Starting a Facebook page
A Facebook page is the usual first stop for a FreshStore, because the groups are where your buyers already are, and it takes about ten minutes to set up. This guide covers creating it, growing it, and choosing products worth sharing.
Create your page
Go to facebook.com/pages/create, choose Business or Brand, and enter your store name, category and description. Use your store's logo as the profile picture and a simple banner that reflects your niche. In the About section, add your store URL and a line on what followers can expect: tips, news and product roundups. Then write a first post saying what the page is for.
Point your store's RSS feed at the page while you are there, and your products and articles will post themselves.
Build your following
Invite your own Facebook contacts to like the page first. It feels awkward and it works: a page with no likes is hard to grow.
After that, the groups do the work. Join groups that match your niche, as your page rather than your personal profile. If you sell motorcycle accessories, that means rider clubs, brand fan groups and country specific groups. Comment on threads and answer questions where you can.
Avoid spamming members with "Visit my site!" links. Contribute, and people will click your name to see what your page is about. It is also worth asking group admins and complementary pages about cross-promotion, their posts on your page and yours on theirs.
Choosing products worth sharing
Facebook rewards products people want to show their friends; quality alone is not enough. The shark beach towel in the video below was a great product, just not exciting enough to share, so it went nowhere.
Look for a WOW factor. Products with nostalgia or pop culture attached travel further than sensible ones. Use several images in a post rather than one, and keep momentum going when something starts to move. What worked last month may not work this month, so keep testing.
Posting to your page
Keep to the 5 to 1 ratio: five helpful posts to every link to your store. Your guides and how-to articles build the authority, so lead with those. Check likes, comments and link clicks in Facebook Insights and adjust the mix.
Growing faster with ads
Ads put your content in front of people in your niche who have not found you yet. They are optional, and the organic route works perfectly well, so treat them as a way to speed things up. Three campaign types are worth knowing:
- Boost a post. Show one of your best performing posts to a wider audience. Usually the most effective option, because the content is already proven.
- Page likes. Facebook shows your page to people likely to follow it and you pay per like. It builds the count, though a follower is not always an engaged one.
- Traffic. Sends people straight to your store or an article, skipping the page entirely.
Start at five to ten dollars a day in Ads Manager and run for three to seven days, enough to judge it. Target tightly: a yoga store should target people interested in yoga, meditation and fitness, not everyone. Images with people beat product-only images, and Facebook penalises images carrying a lot of text, so put your message in the caption. Watch your cost per page like (under fifty cents is healthy) and your cost per click, and switch off what is not working.
Ads buy you the audience. The trust that turns into commissions comes from what you post next, so keep posting while a campaign runs.