It’s officially spring, and we talked last month about spring cleaning your business; part of which is freshening up your marketing campaigns. There’s no doubt that Facebook continues to dominate digital marketing for both online and brick and mortar companies. But are you using Facebook as strategically as you could?

This month we’re going to focus just on Facebook, and to kick it off, let’s get an understanding of the platform itself.

First the stats:

• 5 billion active mobile users
• 2 billion monthly active Facebook users
• 4 billion daily active users
• Link and share buttons are viewed across almost 10 million websites daily
• Average time spent on Facebook is 20 -30 minutes

I was shocked by the numbers, so checked various sites to verify them, and while different sites quote slightly different statistics, they are very close to each other.

1.4 billion users check Facebook daily

So, let’s get started on using Facebook for YOUR business.

Some of this may seem quite elementary, as most businesses have at one time or another created a Facebook page. The question tends to be, how active (or consistent) are you on posting content? If you haven’t read our blog on creating a content calendar, or are looking for tips to get started and make this all seem a little less daunting, send us a note, we’ll be glad to get you started in the right direct.

What’s the difference between your Facebook Profile and your Facebook Page?

Simply, your Profile is you. Pictures of family vacations, inside jokes with high school friends – they all belong on this page. Keep business – business, and personal – personal. You do however need a Facebook Profile to set up a Facebook Page.

Your Facebook Page is a specific web page within Facebook with the goal to create a following and share relevant content for your business. You need a Facebook Page to create Facebook Ads (we’re not going to cover Ads today but will circle back to this later in the month).

Business owners can use their Page to connect with followers, share stories, build reputation, reach new customers, get feedback, provide customer service, and give their business a voice. Since you need a page to start using Facebook ads, let’s focus on how to create a Facebook page that represents your brand, helps establish your credibility, and gets found on Google.

Some of the same advice we give business owners when they’re building their new website also apply to Facebook. Look at the competition, big and small brands, what are they doing well, what could they do better, what elements can you build into your own page. With Facebook, you also want to look at which posts get likes and the engagement level.

When starting your page (or revisiting it and refining it further) keep in mind that complete pages have a better search ranking. You may find that some of the tabs don’t apply to you, and those can be removed. You also have the flexibility to rearrange the tabs in a way that makes more sense to your business. Build your page with text, videos, photos, and sharing (or curating) content from others. One handy trick, back date some of your posts so they all don’t “appear” all on the same day.

Our last tip for this week (and we’ll talk more about this when we start diving deeper into keywords) is maximizing the impact of your Facebook Page short description. The first 156 characters of your short description appears in Google search results as your meta description, this is your opportunity to include 2-3 highly searched keywords (with your domain name). Curious how this looks, try searching one of your competitors to see what they’re doing (just add “Facebook” in your search to filter the results).

We have a lot to cover this month, so stay tuned!