Anyone can stumble on your Facebook page — so what do you want them to see? There are simple ways to use your Facebook business page to your advantage. Sharing photos of your recent work is a must. Responding to clients’ reviews shows good customer service. And make sure to fill in all of your contact info. Below, members on www.expired-link.com share more tips for maintaining a Facebook business page.
Q: What is needed for a well-maintained, engaging Facebook business page?
A: Ben Bowen: I went down the Facebook rabbit hole this morning and looked at a couple dozen (or more) landscapers’ Facebook pages. A couple things I noticed:
- Just like on our websites, we like to steal someone’s picture of amazing strips and post them as ours.
- Way too many are not filling everything out. Why sign your business up for a Facebook page and then leave out key info, like phone number or address?
- A lot of personal stuff on business pages. Keep the two separate. Your clients may be OK with an occasional kid or pet photo, but probably don’t care about your family reunion.
tonygreek:
- Wrong size/scale/aspect ratio/cropped cover image.
- Wrong size/scale/aspect ratio/cropped profile image. (It’s a square, folks.)
If I see those two looking correct, it’s a miracle. If you have a short, wide logo (say, Bob’s Lawn Care & Landscaping), please don’t just add that as your small, square profile pic. If it looks off to you, you can be sure your visitors notice it. Lawn and landscape contractors are supposed to have good attention to detail, so make sure you have those two very important images posted correctly.
earthly: The thing I notice with a lot of business Facebook pages is that they don’t update or post things for months. I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing? How often do you think you should post on your business Facebook page? Once a week, once a month, twice a week?
dstifel: My marketing adviser says post once a week or get rid of it.
Ditta&Sons: Even in the winter?
RussellB: Mine told me the same — all year. She advised the same for my website.
PaperCutter: Prospects actually do check out your Facebook page. If they get there and you have three posts since 2013, that looks bad. If every post is doing a selly-sell (We do mulch! We do mowing! We do gutters! etc.) that looks bad. Your Facebook page is an opportunity to show who you are as a business, how much of an expert you are and why they should hire you vs. the competition.
On frequency: Go as frequent as you think you can keep up with. If you can swing daily, awesome. If it’s weekly, go weekly. If all you can commit to is monthly, commit to that – but also commit to posting great pics of current projects, awesome plants you find in the nursery, etc. I post daily, but A) I’m in the office most days, and B) as a designer/speaker/writer, a wider range of topics are relevant to me and to my audience.
I also “cheat” and use an automated tool for scheduling posts. Throughout the month I’m grabbing relevant posts and articles and saving them to Evernote, then every week I sit down and schedule all of my Facebook posts for the week. If I then post additional content, that’s a bonus.
The more active your Facebook page, the more likely a prospect will see a post. That said, Facebook is still iffy on ROI for lead gen, so automate as much as you can and don’t devote a ton of time to it.
Go to www.expired-link.com to continue this discussion about social media.