How To Optimize Facebook Page Based On The Latest Facebook 2020 Update
There are over 1.69 billion users of Facebook in the world. With this number, it’s no wonder, most businesses skip creating their own website and invest more of their money and time on building their brands on Facebook.
Aside from that billion users (which definitely includes your customers all over the world), creating an account on Facebook is free. There is zero cost in starting your Facebook page, except of course if you will hire a graphic artist to create your photos and visuals, a Facebook manager to manage your account and advertise using Facebook ads.
But if you want to go organic and do everything on your own, then yeah, it is free.
This growing demand from the business sector prompts Facebook to innovate and improve its platform for businesses. Some of the features that have been added and improved recently to better serve business pages are the new Content Creator Studio, Instagram Integration, Messenger Plugin on WordPress, newly improved dashboard, Facebook Pixel, and a lot more.
And from the looks of it, we can expect more exciting changes and updates in the coming days. We will be talking about these tools and updates on our next blog, so better watch out or subscribe.
Facebook is indeed a good platform that should be present in your marketing plans. But it is not enough that you have a Facebook page for your business. Setting up an account is not the end of it. You need to optimize your Facebook page so you can achieve your business goals.
It is useless to create a Facebook page and leave everything to fate. You still need to work on your Facebook page so it appears in front of your customers.
Remember, you are not the only one using Facebook in marketing their business. Your competitors are on Facebook too and they are probably spending a lot of time and money to make sure they hit their business goals.
So if you are new to Facebook or have been using Facebook for quite some time to promote your business but still wondering what else you can do to improve your traffic and conversion, here are some easy and effective ways on how to optimize your page based on the latest Facebook updates.
1. Select the best category for your page
In creating a page, it is important that you pick the right category for your business. Getting it right from the start will give Facebook relevant information on how to position your page. This will help your customer find you easily on Facebook and at the same time give you good SEO appeal so your page can rank well on search engines like Google.
In the old Facebook, there are different types of categories to choose from – Local Business or Place, Company, Brand or Product, Artist, Band or Public Figure, Entertainment, and Cause or Community. Because of this, many often get stuck at this part as they are not sure how to categorize their business properly.
But now, Facebook has updated its Create a Page option by just selecting between these two categories: Business or Brand and Community or Public Figure.
Business or Brand: Showcase your products and services, spotlight your brand and reach more customers on Facebook.
Community or Public Figure: Connect and share with people in your community, organization, team, group or club.
Below is how the new Create a Page set up looks like. You need to type in your page name, category, and description. As you type your information, the data will be projected on the screen and you have the option to view it on a desktop or mobile.
***Note: You cannot create a page unless you have an active personal Facebook account. You will be using that to manage your page.
2. Keep your business operating hours accurate
One way to keep your business operating hours accurate is to update it whenever it changes. This is especially important if there are upcoming holidays or special events that affect your operating hours. Unlike Google My Business, which allows you to customize your business operating hours on special occasions, with Facebook, you need to do it manually.
Moreover, when you update your business operating hours, take advantage of it by creating a Facebook post to convey this message. To emphasize this message, you can “Pin” this post on your Facebook page, so anyone who will visit your page will know about it right away. And just unpin if it is no longer relevant.
3. Customize your username according to your business
When you create a page, Facebook will generate a Facebook domain that is made up of numbers and letters like this:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/your-brand-name/857469375913?ref=ts
Obviously, no one will remember this. And search engines will not spend time deciphering what this means. That is why you need to take advantage of the custom username.
In doing that, you should keep in mind the name of your brand. You can change your username under Settings and under Page Info. This is how it looks on the new Facebook:
Apparently, someone already owned the name Digital Strategists, that is why we opted to be creative and go for @dgstrategists instead. This is how our custom URL looks like:
Facebook Custom URL: https://www.facebook.com/dgstrategists
Other things to keep in mind when creating a custom username for your Facebook page:
- You need to be an admin to be able to create or edit your page’s username
- Spaces or underscores are not allowed. You can use periods in separating words.
- Capitalize words don’t affect people who use lower case letters in searching for your name
- You are only allowed a maximum of 50 characters for your username
4. Make sure your profile and featured image reflects your brand
Another easy and effective way to optimize Facebook page is by uploading a profile and featured image. Business pages without these two are often tagged as spam, troll, or bogus accounts. So make sure to upload images that reflect your brand.
For the profile image, most businesses upload their logo. Some use photos of endorser celebrities.
For the featured image, aside from static images, you can also upload a video to make your page more interactive. Just make sure that your image or video follows the recommended photo size which is 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall on desktop.
Another thing that you should also keep in mind when uploading your featured image is the image size for mobile. Facebook will cut the whole featured image to fit mobile screens. When viewed on mobile, Facebook cover photo size is 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall.
5. Set your call-to-action
Right under your cover or featured image is a button that you can use to encourage your visitor to take action within the page or outside the page. In the older Facebook dashboard, there are a few options that you can choose.
However, in the updated one, there are tons of call-to-action buttons to choose from.
Your call-to-action will depend on your marketing goal. For us Digital Strategists, we aim to increase our website traffic, that is why we choose to use the “Learn More” button to direct our Facebook visitors to our website.
6. Manage your customer reviews and ratings
Another way to optimize your Facebook page is to manage your customer reviews. Reviews on your Facebook page often used as important references by your customers. It is also one way to help you stand out in the competition.
To get good customer reviews, you need to provide excellent customer service. If your customer is 100% satisfied with your product or service, they won’t hesitate to give you a thumbs up and a little love review.
Also, if you have high ratings, Facebook will put you on top of their search results.
If you are not ready to receive reviews for your business, you can simply disable reviews on Settings > Reviews > and then click Disable Reviews.
But again, since we are talking about optimizing your Facebook page, leaving the “Allow Visitors to Review” button on can help you.
7. Check your page quality
On the new Facebook update, you can now check the page quality of your page.
Facebook page quality refers to how your account complies with Facebook community standard. Facebook uses this to filter out pages that they think are spam and troll accounts that violate their policy. If your page quality is good, your page will continue to be visible on Facebook. On the other hand, if it violates restrictions, your account may be suspended for a specific time. It can also be deleted.
So part of the optimization is to keep your account compliant to Facebook’s policy. You can check that on your Manage Page dashboard.
8. Complete your page info
Another best practice to optimize Facebook page is by completing your business information using the new Facebook edit info dashboard. Fill out all the relevant fields as much as possible and make sure your information is accurate.
In editing and completing your page info, go to the Edit Page Info tab. In the updated Facebook, you can link your other social media accounts on Facebook. Like this one.
So when someone visits your page, they will see this on the left panel of your page. This is a good way to cross-promote your other accounts through Facebook.
9. Choosing the right template and tabs
Another update on Facebook that you should definitely take advantage of as part of your optimization strategy is customizing how your page would look like.
There are different available templates that you can choose from, depending on the type of business you have.
And since Digital Strategists is a service-oriented company, the recommended template is “Services”. But if you own a shop or a store, you can use the “Shopping” template to showcase your product.
Another feature to explore is the Tabs. You can manage how your Tabs will appear. This is a good feature as you will only enable the Tabs that you think are important for your page.
10. Use keywords on your description and content
Another important optimization trick that you need to apply to your Facebook page is to use relevant keywords and inject this on your page.
So for example, our keyword is “digital marketing in clark”, we put that on our description. We also use that as a hashtag on our social media posts.
So whenever you type that keyword, our page is the first that appears on the search result under the “All” category.
If you change it to “Pages”, we are still at number one spot against our competitors.
That is how powerful keywords are. So make sure to always put them in your social media content.
11. Be consistent in posting updates
Setting up a Facebook page is not a one-time thing. Don’t treat it as a business listing or directory that once you put all the information, it is done. Whilst Facebook is a good business directory, it can also serve as your business website or online store. That’s how wonderful Facebook is.
That being said, you need to constantly update it so Facebook will know that your account is active. Facebook only suggests pages based on their recent activity. The latest your update is the higher your position is on Facebook search results.
So make sure to post updates on your page on a regular basis.
According to Nulou.net, the minimum Facebook posts to maintain consistency is 3 posts a week. The maximum you can do is 10 posts a week.
On the other hand, according to Quick Sprout, if you have a small page following, you need to post at least 16 to 31 times a month or once every day or two.
12. Posts on optimal time and day
Another optimization strategy that you can do with your page is to post updates during the best time and day. The best time and day to post on Facebook will help you increase your engagement, impression, page following, and conversion. However, you need to keep in mind that the best time and day to post vary depending on the type of business. If you want to know what is the best time and day to post on your page, you need to run an experiment.
We did that experiment with some of our clients and now, when we create posts on their pages, we know when to publish them to get more impressions and engagement.
You can check out our experiment here.
13. Use relevant hashtags
Hashtags also play an important role in optimizing Facebook page. It can help you with your visibility on Facebook search results.
When using hashtags, make sure to stick with it. We suggest creating a hashtag based on your industry, product or relevant keyword. You can also use popular or trending hashtags to go with the trend. However, make sure that the hashtag is relevant to your brand. Moreover, limit your hashtag to a minimum. About 5 or 10 is okay.
Wrap up in how to optimize Facebook page
The recent updates on Facebook have really overwhelmed its users. But all these updates seem to work out just fine especially to Facebook pages. There are now more opportunities for branding and selling products and services. Which is really good. So the best way to take advantage of it is to use it. The above tips are just some of the things that you can do to optimize Facebook page based on the new Facebook updates.
For sure, Facebook will continue to roll out new updates that can affect how we interact and manage pages. But for now, the most important thing that you need to remember when optimizing Facebook pages is to provide accurate and complete information as well as posts updates regularly.
Managing Facebook page can be overwhelming especially if you are a busy business owner. That is why Digital Strategists is here to help you manage your account so it can help you drive sales and hit your marketing goals.
If you need help on managing and optimizing your Facebook page, just message Digital Strategists via Facebook messenger button below or directly email dgstrategists@gmail.com
Be social!
About the Author
Crisel Blenda Fernandez is a digital marketing strategist specialising in content marketing and social media management. She loves writing, experimenting, researching, and discovering new things in the digital marketing world. She is a Hubspot Content Writing Certified and a coffee lover. If not writing, she is busy playing with her daughter (singing Finger Family and I’m a little teapot) or binge-eating with her husband.