The Facebook Business Page Series ~ No 2 ~ Creating Your Page

This is part two of a series of blog posts dedicated to setting up your Facebook Buisness Page (or Fan Page).  Business Pages allow you to profile your business, brand, organization or product on Facebook and are a very powerful way to drive customers to your business or website. Pages differ from personal Profiles in that they are designed specifically for business and promotions, whereas Profiles are designed specifically for individuals. Specialized functionality is available on Pages, to allow you to better promote your business, which is not available on a Profile. As an individual you have “Friends” which must be mutually accepted, however anyone can become a fan of your Business Page without requiring administrative approval. With Business Pages you can also allow for multiple administrators to manage your Page. Setting up a Business Page is free but will require your time to create and maintain.

If you have been following the series so far, by now you should have set up your personal Facebook Profile which you will need in order to manage your Business Page. This is a Facebook requirement. Business Pages are managed and accessed from within your personal account. If you haven’t done this yet, please go back to Part 1 of this series to review the section on signing up for a Facebook Profile.

OK, so let’s get started. You need to begin by actually creating your Facebook Business Page. Once your Page is set up you can then start taking a look at all the whizz bang applications that will make your Page stand out from the crowd. The very first thing you’ll need to do is to decide what you would like your Page to be called. This is important. Once you have set up your Page you can edit pretty much everything except the name of the Page, so whatever you decide now, you will be stuck with. The only way you can change your Page name later is to restart with a new Page – something you probably don’t want to do. So choose wisely. The name of your page could be your own name, your business name, your product name, or whatever you want. You may decide to put some keywords in your Page name but don’t make it too long or Facebook will knock it back. Once you’ve decided on your Page name, follow the simple steps below to create your Page.

Firstly login to your personal Facebook Profile by entering your username and password in the fields at the top right of the Facebook sign up page.

Once you’re logged in you will be directed to your “Home” page. This page displays the News Feed – a timeline of your Facebook friends’ recent activities such as comments, posts, photos and status updates.

Facebook provides a Page Creation Wizard which takes you through the steps required to set up your Business Page. To get to the Page Creation Wizard from your “Home” page, click the “Ads and Pages” link displayed in the left sidebar.

Alternately, you can also reach the Page Creation Wizard by scrolling to the very bottom of your “Home” page and clicking on “Advertsing”, then on “Pages” in your left hand sidebar.

To display the Page Creation Wizard and begin creating your Facebook Business Page, click the “Create Page” button on the top right.

You will be taken to the Page Creation Wizard which is where you can categorize your Facebook Business page.

In the Page Creation Wizard you firstly need to select what type of page you would like to create. There are three possible types, an Official Page, a Community Page or a Group. Read through the descriptions of each and decide what best suits your needs. In this example, we’ll be creating an “Official Page”.

Under the “Official Page” option select what type of page you’r e setting up so that Facebook is able to more correctly categorize it. You can choose from a Local Business; A Brand, Product or Organization; or an Artist, Band or Public Figure. Once you select an option, a drop down menu will appear under the selection asking for more specifics about the type of page you want to create. Select the option that best describes your page. In this example, I’m creating a page about my blog so I’ve selected the “public figure” option and selected “writer”. Make whatever selection is most appropriate for your business, and finally, tick the box indicating you are authorised as an official representative.

Click the “Create Official Page” button and you’re done.

Congratulations! You now have your very own Facebook Business Page. Your newly birthed page will look like this:

Take note of the “Like” button at the top of the page but don’t click on it yet. Clicking this button means you will become a “fan” of your Page. Until your Page has “fans”, it will not show up in Facebook search results. It is generally best to wait until you have created content on your Page that you are ready to share before you choose to “Like” your Page and make it visible to the world. We’ll talk more about this later.

In the next post we’ll start customising and getting your page up and running with some cool apps.

Dedicated to Your Success,