Much has been written about setting up a Facebook page. With over 850 million active members, it’s been done just a few times… The subject however keeps coming up. As recently as SECO and again at Vision Expo East we heard from many optical shops and optometrists who have yet to set up a Facebook page, or have yet to set them up correctly that we thought it worth giving a quick recap to setting up a business page and add to that setting it up for the new timeline structure all business pages will be converted to at the end of March.
Let’s start with the type of page you have. Many businesses have made the mistake of setting up a “friend” or personal page for their business. This is a violation of the TOS (terms of service) for Facebook and your page could be deleted without notice by Facebook, throwing away hours of your hard work, making you go through everything all over again. So let’s set up our page correctly. Point your browser to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. You will see a page that looks like this:
If you are a manufacturer, you would pick the Brand or Product button on the upper right. If you are an ECP, pick the Local Business or Place button on the upper left. For demonstration sake, we will pick Local Business or Place. We then get a drop down box with categories. We picked Health/Medical/Pharmacy and then filled out the information in the boxes provided for our business.
We will then be presented with an opportunity to upload a profile picture. That picture is a square, 125 x 125 pixels. Leave some room for a frame so any text is not cut off. Here we have created our profile pic.
We now get to start inviting people to like us. What better way than to start with our friends? Once we’ve done that we can create a cover picture. This is something new with the Facebook timeline look that has just been introduced. We have an opportunity to create a large picture at the top of our page that will give our page some atmosphere. This picture is 815 pixels across by 315 high. Upload it, save it, and poof! We have a business profile ready for you to have an ongoing conversation with your customers and prospective customers.
Easy huh?
There are a lot of other things you can do with your page such as integrating your blog or Twitter feed. Be engaging, be conversational, be creative. Have fun. If running a business Facebook page seems to daunting with everything else you have going, you can assign multiple administrators to it. Remember, this is a marketing component of your business. Don’t hand it off to just anyone and especially to your youngest employee or child because they are young. If you need help with your page you can hire outside help to manage your page. There are a number of optical professionals who manage Facebook pages for multiple practices (including us) who will work with you to keep your site fresh and up to date.
