Registering a Facebook Page For Your Startup

Given their immense user base there's a good chance that you already have a personal Facebook account. If your business primarily serves customers in a specific location, such as a restaurant or retail storefront, a Facebook page is a must if you want to be visible where your potential customers spend time. For businesses that focus on B2B you don't necessarily need a Facebook page for your company. As a founder your time is limited and more social media channels means more places to check for customer feedback, so whether to register a Facebook page is a decision that depends heavily on your business. In this Recipe we'll walk through the process of setting up the page and highlight a few settings that you can adjust to make it easier to manage.

To get started, from your personal Facebook account look for the icon in the upper right with nine dots. Click that to open Facebook's product menu.

On the right you'll see options for types of things you can create on the platform. Scroll until you find the option to create a Page, and click it.

First you'll give the Page a name. You can use your company name, or if your business is a specific location for a chain you can add the name of the city or location you serve.

Next you'll be prompted to pick up to three categories for your Page. The first one you pick is the only one that will show to visitors, so pick the best fit first. If you pick others they will be used to suggest your page to potential new visitors.

Next enter a description for the Page. You can use your elevator pitch, or match the text you use on other social media platforms if you have registered them for your startup.

Next you'll be able to upload images to personalize your page. Just like your own Facebook account, your company page can feature a profile photo (you should use your logo for this).

You can also add a cover photo. We recommend adding a cover photo that shows people interacting with your product, but you can add a photo of the team if that's all you have available.

Since Facebook owns WhatsApp, one of the features available on a company page is to link a WhatsApp number so that users on that platform can contact your through it. If your customer base uses WhatsApp you can add a number here, but if not it's safe to ignore. You can always set it up later.

Next you'll create your page's username. This is unique to your company and forms part of the unique web link to your Facebook page. Given Facebook's global user base it may be difficult to find a username that isn't already taken, but the Facebook platform doesn't put as much emphasis on this field as Twitter or Instagram do so it's not a big deal if you can't get the exact username you want.

That's all the basic information needed to create your company Page. One you complete the form you'll be directed to your new Page. As the Page's owner you will be able to set some additional information to customize your page for your business.

One of the things you will see on your new company Page is a list of steps you can take to tailor your page to your startup's focus. You've already completed the first section, Establish Your Page's Identity. The next section is Provide Info and Preferences.

Click the section labeled Provide Info and Preferences to enter the data it needs. The first step is to list your startup's Website. If you have already created one you can enter its URL here, but if not you can add it later.

Next Facebook will prompt for your business address and hours. For a retail business this is critical - it will help customers find you and know when you're open. If you don't have a retail presence you can mark This doesn't apply to my Page.

The next section will require some thought. Facebook company Pages support one primary call to action button. You can only select from the options provided by Facebook, and the best option to pick depends heavily on your startup. A restaurant with online ordering might pick Start Order, whereas a physical therapist might use Book Now. If none of the options are a good fit, Follow is the most basic option. Depending on your choice you might be prompted to enter the link you want users to be directed to when they click, such as your online ordering system or booking engine.

The next part of setting up your company's Facebook Page is outreach. There are two steps in this section. You have the ability to invite your personal account's friends to visit and follow your Page. This can be a great way to get initial traction and visibility for your Facebook Page and ultimately to your startup. If you are setting up the Facebook Page before launching your startup you can hold off on this step until you are ready.

You can also create a welcome post that describes your startup's products or services. This post will be one of the first things that new visitors see when they find your Page.

By default, Facebook enables a number of functions on your Facebook Page. Each function is configured as a separate Tab and depending on your startup and how you intend to use your page you might not want all of them enabled. You might also want to re-order the Tabs (my clicking and dragging the icon that looks like six dots) to highlight ones that make more sense for your business. You can review and adjust them by finding the icon with three dots, clicking it, and selecting Edit Tabs. Some specific things you should consider:

As part of setting up your new Page you should review the rest of the Page settings, because there are a lot of them and several have a big impact on how people interact with your Page. The far left panel of your Page lists the functions you can access as the Page's owner. Scroll to the very bottom and select Settings.

There are dozens of settings grouped into categories on the left. Because each startup might leverage its Facebook Page differently we won't review every setting in this Recipe, but you should at least click through each category and make yourself familiar with the settings it offers.

One setting worth highlighting is around visitor posts. If your goal with your Facebook Page is to drive traffic to your website or other external content, especially if you are building an online community outside of Facebook, you might not want to allow visitors to interact with your Facebook Page since it will distract potential customers from your goal. You can disable visitor posts in the General section in Settings. Even if you do want to allow visitor posts, this section controls content moderation and profanity filters that you might want to consider enabling.

Once you have your Facebook Page set up to your satisfaction, it's time to see how it looks to users. A Facebook Page is similar to any other Facebook account in that you can interact with content 'as' the Page. This is useful if you are trying to build a community on your Facebook Page, because you can interact with visitor posts without using your personal Facebook account. As your business grows you can also allow other Facebook users to manage your Page and help you grow your community.

Now that you have a Page account, one thing you should always keep in mind as you use Facebook is which account is currently active. The active account's profile photo will always be displayed as you use Facebook, and you can switch between the Page account and your personal one by clicking the profile photo and selecting the other account.

Before we finish let's switch to a personal account and make sure the Page looks the way we expect. Click the profile icon and switch to your personal account. You'll notice that the administrative functions for the Page are now hidden. Check that the Page looks like you expect, and if you need to make changes you can switch back to the Page account and make adjustments.