Guide - Facebook for your campsite

Intro

So we all know what Facebook is and we all know that it is the biggest of all the social media platforms out there, with over 1 billion users signed up it creates the perfect platform to keep in contact with your friends and family, but most of all it opens the flood gates to connecting with potential customers.

In this guide you will…

• Understand why it’s so important to have a Facebook page and how to set your page.
• Writing the perfect post
• Make sense of your follower growth, and get to know what all the stats mean with Facebook insights

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 Why should your campsite have a Facebook page?

Facebook doesn’t have to be all about selling and shoving products and opportunities in people’s faces, it can be about connecting and engaging with customers. Nobody who uses Facebook wants to have the wall covered in sales and companies forcing products upon them, they frankly want to see the pictures from last night’s party and see what their friends and family are doing. So if their friends are going to the brilliant festival

 

Businesses should aim to offer their Facebook fans something of value, we mean by this offering things like discount and exclusive offers through Facebook. It is very important though to maintain human when writing a Facebook status and reply to your customers through Facebook.

 

Facebook has some mind blowing stats that should not just blow your socks off…

 

Facebook Statistics…

 Facebook has 798 million mobile daily active users

 Facebook has over 936 million daily users

 Facebook has 1.44 billion monthly active users

Facebook has 1.25 billion mobile monthly users

(Source)

 

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 What is a difference between a Facebook Page and a Facebook Profile?

A Facebook page does not represent a single person, but is intended specifically for a business. You do not ‘make friends’ with a page, but you can instead become a fan of a Facebook page.

 

Facebook is very keen to see businesses using pages, not personal profiles so much so that they have been known to shut down personal profiles that were set up specifically to promote a business. This would be a disaster after all the hard work you have put into your page, so it’s important to just create a Facebook page from the start. If you find out that your page is a profile not a page, then just follow this link to convert your profile to a page!

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What are the key benefits of having a Facebook page vs a regular Facebook profile account?

 

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Where can I create my Facebook page?

To create your Facebook page you will need to have a personal profile, but you can easily set one up here: https://www.facebook.com. Once you have your personal Facebook page, then start to create your business page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/

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What option do I select?

On the create a page you will see 6 options…

 

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What option do I select?

Let’s break them down for you, but we will give you a head start by telling you that most campsites, select the “Local Business or Place” and then selecting “Local Business” from the drop down menu.

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What do I need to fill out?

Select “Local business” from the drop down menu, then just fill out all the boxes, don’t worry if you get this wrong because you can change this anytime from within your Facebook page.

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What do I do next?

Once you have completed the first set you will be brought to a page called “Set Up”. Very simply, just filling this out each box at a time. Make sure that you put in your website domain name if you have one because this will show on your Facebook homepage. You might get the option to a unique Facebook web address to make it easier for people to find your Page. Once this is set, it can only be changed once. For instance, our Facebook link is www.facebook.com/headoutside so you would want to make yours www.facebook.com/your campsite name. Now this is done just fill out the last 2 steps, then click “Save Info”

 

Now it’s time to upload your company logo or whatever you want to use as your profile picture, but we recommend that this is the company logo, just click upload from computer and select the image then it will download. Don’t worry it might not be perfectly in the right place yet, but we can change this later on. Once it has downloaded, click “next”

 

Now you will get the option to add your page to your profile, favorites, this can be handy so you can quickly access your Facebook page from your personal profile. If you don’t want to do this then just click “skip”

 

Now you need to select your page audience, this is very important as this is how people will find you and it is also gives Facebook information about your target audience age. First, it will ask for locations, best bet is fit as many as you can think of. Next, you need to select your target age and for most campsites this will be of any age, so we would say select 13 to 65+. Next is gender and make sure that this is “All” then comes the interests section. In here you need to conation key words like “Camping, campsites, UK, England, holiday parks, etc.” then click save and you will have your first ever Facebook page.

 

Facebook will then give you a quick tutorial which, if you haven’t used it before would probably be very helping in watching, if not then just select the close button.

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We finally have a page!

So we now have the task of getting your page ready and inviting people to join your page. So now your page will look something similar to this…

 

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Cover photo

So every good page needs a good cover photo, this is very easy to put in and can make your page stand out against all the rest, just click the “Add a Cover” button on the top left.

 

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Create call to action

This is a new and brilliant button that Facebook have launched, it gives your customers a quick and easy way to access your website, just click the button then select the option you want from the drop down menu the insert your link into the website box, if your website has a separate mobile friendly site then insert the link for that om the mobile website link if not just leave it blank.

 

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Settings

This is where we are going to be spending a lot of time setting up your page so we will break it down into bullet points for you. Start off by clicking the settings button which can be found in the top right of the screen…

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General

This section is broken down into 13 options, so let’s start from the top…

 

• Page visibility
  • Make sure that this says “page published”

 

• Posting ability
  • Make sure this says “ Anyone can post to my page” This will allow customers to message you over Facebook
  • “Anyone can add photos and videos to my page” This is up to you but, we would recommend to have this on because it will allow customers to add their camping holidays from your campsite to your page

 

• Targeting and privacy for posts
  • We recommend that you have this to say “Targeting and privacy for posts are turned off for my page”

 

• Messages
  • We would always recommend letting people contact you over Facebook messages because it opens another gateway for your customers to get In touch with you.

 

• Tagging ability
  • We would recommend that you click edit and change the setting to display “ Allow others to tag photos and videos posted by (Campsite Name)” This will allow anyone to tag a photo which will then display in that person’s photos and allowing their friends to see it.

 

• Country Restrictions
  • Make sure that this is set to “Page visible to everyone”

 

• Age Restrictions
  • Make sure that this is set to “page is shown to everyone”

 

• Page Moderation
  • This option allows you to ban words that you do not want displayed on your page, we have attached a link so you can access these words easily, just copy and paste into the box. Click here for banned words.

 

• Profanity Filter
  • This will be set to Off by default and we would recommend leaving it like that

 

• Similar Page Suggestions
  • Click the edit button and select the option “Include (Campsite name) when recommending similar pages people might like on a page timeline”

 

• Comment Ranking
  • This will say” Most relevant comments are shown for my page by default” and we would recommend that you leave this like that

 

• Marge Pages
  • We covered this earlier, but if you have made your page from scratch then just leave this alone

 

• Remove page
  • This will only be needed if you ever want to delete your page

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Page Info / about us

This section has now moved and you can find by clicking about on the tab button near your profile picture.

 

• Overview
  • Don’t worry if anything is this section is displayed wrong because we will change it in the Page info section

 

• Page Info
  • This section has a few options so just work your way through it, to edit your information highlight the information you want to edit then the edit button will appear on the right then click the edit button then make then changes and click save changes, do this for all options until you are happy with the information you have provided.

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Post Attribution

This section is how your posts, likes and comments will appear on your page, this needs to be set to “Post and (Campsite name)”

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Notifications

This section is how you will be notified when something happens to your page, by default this will have the top option selected for each category and we recommend that you leave it like that because otherwise you might miss that very important message from your customers.

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Page Roles

This section gives people on Facebook the ability to manage your page, by default you will have your personal profile as an admin, you can set more people to manage your page but they must have a Facebook personal account. You can then set their role by clicking on the editor link and selecting the relevant option from the drop down menu.

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Preferred Page Audience

You might get this option if you forgot to set the page audience earlier on, if so we recommend that you select the age between 13 and 65. You will also have the options for locations and we recommend that you start off with the country you are in then selecting the region the county and then towns and surrounding areas. Select all in the gender option and finally in the interest box insert keywords like, Camping, campsites, Holiday Park, and activity’s that you offer.

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Apps

You can add apps to your Facebook page by visiting certain websites that offer them, but for now we would recommend that you just leave this alone until you have finished.

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Featured

This will display likes that your page has made and also it has the option display the page owners on your Facebook Page, we would recommend that you don’t do this and just leave this to default settings

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Banned Users

If you ever need to ban a user/customer from visiting you page then this is where they will appear, we recommend that you don’t ban anyone though and try to solve any issues with the customer directly.

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Page support

You can find out lots to do with Facebook and get help with certain things.

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Activity Log

This will display everything that your page has done in a timeline sequence, this only really need to be accessed if you need to find something from the past.

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So now we are nearly done

So we have set up the Facebook page and now it’s time to let the world know about you, we need to share you page with your Facebook friends and email contacts to click on the 3 dots on the right of the screen and select share with friends and invite everybody that you know then do the same for invite email contacts by clicking the link that you want to send from, i.e. outlook then click send!

 

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That perfect Post

Facebook posts are broken down in to lots of different sections, so we will list a few for you.

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Post type #1 – Text Post

This kind of posts usually only works best if they are kept short and sweet. You can often get a good response by asking questions, or offering quick and simple tips. Another popular way of engaging fans with a text post is asking them to fill in the gap, such as “I couldn’t go camping without ______”.

 

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Post type #2 – Image Post

This kind of posts works very well and often get a strong engagement especially via the ‘like’ button, but may not spark as much discussion as a text update containing a question.

 

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 Post type #3 – Link Post

A link post is one which contains a link to another Facebook page or a website. A link post will encourage the user to click the link and land on the destination page. So, if you launch a new product or service, a link post is a good way to alert your customers and drive traffic to that page.

 

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Tools & tips when writing your posts

When you start typing in the status box you might get a couple of features and functions to enhance your posts, such as the ability to seclude a post to go out at a later time or include a location or you can even tag others to your post. Whatever you do, just make sure that your posts are engaging and fun.

 

Congratulations

You are now a Facebook expert and it's time to stop reading and start posting.

From everyone at Head Outside, Thank you.