How to Create a Facebook Fan Page for Your Home Business

Build a Community and Your Home Business With a Facebook Fan Page

Thumbs up "like" icon from Facebook.

Mizter_x94 / Pixabay.com

You already know that a Facebook Fan Page is a great marketing tool for businesses of any size, nonprofit organizations, independent contractors and freelancers, celebrities, musical groups, and even politicians. The fan page will help you connect with Facebook users. These pages have different attributes than a standard profile page and are powerful tools to build a following.

Creating a Facebook Fan Page

Navigate to Facebook using your favorite method and sign in to your existing account. The most direct way to begin to build a fan page is from the blue control bar at the top of a Facebook page. On this bar, next to the Home button choose to Create. You will get a drop-down menu listing several options for your page. The first option on the list is Page. 

Choose Page and you will be brought to another screen showing two options.

  • Business or Brand
  • Community or Public Figure

Categorize Yourself

Choose between these two and you will be prompted to enter the name of your page. You can include keywords for which you'd like to rank well for in Google or other search engine results (SER) pages.

The next field requires you to choose a Category for the page. Facebook has literally thousands of categories for you to choose from. The list is alphabetically sorted with subtitles below each major category. You can click each item and navigate to a list of other pages under that same listing. Shop around and find the one best suited for your purpose.

If you decide later you would like to change the category on your page you can do that from the edit menu of your fan page. The edit menu is located under the About tab for the page. You can change the category as often as you would like.

Images for Your Fan Page

The next step is to upload the page's profile picture and the cover photo. You can skip one or both of these items and always go back and edit them later. You can also change these items as often as you would like.

The profile image is the small icon that will appear next to post or comments you make. The cover photo is a larger, banner-like, image that will appear at the top of your fan page. The best size for this image is 820 pixels by 462 pixels in width and height.

Settings for Success

Once you complete—or skip—the image work you page will automatically load. Now you need to set the administrator and other roles for the page. Since you built the page you are automatically listed as an administrator. As the admin, you'll have total control over the page. You can add others to your admin. For example, you can have your virtual assistant help you manage the page.

Besides administrator, roles include editor, moderator, advertiser, analyst, and jobs manager and each position is allowed varying levels of control on the page. Facebook does not limit the number of people you can assign to these roles. You can also add or remove people at any time. To make changes go to your fan page and click the Settings tab in the white bar at the top of the page. Settings are located just below the Notifications icons on the primary blue bar.

Once you click Settings it will bring up another page showing several options that you can set for this fan page. Navigate through all of these and customize your page.

Be sure to read Facebook's terms before proceeding. You do that by clicking the Review the Facebook terms link. Violating Facebook rules can get your page terminated, so be sure you know the policies.

Build Fan Pages on Mobile Devices

To build a page using a mobile device open the Facebook app and sign in. Use the hamburger menu and choose Pages next to the orange flag. This will allow you to create or view already existing pages.

You will name and categorize your page as discussed above. Categories will be in a scroll-down list. Choose next when you are done. You can add a website link, profile photo, and cover photo or skip these steps. When you are done you can tap Visit Page to navigate to the new fan page.

Delete a Facebook Fan Page

As an administrator, you can decide to delete a page at any time. To do this go to the fan page and choose Settings located at the top of the page. Look in the General Tab. At the bottom is the option to remove the page. Make sure the correct page displays, click to delete and confirm.

Customizing Your Facebook Fan Page

Before you start gathering fans, make sure your fan page provides all the important information about your business including:

  1. Link to your home business website
  2. Fill in the About information related to your business
  3. Integrate other social media such as Instagram, YouTube, or Pinterest

What to Post on Your Facebook Fan Page

While the goal of making a business Facebook fan page is for marketing, you want to avoid posting only "buy now" type messages. Remember, social media is social, and this is called a fan page, so your goal is to build a community. To do that, you need to not only post helpful information but also messages that will attract followers and have them engage with you. Some ideas of what to post include:

  1. Posts from your blog
  2. Blog posts or articles from other sources
  3. Images with quotes or memes
  4. Ask questions
  5. Give behind the scenes look into your business
  6. Give advanced access to your content 
  7. Special offers for fans only
  8. Videos
  9. Contests or giveaways
  10. Anything that your fans would be interested in knowing about

You might consider adding a group, which Facebook can help integrate with your fan page. Click on Community in the left-hand menu and Facebook will have a box that says Groups, with information on creating a Facebook group around your fan page. 

Like other social media, you need to do more than post messages to your page. You also need to respond to comments and interact with your followers.

Creating a Custom URL

Before you can have a custom URL (i.e, facebook.com/mybusinessname/) you'll need to get 25 fans (people who have clicked the "Like" button on the top of your fan page). You can start by telling the people who are friends on your profile page know about the fan page. You can invite them specifically or you can post about the page on your profile feed. Be careful about inviting people to like your page, as sometimes this can annoy people. Make sure that whoever you invite is someone who is interested in what your fan page has to offer. 

You can also build your following by including links to your fan page:

  • On your website
  • In your email signature
  • On other social media (i.e. send a tweet about your fan page)
  • On your business card
  • In a message to your email list
  • On a blog post about the fan page