How to use Facebook for a small business

Company’s head of Middle East, Africa and Pakistan, Jonathan Labin, shares his top five tips.

1. Spruce up your page

A little bit of housekeeping on your page can add lots of value. Make sure that your hours of business and contact information are all up to date. It’s also a good idea to update your page’s cover photo with holiday- or small business-themed images. These little steps let visitors know that your page is an active extension of your business.

2. Post regularly

A steady rhythm of posts in the days before a big event can keep your business top-of-mind to customers. Be sure to highlight your best merchandise, but don’t restrict yourself to just self-promotional posts. Also, consider posting content that gives people some kind of extra value. For instance, you can highlight other great businesses nearby or share interesting content that relates to your business.

3. Create photo and video posts

Posting great photo or video content is an easy way to make your business come alive on Facebook. Photo or video posts generally have good levels of engagement. For small businesses, another idea is to create a photo album with images of products that people can preview before coming into the shop.

4. Try a Facebook Offers

Posting special offers or discounts is a great way of offering customers even more value. You can offer start by providing a discount to people that mention Facebook when they come into your shop. Or, if you’re looking for more reach, Facebook Offers makes it easy for you to distribute your promotions to an audience beyond your fan base. It make it easy for people to redeem your offers too – when people click to claim your offer, they get an email reminder containing all of the necessary details on how to redeem it.

5. Boost your important posts

Boosted Posts can help you reach wider audiences with greater accuracy. Simply enter whatever amount you can set aside for the promotion and Facebook will tell you instantly how many people your post will reach. With the targeting features built into Boosted Posts, you can make sure that the right people are seeing your content.

For instance, you can direct your posts towards people who live nearby. It can be a great way of reaching people, even when they’re out and about. Just remember that if you want to boost a post containing an image, the picture cannot contain more than 20 per cent text.