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With social networking continuing to grow, more and more businesses are looking to show their stuff on tools like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Utilizing those tools are great because they’re free, and they can help drive traffic to your website to help bring in potential business. A lot of clients and friends ask us how to setup business pages on Facebook. The process is really easy as long as you know what you’re looking for. So we wanted to take the time to put together this really simple tutorial on setting up a business page on Facebook as well as creating the custom URL for your new page!

Getting Started

There are a few things that you may want to have prepared in order to create a Facebook business page and they are as follows:

• A personal Facebook account This is required in order to setup a page
• At least one photo for the business profile Ideally you may want to have a few photos ready to upload
• A starting post announcing your business presence on Facebook

Setting Up Your Business Page

Now that you have all your tools ready you want to log into Facebook with your personal account information. When you’ve logged in you want to go to the following link: www.facebook.com/pages/ and you’ll see something similar to what is shown in the image below. From here you want to click the button that we have highlighted that says ‘Create Page.’

On the next screen simply fill in the basic information by choosing your category and filling in the name of your page. The name of your page is your business name, not what you’d like the Facebook URL to be. After you have setup your new page, follow any of the additional instructions that Facebook throws your way! It’s at this point that you’ll want to get in your photos and a starting post on your wall. After you have that information prepared you’ll want to start suggesting your page to your friends.

Getting a Custom URL for Your Page

Facebook has a rule that you must have at least 25 fans in order to get a custom URL structure for your page. For those of you who don’t know what we mean by custom URL structure, it’s basically a custom link to your Facebook page like www.facebook.com/yourbusiness so you can easily direct people there from your website, an email, etc. So once you have at least 25 fans you can go to the following link to setup your custom URL: www.facebook.com/usernames/ and you’ll see something like the image below. Make sure to click the ‘Set a Username for your Pages’ link toward the bottom of the screen as highlighted in the below image.

Next you’ll want to choose your newly added page from the drop down list as shown in the image below. From there you’ll want to type in the custom URL that you’d like to have for your page and click the blue Check Availability button. Follow the instructions and you’re all set! From here you’ll want to remember your custom URL and link to your new Facebook page from your website, your email blasts, etc.

Facebook Page Tips

• Even though Facebook is free to use, it does take time to update. We recommend that you set aside some time to handle updates. A good idea would be to set aside time to update all of your online marketing, for example your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you let your sites get out of date, it doesn’t look good. We’re not the best at it either. Work gets in the way, but if you plan for it, they’ll always be updated.
• Try and get your fans to interact with your Facebook page. This may or may not work depending on what your business is. For example, if you sell clothing you can request that your fans submit pictures to your page. Think of creative ways to get your fans involved. That way your fans will build your page for you.
• Create a contest with a prize for the winner and run contests regularly. You want to keep whatever momentum you get on your page running smoothly.
• When you add a new blog to your site, link to it from your Facebook page. That way you’ll get more readers to your site.
• Try and keep your Facebook page fun. Facebook was originally created for a personal environment, so all of your fans are showing off their personality on their pages. You should too.
• Create some ‘fan specific’ content. Give people a reason to become a fan of your business.