I’ve been up to my eyes in Facebook recently, working for clients. It goes in phases, but there is certainly a market for Facebook set-ups and posting content at the moment.

I have been finding some aspects more difficult than I expected though!

For example, a potential client wanting a Facebook Page set-up was asking for pointers regarding what and how often to post on their Page. As such, they asked for good examples of active Pages in their niche that they could emulate.

Now, their specialism is in the area of financial business services, which isn’t an area that I’ve been involved with until now. We had a phone conversation about content during which I suggested that they could give their fans some really useful information such as tips for small business efficiency, a commentary on how the economy is affecting small businesses, tips on branding, sales, anything which could be useful to a business owner. My client grasped the idea pretty quickly and wrote it down, with the promise that I’d email them some links to great Pages to copy.

And that was where the problems started. I thought I’d search for ‘office solution’ or accountancy-type Pages and that I’d be spoilt for choice in terms of what I could send over. However , when I started to look at Pages in detail I found it difficult to pick out any that I would encourage anyone to copy! Some of the Pages just weren’t active, others had very few likes, others had no interaction with fans in evidence….

But the biggest problem I came up against was the content that was being posted. In practically every case, the Page admin was just spouting stuff about the particular tiny niche their business was in, eg. tax consultancy, which made for pretty boring reading, to be honest! Not surprisingly, there wasn’t much sign of audience participation going on! With so much information out there about how to grow your audience by giving them content they love, it’s a shame that some are missing the point!

In the end, I found 3 suitable sites and sent the links over. Two of these were Stateside Pages, which I suppose makes sense as the use of social media for business purposes over there is a couple of years ahead of where we are here. Interestingly though, despite hundreds of likes, the admins of those Pages hadn’t claimed their unique urls. So they weren’t the perfect examples!!!

Have you found any great examples of Facebook Pages for small businesses?