Contractor's Guide to Facebook

If you’re looking for ways to market your services, Facebook is a powerful tool, especially if used correctly.

Why should you use Facebook for your business?

Brand awareness – Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms in the world, with more than 2.7 billion active users each month (correct as of 2019).

Keeping clients engaged – Being active on the platform is a good way to spread your company’s message, build community and loyalty amongst your customers.

How to set up a Facebook Business page

Even if you have a personal profile, it’s against Facebook’s terms of service to use this for promoting your business, so you must create a dedicated business page. By keeping your business and personal information separate, building your pages professionally, and posting relevant content, you can create powerful relationships on Facebook that positively impact your company’s bottom line.

Below are the steps to setting up your Facebook Business page:

Ensure you have a personal Facebook profile – if you don’t, first register online for free.
You must use your own personal Facebook profile, or a registered user of Facebook to set up your Business page. You need to allocate an ‘administrator’ for the site, the person who is going to update your page.
You can add as many admin users as you would like for your business page, we recommend you keep it to one or two people. Should you want a personal profile page that does not contain any of your own personal information (pictures, post etc) then sign up again; there is no rule that says you cannot have two accounts, you would just require two separate email addresses. That way you have a completely blank personal profile that can be used by anyone in the future.
Click on the ‘create a page‘ link – this can be found on the Facebook homepage or in the ‘help’ section of the site.
Ensure to make your business page ‘public’ by clicking this option in your settings, by doing so this ensures anyone can find your page.

Get your guide to contracting

Find out how to maximise your take-home pay and become a successful contractor in our free guide. Also covered in our guide is:

Getting started – discover which business structure is best for you and how to get started.
Your tax and financial obligations – all you need to know about your paying tax, filing accounts and what costs you offset.
Making your business a success – learn how to grow your business, how to market yourself and to forecast for the future.

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How to use Facebook to increase engagement

Here are a few easy ways to use your Facebook profile to increase engagement:

Add the link of your Facebook business page to your email auto-signature, in the same way that you would to promote your web address.

Try recommending useful articles, links to presentations, websites and valuable resources that may interest your clients and prospects.

Let people know about anything that happens with your business – such as new products or services you’re offering, any trade shows you might be attending, any new developments you want people to know about, or anything related to the business as a whole. People read those posts and monitor what you are doing or offering and they then invite others to become friends.

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Growing your business using Facebook

Once your page is set up, we recommend customising it by adding various applications. Doing so will make your business page a lot more user-friendly. The basic Facebook applications available when creating your business page are as follows, however, you can add more should you want to:

Discussion Board: Enables your fans to get their ideas out into the open. Discussion boards let you know exactly what your fans and customers think and want.
Events: Promote your gatherings or let people know about upcoming business events.
Notes: Share your business news or engage your fans through written entries.
Photos: Upload photos to your page promoting your products or business service. This is also where you can upload your company logo and tag this as your ‘profile picture’.
Reviews: Fans and customers can leave honest opinions about your business.
Video: A high-quality video platform – this is useful for demonstration.
Wall: The Wall is an open forum for your fans or friends to leave comments, thoughts, and ideas about you on your Page or Profile.