Setting up a proper Page — not a personal profile — and connecting it to the rest of the Meta stack.
Verified August 2026.
Facebook remains the default place people check a local business's reputation, particularly customers over 45. It's also required infrastructure: you cannot run an Instagram business account, WhatsApp Business, or Meta ads properly without a Page.
Setup takes about thirty minutes.
First: do not use a personal profile as a business
Some businesses run everything from a personal account under the business name. Don't. It violates Meta's terms, and the profile can be disabled without warning, taking your entire audience with it. A personal profile also can't run ads, can't be managed by a team, and doesn't appear in business search.
A Page is created from your personal account, but stays separate from it. Your personal profile is the key, not the storefront — nothing you post personally becomes visible through the Page.
Before you start
- Your personal Facebook account (or create one)
- Business name, address or service area, phone, hours, website
- Profile photo at 1080 × 1080 px
- Cover photo at 1640 × 624 px
- A one- or two-sentence description
Step 1: Check for an existing page
Search your business name on Facebook. Unofficial Pages get generated when users check in at a location, and old Pages left by former staff are common.
If an unofficial Page exists, claim or merge it rather than creating a competing one. Duplicate Pages split your reviews and followers.
Step 2: Create the Page
Two routes, same result:
Direct: log into your personal account and go to the Page creation flow. Enter your Page name, choose up to three categories, and add a short description.
Via Meta Business Suite: go to business.facebook.com, open Settings, then Pages, and add a new Page. Slightly more setup, but it puts you in the business tooling from the start — worth it if you'll add Instagram or run ads.
Your Page name should be your exact business name. Not your business name plus keywords. Meta restricts name changes and keyword-stuffed names can be rejected.
Step 3: Add images
| Asset | Specification |
|---|---|
| Profile photo | Upload 1080 × 1080 (displays 170 × 170 desktop, 128 × 128 mobile) |
| Cover photo | Design at 1640 × 624 (displays 820 × 312 desktop, 640 × 360 mobile) |
| Feed post | 1080 × 1350 |
| Link preview | 1200 × 630 |
Your cover photo crops differently on phone and desktop — noticeably so. Preview both before finishing. Keep any text or logo in the center; the sides get trimmed on mobile and the lower-left is partly covered by your profile photo on desktop.
Published cover dimensions vary between sources. Designing at 1640 × 624 with everything essential centered is safe across the variations. (Directional.)
Your profile photo displays as a circle. Square-cornered logos lose their corners.
Step 4: Complete your business information
| Field | Hard limit |
|---|---|
| Page intro | 101 |
| Post | 63,206 |
Intro (101 characters). Very tight. What you do and where, nothing else.
Categories. Up to three. The first is the most important; choose the most accurate rather than the broadest.
Address or service area. As with Google, decide whether customers come to you or you go to them. Service-area businesses can hide the street address.
Hours. Include holidays.
Phone, website, email.
Username (vanity URL). Claim one so your Page is facebook.com/YourBusiness instead of a string of numbers. Set it in Page settings. This affects how shareable your Page is everywhere else.
Call-to-action button. Book Now, Call Now, Send Message, Learn More, Sign Up. Choose the one matching how customers actually reach you.
Step 5: Set roles before you do anything else
Add at least one other admin from your business. If you're working with a marketing vendor, add them as an Editor or Advertiser, not an Admin — those roles let them post and run ads without letting them remove you.
This is the step that prevents the most common Facebook disaster: losing access to your own Page when a relationship ends.
Step 6: Connect Instagram and Business Suite
If you plan to use Instagram for business, connect it now through Meta Business Suite → Business Assets. This gives you:
- One inbox for Facebook comments and Instagram DMs
- Cross-posting
- Combined analytics
- The ability to run ads across both
Doing this first makes the Instagram setup considerably simpler.
Step 7: Messaging settings
Only turn on Messenger if someone will actually respond. Facebook publicly displays your response rate and time, and a slow or absent one is visible to prospective customers.
Set up a welcome message and an away message. Pages that respond quickly earn a responsiveness badge.
Step 8: Reviews and recommendations
Facebook uses Recommendations rather than star ratings. Visitors answer yes or no and add a comment.
Respond to all of them. As with everywhere else, a measured reply to a negative recommendation does more for prospective customers than several positive ones.
If your profession is regulated, your rules on testimonials apply here regardless of what Facebook permits. Medical and dental practices in particular must consider HIPAA before responding to anything that identifies someone as a patient — including a thank-you.
A note on link previews
When someone shares a link to your website on Facebook, the image that appears does not come from anything you upload to Facebook. It comes from the Open Graph tag on your website, at 1200 × 630 px.
If your links show a broken image, a random logo, or nothing at all, the fix is on your website, not on your Page.
Common problems
Page name rejected. Usually keyword stuffing. Use your real business name.
Cover photo looks wrong on mobile. The sides are cropped. Re-center the content.
Can't merge duplicate Pages. Facebook only merges Pages with similar names and the same address. If they differ, update one to match before requesting the merge.
Lost admin access. If the only admin has left, Facebook's recovery process requires documentation proving you represent the business. Slow. Avoidable by adding a second admin on day one.
Reach dropped to nothing. Organic Page reach is genuinely low. This is the platform working as designed, not a problem with your Page.
Maintenance
- Weekly: respond to messages and recommendations
- Monthly: post at least once so the Page doesn't look abandoned
- Quarterly: verify hours, phone, address; review admin list
- Immediately: update holiday hours; remove departed staff from roles
Next steps
Next is BBB, then Yelp — the last two Tier 1 items. If you plan to use Instagram, your Facebook Page is now the prerequisite for Instagram setup.
Full checklist: the complete setup guide.
Verified August 2026 against Meta documentation and current published sources. Meta frequently changes the Pages experience; interface paths may differ from what's described.