5 Essential Tips to Start a Facebook Page from Scratch

This works because as you post things, your friends will like and comment on those posts, and in doing so will expose your page to new audiences. Those new people may end up being your future customers. So even though your friends may not be your customers, it is typically the easiest place for a new business to start. If you’re comfortable with this, then start there.

There are a few great ways to do this. You can use the “Invite friends to like this page” Link on the top right of your page or share your business page on your personal Facebook account. You can also include a link to your Facebook page in your email signature saying “follow us on Facebook.” If you use more than one social media account for one business, you can put little social media icons at the bottom of your email and say something like “Connect with us.”

This is a simple thing to do, yet many business owners neglect it. If people are searching and finding your personal profile on Facebook, you want to make it easy for them to find your business page from there. When people list where they work and it’s not properly linked to their Facebook page, a weird “Community Page” is created with the same name and a little suitcase icon. People will like that page rather than your real Facebook page, and so none of your carefully created content will show up in their feed.

To make sure you link your page properly, navigate to your personal profile’s About section and edit the ‘Work and Education’ field. Any page name with the “suitcase” icon is a generic link. To unlink the “dummy page” from your profile, simply delete the position from your ‘Work and Education’ section in the About area (click Edit in the About section), and then add in the correct Facebook page. Usually if you start typing the name of your page in the Company area it will autofill it, but that occasionally doesn’t happen. If your page isn’t showing up, simply try again later or use a different browser to see if that will help.

Also, make sure that your Work and Education is Public, not just visible to friends. You can adjust that in the little field to the left of the ‘save changes’ button.

For example; a company selling kiln-dried firewood might want to follow the official Michigan DNR page. If they see a post about not moving firewood, it would be an excellent idea for them to like that post, and then comment how "as a forester we’ve seen the danger firsthand of forest devastation and that is one reason kiln-dried firewood is growing in popularity - no bugs.” Or something along those lines. The point is to become involved in the conversation and establish yourselves as the authority on the subject. People will listen, your voice will be heard, they'll learn to think of you as the experts, and your web presence will grow. This will put weight and authority behind your name, paving the way for future advertising.