Social Media for Business: Top
Tips for Facebook
Keith has been involved in social
media since first becoming a member
of the early business networking site
Ecademy in 1999.
Now with 13,000+ connections on
LinkedIn, 5,000+ followers on Twitter,
2,000+ friends on Facebook, Keith
also runs the largest charity-related
group on LinkedInCharity UKwith
31,000+ members. Keith teaches and
mentors business people on how
to make the most of social media in
business. He reminds networkers,
whether online or offline, that
networking is all about sharing and
exchanging information.
Business Expert Press 978-1-9470-9859-6 (2017)
www.businessexpertpress.com
Keith Grinsted
Abstract: This article is one in a series of articles covering
the use of social media for business. It looks at Facebook
and covers the history of the platform, analyzes why it is
important for businesses, and provides some top tips for
making best use of the platform.
Keywords: connect, engage, Facebook, group, Messenger,
networking, page, post, profile, promote, social media, top
tips for Facebook
Social Media for Business: Top Tips for
Facebook
Just before we get too heavily into talking about Face-
book, lets just consider social media a little more widely.
In this series of articles, Im covering top tips for
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In addition,
there is a further article on the various tools you can use
to streamline your social media activity. These include
Buffer and Hootsuite.
Social media has become a central part of most of our
lives, across all ages. In the same way, it has become an
essential tool for marketing businesses. Through what
other medium these days can you connect with millions
of potential clients for your products and services at a
fraction of the cost of the hefty advertising budgets of
yore?
Now, dont get me wrong. Im not implying that social
media is free, well I guess it is, but you need to allocate
some resource to use it effectively.
Time at the very least.
This article covers the social media platform Facebook
and will provide you with some simple tips and tricks to
help you utilize it effectively in business.
But remember, wherever you are online, whatever
you say or do online, you are creating an indelible
DIGITAL FOOTPRINT!
It wont get washed away the next time the tide comes
in!
Expert Insights
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 Social Media for Business: Top Tips for Facebook
Facebook History
Facebook started life on February 4, 2004.
Founded, as most people are aware, by
Mark Zuckerberg. But also with his Har-
vard roommate Eduardo Saverin.
Initially, membership was limited to fel-
low Harvard students. They then expanded
to other colleges in the Boston area. Gradu-
ally, most universities in the USA and Can-
ada were included. Then corporations, and
by September 2006, everyone with a valid
email address aged 13 or older.
The name Facebook came from the orig-
inal concept of a university student face
book, which was an offline directory of
students with photos and basic informa-
tion. Zuckerberg started writing the code
for the new site, originally thefacebook.
com before the February launch.
By August 2008 Facebook had 100 mil-
lion users and has grown exponentially
ever since. Today Facebook has 2 billion
monthly users, so dont think it is a plat-
form you can ignore! It needs to be part of
your overall social media strategy no mat-
ter what you may think of it.
Two billion users certainly make Face-
book the largest social network in terms
of actual users. Way above YouTubes 1.5
billion, WeChats 889 million, Twitters
328 million, and Snapchats estimated 255
million. Only Facebooks other apps have
more than 1 billion users, both WhatsApp
and Facebook Messenger having 1.2 billion
each. Instagram is another site seeing con-
siderable growth having recently surpassed
700 million users.
Like Marmite
Yes, like marmite, you either love it or hate
it! (Marmite is a yeast extract based spread
that people either love or hate, there is
never a middle ground!). I should admit
over the years I have been on Facebook
and off it several times. But these days it
is an integral part of the social media mix
that any business must be engaged with.
No matter what your personal feelings
about Facebook may be, from a business
2 Business Expert Press 978-1-9470-9859-6 (2017)
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perspective you cannot ignore it. Espe-
cially if you have a business-to-consumer
model. But even if you are predominantly
business-to-business, the people who run
or work in those businesses are probably
on Facebook themselves!
But, before you dive in, take time to
consider both your overall social media
strategy, and your specific strategy on
Facebook. You will need to try different
strategies, to experiment, to find out what
works and what does not work.
But dont be fooled by preconceptions
in my experience, they are generally wrong!
Some of my recent clients have had
some really set ideas on what will work
and what will not. However, in one case,
they were basing their experience on their
own personal activities on Facebook. Their
organizations presence had been limited to
about two posts in the past 12 months! We
experimented over a couple of months and
it became clear from Facebook Insights the
reach for one type of post was far greater
than that for the type they thought would
work. And we were also able to see that
their audience was online at a completely
different time to what they had perceived.
There are some great publishing tools and
insights available on Facebookuse them.
Your Business on Facebook
Establishing Your Facebook Presence
Most people will have set up a personal pro-
file on Facebook. This is NOT how you es-
tablish your business presence here though.
You need to create a Page for your busi-
ness rather than a profile
And I would suggest you focus on one
product or service at a time. Taking a more
focused approach will help you gauge what
works and what does not work.
By establishing a business page, you take
advantage of the publishing tools and in-
sights I mentioned earlier. If you try to set
your business up using a personal profile
page, you will look unprofessional and will
miss out on promotional opportunities.
Expert Insights
 Social Media for Business: Top Tips for Facebook
Also, with a business page you make it
easier for potential customers to engage
with you.
Control Your Presence
Setting up a business page allows you to
assign editorial and management rights to
others. Do this with caution!
Weve all heard stories in the press
where individuals have accidentally posted
personal stuff to their business social me-
diaFacebook or otherwise! It can be a
promotional nightmare!
If you are going to assign roles to oth-
ers then do please ensure they are going
to comply with very clear design and con-
tent guidelines. Also, be sure they have the
basic spelling, punctuation, and grammar
skills to produce quality content. You can
find out more about Facebook roles here:
http://bit.ly/2dDhxJ6
With good training, clear guidance, and
the right people involved, you should be
able to create a great Facebook strategy.
You may decide in the early days that con-
tent needs to be approved before posting.
You can use Word or Excel to prepare a
schedule and pre-approve the content.
When posting as the business, make sure
you are signed in as the business, otherwise
you may find you are posting as yourself
instead. Ensure others do the same. Even
if you run a policy of no personal social
media at work, people will find a way
around it!
Be Clear Who You Are
The first thing is to ensure you have a pro-
file picture that clearly defines your busi-
ness. This could be a logo, a brand image,
or your personal headshot if you are the
business. I emphasize the use of a profes-
sional headshot as you need to convey a
professional image.
Be clear on what you want to be found
for as the image will be what shows up in
search results and people need to associate
that image with your business. So, choose
the image you use wisely.
Business Expert Press 978-1-9470-9859-6 (2017)
www.businessexpertpress.com
Facebook, in common with other social
media sites, often changes its specifications
for images, so do check before spending too
much time manipulating an image only to
find it does not fit. And check the result
on laptop, tablet, and smartphone as it may
well render differently. At the time of writ-
ing, these dimensions could be found here:
http://bit.ly/1nM0WX0
Masthead or Cover Image
Similar to the profile above, this is another
important image. This will be your mast-
head across the top of the page and there-
fore the most prominent thing visitors will
see when they arrive. It needs to be high
quality and engage with visitors. It needs
to clearly get across the message of who
you are and what you do. The best advice
I can give you here is to look at some of
your competitors pages to see what images
they have. Consider what works and what
doesnt work. Benchmark against other sec-
tors. This is social media, so you can always
use your channels to ask for their thoughts
on what works better for them. This could
be a part of your engagement process. And
check out on Facebook what the current
specifications are and make sure your im-
ages comply. If they dont comply then it
may look great on your laptop but rubbish
on a smartphone!
Call to Action Button
This is a great tool Facebook has added in
the past few years and makes it so much
easier for the visitor to engage with you. I
recently set up a page for a tech business
with a new app. We set the Call to Action
button to link straight to their app on the
Google Play Store. Heres a list of the cur-
rent options for you to consider:
Book services
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Start order
Get in touch
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