Jonathan Labin is Facebook's Head of Middle East, Africa, and Pakistan. He contacted us with some tips, based on Facebook's own research, for small business owners looking to use Facebook to expand their business.

1. Spruce up your page

A little bit of housekeeping on your page can add a lot of value. Make sure that your hours of business and contact information are all up to date. It’s also a good idea to update your page’s cover photo with holiday- or small business-themed images. These little steps let visitors know that your page is an active extension of your business.

2. Post regularly

A steady rhythm of posts in the days before a big event can help keep your business top-of-mind to customers. Be sure to highlight your best merchandise, but don’t restrict yourself to just self-promotional posts. Also consider posting content that gives people some kind of extra value. For instance, you can highlight other great businesses nearby, or share interesting content that relates to your business.

3. Create photo and video page posts

Posting great photo or video content is an easy way to make your business come alive on Facebook. Photo or video posts generally have good levels of engagement. For businesses, another idea is to create a photo album with images of products that people can preview before coming into the shop.

4. Try a Facebook Offer

Posting special offers or discounts for small business is a great way of offering your customers even more value. You can start by offering a discount to people that mention Facebook when they come into your shop. Or, if you’re looking for more reach, Facebook Offers make it easy for you to distribute your promotions to an audience beyond your fan base. And they make it easy for people to redeem your offers, too — when people click to claim your offer they get an e-mail reminder with all the necessary details on how to redeem it.

5. Boost your important posts

Boosted Posts can help you reach wider audiences with greater accuracy. Simply enter whatever amount you can set aside for the promotion and Facebook will tell you instantly how many people your post will reach. And with the targeting features built into Boosted Posts, you can make sure the right people are seeing your posts. For instance, you can direct your posts toward people who live nearby. It can be a great way of reaching people while they’re out and about. (Just remember that if you want to boost a post containing an image, the image cannot contain any more than 20% text.)