How to Use Facebook for Your Small Business

As a small business owner or employee, we know you’re busy hustling every day! Being a marketer isn’t the only important hat that you need to wear. But marketing well and effectively can very much be (very nearly) a full-time job as the marketing sand beneath your feet is constantly shifting. This is especially true with SEO, SEM, Google AdWords and social media happenings. 

One great way to boost your brand’s online presence is by taking advantage of the great business tools that Google and Facebook have to offer. With over 90 million other small businesses taking advantage of Facebook, over 2.6 billion monthly active users, and businesses making a mean of $2 in income for each $1 they spend in Google Ads, your business very much needs to be active on both platforms to remain in front of your customers. 

 Set up / enhance your company’s Facebook and Instagram pages

The first thing you’ll want to do when setting up your Facebook and Instagram page is choosing the right category and template. If you already have a page and want to make changes, you can! Your categories, subcategories, and templates can be edited at any time. 

Making sure that you choose your categories carefully is important, as they are key for discovery, and templates allow you to access features like shops and reviews. When looking at the available templates, you’ll be able to see which tabs are available to you. After choosing your desired template, you’ll then be able to hide and add tabs, as well as rearrange what order they’re in. 

If you run a service or product-based business, we recommend taking the time to set up your call-to-action button and linking your product catalog. Doing these two tasks will allow your customers to book a service or make a purchase directly on your page without ever leaving Facebook.

One final important thing you’ll want to do is set up Messenger. One of the great things of being a small company is that you’re able to be more accessible than larger ones. You can communicate with your customers through Messenger quickly to make sure all questions and concerns are being managed. There are more advanced things you can do with Messenger as well, this is just covering the basics! Facebook offers free courses on how you can best utilize this tool.

Start promoting your page / business 

Once you have your page fully set up, you’re ready to start attracting current and future customers! You’ll need to think about what kind of content you want to share (and when you’ll want to share it) to drive both engagement and sales. One great way to do this is by having a monthly content calendar to not only plan in advance, but also to identify what’s missing and how you can fill in the gaps. 

As a small business, you need to be crafty about how you use your content. You can use the same content across multiple social media platforms if the audience and goals fit! Simply tweaking your caption is enough to make the content feel different on each channel. Additionally, if you use Instagram Stories, you can link your Facebook Stories to them, which will then publish your content to both platforms every time you post.

Aside from your standard social media content, try experimenting with running contests and offering sales! Many consumers follow brands on social media to learn about promotions and discounts, so it’s valuable to give the people what they want. Facebook even has an ad offer feature so you can track how many consumers are actually taking advantage of your sale.

One other thing to consider is paid advertising to attract a larger pool of users who are not currently familiar with your brand to drum up new business. In fact, the advertising you do on Facebook could compliment any campaigns running with Google Adwords, for example. You can use Facebook to retarget the people who got to your website from a Google ad, with exactly what they were searching for, and vice versa. 

To start thinking about paid advertising, check out our post on how to create a budget that works for your company. 

Take advantage of available business tools 

Facebook has some awesome tools to showcase your products and services to attract new customers. In addition to the ad offer feature we mentioned earlier, the platform also offers appointment / reservation booking services, event pages, and more. 

Most recently, Facebook introduced Shops, a new way for small businesses to set up free storefronts on the platform. This feature is designed to turn Facebook into a shopping destination!  The social network is also working on offering loyalty programs through your page. Users will be able to connect their loyalty rewards, like those you’d earn at a coffee shop or a salon, to their Facebook account. Get the full rundown on Shops here! 

We could go on forever about all the different ways you could leverage Facebook for your business, there’s that much to explore. Now that you know the basics, you can build the foundation you need to start driving traffic and sales! 

Looking to turn your Facebook page into a shopping destination? Call, DM, or email us at sbellem@bbrookstone.com to get started. We would love to help your small business crush it on this (and all!) social media platform(s).