Everybody and their mother has a Facebook page. No, seriously that isn’t even just an expression anymore… everybody and their mother has a Facebook page.
But it isn’t even just individuals anymore. It’s businesses too. Every mom and pop store and major chain is – or should be – accounted for in the social media jungle.
So, in a world where most every business – including your competitors – is represented and vying for the attention and business of your current and potential customers, how do you make your Facebook business page stand out?
Use Custom Graphics
One of the best ways to stand out is to be creative. In between your avatar/icon, banner and posts, there are plenty of opportunities to have a little fun.
Your avatar presents an area for you to be different and try some kind of new variation on your current logo. The rise of social media in the last few years has led to many businesses reevaluating or entirely redesigning their logo to make it more memorable when used in social media. This is your opportunity to do something similar.
For your banner, you can do something more creative than just a picture, right? Your banner provides an area for you to promote a theme or important information. Try swapping out a new banner every couple of months with a graphic highlighting a product, new seasonal theme or anything else you can cook up. For one of our food clients, we change the header every month to reflect the theme of the cookbook we are promoting for the month.
Custom graphics for blog posts and announcements can help your posts jump out of your audiences’ news feed as well.
Fill Out All Appropriate Info
Your Facebook business page gives your customers an opportunity to get an overview before they make the jump to your website for more in depth information.
So, don’t skimp out on completely filling out your information.
Nothing irks me like making a preliminary visit to a company’s page looking for something simple, like their hours, and not being able to find it. It makes the whole page kind of feel like a hollow shell.
A completed page also promotes the feeling that you are invested, mindful and are constantly monitoring your page. You care about your business and want to promote it.
Post Regularly
People like and follow your page because they want to see what’s going on with you. I’m sure we’ve all run into business pages that haven’t been touched in months… sometimes even years. It begs the question, why would someone even follow them?
That little touch of personality that comes with regular posting and engagement goes a long way for someone trying to choose a company to do business with.
Get on a regular schedule of posting content so your audience will know when they should expect to check in for updates.
A good variety of posts play well on Facebook. Mix in some updates from your blog, announcements about upcoming events and even just random snapshots from around the office. Also, try experimenting with Facebook Live and other kinds of videos. Facebook tends to go on trends of favoring certain kinds of content and right now video, in the words of Mugatu, is so hot right now.
It is “Facebook”, after all… people like seeing faces!
Interact With Your Audience
The biggest appeal of social media for businesses is the ability to directly communicate and interact with their customers.
Establishing a steady presence over social media gives your page life, like a 24/7 customer service rep available to your customers at the push of a button, answering any questions they may have.
Other interactions can be as simple as commenting on reviews and posts on your timeline, posing questions to your audience, running contests and even cross-promoting on other pages.
Again, it all comes down to that personal touch.
At the end of the day, all of these measures really just show your audience one thing: you care.
You care enough about your clients to interact and engage them. You care enough to post regular content and not let your page turn into a ghost town and you care enough to put in that extra effort to make your page look more exciting and different from everyone else.
