This article tells interior designers how to setup a business page for their interior design business on Facebook.If you sell to the general public then the consensus amongst marketing professionals is that your marketing strategy must include Facebook. Facebook will work to promote your services through your network and through the networks of your network members.
If you sell to businesses (eg if you are a hospitality interior designer specialising in restaurants) then I’m not convinced that Facebook is the best medium. However, and its a big however, many of your clients will be using Facebook already so maybe you should use it to help them consume the information that you produce and to help them interact with your organisation in a way that suits them. It’s not what is easiest for you that should be the way forwards, it should be what is the easiest for your (potential-) clients.
Click To Read More Interior Design ArticlesLet’s get started then. Here’s what you need to do and it will cost you nothing other than time:
1. Create a personal Facebook account if you don’t already have one. If you have one, use the one you have.
2. Create a business page for your business – sometimes called a fan page. Listen up here!
- Don’t create another personal page.
- Don’t create a group – you don’t need to know what one is.
- Create a business(or fan) page: http://www.Facebook.com/pages/create.php
Make a note of your default business page ie the URL that Facebook gives you. KOTHEA’s is http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/KOTHEA/129265851209/ and yours will be similar, make sure that there aren’t any superfluous bits on the end, it should look similar to mine. Yuk, looks awful I know; we’ll deal with that in a minute.
One thing you can do with your existing web site is to redirect traffic from one folder of your web site to your Facebook business page. eg look at this www.kothea.com/facebook.You’ll have to ask your hosting company to do that or your web administrator. It might be free to do that but some hosting companies charge.
If instead you want something like http://www.facebook.com/kothea then do steps 3 and 4 below.
3. Get 25 fans. You must have at least 25 fans of your business (ie NOT 25 friends of your personal account). You must do this to get a vanity URL.
4. Create a personal/vanity url for your business. This is sometimes referred to as a fan page. You probably want it to appear like: www.facebook.com/yourcompany. I’ve already published an article how to do this and it is <here>. Read it carefully as there are some disastrous mistakes you can make if you do not do it properly.
5. Get a (free) tool that lets you add more about your business to the “Info page” than is allowed by the standard Facebook section eg the application “More Extended Info”
6. Blogs: This can be seen as a ‘wall’ for your business. You have a few options for example:
- Write your blog in Facebook and post it everywhere else automatically from Facebook. You can even do that by accessing Facebook from your blackberry.
- Get your external blog synchronised into Facebook automatically (I use a free Facebook application called Social RSS and my blog is on WordPress)
Don’t do this
- Copy and paste all your blog posts into lots of different places. Too time-consuming.
7. Get lots more fans and build your network. You’ll do the best job at that by regularly adding interesting, original content that includes video, images and words.
A closing thought. Think of your old mailshots, think of your newer email shots, think how most of them were probably unsolicited, unwanted and UNREAD. When someone becomes a fan of your business on Facebook they actively want information about you and/or your company – so send it. When their friends look at the profile of your fans it will sometimes say that they are a fan of your company…the chance for someone you’ve probably never met to be enticed to find out more about your business. It’s not a panacea for lead generation but it’s a great start.
Thank you for clear, concise instructions. I’d created a page months ago, but wasn’t sure how to utilize it to it’s full potential.
Very interesting article. Looking forward to read another nice articles from you.
We have one for my interior design firm, Habachy Designs, and it has been great! Now, we are trying to figure out a way to make it more noticable to others that are NOT friends on FB. Any suggestions on how to market it further?
Hi Michael
Thank you for reading the article.
Anyone can be a fan of your page, they do not have to be a friend of you! I think tho the problem is the same in that you want to boost your friend network. Essentially you have to promote your page but more importantly you have to have something on it that is worth seeing…CONTENT is King. We will come back to this area of promotion on future posts so please “watch this space”, in the meantime look at advertising on facebook.
Thank you for sharing the information. Found it to be very helpful and will incorporate it in creating a fan page for my photography susiness.
Thank YOU for the feedback, good luck.
Excellent! Thanks for the thought!
i am a real novice at this, but am determined to figure out facebook and use it for personal, and business! I have a personal page and a business “fan” page, but i can’t see how to “find” my fan/business page on my main profile/page. ?? also, i would love to see examples of fan pages that you think are really effective.
i aspire to be as savvy social media-wise as you are when i grow up! thanks for all the great info.
If you have a fan page and a personal page then you are off to a good start. Have a look at https://www.kothea.com/2009/12/12/facebook-vanity-url-username-fan-page/ this should help you with some pointers telling you where to navigate to all the relevant bits.
Hi –
Thanks for the helpful info for someone who is not tech savy. I have a question regarding the RSS and word press. I use WordPress and would love for it to be incorporated on my FB page. Can you describe how to get that up and running? Or better yet, I’m using constantcontact to create a monthly newsletter that I am then copying and pasting into my blog…can I link from constant contact? Thanks!
1. This blog is on wordpress. Our feed is at http://www.kothea.com/feed. Find and test the same info for your site.
2. look at kothea.com/facebook
3. go to the rss/blog tab. You need to add one of these. You do this by adding an application to FB (search FB applications for these applications). We use Social RSS (please follow their instructions on how to install and configure – its not hard). I believe that you can also add your rss feed to a fb box and also to the fb wa
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