The holiday season is coming upon us, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday right around the corner. For small business owners, it’s a make-or-break moment for sales.
Facebook, meanwhile, has been making a concerted effort in 2015 to ramp up its small business offerings to those who rely on Pages to give their companies a boost.
Facebook announced earlier this year that it had added 10 million small business pages in a year, boasting a total of 40 million small business pages at the time. Meanwhile, the company trumpets that nearly all of the 2 million who use the platform to advertise their businesses or services are, indeed, small business owners. That figure is up from 1.5 million last year.
As of October, the company has 45 million active pages and 2.5 million advertisers, according to a spokesperson.
In September, Facebook announced its Pages received a facelift for mobile (and businesses) in mind, which Fortune covered.
Basically, the social media site wants to keep owners happy to boost their bottom line.
Fortune got some tips from Facebook’s small business guru Mari Smith for small business owners looking to gain a competitive edge of their competition.
“First, set up a Facebook business Page in the most relevant category; fill out the ‘About’ section thoroughly and upload an attractive cover image and profile picture,” she advised.
“Next, craft a strategy for your content that includes a variety of written, visual and video content. Start by sharing quality, relevant content once or twice a day,” added Smith. “With this foundation in place, now you can drive traffic to the Page from other sources, such as your email list, website and other social channels.”
And finally: “For sure, set aside a nominal budget to amplify certain posts using Facebook’s paid features, such as the Boost button or the Ads Manager.”
