If you’re thinking about creating a professional Facebook page but are unsure of where to start, don’t worry—you’re not alone.

As anyone familiar with the site will tell you, Facebook changes and evolves its features regularly. It can be a proverbial moving target for marketers who are trying to find the best steps to set up their professional page.

In this blog, we’ll discuss some of the benefits of having a professional Facebook page—rather than your own personal profile—and best practices to accomplish your goals.

Best Practices for Developing Your Brand on Facebook

You don’t want to put off starting your professional Facebook page any longer. The social media behemoth is starting to penalize people who use personal pages for business. Plus, a business page offers additional value. A few benefits of using a professional page include having insights into your visitors and campaigns, tabs for promotions or business information, and greater scalability.

But where do you start? How can you be sure your page is set up for success? Never fear—our team has you covered.

Here are 8 tips for starting your professional Facebook page.

1. Decide which type of classification best fits you and your needs, and understand the different offerings of each classification. Facebook offers 6 different types of classifications, each with its own relevant fields:
   • Local Business or Place. Fields include About, Hours, Contact Info, Address, Price Range, and Parking Info.
   • Company, Organization, or Institution. Fields include Founded, Mission, Awards, Products, and Address.
   • Brand or Product. Fields include About, Founded, Awards, and Products.
   • Artist, Band, or Public Figure. Fields include Birthday, Affiliation, Biography, Address, Gender, and Interests.
   • Entertainment. Fields include About and Release Date.
   • Cause or Community. Fields include Description, Cause Type, and Cause Group.
2. Get a “good” URL. Your URL is your web address on Facebook, so it is important that it is easy to remember and type in. The best URLs are short; include your company name, and don’t have any hard-to-remember additional characters or numbers.
3. Understand your admin panel and settings. Under your professional Facebook page settings, you will find a navigation bar with sections for notifications, page info, and page roles. This is where you will designate any additional admins for your new page, and assign various roles to them.
4. Populate your page with content before you promote it. The basic information and content you should publish to your page before starting to promote includes:
   • Posts. Facebook has different options for public posts, including an event page, text status, photo status with caption, link sharing with caption, video sharing with caption, and location check in.
   • Profile photo. Typically, this will be your logo or a professional headshot. This is one of the first things that visitors to your page will see, so it is important that the image is high quality, easily recognizable, consistent across all of your social media platforms, and reflects your overall brand identity. Get tips for taking a professional looking photo.
   • Cover photo. This is the large, horizontal photo that makes up the top of your Facebook page. It is best to use an attractive and branded image that will help attract people to your page.
5. Spread the word. Getting the word out about your Facebook page is crucial. Even the most well designed Facebook page is useless if it doesn’t have any traffic. Add links to your Facebook page on your website, email signature, business card, brochures, and other promotions. Tell your customers and prospects about exclusive content on your page. And consider running targeted Facebook ads.
6. Ask for reviews. Your goal in using Facebook for your business should be to convert prospects to clients, and having client reviews on your page can be influential. Start by contacting recent clients, co-workers, or anyone in your sphere of influence, and ask them to write a review on your page.
7. Post relevant content—and post often. Develop a signature style, or voice, and then deliver content that is appealing and informative to your consumer. This will increase consumer engagement and drive traffic to your page.You should use your posts to show off your brand’s “personality.” And only about 20% of your posts should be promotional; the rest should be informative, inspiring, or fun bits of information that resonate with your audience. For instance, our customers use social media shares to easily post recipes, graphics and other content related to the latest issue of American Lifestyle magazine.
8. Pin important posts. Pinning important posts keeps them at the top of your page and ensures that your visitors will see them. Consider pinning important and timely posts, such as information about fun promotions you are running, a post directing visitors to your blog, or even a glowing review from a recent customer.

…and just like that, you have a professional Facebook page that is primed for success!

Want Even More Ways to Increase Your Social Media Presence?

If one of your goals for 2015 is to increase your social media marketing, or to better help you reach out to your clients and grow your customer base, ReminderMedia can help. With each new issue, we provide additional pieces of exclusive content to share in print or online. So when your customers call you to rave about a recipe in the most recent issue, you’ll have the perfect online conversation starter—American Lifestyle social media shareables, which are available to share right from your online account interface. Learn more about our social media shareables or start your account online at remindermedia.com/choosingsides.