A Complete Guide to Evaluating Your Facebook Presence

Small business owners often times voice mixed feelings about recent Facebook changes. Facebook Pixels, targeting abilities, Facebook ad formats and ever-changing Business Page looks are just a few of the latest alterations. Let's not even get started with the whole Facebook organic reach that dropped dramatically and now averages three to five percent of the total pages' following.

Yet, having an optimized branded Facebook page is more important than ever before. Whether you're considering paying for Facebook ads or just want to create a strong organic presence, here are some things that are absolutely essential for the well-being of your Business Page.

First things first, profile photo is the one key visual element with which your brand will be associated from the first impression on. Make sure it's representative of your brand. Company logo might be the best choice, because it's safe and brand image re-enforcing.

If you don't have a logo or is one-man business, your best strategy is setting a nice clean headshot as your profile image. Don't go over the board and upload the same profile photo as your LinkedIn profile; something a little more casual might work better on Facebook. 

Recommended profile size is 180 by 180 pixels.

Notice the creative use of profile photo and cover photo.

Cover photo is the first thing that really pops out at your visitors and followers. Make sure it's meaningful and high-quality.

Experiment with cover photos by promoting your latest product, promotion or any other business-related announcements. This will ensure that the latest, most important product is at the very first thing people will see when landing on your page.

Also, don't forget to update cover photo description. Use this space to your advantage by providing further details about promotion and don't forget to add a relevant link where people could find out more or sign up for future updates.

Recommended cover photo size is 851 by 315 pixels.

Can you say fall favorites?

Make sure it's consistent across all of your digital channels. It might look like a no-brainer, but shortening your name (for example, omitting "Inc." in the end) or using "&" instead of "and" might put you at a disadvantage.

For example, Google scans the web to find relevant web results besides your website. If your name is slightly inconsistent, Google might not recognize that Facebook page belongs to you or simply decrease the rank of the page to not display on the first page of search results. This is not the best move for your company, as you should aim at owning the first page of Google results with all of your digital channels that you have control over.

There are a short description, a long description and an Impressum. Spend some time to create a short, yet interesting description that will "hook" the visitors. Also, it's a good idea to have a consistent description across all your channels. Again, that will show that you care and might establish a stronger link between your accounts in search results.

Plus, it's probably the best to insert the home page main link instead of linking separate seasonal links as your main link on Facebook Page. You can find better ways to draw people to special links.

It becomes especially important to post on Facebook consistently. If you don't, your Facebook Page Edge Rank might decrease resulting in decreased organic reach for your posts.

Of course, the more quality content you post, the better, but even posting every other day consistently is better than posting 5 updates in a row and then falling off the face of the Earth (in Facebook's perception) for weeks.

Develop a posting schedule that works for you and your audience and stick to it. You might want to experiment with a few different posting schedules if you're unsure of what works for your audience. In addition, don't forget to use Insights to uncover peak times when a majority of your audience is online. Go to Insights, then click "Posts," and it will automatically default to "When Your Fans Are Online" view.

Experiment with formats and post types to make your page especially engaging. See what types of content your audience loves the most. Could it be videos or images? Maybe the best way to engage your audience is by linking to interesting content on your blog or from other trusted sources. Could it be your seasonal sales announcement, weekly trivia or fun facts?

Try a bit of everything to see what people respond the best to, but still aim to have it pretty diverse so that everyone finds something for them. You can also go to Insights, click on "People" and then "Post Types."

Recommended cover photo size is 1200 by 900 pixels.

Gary Vaynerchuk has great balance of photos, videos, links and long-form posts.

Statistics are a great way to see what truly works and what doesn't. You might be posting lots of videos, but statistics might tell you that posts with links in them get the most clicks.

Dive into analytics to research the socio-demographic makeup of your Facebook follower base. This information can be accessed in the "People" section of Insights Tab. See what the average engagement and reach rates are. There is a wealth of information and insight there.

If you're promoting your posts or a Page, seeing how your organic versus paid reach is doing might be a good idea. While it's more likely than not that your paid reach is higher than organic reach, there are more things you can analyze. For example, since you started boosting your posts, has your organic reach dropped, increased or stayed the same?

Does your cost-per-click increase, decrease or stay the same? How much engagement do you get when you boost posts? All of these indicators might be helpful to monitor the performance of a page.

Recommended cover photo size is 1200 by 627 pixels.

There are also a few tools that will help you stay on top of your Facebook game. I use Canva for social media images. Canva is a free tool that lets you design social images with a variety of images, fonts and visual elements. The best thing is that it is already pre-loaded with correct current image dimensions, so you just need to tell Canva what this image is for.

Now that you've done all of these things, you can also try free Facebook Page Analyzer by Locowise. It will warn you of indicators you might need pay close attention to. The tool will compare your page with thousands of other similar pages, so you can benchmark your brand page against other brands' pages.

What are you paying most attention to? Share in the comment section below.

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Original source: A Complete Guide to Evaluating Your Facebook Presence.
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