How to Create and Optimise a Facebook Business Page

What is a Facebook Business Page?

Social media is all the rage, and that’s not changing any time soon. If your small business doesn’t use Facebook yet, it’s probably time to reconsider. A Facebook business page is a great place to:

• Promote events
• Share content
• Create posts
• Communicate with clients
• Share business news
• Share updates

Why You Want a Business Facebook Page

Facebook isn’t just where millions of consumers flock on a daily basis. It also already hosts pages for your competitors.

Currently, 98% of business-to-consumer (B2C) companies have Facebook pages, and business-to-business (B2B) companies aren’t far behind at 89%. These usage rates are higher than on any other social media platform, which means not having a business Facebook page lets your competitors take the lead.

A business page can also directly increase your revenue, especially when you start adding targeted Facebook ads to your Facebook marketing strategy. In 2017, 76% of consumers in the United States made a purchase after seeing a brand’s social media post. Posts are the leading platform for discovery.

Facebook also plays a huge role in your overall digital marketing strategy. Much like Google and Yelp, Facebook is one of the leading review sites for local businesses, with 49% of consumers seeking out reviews on this platform to guide their purchasing decisions. When you unlock your ability to get Facebook reviews, you can begin building a positive online reputation across platforms—and you can use Podium reviews to gather hundreds of authentic ratings where it matters.

Creating Your Facebook Business Page in 8 Steps

1. Create/Sign Up for Your Facebook Business Page

First, log in to Facebook and select the Pages tab from the left-hand sidebar. Tap the green Create Page button on the upper right-hand corner. Then, tap Get Started under “Business or Brand” or under “Community or Public Figure,” depending on your organisation type. Most business owners will select the Business and Brand category to focus on marketing their products, services, and overall brand. Now is also a good time to go ahead and invite friends and family to follow your new page.

2. Enter your Business Details and Information

Next, you’ll fill in information about your business. The more information you provide, the more helpful your Facebook business page will be to potential customers.

Type in your page name—this should be the name of your business—and business category. Your category acts as a basic descriptor for what your business does. We recommend selecting a specific category to help page visitors best understand your company (ex: “Automotive Repair Shop”), but vague categories like “Business Service” can work if no other options suit your products or services.

Fill out your business address. You have the option to check Don’t show my address if you only want your city and state displayed. This is especially helpful if your office is your personal home address or if you don’t allow visitors. Also, be sure add your phone number, any other relevant contact information, and business hours.

Under your page name on the left-hand side, tap Create Page @Username. This unique username will give you a custom URL (ex: facebook.com/username) and help potential customers find you. That said, using your exact company name works best when possible.

3. Add your Business Profile and Cover Photos

Following the prompts, add your profile photo and cover image. Your profile picture should be an image of your brand’s logo—this will help with brand awareness. For your Facebook cover photo, you might choose a picture of your employees providing a service or product imagery.

You can skip these steps or change them later, but adding these images will help your business seem more legitimate.

4. Create an Action Button (Call-to-Action)

Setting up a call-to-action (CTA) button on your Facebook Business Page will encourage visitors to take a specific action, such as making a purchase or booking an appointment. Here’s how to set up a CTA button:

• Go to your Facebook Business Page and click on the blue “+ Add a Button” button below your cover photo.
• Choose the type of CTA you want to use from the list of options, such as “Shop Now,” “Book Now,” or “Contact Us.”
• Enter the URL where you want people to go when they click on the button. This could be a product page on your website or a contact form.
• Click “Finish” to save your changes.

Pro tip: Be sure to regularly review and update your CTA based on your business goals and promotions you may be running.

5. Connect your Facebook Page with your WhatsApp Business

Making sure it’s easy for your customers to communicate with you is crucial if you want to win business nowadays. Connecting your Facebook Page with your WhatsApp Business account will help you streamline customer communication and provide a better user experience. Here’s how to do it:

• Go to your Facebook Page and click on “Settings” in the top right corner.
• Click on “WhatsApp” in the left-hand menu.
• Click on “Connect Account.”
• Enter your WhatsApp Business phone number and click “Send Code.”
• Verify your phone number by entering the verification code you receive via WhatsApp.
• Once verified, choose which types of messages you want to send from your Facebook Page to WhatsApp (e.g. customer service inquiries, order updates).
• Click “Finish” to save your settings.

Once you’ve connected your business page with your WhatsApp Business account, customers will be able to message you directly through WhatsApp by clicking on the “Message” button on your business page.

6. Create your First Post

Creating your first post on your new page might feel a little daunting, but it’s an important step to start building your online presence. Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Define your audience: Before writing your post, think about who your target audience is and what they might be interested in.
• Keep it short and sweet: People tend to have short attention spans on social networks, so aim for posts that are concise and easy to read.
• Use visuals: Images and videos can help make your post more engaging and eye-catching. Make sure they’re high-quality and relevant to the content of the post. You might consider using a free tool like Canva to help. They’ve got tons of templates you can use, which makes creating content quick and painless.
• Showcase your brand personality: People like personality. Be sure your caption reflects your brand’s unique style and tone.
• Include a call-to-action (CTA): Encourage engagement by adding a CTA at the end of your post, such as asking people to comment or share their thoughts.

How to Manage Your Facebook Business Page

So now you’ve got a business page—congratulations! Now, let’s talk about how to manage that page.

Manage Your Page With Meta Business Suite

Meta Business Suite is the free tool Meta provides for running Facebook and Instagram from one place, and it’s worth setting up early. You can create and schedule posts for both platforms from a single dashboard, which makes that monthly batch of content far less fiddly than logging in and out of separate accounts. Messages and comments from both platforms land in one inbox too, so it’s easier to reply quickly and not miss the enquiry that arrives at 9pm on a Sunday.

Business Suite also shows how your content is performing, and it’s where you coordinate who works on your Page. If one person handles comments and another schedules posts, you can manage that from one place instead of passing a login around.

Give Your Team Access Without Sharing Passwords

Never hand over your Facebook login so someone else can run your Page. Give each person their own access through Meta Business Suite instead, so you can see who can do what and remove them later without changing a password. Facebook splits access into levels. Facebook access with full control lets someone change settings, manage who else has access and delete the Page, so keep it to the owner and one trusted backup. A person who only needs to publish posts, reply to messages or check performance can be given partial control or access to just those tasks.

Review who has access every few months, and straight away when an employee, agency or contractor leaves or changes role. It takes a few minutes, and it beats discovering later that a former freelancer still has full control of your Page.

How to Deactivate Your Facebook Page Temporarily

Need to take a little break or temporarily remove it from the public eye? If you think you might still need your business page in the future, temporarily deactivating it may be a good option. Here’s how to do it:

• Go to your Facebook Page and click on “Settings” in the top right corner.
• Click on “General” in the left-hand menu.
• Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Remove Page.”
• Select “Deactivate Page” and click “Continue.”
• Follow the prompts to confirm that you want to deactivate your page.

Once you’ve deactivated your Facebook page, it will no longer be visible to anyone. It’s important to note that deactivating your page is different from deleting it entirely. If you choose to delete your page permanently, all of its content and data will be lost forever, so make sure you’ve really thought the decision through before you make any rash decisions.

How to Permanently Delete your Facebook Page

Maybe you’re going out of business or you just don’t want to deal with the upkeep of your Facebook business page anymore. It happens, we get it. If you’ve decided that you no longer want to keep your Facebook Page, you can permanently delete it. Here’s how:

• Go to your Facebook Page and click on “Settings” in the top right corner.
• Click on “General” in the left-hand menu.
• Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Remove Page.”
• Select “Permanently Delete Page” and click “Continue.”
• Follow the prompts to confirm that you want to permanently delete your page.

Once you’ve confirmed that you want to delete your Facebook Page, it will be removed from Facebook forever, along with all of its content and data. This action cannot be undone, so make sure that this is what you really want before proceeding.

How to Schedule Posts

It’s important to post content often, but we get it—keeping up a regular posting cadence can be overwhelming. Luckily, Facebook allows you to schedule posts in advance, which means you can batch out content once or twice a month and not have to worry about manually posting. Here’s how to schedule a post on Facebook:

• Start by creating your post as you normally would, including any text, images, or links you want to include.
• Once your post is ready, select “Schedule.”
• Choose the date and time you want your post to be published using the calendar and clock icons.
• Click “Schedule” to set the publication date and time for your post.

Another option is to use a scheduling tool like Buffer. This is a good route if you want to schedule posts for multiple platforms rather than just Facebook.

Optimising your Facebook Business Page: 4 Tips

Next, let’s talk page optimisation. If you want to make the most out of your business page, the following tips will lead you in the right direction. 

1. Post Consistently and Test What Works

Optimising your Page doesn’t stop at the setup. What you post, and how reliably you show up, matters just as much. Choose a posting schedule you can keep up, because a modest routine that continues for a year beats an ambitious one that fizzles after a month. Mix your formats, too. Photos, short video, Reels and plain text updates all perform differently, and your audience will favour some over others. Reply to comments and messages promptly, since an unanswered question on a public post is visible to everyone who scrolls past.

Try different formats and calls to action, and see what people respond to instead of relying on a generic best time to post. Local content often earns more attention for local businesses: a mention of a nearby event, an offer tied to EOFY or the school holidays, or a photo of your team at the shopfront gives people a reason to engage that a stock image doesn’t. Look at how your posts are performing every month or so and adjust. There isn’t one ideal posting frequency, only what works for your audience.

2. Explore your Page Insights

Data-driven decisions are the best kind of decisions. Facebook Business Page Insights provide tons of valuable data and information about your audience, engagement, and performance on the platform. Here’s how to explore that data:

• Go to your Facebook Page and click on “Insights” at the top of the page.
• From here, you’ll see a dashboard with several different tabs that allow you to explore different types of data about your page.
• The “Overview” tab provides a summary of your page’s performance over the last 7 days, including metrics like reach, engagement, and likes.
• The “Likes” tab provides information about who likes your page, including demographics like age, gender, and location.
• The “Reach” tab shows how many people have seen your posts in their News Feed or on your Page.
• The “Engagement” tab displays data on post engagement such as reactions, comments, shares etc.
• You can also explore other tabs that provide more detailed information about video views, website clicks and more.

3. Pin a Post

Not all posts are created equal. Some posts will include important information and announcements, so you might want to pin them to the top of your page for optimal visibility. Here’s how to do it:

• Go to the post you want to pin on your Facebook Business Page.
• Click on the three dots in the top right corner of the post.
• Select “Pin to Top of Page” from the drop-down menu that appears.
• If you have multiple posts pinned, you can rearrange their order by clicking and dragging them in the “Pinned Posts” section located under your page cover photo.
• To unpin a post, click on the three dots in the top right corner of the pinned post and select “Unpin from Top of Page.”

Something important to note is that you can only pin one post at a time, so be sure to choose your pinned post carefully.

4. Get Facebook Reviews

Reviews are everything nowadays—they can literally make or break your business. Time spent collecting reviews from your customers will never be time wasted, but you also want to make the collection process as quick and simple as possible. And no, we’re not talking about buying reviews (that’s never a good idea).

By using a tool like Podium, you can easily ask for reviews from your customers via text any time they make a purchase. If you bake this process into your daily to-do list, your online presence will thank you for it. Podium also makes it easy to respond to reviews, which is good practice.

As a final word of advice, make sure to remove fake or spammy reviews as they might raise some red flags for potential customers visiting your page for the first time.

Optimise Your Facebook Business Page for Local Customers

A Page that only shares posts is doing about half the job. Most people who find your business on Facebook want something practical first: where you are, when you’re open and how to reach you. Start by checking that your business name, address, phone number and opening hours are right, then choose the category that describes what you do most closely. Add your website and the contact options you respond to, and write a plain description of what you sell and who you serve. If your Page has fields for services or products, fill them in. Keep your logo, cover image and tone in line with your website and other profiles, and set the call to action button to match your main goal, whether that’s booking, calling or messaging.

If you run a local business in Australia, think of your Facebook Page, your Google Business Profile and your website as three listings that need to agree. When your opening hours say one thing on Facebook and another on Google, customers turn up to a closed door and tell people about it. Using the same business name, address and phone number everywhere also makes it easier for search engines to connect those listings to one business. Check all three whenever something changes, like summer trading hours or a move to a new shopfront.

Protect Your Personal Information While Attracting Customers to Your Business

With over 2.4 billion active monthly users on Facebook, it’s hard to ignore the opportunities this social media platform can bring to your business. However, if you believe in the age-old rule of not mixing business with pleasure, you may wonder how to create a business Facebook page without a personal account.

Sharing personal email addresses, phone numbers, and birthdays on the internet isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Whether you want to limit what your team members can see or you’re sceptical about Facebook altogether, it’s understandable. You might not be in the market to publicise your private details.

If you want to maximise your social media marketing by creating a Facebook business page but don’t want your personal information within reach, read on. We’ll show you how to make it happen.

Keep Your Facebook Business Page Safe and Secure

Your Page is a business asset, so protect it like one. Turn on two factor authentication for every account that has access to the Page, starting with anyone who has full control, so a stolen password isn’t enough to get in. Give access only to people you trust, give each of them their own access instead of a shared login, and never send a password by email or text. Check the list of people with access on a regular schedule and remove anyone who doesn’t need it.

Be wary of messages claiming to be from Meta support, especially ones saying your Page has broken a policy and will be removed unless you click a link straight away. That’s a common phishing tactic. Finally, make sure more than one senior person can recover and manage the Page. If your only admin leaves the business or loses access to their account, getting the Page back can be slow and frustrating.

Are Personal Accounts Required to Create a Business Facebook Page?

While a personal Facebook profile is required to create a Facebook business page and to become a Facebook admin, you can avoid creating a personal profile all your friends can search for.

To create a Facebook page without a personal Facebook account, create a new account on Facebook’s homepage with your business email address. This way, you’ll only need to provide the following information:

• Your first name
• Your last name
• Your birthday
• Your gender

Even if prompted, you are not required to add your phone number to Facebook. However, it can add an extra layer of security to your Facebook page. We’ll soon explain how to keep your phone number and your required pieces of personal information private.

Keeping your personal information private

Once you’ve created your Facebook profile with your business email, you can further protect the minimal personal profile information you provided. In this section, we’ll guide you through a couple of precautions you can take to keep your account as non-personal as possible.

Make your Facebook profile unsearchable

The first step most users take to protect their information is making their profile fully private. This means no search engines can display your profile in their search results, and no Facebook users can find your account by searching for your phone number or business email address.

To make your profile unsearchable, log in to Facebook and head to the Privacy Settings and Tools section of your account.

Then, tap Edit next to the following sections and update the privacy setting to Friends or Only Me:

• “Who can see your future posts?”
• “Who can see your friends list?”
• “Who can look you up using the email address you provided?”
• “Who can look you up using the phone number you provided?”

Then, tap Edit next to Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile? and uncheck Allow search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile if needed.

Changing these settings will only affect your Facebook profile. Your Facebook business page will still be completely searchable for all users who may be interested in your company.

Hide your personal details

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Facebook Business Page FAQs

Is a Facebook Business Page free?

Yes. Creating and running a Facebook Business Page is free. You only pay if you choose to boost posts or run ads.

Do you need a personal Facebook account to create a business Page?

Yes. A Page has to be created and managed through a personal Facebook profile. It doesn’t need to be your everyday profile, and your Page stays separate from it.

How do you give employees access to a Facebook Business Page?

Add them through Meta Business Suite instead of sharing your login. Choose Facebook access or task access depending on what each person needs to do, and keep full control for the owner and a trusted backup. You can remove their access at any time.

How do you optimise a Facebook Page for a local business?

Keep your business name, address, phone number and opening hours accurate, choose a specific category, and add your website and a clear description. Make sure those details match your Google Business Profile, then post local content regularly and reply to customers promptly.

How often should a business post on Facebook?

There’s no single right answer. Pick a schedule you can keep up week after week, then watch your engagement, link clicks and enquiries. If they’re not improving, try changing your formats and calls to action before posting more often.