: double check all this information is accurate, and be sure it is all kept up to date so customers know the important info (like opening hours – nobody wants to get to a shop to find it closed)

Jacqueline Martin, social media consultant at marketing agency Hallam, reiterates this. She says:

“This advice sounds obvious, but fill in as much information as possible on your page. A complete profile helps to prove you are a legitimate business to Facebook users!”

Step 4: Begin personalising your page

The next step is to make your page unique to your business. Creativity is key here, particularly when it comes to your profile picture and cover photo.

Make sure your brand logo is clear, and that your cover photo really grabs the audience’s attention. You can even get your creative team to produce an advertisement to use for your cover photo (about the latest in-store offer for example).

Step 5: Add a call-to-action (CTA) button

Adding a CTA is crucial, as it guides Facebook users that visit your page towards a certain action. Whether that be a sign-up to your website, or a visit to your online store. There are plenty of CTA buttons available for you to use (and test) which is one of the many positives about having a Facebook Business page!

Step 6: Invite friends

You can begin building your page’s audience by inviting the users you are already connected with on your personal profile! This is a great way for your business to gain some early traction, particularly from your biggest fan (in our case, our mums).

Step 7: Turn on notifications and marketing emails

It is important to stay up to date about what is happening on your page. It is even more important to respond to customers succinctly and professionally. So be sure to keep page notifications turned on.

You can also choose whether you would like marketing and promotional emails from Meta in relation to the products and services it can offer to help improve your page’s performance. Depending on the size of your marketing team. your strategy, and whether you are going to outsource your marketing, will determine whether you want to receive communication about this.

Step 8: Write a kick-ass welcome post

Now that your page is set up, the next step is to publish your first post to the Facebook world! Your ideal first post will be:

Short – you aren’t Victor Hugo writing Les Miserables. Simply welcome users to your business, explain succinctly (and effectively) what the purpose of your business is, the products you offer, and why you are different from the thousands of other UK businesses on Facebook (this point is important). There’s literally zero harm in being confident about how you differ from your competitors
Eye-catching – include emojis or other media, such as images (e.g. a team or product photo), or video clips to attract attention and get users excited. Videos are always a winner – with 78% of marketers feeling that they have directly increased sales for clients over the last year

Step 9: Engage with Facebook users

Engaging with Facebook users is a key part of using the platform successfully. The more you interact with customers, the more likely you are to get page likes and followers (and most importantly – reviews)!

Tip: try not to leave it longer than 24 hours to respond to customer queries.

Particularly as 79% of consumers expect brands to respond within a day of reaching out over social media, but average brand response rates across all industries is lower than 25%.

How to make the most of your Facebook Business page

Research your target audience

Before you start posting content on your Facebook Business page, you really need to think about the kind of content your target customer would want to see. For younger audiences, short vertical videos are your best bet.

Optimise your page with strategically placed keywords

Using strategically placed keywords on your Facebook Business page is a great way to optimise it. The more keywords, the higher the traffic and, ultimately, the followers. It also vastly improves your page’s search ranking position as it means a higher SEO (search engine optimisation) score.

Some of the best places to include keywords are in your page’s title or name, as well as the URL and ‘About’ section. Also, the address section can be particularly useful to help you rank locally.

Other areas of your page to include keywords are of course in the content that you post, such as descriptions, photos, and updates.

You can find which words or phrases to implement using a keyword research tool like Semrush. Or, type into search engines any queries you can think of that your customers would use to find your business.

Add a pinned post to the top of your page

If you want to keep a post at the top of your timeline, you can add a pinned post to your page. There are a number of reasons for doing so, including:

Ensuring that key information is easily seen
Showcasing a current campaign
Displaying a new product launch
Promoting an event
Directing users to your blog or website
Advertising the latest discounts and deals

How to add a pinned post to your Facebook Business page:

Go to your page timeline
Find the post that you want to pin
Click on the ‘…’ icon in the top right of the post
Select ‘Pin to top of page’

How do you know if a post has been pinned?

It will appear at the top of your page’s timeline under the ‘featured’ section

Note that the pinned post feature is not available on personal Facebook page timelines.

Interact with users

Interacting with users is a vital part of building a following on any social media platform, particularly on Facebook.

Be sure to:

Ask questions – this is a way of involving users and communicating with them. It can also provide some insight into how they feel about a product you’ve recently launched, or a service you provide
Respond to comments – answering user’s questions helps to show that there’s a real person or team working behind the scenes, and inspires trust in the brand
Share and like content – by being an active member of your Facebook community, you can help to create a connection between your business and your customers
Run a competition – promote a product or help to drive engagement with a competition, although be sure to check Facebook’s rules on running them

Manage comments

Once you start to build a community and interact with other users more frequently, it’s likely that you’ll start to receive some comments on your page. You’ll need to manage these, so that you keep control of what happens on your page.

There are steps you can take to ensure that only relevant or useful comments are displayed, as well as to take action against any abusive or inappropriate comments. Also, Facebook offers the option to block words and turn on its profanity filter.

By taking control of your comments sections, you can filter out negative comments, whilst also helping to provide a generally enjoyable customer service experience.

Plus, it allows you to accurately reflect your brand and ethos: everything from the tone of voice to the timing of your responses helps to build your community and create a relationship with your customers. And, if the worst should happen, you can also help manage expectations.

Here are some top tips:

Check comments on your page regularly
Identify comments that require action
Respond accordingly
Review any other steps that you need to take, e.g. exchanging an item

You’ll need to manage comments in multiple areas of your page, including posts, photos, and videos. However, other areas of your page where comments may feature include:

Reviews – users can also comment on reviews, although reviews can be turned off (if you set up this feature – mentioned in the tabs section above). It’s also worth remembering that reviews may help people to find your page
Ads – while you may think comments are only for posts, users may be able to comment on ads if and when you run them, so be sure to manage them accordingly

When responding to comments, you can opt for a public or private response. Note that if you choose the latter, it will show that the comment has been responded to privately. You might want to do this when following up on a customer service query, for example.

Join and interact with groups

Joining Facebook groups allow you to network and share content, within your industry, with other startup founders, and with consumers.

When you contribute to a group discussion, it allows you to position your business as an industry leader, such as by responding to queries for advice or call-outs for experts. Plus, it’s another way of promoting events, products, or services.

Also, as groups can be set to public, private, or secret, the latter two types can be used to create a sense of exclusiveness.

Serena Doherty, Senior Social Media Specialist at Bamboo Nine, offering her insight into Facebook groups, says:

Local community noticeboards often have a specific day for local businesses to promote themselves. If you work in a niche industry or there are hobbyists, support groups, or communities around your products or services, you should be there!

Keep on top of your DMs in Facebook Messenger

As we touched on previously, 79% of consumers expect brands to respond within 24 hours of them sending a message. Whilst in the US, patience is certainly not a virtue as 13% of consumers want a DM reply within the first hour.

If you fail to respond to customer queries within a certain time frame, you will be at real risk of putting them off your brand. Do you really want to miss out on a potential sale or new customer because it took you two weeks to respond? We think not.

Keep your notifications on and be sure to check your device regularly so you can stay on top of customer inquiries.

However, remember a work-life balance is important, so be sure to get your ‘do not disturb’ on when you want that all-important downtime. Don’t burn out.

To access your messages:

Download the messenger app
Select the profile icon in the top left-hand corner
Select your Business Page Account
Access your messages and get responding!

Run Facebook ads to boost engagement and reach

Advertising on Facebook is a great way to reach a wider audience (or a more specific demographic with targeted ads).

To find out everything you need to know about advertising on Facebook, visit our guide to Facebook ad costs.

How to measure the success of your Facebook Business page

Now that you know how to set up your page and optimise it, how do you monitor its performance? Luckily for its users, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) has built-in analytics tools to help you keep track of what is working, and what isn’t.

Briefly, let’s summarise why it is important to measure insights and page performance:

To measure growth
To gain fans rather than followers
To strategise effectively

The last point is particularly important, as formulating an effective marketing strategy is entirely dependent on solid, quantifiable data. As Petra Smith, marketing consultant at Squirrels and Bears argues:

“Every brand has a different audience and the strategy needs to be tailored to that audience. Whilst hacks are a great short-term fix, they are not a strategy. A long-term successful strategy is created through understanding and implementing your analytics so that you can create content that your audience will enjoy and act upon.”

A long-term successful strategy is created through understanding and implementing your analytics so that you can create content that your audience will enjoy and act upon.

Define your success metrics and monitor them

To understand what’s working and what isn’t on your page, you’ll need to outline how you will measure success. Some key metrics (aka key performance indicators) to measure include:

Traffic to your website – the majority of platforms, including Wix, will enable you to monitor the number of users that are going to your website via your Facebook Business page. If this number is encouraging, it means you have clear CTAs, if it isn’t, you need to revisit this
Engagement – how well do users engage with your page on Facebook? Do they like and share your content? Do they follow your page? All of this can be monitored via the professional dashboard, found by selecting the ‘view tools’ button
Reach – this metric looks at how many people your page has connected with, both through your own posts and through shares via other users. You want to keep an eye on this metric, which is arguably the most important of metrics as it determines how many users are going to see your posts. If this number is dwindling, your social media strategy needs to be revisited as your outreach is not what it could be
Conversions – this allows you to determine how many users have purchased a product or signed up for a service via your page. Which at the end of the day is the point, right?

Make use of Facebook Page Insights

Facebook page insights offer information on how your page is performing, e.g. data about the demographics of your users, and responses to posts. Data from the last two years is accessible in page insights, although for demographic data, your page will need to have data for at least 100 people.

Facebook Page Insights measures users’ engagement with your page. It offers page performance metrics so you can track performance, and understand when and how your audience uses Facebook. Some other metrics it offers include:

Page views – the number of profile views
Reach – the estimated number of people who saw any content from, or related to, your page
Impressions – the number of times content from, or related to, your page was displayed on a user’s screen

You can also use Page Insights to view likes and unlikes, as well as engagement across videos, events, call-to-action (CTA) buttons, contact information, as well as followers and recommendations. It’s also possible to export data from the platform for external use.

In order to access individual post insights and page insights, scroll down to the relevant post and select ‘post insights’. From here you can interpret the data on your post, including reach and interactions. You can access page insights by selecting the big blue button bottom left (shown below)!

Check out the ‘pages to watch’ section

According to Jacqueline Martin, social media consultant at digital marketing agency Hallam, a great way to make use of Facebook insights is to “regularly monitor the ‘pages to watch’ section, where you can see how your competitor’s performance stands up to your own. This will give you a good benchmark to aim for with your future activity.”(sic)

Regularly monitor the 'pages to watch' section, where you can see how your competitor's performance stands up to your own. This will give you a good benchmark to aim for with your future activity.

Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that helps you to understand your customers or audience, and provides a way to analyse business data in a central location. There is also the paid version, Analytics 360, which offers more advanced functionality.

Google Analytics can be used to measure referral traffic, such as how many people are driven to your website, and from which source (e.g. Facebook). You can also use Google Analytics to see results from page views, helping you realise what is and isn’t working on your page.

Plus, you can use it to track user’s activity on your website after being referred from Facebook, including which landing pages on your site users from Facebook end up on, as well as any conversions. If and when you run ads on Facebook, Google Analytics also lets you track their performance.

To find Facebook information on Google Analytics, go to the Acquisitions section, select ‘Channels’, then ‘Social’, and look for the Facebook data.

Make use of social media management tools

Sometimes analysing and interpreting insights can be a pain. You can save yourself time, and stress, by using a social media management tool like Hubspot or Sprout Social to do the hard work for you.

Check out some of the best social media management tools available for small businesses in our guide.

Should you outsource your Facebook Business page management?

Now you’ve understood how to set up and optimise your Facebook Business page, the next item on the agenda is deciding how you manage it.

This depends entirely on your business’s setup. If you have a number of marketers already in your employment, it is counterproductive to hire the help of an agency, as well as costly.

However, if you have no marketing capacity in-house, we would highly recommend you hire a digital marketing agency to support you with your Facebook strategy.

The importance of marketing for all startups and small businesses cannot be underestimated. And to make it super easy to compare agencies, simply fill in our free cost comparison tool to receive quotes from some of the UK’s top digital marketing agencies, including Yell.

Below we’ve summarised the benefits of in-house Facebook marketing management, and the benefits of outsourcing. But at the end of the day, the choice is entirely yours.

Benefits of in-house management

Develop expertise internally
Keep costs down
Can be quicker and easier to implement changes
More creative control
Focus on your brand only
Tailored to your business

Benefits of outsourcing

Access to specialists
Makes it seem less daunting
Industry knowledge
Access to dedicated tools and software
Alternative opinions
Scalable

Startups.co.uk is reader-supported. If you make a purchase through the links on our site, we may earn a commission from the retailers of the products we have reviewed. This helps Startups.co.uk to provide free reviews for our readers. It has no additional cost to you, and never affects the editorial independence of our reviews.