What You Need to Know Before Starting a Facebook for your Business
Facebook is the most active social media platform, with over 1.6 billion active users as of March 2016. This means that there are tons of opportunity to grow your brand and business on this network.
Facebook is somewhat simple in the way that users use the platform. Each user has a page where they can post their own updates. These updates then show up in their friends’ news feeds. In addition, businesses and other entities can also set up pages or groups. This makes the platform very adaptable. In order to create or manage a business page/group, you will need to have a Facebook account. Below are aspects you should know about when starting your Facebook journey.
Personal vs. Business
Personal users are the backbone of Facebook. Each user has to be a real person (your identity is even verified). This allows you to have a timeline, share posts, and add friends.
If you create a business profile, it will be created through your personal account, but will be a separate entity. We will discuss these later on.
Timelines
When a user signs up for a Facebook account, their activity shows up as a timeline. This timeline shows their posts and important events. Facebook’s current timeline are visual and engaging when compared with their old format. This can be very helpful in giving users a clean, impactful view of your business.
Facebook Posts
Facebook allows you to write text posts and share them with others. In addition to text, you can also share links (to articles, websites, etc.), photos, and videos. These posts will then be shared to your friends. If you want to mention someone in a post, you are also able to tag them. This will alert them to the tagging, and in some cases, the post will show up on their timeline.
Friends
People connect on Facebook by adding them as a friend. In comparison to Twitter though, both parties must accept the connection. This is because of Facebook’s feeling of community.
As a user you will be able to add people as friends. However, this is does not mean that they will automatically follow any business pages that you create. They will only see what you personally share. If you wanted them to follow your business pages, you would have to invite them to do so.
Likes, Comments, Sharing
The fact that posts can be liked has permeated the rest of our culture. But, it remains an important aspect of Facebook’s user experience. When someone shares a post, users have the option of liking, commenting, and sharing it.
Likes – Originally, Facebook only had the capability of liking someone’s post. This is very similar to the concept of favoriting a post on Twitter. Recently, Facebook has opened up the reaction capabilities. It is now possible to like, love, haha, wow, sad, and angry each post. Each of these conveys a different reaction to the post.
Comments – Another feature is commenting on posts. Comments show up below the original post and are basically conversations. All comments from one post show up below that post.
Sharing – You have the option to share posts to your friends. For example, if someone posts an article, you can press the share button and that article will then be shared with all of your friends. This can be very helpful in spreading information.
Audiences/Privacy
As a user, you can change the privacy settings on your profile. Aspects can be restricted to show to friends-only, friends of friends, or public. Choose based on your own discretion.
Facebook is an incredibly powerful social media tool. With billions of active users, the potential reach offers a lot of options for growth. Let us know what you think about using Twitter for business.
