Facebook really is such a powerful tool for small businesses, and large businesses! During lockdown, I’ve delivered many webinars about social media and Facebook specifically, and it really made me realise that a lot of people do not know how powerful it is.

The Basics

Even just looking at Facebook in a basic sense, it’s potential for you as a small business is a great. You can set up a specific business page which you fill with all of your business information, and you can post to your followers. You can just try and grow your page like this but it’s the networking and features that Facebook offer which is where you can really boost your social media.

Features

Facebook has a lot of features for business, it’s really there to make promoting your business easy and dare I say it, enjoyable! The more you use and get stuck in with Facebook, the easier you’ll find growing your page and your following.

Posting

You can post in loads of different ways on Facebook, which really helps to keep your page looking diverse and interesting. I’d always recommend making sure each post looks good – that could be by using an image or video, or even a website link which pulls through a good picture. You can also use polls, background colours, you could go live, make slideshows – lots of difference features. Facebook even helps you choose them!

Stories

Facebook has a good stories feature, which works in a very similar way to Instagram – although personally, if you do have an Instagram page and post to Stories on there, I would share them directly over. The options on Instagram feel more sleek!

Groups

This is the big one for Facebook and it’s growing and growing in popularity. So there’s a two prong approach here really – the potential for joining groups and networking, and then also creating your own group around your page and business community.

On Facebook you can search and find a group for pretty much anything – the key is finding one that will be valuable to you. So, for me, I like groups that are talking about digital or helping small businesses feel empowered. I want a group that has a lot of discussion and nattering (because it’s what I like to do as well), answering questions and sharing information. I’ve joined many groups that end up just being post after post with no engagement – that’s not for me. So, find your group on Facebook and then remember – be a part of it.

I’ve honestly had a lot of business through Facebook groups and networking in them. My top tip, forget the “sell sell sell” and concentrate more on providing valuable answers and comments, and working on your repuation that way.

Appointments

Did you know you can book appointments via Facebook? It seems to be a little known feature, but incredibly powerful depending on your line of work. I’m thinking especially beauticians and hairdressers. You turn on the appointments tab on your page, and set up what appointment slots you have available on what days.

Visitors to your page can then book that slot, and you can confirm and communicate with them via messenger.

Facebook Shops

Now that the new Facebook shops has rolled out in the UK, a huge new potential for anyone selling online!

First though – don’t rely on just Facebook shops, please! It’s a fickle beast, and if you put all of your energy into this and don’t look at an ecommerce website or other platforms, you might be left hanging if your page gets taken away from you – and they do!

The new Facebook Shops comes with a lot of features, and from my small amount of dabbling – you can create catelogues with collections and products, link your shop to your website or take payments via Facebook (for a small cost, of course), link products and of course link it over to Instagram too.

The beauty of a shop is, when you then post to your page, you can tag your products and promote them. Even if you’re only tagging them in the picture and not directly “sell sell sell-ing”, it just makes your page a lot more flexible, and helpful to you.

The new shops will also soon be able to link up to your websites, so if you’ve got a WordPress ecommerce shop, you can link the two and it manages your stock control. Swanky! I’m not sure yet of the full list of platforms it will work with, but I know WordPress is on the list!

Job Advertising

Similar to the appointments tab, you can also advertise jobs on Facebook and they get brilliant reach too! Within the tool, you can set up how people apply for the job (be it through Facebook or an external website, do they send a CV or fill in some questions you can set up) and reply to them. You can tag them as making the interview or shortlist stage, you can really keep on top of the process all from within the one area.

What’s great about this is that from experience, the jobs do get a lot of local traction, so if you are a hotel or seasonal business with jobs coming and going often, Facebook is a great avenue to go down… and it’s free!

Facebook Rooms

This is a fairly new feature, where you can create video rooms either on your personal profile or within a group.

Think – Zoom or Teams, it works in the same way with a maximum of 50 people. Great way to create networking sessions within the groups!