Does Your Facebook Business Page Still Matter?

Years ago, when Facebook rolled out an entirely new design for business Pages, everyone was talking, blogging, redesigning cover images, organizing apps, pinning posts, starring posts, and creating milestones. At the time, I asked what I thought was the obvious question: Will any of this actually have an impact?

It was a fair question because, even then, most interactions with a business didn’t occur when someone deliberately went to the company’s Facebook Page. People saw a post in their feed, liked it, commented on it, shared it, and went on with their day. Businesses were spending all kinds of time redesigning their front doors while most customers were having the conversation out on the street.

Facebook has changed almost beyond recognition since I wrote the original article, but I think the question has aged pretty well. Is your Facebook business page itself important, or is the real value in what shows up in the feed?

The answer is both, but they have different jobs.

People Don’t Have to Visit Your Facebook Business Page to Interact With You

That was the central point of the original article, and it’s still the place I’d start. Your Facebook Page is not necessarily where most people first encounter your business. They may see one of your posts, a Reel, something a friend shared, an advertisement, or some other piece of content without ever deliberately saying, “I think I’ll go look at that company’s Facebook Page today.”

That’s not a problem. That’s how the platform works.

Back when Facebook first introduced the Timeline design, I linked to our article about the new Facebook Timeline for business Pages because the layout itself was the big story. The cover photo, apps, milestones, and the rest suddenly gave businesses a much more elaborate Page to manage.

My concern then was pretty straightforward: if most engagement was occurring in the newsfeed, how many people would actually see all the work we were putting into the Page?

The terminology and layout have changed since then, but that underlying behavior really hasn’t. The feed is where discovery and ongoing interaction tend to happen. Your business Page is more often the place somebody goes when they want to know more.

That makes the Page important, just not necessarily for the reason businesses once thought it was.

Your Facebook Business Page Is More Like a Storefront Than a Billboard

I think this is the easiest way to look at it. Your posts, ads, videos, and other content are doing the work of getting your business in front of people. Your Page is where they can visit to check you out.

Someone sees a post and wonders who you are. They click your name. Someone hears about you from a friend and looks you up on Facebook. A potential customer wants to make sure you’re still in business, see what kind of work you’re doing, get a feel for your personality, or find another way to contact you.

At that point, your Page becomes part of the buying decision.

This is why I don’t think a business should dismiss its Facebook Page simply because the Page itself doesn’t generate the lion’s share of engagement. Most people don’t stand outside your storefront staring at the sign for twenty minutes either. That doesn’t mean you stop washing the windows.

Your Facebook Page creates an impression of the business. If the information is incomplete, the images are poor, the last post was three years ago, or it’s hard to figure out what you actually do, that impression may not be particularly helpful.

That same basic principle was behind an older article of ours about the little things that make a business’s Facebook Page look more credible. The specific Facebook features have changed, but first impressions haven’t.

Don’t Spend All Your Time Decorating the Facebook Page

This is where I think the lesson from the original article is still useful.

When Facebook changes something, businesses tend to obsess over the feature itself. New cover image dimensions? Everybody scrambles to redesign the cover image. New video format? Suddenly, every business believes it needs video. New algorithm rumor? We all changed the posting schedule on Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the more important question gets lost: what are we trying to accomplish?

If you spend five hours making the Page beautiful and five minutes thinking about what information or content would actually give somebody a reason to care about your business, you’ve probably got the proportions backward.

Yes, take care of your Page. Make sure the information is correct. Use good images. Make it clear who you are and what you do. Keep it current enough that someone doesn’t wonder whether you quietly went out of business.

Then get back to the real work: creating reasons for people to encounter, notice, remember, and interact with your business.

Give People a Reason to Visit Your Facebook Business Page

This was the challenge I posed in the original article, and I still think it’s worth thinking about. If people normally interact with your content in their feeds, what would make them click through and spend a little more time with your actual Page?

Back then, I was fascinated with Facebook’s new Milestone feature. Businesses could use their Timelines to share parts of their history, and I wrote separately about the Facebook Business Page Milestone feature for small businesses. I wanted Facebook to make it easier to send somebody directly to a particular Milestone because that would give businesses a reason to intentionally drive traffic back to their Page.

The specific feature isn’t the point anymore. The principle is.

Your Page should contain something worth finding when somebody gets there. That may be recent work, customer interactions, useful information, videos, events, your company’s personality, or a steady body of posts that helps someone understand what it would be like to do business with you.

Don’t create a Page simply because every business is “supposed” to have one. Decide what role Facebook plays in your customer’s relationship with the business and make the Page useful in that role.

Your Facebook Page and Your Website Have Different Jobs

One thing I would not recommend is treating Facebook as a substitute for your website.

Facebook is rented ground. Meta decides how the platform looks, which tools are available, how much of your content gets distributed, and what changes will be made tomorrow morning. We’ve watched enough Facebook redesigns over the years to know that nothing about the interface should be considered permanent.

Your website is different. That’s the place where you control the experience, organize information the way customers need it, capture leads, explain services in depth, and build a long-term body of content.

Facebook can be very good at sending people there. That was true when the original article cited Google Analytics as a way to see that Facebook was driving traffic to the website, and it remains an important distinction today.

The objective doesn’t have to be to keep somebody on Facebook forever. Sometimes, the best thing Facebook can do is generate enough interest for that person to take the next step elsewhere.

The Feed Is for Attention; the Page Is for Confidence

If I had to boil the whole thing down, that’s probably how I’d say it now.

Your feed content is competing for attention. It needs to be relevant, interesting, useful, entertaining, or timely enough to make somebody notice it while scrolling past everything else in their life.

Your Facebook business Page has a different responsibility. When somebody deliberately visits it, they’ve already shown a little more interest. Now the Page needs to give them confidence that the business is legitimate, up to date, active, and worth learning more about.

Those are different marketing jobs, and understanding that keeps you from judging the Page only by how many people visit it every day.

For businesses working through the broader question of what belongs on Facebook and why, we have a whole Facebook Marketing Series that looks at the platform from the small-business side of the table.

Don’t Measure Facebook Only by Page Visits

The original article discussed comparing reach and engagement with unique Page visits to gauge where interaction was occurring. The reports and terminology have changed over the years, but I’d still encourage businesses to look beyond one number.

What are people doing after they encounter your Facebook content? Are they interacting? Visiting your website? Messaging the business? Watching your videos? Responding to an offer? Showing up at an event? Becoming customers?

The question is not whether you can produce a beautiful Facebook report. The question is whether Facebook is doing a useful job in the marketing plan.

This is also why I don’t get terribly excited about chasing “likes” simply for the sake of having a bigger number attached to the Page. A smaller audience that pays attention and can actually become customers is generally worth considerably more than a giant audience that doesn’t care what you do.

That idea carries over to Facebook audience targeting as well. The ability to reach people is useful. Reaching the right people is considerably more useful.

What Should a Small Business Do With Its Facebook Page?

I’d keep it pretty simple. Make the Page professional and complete, keep the information accurate, use images that accurately represent the business, and ensure a visitor can quickly understand what you do. Then maintain sufficient activity so that the Page reflects the business as it exists today, rather than the business that existed three years ago.

After that, put most of your energy into the things that create interaction: useful posts, good stories, strong images, video when video makes sense, community involvement, customer questions, expertise, and the occasional promotion when you actually have something worth promoting.

And don’t make your business Page a carbon copy of everything you put on your personal profile. We’ve talked before about the difference between a personal Facebook presence and a business Page. People need a reason to follow the business rather than simply getting the same information twice.

If you’re putting advertising dollars behind Facebook, that becomes another conversation entirely. A good Page supports the advertiser’s credibility, but the campaign itself still needs the right goal, audience, creative, and destination. Our updated look at Facebook ads for small businesses gets into that side of it.

So, Does the Facebook Business Page Itself Have an Impact?

Yes, but I wouldn’t judge its value by how many people deliberately type your business name into Facebook and visit the Page every day.

Your Facebook Page is one part of the larger experience people have with your business. The content you publish goes out and finds people. Your Page gives those people somewhere to learn more when their interest is piqued. Your website takes over when they need deeper information or are ready to take the next step.

That means the Page needs care, but it doesn’t need obsession.

When I originally wrote this article, my advice was to make the investment, build as fine a Timeline as you could, watch the Insights, and create interesting reasons for people to visit it. I’d make essentially the same recommendation now, with one adjustment: don’t build your strategy around whatever Facebook calls the Page layout this year.

Build it around the customer.

Make the Page useful. Keep it current. Give people good reasons to engage with your content, and pay attention to whether those interactions move them closer to your business.

There are very few absolutes in social media. That hasn’t changed either.

If you’re spending a lot of time on Facebook and still aren’t quite sure what it’s accomplishing for your business, give us a quack. We’d rather help you figure out the role Facebook should play in your marketing than keep you busy chasing the latest Page redesign.