Back to Basics Part 1: The Advantages of a Facebook Business Page

Oct 01, 2021

We’re taking it back to the basics with this series.

Last Tuesday night we visited the Shire of Mundaring to deliver our Activate your Community Workshop. It was wonderful to meet so many motivated people involved in their community groups- AND to be completely flooded with questions about how to make social media work for them. This series is inspired by questions from the workshop.

We’re going right to the beginning and talking about starting your Facebook presence. So, if you are in the same boat and aren’t sure where to start, follow along! Part 2 outlines the 5 key elements of a great Facebook Business Page. Part 3 shows you how to migrate over a Facebook group to a Facebook page.

Now let’s dive in.

OK- so you’ve decided to set up a Facebook page for your organisation. You’re not quite sure about this “BUSINESS Page” idea yet. Well that’s about to change! We’re starting off this series by talking about the FOUR advantages of a business page so you can make the (right) decision (to have one). Ready to be convinced?

Advantage #1: You have access to Facebook Insights

Setting up your organisation with a business page allows you access to in-depth insights into your audience. As a business page, you can find out a ton of information from the last six months about your page. To access this data, when you login to your business page, head to the insights tab.

When you click on the “Insights” tab, you will see a dashboard that looks something like the screenshot below. It is your general overview of how your page is performing as compared to the week before.

From this dashboard, you can navigate to other dashboards with different pieces of data. On the left side of your screen is a series of tabs that you will want to check in on. The ones that will particularly help you customise your content are the “people” tab and the “posts” tab.

Under the people tab, you can find out where your followers live, their gender and what age they are.

… more like post 1 and 5, less like post 2!

Advantage #2: You can access and use Facebook ads

Facebook only allows Business Pages to run ads on the platform. You may just be starting out, and can’t even begin to fathom using Facebook ads, but believe me there will come a day when you will. Facebook ads allow you to reach new audiences and promote events, at a very low cost. So, when you’ve got your strategy locked down and have figured out what sort of content works, you’ll definitely want to think about Facebook ads in order to scale your efforts and reach new people on social.

Advantage #3: Your events can be featured on Facebook Local App

Facebook local is a relatively new app. It allows people to find events in their local area and filter them by date and category. Personal events cannot be featured on the local app, so, if you have a personal page, sorry but you are not going to show up here. If you have a business page however, the local app is a great way to show up to new audiences. It is intuitive to use and allows users to find out about the live, face-to-face events you offer, such as markets, footie tournaments, or fundraiser auctions in the exact place they live or are visiting. It’s a great way to promote your event for free, and literally requires no extra effort to set up. #winning!

Advantage #4: You can schedule your posts

Finally, the last big advantage- you can schedule your posts! As a Facebook Business Page, you are able to natively schedule in your content by clicking on the drop down arrow when you are about to send out a post. Believe us. This will save you SO much time if you can batch plan your content and then schedule it in all at the same time.

Instead of having to quickly (and usually reactively!) sit down to pop in a post, you can schedule in all your content and get your creative juices flowing. Then, you can sit down once every two weeks or so and bulk schedule in everything you want to say. After that, all you have to do is sit back and monitor your community’s response. It takes off the pressure of constantly coming up with new ideas and allows you to block out a single chunk of time to invest in your social efforts. Time efficient? Definitely.