With almost 45 million users in the UK alone, which is around 70% of the country’s population, it’s fair to say that a lot of people will have Facebook pages for their personal use.
You could use your personal Facebook page for your business; however, we wouldn’t recommend this for a few reasons:
It’s easier, when advertising your services, to keep your business contacts separate from your friends…
…as you’re unlikely to want to post the same information, in the same tone, to these two groups of people
There are many features you can use to promote your page to people you don’t know if you have a business page
There are probably more reasons, but these are the main ones - and they’re significant enough for us to highly recommend that you create a separate Facebook page for your business.
This is how to do it…
If you’re not already a user of Facebook, join up. If you have a personal Facebook page, login, then go to facebook.com/pages/create
Choose which type of page you need (though we’d imagine you would opt for a business page as a tradesperson) and add your company name.
Choose the category your business falls under. If your services cross more than one category, pick the one that brings you the most sales, or consider having two separate business pages in the two categories.
The Facebook wizard will then prompt you to upload your company logo. You will also need a cover photo (the image at the top of your page); this should represent what your business is about, or possibly show you carrying out the service(s) you offer. Facebook requires these images to be a specific size; it will not allow you to upload an incorrectly-sized image.
You then need to choose your page’s username (this will be the address/URL/what someone puts into Facebook’s search facility to find you). If the name of your business is available and has not already been used, it’s advisable to choose this name for your page, as consistency of brand is key. If your brand name has already been used, however add something like ‘UK’ or ‘Yorkshire’ on the end of your business’s name – according to where you’re predominantly based (beware of limiting your customer base by choosing too specific an area, though).
From this point, you need to populate your page with the details it will prompt you for, i.e. your business’s phone number, website address, description of services, etc. The ‘about’ section allows you to tell your story, i.e. how you came to be in business, why you enjoy the work you do.
You’re ready for your first post!
Our advice is to think of your business page as both a place for people to obtain information about you, but also one for you to get to know them. Don’t just think of it as a page to sell, sell, sell. Ideally, you should aim for engagement. You wouldn’t purely sell to a prospect in person, you’d try and forge a relationship, a connection, with them first…and that’s the point we’re trying to make. You may be promoting yourself via a digital screen, but it’s still people at the other end who may be turned off if you’re constantly trying to sell to them.
See it as an opportunity to show your personality, to post pictures of the jobs you’re working on, to display testimonials from satisfied customers.
Good luck!