Starting up a fb 'business' page?

[AD Chaos]

Hey dudes


I'm thinking of starting up a fb page to offer some services locally (Not a personal one, had one of those some 2 years ago, really disliked it). App though, putting one up together for biz still seems like a good thing to do, nowadays?

I see the page can be made into a 'business' one, what are the advantages to that? I know a bit of image editing, so I'd like to be able to make it as visually attractive as possible.
Also, I read somewhere that commercial fb pages were starting to become charged sometime over the next few months, so I don't know if making the page into a 'personal' layout could be a smarter choice? Or is that just rumor..

Do you have any tips to make the layout more attractive? Or how to run a business page in there, generally speaking?



Thanks much, appreciate all your advice!

 

[StefTD]

It's still a good thing, there's lots of hate against facebook, but on the other side, still enough users (still growing).
Depends on the kind of business and your target group, but as long as your target group is between 13-35 years
old, the chance that at least 25% use FB on a daily basis is HUGE!!!

You actually have to run a business page instead of a personal page (FB might delete it otherwise, happened to
a friend 2 times , told him ) - about the image editing part, you can't edit a FB page like an old Myspace profile,
but you still can do some nice stuff.
The title picture is 851x315 px, the profile pic (put your logo there for example) is 180x180 px, than there are the
tabs-these pics are editable, too (you can't edit the pic of the "like-counter"). These are 111x74 px and you can
edit custom tabs with shortstack for example (for free as long as you don't have 5000 likes, pretty cool).

If your page is music related you can add reverbnation and so on as custom tabs so visitors are able to listen to
your stuff on your page.

And now the most important part that nobody likes - you have to be interesting for your target group, put some
work in there, write funny or interesting stuff, post cool things and so on, like if you're recording a band you could
write "recording drums today" and post 2-3 pics of the drum setup.
Content is everything, without content, nobody is interested, cool stuff might be shared by your fans and due to
that, their friends see what they shared, that's one of the most important ways to get fans for your fb page.

 

[AD Chaos]

Perfect Stef, that's exactly all the kind of information I was looking for! Very interesting tips there



Thanks so much, man!

 

[StefTD]

no problem, I do this stuff at least from time to time for a living
like I said, interesting content really helps and try to be professional, you want to get your business
running so for the "official" promo pictures, use good quality ones, get somebody you know who owns
a decent camera and how to work with it to shoot some pictures.
It's no problem to post a status and use a picture you've done with your phone or something like that,
that's ok, videos for example are a great way to spread the word, for you and your customers.
If I would own a studio, I would get me a GoPro for example, they aren't that expensive but you're able
to get some nice videos with them, maybe some bands bring in a friend with a cam or stuff like that,
that's cool, but not every band does that stuff, so just put the GoPro from time to time somewhere.
Record a video, edit the files by yourself (doesn't need to be really professional, just some nice clean
cuts, music they recorded at your place, the logo of the band and of the studio) or let the bands do it.
Upload it on youtube, share it on FB, because even if people aren't interested in studios, they're intersted
in teasers

 

[AD Chaos]

Nice!

Yeah, I'm sure the graphic part is really important, I could make it my excuse to finally justify the purchase of an SLR next year

 

[AD Chaos]

Wanted to bump this to ask Stef (or anyone else in the know)- is it worth it to spend on sponsored ads on FB?


*btw, anyone knows about that 'Buy Facebook Likes & Fans' offers? sounds like a scam..

 

[Line666]

The buy likes and fans thing is just to give the illusion of being successful, they don't interact with the page because they're bots or automatically registered accounts and someone just uses a script to get all the bot accounts to 'like' the page in a singular instance. That's mainly for people wanting to create a self fulfilling prophecy and a fairly arbitrary indicator of success - as facebook 'likes' have become a bit like more lucrative myspace 'friends' (I think the hope is that if people see something is popular or qualified with a large number of people they are more likely to get on the bandwagon themselves; fairly sound logic in some regards)

FB sponsored ads relies on clickthroughs and actions, I ran one for my bands page with 20 quid free credit Facebook gave me on some sort of deal they had going, so you essentially pay a rate for everyone clicking through to your page and then a higher rate for actions on that page 'likes, shares' etc etc. I think most people click on these sponsored ads by accident though so you get people liking your page unintentionally for the most part but the accounts are real. Just don't expect to see any interaction from them after that initial click, I got about 80 likes for my 20 pounds and none really interacted with the page subsequent to that, it's a fair chunk of money for little benefit.

 

[AD Chaos]

Ah, thanks! Kind of a bummer, but I guess that's what I was expecting to hear.

 

[StefTD]

Imho the paid ads on FB is only relevant for bigger companies that already got a decent fanbase,
for example, my business only has around 100 fans, I wouldn't even start thinking about paying
FB for something for this page.
Worked for a company which had 4k fans (and 95% of them interacted and were relevant) so they
spent a few bucks on it (but peanuts if you know how much they spend on google adwords...).

buying fans won't get you anywhere like Öwen said, sponsored ads might work, but depending on the
business and stuff, I would rather spent 50 bucks a month on google adwords than on FB's sponsored
Ads.

 

[AD Chaos]

Ah ok, good to know - coincidentally, I hit one of those sponsored ads 'by accident' as Öwen says