A Facebook fan page for your restaurant is one of the best alternatives to engage with your fans while promoting your business to reach new potential customers.

This is a step by step Setup Guide that will allow you to not only create your Facebook fan page but understand the key elements that must be addressed when working with facebook pages.

Creating your Restaurant’s Facebook Fan Page1. Go to www.facebook.com

2. At the bottom of the page you’ll find the “Create a Page” link. Click on it

3. Select the type of business. In your case Local Business or Place is the most accurate.

4. A form will appear. Fill out those fields according to your business information.

First select your business category. There are different categories for Bar and Restaurant, be careful to choose correctly.

In this case we will fill out the information for an imaginary restaurant named Pizza Joe’s.

Remember to check the “I agree to Facebook pages terms” checkbox.

Once you are done click on Get Started.

Choose your page name carefully.

This will show up under your cover

photo.

5. In the following window you’ll be asked to either log in to Facebook using your personal account or create a new business account.

We strongly recommend you choose to create a new business account. It is against Facebook policy to create a business on a personal page.

6. Click on “create a new business account”.

7. You’ll be presented with the following form

Have a logo, pictures and your bar or restaurant’s basic information

ready!

8. You’ll see the following window next

Now you must go to your e-mail account, find the Facebook e-mail and click on the link you are provided with.

The email should look something like this

Insert a company email and select a password that may be shared in the future with your employees.

You must insert your own date of birth (for facebook security reasons they want to be sure that you are old enough to legally manage the page)

Complete the rest of the form, then check the Terms of Use checkbox and proceed to click Sign Up Now!

Think about your business’

description: how would you like to

introduce your restaurant to your customers (think about your target

audience)

9. Once you click on the link you’ll be redirected to this page

10. As the form states the About field must include a description of your business and include your Restaurant’s website as well in the following field.

Remember to check “yes” when asked if your business is a real establishment

Once you check on “yes” a new question will appear. It will ask you if this page will be the official representation of the real business. Since this is your business you must check Yes as well.

Once you are done click on Save Info.

You have successfully created your Facebook Fan Page!

Now is the time to set up your page and introduce logos, pictures, a description, and about info so that your page will reflect as best as possible the image you want portray to your fans and potential customers.

Setting up your Restaurant’s Facebook Fan Page

Now you can edit your Facebook page name, category and the “about us” info

11. Now is the time to select a profile picture. This is the small rectangular picture that will be shown at the left of your page.

It is common to include the company’s logo here.

You may upload the image from your hard drive or import from your website just by typing your company’s website.

You may also click the skip button and upload your profile picture later on if you are not ready yet.

12. Once you click on either save or skip, you’ll be presented with the following window.

Facebook now strongly suggests facebook fan page owners to use Facebook Ads to increase the number of fans and how much they interact with your page.

You can skip this step and review it in the future (we won’t be covering Facebook Ads in this guide, however it will be covered in an upcoming guide!)

13. Once you click on skip you will finally see your Facebook Page and the Administration Panel.

This Panel only appears to the page administrator, any other visitor or fan won’t see this panel.

As you can see it’s the place where different elements are displayed:

- Notifications ( this will show all your fan’s interactions: likes, comments, shares)- Messages (this is a direct form of contact with your fans, they can send you direct messages for an easier and faster communication)- New likes (it shows who were the last people to become your fans)- Insights (displays stats about your posts, however it requires a minimum of 30 fans to begin working)- Page tips (Facebook suggestions to increase your fans and improve the engagement)

At the top right you can see four different buttons that allow you to manage the Admin Panel:

- Edit PageThis Menu allows you to update the page info (the description and about info you wrote before. You may also add extra info like hours, address and phone number).

It also allows you to edit your page’s settings: Who is allowed to post on the page, if a country is restricted, if there’s an age restriction and so on.

Another important option is the ability to manage admin roles. Facebook now allows you to establish different admin levels, so that a community manager can’t have total control of the page

The activity log shows displays all the different interactions that occurred with the page (similar to a personal facebook profile)

You can also edit a banned user list and finally you can use facebook as “Your Business”.

This means that you can reply to comments or even like other pages as your own business, as it if was a different entity in the social network.Therefore people never interact with someone who works for the company but the virtual representation of the company itself.

Facebook allows you to create a

custom URL specific to your page.

- Build Audience

This menu includes the possibility to suggest your page to different email contacts so you may advertise your recently created page.It also includes the creation of Facebook Ads

- Help

There is vast information on facebook pages either from facebook or the facebook community. Feel free to research these resources.

- Hide

This button simply hides the admin panel so you can have a look at how your page will look like to your fans and visitors.

14. Click hide so you may see the rest of the elements that need to be added in order to have your page ready for fans.

15. Let’s identify the different elements your page includes:

a. Cover Picture: Just like in personal facebook profiles you may add a cover picture (851x315) so you may attract visitors’ attention and move them to become fans.b. Profile Picture: We already covered this but you can see how it can be easily modifiedc. About info: The info we entered at the very beginning is displayed here, take into account that you can edit all this information and even add more info by clicking the About link.d. Tabs: Here’s where different predefined tabs like Photos, Likes and Events are located. Just like a personal facebook profile, these are links to review more info about the page. However you can not only add Photos and Events, you may add your own tabs which will display apps. (opt-in forms, videos, online shop, discount offers, coupons and so much more)e. Wall: Here’s where you write your different posts just like on your own facebook account: Status, Photo/video, Event, Milestone, Questionf. Activity: Here the log of your page’s activities will be displayed.

ab

cd

e f

With Facebook’s timeline, you can

include your bar or restaurant’s history!

16. Once you add your profile picture and cover picture, you may write your first post and you are ready to start inviting people to like your page!

Your facebook page is successfully set up and it just needs to be managed adequately to increase likes and also improve the way you interact with your fans.

What’s next?

This will all be covered in our next Facebook guide!

- Learn about tabs and apps- Learn about Facebook Ads- Learn about using Facebook’s timeline format effectively- Learn about Facebook campaigns