Your website is finished—congratulations! At this point you might be thinking, “Why do I need a Facebook business page if I already have a Zarla website?”

In short, because Facebook is a free, user-friendly marketing tool for your business with the potential to reach over 3 billion active users.

Creating a Facebook business page gives you the perfect opportunity to:

In this article, we’ll show you how to set up a page on Facebook that’s engaging AND optimized to help you grow your online presence and get customers for your business.

1. Go to your personal Facebook account and click on the Menu button in the top right corner (the little grid-shaped icon).

Then click “Page” in the drop-down menu. (If you don’t have a Facebook profile yet, just create one with your personal or business email address.)

Below the “Create a Page” header, add your business name, a category, and a short bio in 1-2 sentences.

While a bio is optional, it’s worth including as it tells visitors to your page what services you offer straightaway. You could also include your slogan or motto, if you prefer. Feel free to copy/paste text from your Zarla website to speed up this process.

Once you’re happy with how the preview looks, click the blue “Create Page” button.

2. Add your business details. This is probably the most important part — without business details, customers can’t contact you, visit your website, or find your location (if you have one).

Add your website URL, business phone number, email address, business address, and operating hours. If you’re worried about privacy, you can always hide any of these details later.

For hours, you can either select “No hours available”, “Always open”, or “Open at selected hours”. If you’ve selected the latter, a pop-up will allow you to set your daily hours for the week. If you’re closed on a specific day, just leave that row blank.

You can even be closed for a certain part of the day, say between 12:00 and 13:00. Just add a second time slot to the same day by selecting the “+” button to add another row.

Once all your business details are filled in, click “Next”.

3. Your profile and cover images are typically the first thing that people see, so you’ll want to make sure they’re visually appealing and high-quality. They should also be sized correctly.
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​Profile Picture

As a Zarla user you have a logo already, which is perfect for your profile picture. Check your download page for a file that's optimized for Facebook, and upload that to Facebook.

Cover photo

For your cover photo, you can be a little more creative by using an image related to your business or a banner that promotes a particular product or service, like this:

I recommend picking an image from your website to make your Facebook page and website feel similar. Or, just pick a photo that is consistent with your business brand.

4. Next, you’ll want to add an Action button to your profile. An Action button functions as a Call-to-Action, prompting customers to take a specific step that’s important to your business, such as booking an appointment, contacting you, or visiting your Zarla website.
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To add an Action button, make sure you’re on the “Posts” tab, scroll down the page and click on “Add an action button” on the left.
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In the pop-up, click on “Try It” to customize your action button. The next pop-up brings up a list of actions for you to choose from which is divided into three categories — helping people to support you—for example, “Book now” or “Sign up”—getting people to contact you, or linking to an external site like your business website or online store.

For this article, we selected “Learn more”.

Once you’ve selected the most suitable option, click on “Next” and follow the prompts. To preview your Action button, click on the menu icon (three dots) at the top of your page and select “View as”, which shows you what your page visitors will be seeing.

You’ll see the Action button just below your cover image. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to click any buttons in “View as” mode.

5. Now that you’ve got the basics down for your Facebook business page, let's make it stand out with a few more improvements.
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By now you’ve probably noticed the “How healthy is your Page?” header with a green line and a “page health rating” marked as “good”. We’ll get to this later. For now, you’ll want to remove any tabs that aren’t relevant to your business. So, for example, if you have a gardening service, you’re probably not going to need any of the sections under “More”, like “Music” or “Check-ins”.

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To remove them, click on “More” and select “Manage Sections” at the bottom of the list. Then deselect all the tabs you won’t be using. You will not, however, be able to remove any of the standard tabs on your page, such as the About and Review sections.
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Now that you’ve tidied up your page, click on the “About” tab in the main menu. Here you’ll see quite a bit of info, like the contact details you added earlier and a column on the left with tabs for “Privacy and legal info”, “Work and education”, “Places lived” etc.; but don’t worry, most businesses won’t need to fill these out.
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We’re going to focus on something far more important — your social links and basic info — which you will find further down the page.
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Below your website link, you’re going to add your social media handles. Click on “Add a social link” and select the social platform you want to link to from the drop-down list on the right.

The first option listed is Instagram. So if you want to link to your Instagram account, add your username/handle in the empty block. To add another social link, click the “Add a social link” button again and repeat the steps. When you’re done, click “Save”.

​Below your social links you’ll see a section attributed to “Basic info” with options to select a price range, services, and languages spoken. Click on “Add Price Range” and select the currency symbol that best complies with your price range (note: your location will determine the currency symbol you see).
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​Next, click on “Add Service” and select any of the tabs that apply to your business. If, for example, you own a hair salon and offer online appointments, you can select the “Online booking” tab. If none of these apply to you, you can leave it blank.
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​Back on your “Posts” page, scroll down to the Intro section and you’ll see all of the information you’ve just added, including your social links, price range, and services. When you’re ready, select “Edit details”.
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This section allows you to review your information, add your preferred pronouns, and make any changes.
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Next, you’ll want to update your “Featured” section which allows you to upload a selection of your favorite photos to make your page even more visually attractive to visitors and establish familiarity with your brand. These could be photos of your staff performing a service, photos of the interior of your business, or photos of your team.
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To get started, click on “Add Featured” and then “Add New”. A pop-up will appear on screen where you’ll see all the photos you’ve already uploaded, like your profile picture and cover photo. In this case, you’re going to select “Upload Photos” to add your favorite images saved on your desktop or phone.
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​Once you’ve uploaded a few images, give your collection a title. A cover photo is selected for you by default, but you can change it by clicking on the camera icon on the main image and choosing another. When you’re done, click “Save”. Your featured photos will be visible at the bottom of the intro section, and when visitors click on it, they’ll view the images in a Story format, similar to a slide show.
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​Now that your business page is set up properly and looks amazing, take a look at the URL at the top of the page. You’ll notice a very unattractive ID number tacked on to the end. You can change your page’s username, which is also your URL, by editing your page settings.
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Simply click on your logo in the top right corner, select “Settings & privacy” and then “Settings”.

​This will bring up a large dashboard with a search bar and various options in the center of the page and the left column. Hover your cursor over the left column and scroll down to “Audience and visibility”. Then select “Page setup”.
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​On the following page, click “View” next to your business name. This will bring up the “General Settings” page which lists your business name and username. Clicking “Edit” on the right will bring up a block in which you can enter a new username. You may need to try a few different variations as your name may not be available. You’ll see a green tick appear if the username is available.
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​Click “Save changes” and enter your Facebook password to confirm your changes. To see what it looks like in real-time, navigate back to your business page and you should see your new, and much shorter, username in the URL bar.
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7. To give your business page full marks for “health”, you may want to link it to your business Whatsapp account. This enables potential customers to message you directly to ask a question or request a quote for your services. However, keep in mind that this is region-dependent. Some regions liaise predominantly with their customers through WhatsApp, so if WhatsApp is not popular in your region, it’s not necessary to add it.
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To link your WhatsApp account to your profile, click “Link your WhatsApp account” in the page health section.
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​On the following page, you’ll see the original phone number you signed up with on Facebook. Be sure to change it if you’re using a different phone number for your Whatsapp business account. Then click “Send Whatsapp Code”.
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​Open your Whatsapp and copy the special confirmation code you’ll have received. Enter the code on Facebook and select “Confirm”. Now that you’ve connected your Whatsapp account, you’ll be prompted to add a Whatsapp button to your Facebook business page. You’ll also be able to create a post that directs visitors to Whatsapp or create a Whatsapp ad.
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This is what a Whatsapp post would look like to page visitors.

Now that you’ve created a Facebook business page with all the bells and whistles to attract a following, it’s time to bring in leads and convert visitors to customers!

The trick to growing your following organically is to create meaningful content that’s interesting and entertaining to potential customers. Think of your Facebook page as an introduction to your brand — when you meet someone new, you want to show them your best side and keep them interested in what you have to say or offer.

Your business page is exactly the same — plus you get to learn more about your target audience and tailor your content according to what they like. This, in turn, will resonate with your audience and encourage them to become your next customer.

Where do you start? Any marketing expert will tell you that consistent posting is the key to keeping your audience engaged and your business top of mind. So the best place to start is by creating a simple posting schedule and sticking with it.

Now, you might be thinking, “I have no idea how to create a posting schedule” or “I’m a business owner — I really don’t have the time.” Well, I’m here to tell you that it can be done, and in the end it will save time AND be worth the time it takes to set up.

Sure, there are a range of free and paid social calendars you can use, but the simplest and most affordable option is to create one in Google Sheets. You can easily create a weekly and monthly calendar that can be duplicated and tweaked according to your needs.

Ideas for your first posts

Your Facebook business page is a great opportunity to promote your products or services, but it shouldn’t be the only thing you post about, as it may come off as “salesy” and put your followers off.

Instead, the key is to create content that provides value for your followers and addresses any pain points they may have in an authentic, non-pushy way. For example, a gardening service might address users’ struggles with maintaining their grass or keeping pests or disease out of their gardens.

Just think about the types of questions your customers ask, or even questions that your friends and family asked when you first told them about your business. Each question and answer can become a post.

Apart from value-driven content, you could also share interesting stories about how your business came to be, in addition to photo reels, industry news and trends, and behind-the-scenes content.

With that in mind, be sure to keep your posts concise yet informative — you want to hold followers’ attention, not bore them to death with lengthy essays.

And remember, quality over quantity is essential — if you can’t produce enough quality posts to publish something every day, just reduce the number of posts you publish per week.

Choosing the best times to post

For the best chance of users seeing your posts and engaging with them, it’s important to know the times of the day when they’re most active on Facebook.

While results may vary by industry, studies have revealed that the best times to post on average are 7am to 9am, 1pm to 3pm, and 7pm to 9pm. As for the days, weekdays have turned out to be the best days to post content.

Trying different post types

Text posts and videos are arguably the most popular forms of posting on Facebook, but there’s so much more you could do! Try mixing up your post style with polls, stories, reels, surveys, Q&As, links, events, contests, and more. Check out this informative guide on the different kinds of posts you could create.

Visually-appealing content is by far the best way to attract and engage individuals, so you’ll want to use images as much as possible. You can create really professional-looking, custom graphics with Canva and of course, original photos rather than stock images are the way to go.

If you're making videos, keep in mind that many people watch with sound off, so you’ll want to enable the mute and subtitle functions when creating your videos.

Adding powerful calls-to-action to each post

If you want to encourage users to complete a certain task, like visit your website or request a quote for your services, make sure your posts include a clear call-to-action (CTA) that also communicates the value of completing that task. Studies show that including a CTA creates a sense of urgency, leading to increased conversion rates.

Check out this guide for examples and how to craft effective CTAs.

Cross-promoting with partners and influencers

Cross-promotion is a collaboration between brands or influencers that involves promoting each other’s products or services on various social platforms, with the aim of reaching a wider and more diverse audience.

This approach is a win-win strategy as it doesn’t cost anything and boosts visibility for both parties.

Say, for example, you own a local cleaning company called Extreme Clean — you might consider cross-promoting with a local real estate agent. The two companies do not compete in terms of customers and both have very different audiences. The cleaning company could form a partnership with a real estate agent that needs someone to clean the properties they’re going to be showing.

Both companies then cross-promote each other on Facebook. The cleaning company’s audience may include a few people who are looking to sell their house. One day, they’re scrolling Facebook and they see Extreme Clean’s post about this real estate agent in the area. They think, “Ah! I should check them out.” and they give the real estate agent a call.

On the other hand, the real estate agent shares a post about Extreme Clean’s excellent cleaning services on their Facebook page. One of the real estate agent’s followers who’d just bought a house through them sees the post and decides to try them out. Everybody wins!

It’s time to start building an audience by inviting friends, family, and existing customers to like your page and leave a positive review.

On your Zarla website, you can link to your social media platforms and encourage potential customers to follow your brand. Ask your staff to invite their friends to like your page, too.

Another opportunity for engagement is to include your Facebook URL on your receipts or invoices. You can even hold monthly drawings or offer other incentives directly to your customer to ensure that they visit your Facebook page and leave a like or review.

As new followers appear, remember to reply to comments and messages promptly to keep the relationship growing. If a customer posts a complaint, responding in a way that solves their issue shows you're a business worth following. Responsiveness also builds trust and loyalty to your brand.

Not surprisingly, Facebook measures your response rate and time, and if your page is found to be highly responsive, you’ll receive a “Very responsive to messages” badge that’s visible to your followers.

If you’re unable to reply to users within 4 hours, consider creating a Facebook chat bot to respond for you. Learn how to build a free chatbot with Manychat and link it to your Facebook account in this tutorial.

Lastly, Facebook Insights is a built-in tool that provides information about your page’s performance, audience demographics, and post engagement. It allows you to learn more about who your audience is and the type of content that resonates with them so that you can refine your social media strategy and grow your following.

You can find the Insights tab on your page dashboard once you have 100 followers or more, excluding friends. Check out this video on using Facebook Insights.