These days, everybody knows about Facebook, but not everybody truly understands how to make the most of their Facebook accounts. With over 11.8 million people on Facebook in South Africa, using social media for marketing your business or brand is an obvious choice to reach your target market. So, how do you use Facebook for marketing your business?

Luckily, Facebook has a number of different tools and advertising options that will help you zone in on your perfect target audience and get your brand out there. This guide will show you the basics of creating a Facebook Business Page and how to use it to your advantage.
What is a Facebook Page?
Facebook pages are similar to profiles that can be used for public figures, businesses or organisations. Facebook users can “Like” your page, which means they can receive updates from your page in their News Feed. Facebook Pages are great for marketing on Facebook as they are free, easy to set up and flexible in terms of how you would like to use them.
1. To set up a Facebook page, select the arrow in the top right hand corner of your Facebook account and select “ Create A Page’.

2. Choose a business category for your page. This helps to focus on the most important information for its category. Select the type of business that you want your page to represent from the following categories:
• Local Business or Place
• Company, Organisation or Institution
• Brand or Product
• Artist, Band or Public Figure
• Entertainment
• Cause or Community
[Tip: Each option will ask for an official Facebook page name. Make sure you select a Facebook address that you are happy with the first time around as you only get to change the address once and it’s a complicated process.]

3. Complete Basic Information
Now that you have your page ready, complete the profile by adding basic company information.
About Section
This section will be the main description for your site so make sure the it is descriptive but short. Add your company web address here and ensure that this section differentiates your brand early on to make your page even more appealing to potential followers.
Upload Profile Picture
As a general rule of thumb, your profile picture should be your company logo. For best results, use a perfectly square image that is 180px by 180px wide.
Favourites
Adding the page to your Favourites is similar to bookmarking a page on your browser for easy access. This means that now you will be able to view the page from the vertical navigation bar on the left of your news feed for easy access.
Reach More People
This part allows you to make an advert for your page to encourage people to like you page. At this stage, there is no content on your page to entice people to like it, but you can come back to this option at a later stage.

4. Optimise your page.
Everything you do online must always be optimised for web. That means that you make it easy for your web page, or in this case, Facebook page, to be found online. Do this by adding as much information as in your profile as possible. Make sure that you stick to all of Facebooks guidelines so that you page is easily shown when people search for content that you may have on your page.

5. You are now the Administrator of the page and will now be in control of the content and page settings. You can add other page administrators and editors.

6. Make sure you add as much information as possible to be more credible. If you need help with creating great graphics try Canva, a web based graphic design app where you can create free, high quality images. Create a call to action, select a Facebook web address and your Facebook page is officially complete! Let us know how your Facebook Page is growing by tweeting us @digifybytesza #DigifyBytes