Jul 10, 2019
Hey there, welcome to episode 28 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.
For the next 3 weeks, I will be doing some social media platform audits. This week is Facebook, and the next two will be Instagram and LinkedIn.
The idea is to ensure you have all your i's dotted and t’s crossed and that your profiles and content are as magnetic as they can be.
If you want to get off to an even faster start, you can take my 5 Day Social Media Challenge and get ahead of the crowd! Just go to www.5daysocialchallenge.com.au/ and join up.
I come across many social media profiles, on all platforms, that people have simply set up quickly and started banging out content. What they’ve never done, is have a look at what “first impression” is given for anyone landing on your profile for the first time. Do they know who you are, what you do, what you are famous for or importantly, what you can do for them?
So, buckle up and listen in so you can make sure everything is smick with you and yours! Of course, if you’re out walking or shopping or in the bath listening to this – there’s always show notes – just go to www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au and find them there!
But firstly, let’s do the Discovery of the Week!
THIS WEEK’S DISCOVERY!
Ok, this week, it’s a good one and is a discovery for me and I am just a wee bit excited to use it and share it with you all!
At the moment I am in the middle of head down bum up, building my first digital course – Facebook Ads for Beginners. And with that course comes workbooks! I wanted a way people could fill in the workbook on their computer – whilst dealing with all the different platforms and systems my students might be using.
And then I found https://www.pdfescape.com/windows/ - which is a free PDF editor and form filler!
Can you get excited!?!? Not only can you edit PDFs but it’s a form filler too! So, all those PDF’s you’re sent you can plug into here and fill them out online!
I really think this is a game changer to me in my business and get see so many applications – not to mention filling out Uni and School forms for the kids!! I hope it will make my life Simpler and yours too!
As always, just a little disclaimer, my discoveries are just that and I am in no way affiliated with any of them but promise to tell you if I ever am. I just love them and from the response of my listeners, you guys, you are loving them too!
Hey and if you have a little discovery, or something you use in your business that you’d like to share, please do so. Email me at jenn@jenndonovan.com.au or tag me @smallbusinessmadesimple. I really love to know what tools you use to help make your life simpler!
FACEBOOK AUDIT
If you can listen to this podcast at your desk in front of your computer – that’s great – and will be best. But if you’re not – that’s ok too – everything will be in the show notes – you can use them to do your audit when you’re ready!
Ok – so let’s get into your Facebook audit.
So, for this audit I will be going through the essential things you need to have on your Facebook Business Page, and I will touch on things you should have on your personal page regarding your business too.
FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE
I’m gunna start with your Facebook Business page::
- Your profile pic
- Does it look like you? Is it brand consistent? Is it a recent picture of you? Would I recognise you from it if I saw you at the supermarket? When was the last time you updated it? Is it a consistent look across all your social platforms?
That’s a lot of questions – but let me break it down into some BIG don’ts –
- don’t have a picture that doesn’t look like you. I come across some profile pics on social media and they are clearly hanging onto their youth! It is their picture, but it’s from long, long ago. You are doing no justice to yourself or your brand having a picture like this. Update it. Embrace who you are, warts and all!
- No glamour shots. Seriously, I’ve seen people use those shots that I would call “glamour” and look more sexy than engaging – not the platform – this is business not a dating app. Plus, it just makes you look less authentic when you post a selfie or another pic of yourself and you’re almost unrecognisable!
- No dogs, no pets, no partners – this picture if about you and your business. Think H2H – human to human.
Just be YOU!
- Your Facebook cover. What does it say about your business? What does it tell your prospect who’s landed on your page? When was the last time you updated it?
This is PRIME real estate peeps. It should say what you do in pictures and have a call to action.
If you’ve got an event coming up – change it.
If you’re on sale – change it.
If you’ve got something significant to tell or show your audience – change it!
Ok, it’s Facebook Cover challenge time – if you click on your Facebook cover – does it have a link – call to action – anything?
This is a step that so many people forget to do – and it’s a HUGE mistake. If someone clicks your cover – you want to have something else for them to do right? A CTA?
I’ve put a picture in the show notes of mine to show you what I mean::
Not sure what I’m talking about or where to find it/put your call to action.
Ok – just go to your Facebook Page – click your cover anywhere and to the right-hand side do you have “add a description” or do you have a description?
You can add links here, a creative call to action etc etc. DO NOT leave this space blank – prime real estate peeps!
It’s a good idea to change your cover, I’d suggest, maybe every few months or so?
www.canva.com has lots of templates to help you out with this. If you haven’t used Canva before – go there right now and start exploring. It’s LIFE CHANGING. You can thank me later!
Ok, that’s the two big ones done.
But just under your Facebook cover – you have a Call to Action Button (right hand side on computer, under it on mobile device). You can change this and should change it depending on what’s happen inside your business.
You have lots of options – go through them, see which one is appropriate for now and set that button up. E.g./ if you have a shop – have Shop Now – if you have an event coming up you are prompting, having “Sign Up” and so forth.
My point is don’t set and forget – change these things up depending on what’s happening in business! Use these platforms to make them as lead generating as possible!
Now let’s head down the list, as admins, we can see on our Facebook Page – the list is on the left-hand side that I am referring to.
- Services – if you have services that you offer – put them here! Whether they are sewing services or courses you sell or coaching offerings you offer – whatever service you provide to your audience – they go here. Remember to update them often though as your business changes or grows.
- Reviews – haven’t got any – ask for some! Reach out to your best clients or customers and ask them if they could leave you a review or better still start leaving them for businesses you buy from or use and pay it forward (it will come back to you – you know it always does!)
o If you have bad reviews (that are unfair and unfounded) turn off your reviews by going to settings, templates and tabs, reviews – and turn off. If you can’t see your reviews – follow the same process and click turn on! (I’ll come back to settings shortly!)
Now, I’m just going to say here – your left-hand menu might look different to mine. You can turn on and off functions of this menu that sits just below your profile pic, on a computer, by going to that templates and tab option in your settings.
I recommend that you do go here, turn off ones that aren’t relevant and set up the ones that are and you should have. For example, if you have an online shop – or want one – you should set up the Shop tab. If you do offers to your audience – again you should set this up!
I’m not going to run through them all – because a. I don’t have time and b. we are all a wee bit different and c. I’ve got a lot to get through!
But I am going to head to the About section!
If I went to your “About” section on your Facebook page – what would I read? Something? Nothing? Something engaging and relevant?
Recently, I was working with a prospect and their “About” section told me about their achievements in 2012 – it’s 2019 – I’m not sure a single person would care about how good they were 7 years ago!
But that’s an important lesson, we can’t set these things up and then never go back to edit, change or update.
I think every 6 or 12 months we should pretend to be our own clients and go through and seeing what they see – what they read etc.
Make sure you’re About section is filled in with as much detail as possible.
** Pro-tip – when it asks for your website address – it doesn’t have to be your home page. It can be any page within your website – be strategic. Again, if you have an event coming up – change it to that URL etc etc – just remember to change it back after the event!
Second Pro-Tip – it’s in the About section that your @name forms part of your URL. If you go to your page and under your profile pictures doesn’t sit a @name – then it’s time to claim that name and set up your Vanity URL for the page.
CAUTION though – changes this may make links in previous posts, documents, articles etc etc invalid as you are changing your URL – so think about this before changing it. But if nothing exists there – that’s different.
Within the About section is the “Story” section. It’s here you need to write some compelling copy to engage your reader. It’s your Story but remember it’s not ALL about you!
After someone has read it, they should know what you do, and what you can do for them.
Add your awards here too. Frankly, just follow the bouncing ball and fill out as much detail are possible.
Two more things::
- Verify your email address here – Facebook will send you an email to make sure it’s legit.
- Verify your Page – go to settings, Page Verification, and follow the prompts.
Just a heads up – verifying your page can be a little challenging for some in the past – but stick with it! Fingers crossed it’s super simple for you if you haven’t already done it.
In the settings section, People and Other Pages tab is a little interesting – you can see who likes your page and when they joined up by date, people who “follow the page” (as opposed to like it) and pages your page likes and pages that like your page.
Still in the settings section – Instagram tab – if you have a business Instagram profile – this is where you can connect it. I love that mine are connected – helps with content curation – and love that it shares stories!
A couple of final thoughts, suggestions, ideas while we are still in “Setting”. Instant Articles – if you are writing blogs consistently, you might like to look at setting up Instant Articles. What are they? Well, they are basically Facebook’s way of keeping content within Facebook (so you aren’t redirecting your audience away from Facebook to say your blog page) and to give the reader a better reader experience by having the article load, well instantly, hence the name!
This is not my area of expertise as I found the whole thing a little difficult to set up, work into my business model, but if you’re a blogger or article writer, I do suggest you look into them more.
In the show notes there’s a link to a blog which talks all about Instant Articles – the pros and possible cons. Have a read and see if it fits in your business model.
https://instapage.com/blog/facebook-instant-articles
Instant Articles are one of the things Facebook does but doesn’t make it easy for us (the curator) but seamless for the end user (who’s their customer I guess!).
And finally, in Settings, Cross Posting – if you’re an admin of several Pages who have the same target audience, you can set up cross posting so that you only have to post once, and it will go several places!
BUT, if you really do have several Pages with the same target audience, think about merging them – it could just make it easier for you and your audience! Just a thought!
If you’ve never explored your “Settings” tab in Facebook – spend some time in there – there’s lots of things in there that could make your life simpler, but I don’t have time to run through them all. For example, if you are sick of Facebook notifications – you can change how often you get them and get them in bulk! That could be awesome if you are often distracted by the ding sound of a notification!
Before a finish up this episode, a couple more tips for you.
Did you know you can like a page as your page? So, I can like a page as Social Media and Marketing Australia rather than as Jenn Donovan. Great for branding and for keeping people to like you back! I believe you can only do it from a computer though – not a mobile device. Simple go to the page you want to like – click the 3 dots in the like, Followings, Share menu under your Facebook cover and a menu drops down. Click “Like as Your Page” – cool hey!
Just on those 3 dots, if you are on your page, you can click them and then click – “View as a Page Visitor” and see your page as someone who isn’t an admin would see it. Again, I don’t think you can do this on mobile – or at the time of this recording. It’s fabulous for undertaking a review like this, seeing what our prospects see!
I can’t do a Facebook review without talking about your Insights tab. This is oh so so very important. You should be looking at your insights at least monthly – and I say at least – really twice a month.
Insights sits at the top of your page on a computer. On your mobile – it’s when you click to look at your Page via the Facebook app (as opposed to the Pages app).
Insights tells you so many things. In fact, enough for another Podcast episode! But if you’ve never ventured in there, here’s some things it will tell you
- All about your audience
- Best times for posting
- Your most engaging content
- Story Stats
- You can dominate pages to watch. Pages to Watch helps you compare the performance of your Page and posts with similar Pages on Facebook. Great tool for content creation.
- At the moment it tells you about your paid promotions – but that’s moving at the end of July.
So, my challenge to you is, schedule out 10 minutes in your diary to look at your insights twice a month. Learn more about your audience, what they find most engaging and when they are engaging with it and create marketing strategies to match.
I’m often asked about the best way to schedule Facebook posts – which app to use. My recommendation is here – if you are scheduling posts for Facebook – do it natively in the app. Better algorithm and it’s oh so easy!
On a computer just do the post as you usually would but instead of press “post” click the little clock and schedule it.
Go into the app, do a post as you usually would, click continue and when it says “when will this be published” or “share now” click and schedule it for when you want it!
Heads up though – you can’t see your scheduled posts through the Facebook app – as far as I can find, you need to be on desktop or using the Facebook Pages app.
I think we’ve covered enough for one Podcast for Facebook Pages – I’m sure you’ve all got some work to do.
PERSONAL FACEBOOK PROFILE
But before I finish up, I said I would briefly touch on a personal profile too. If you want people to be able to find your business via your personal profile – then you need to make sure that your personal “About” is optimised for that!
Having where you work plugged into your profile as well as ensuring that you add connection points in your Contact information.
You can add your
- Business Phone number
- Your skype link
- Your YouTube link
- Your LinkedIn profile link
- Instagram link
- Website
- And another webpage – I’ve done my link to Spotify – but you can send it wherever you want!
If you are your business, then it’s wise to optimise here. Of course, if you want to keep your personal profile private from business – then simply don’t! But it’s another way to drive leads, sales and human to human connections.
Wow – that was quite the episode – I hope you got lots of gold from it. But that is it for episode 28.
If you have any queries, questions, thoughts tips or tricks, let’s continue this conversation in my Facebook Group – Like Minded Business Owners.
I’ll be back next Thursday with some more marketing know-how and another discovery of course.
If you’re enjoying this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this with a friend. And maybe leave me a rating and a review wherever you listen in. Those things are like gold for podcasters like me! PS – you can leave more than one rating and review – just saying!
Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that special gift that only you have. Thanks so much for lending me your ears.
…….. and remember small business peeps, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!