Yes, Timeline is almost upon us for Pages and Profiles… but one thing remains a constant – how to market your Facebook Page!

There are 3 things that most businesses I come across on Facebook (whether they be a client or just a page I “like”) forget to do on a daily basis.

It’s no secret, build these into your daily or weekly routine and reap the benefits!

1. Add a URL to your Product Images

I don’t just mean your main URL to the home page of your shop – the FULL URL to the exact product. You may have lots of lovely new items to add to an album on Facebook to inform your fans about. Yes, you could put the homepage but then they have to scroll through to find the product. If you want to maximise the likelihood of gaining a sale via Facebook use the exact link to the product. To find the link, go to the page on your website and click copy in the browser bar at the top then paste this into the description of your image.

• Create a Photo Album

• Select the Photos you wish to add

• Add a Description – this is where you should add the URL with any other details like price, detailed info, email address if you accept PayPal orders.

• Now click Publish and your album will have the description beneath each photo you have uploaded with a direct link to your product URL.

2. Using Images – funny or with a message

In recent months, and because of the way the Facebook news feed has changed, image sharing is a big news. I don’t mean your product images either – mostly funny or those with a message tend to get shared and liked A LOT. Bigger reach and more exposure will come your way if you use an image with a quote, serious or funny, or a cute/fluffy image to share on your Facebook wall. Encourage people to share it and upload the image yourself to your wall. Don’t use somebody else’s as all the viral loveliness will go their way – not yours!

3. Use you Insights to make decisions about what you post

Still mostly overlooked by businesses in particular are your Facebook insights. There are so many detailed stats you can go through to make an informed decision about what works best on your page – AND when to post it.

To get to insights (via Timeline):

• Click “manage” and “edit page”

• Select “Insights” from the menu

• You have the option to export the data from your Insights which we can look at another day – what we are interested in on this panel for the purposes of decision making is the second section entitled ” Page Posts”. You will see that we can see all the posts for your page over the past few weeks. If you select older posts you will get a bigger snapshot. What we are most interested in is the “Reach” “Engaged Users” and the “Virality” columns. The higher the reach, engaged users and virality the more posts like these you should add to your Facebook wall over time. Engaged users and virality make for spreading the word about your Facebook page all over Facebook!

Want to learn more about Facebook Insights right now? Head on over to Facebook’s own guide to Insights (GB version)