10 brilliant Facebook features you may be missing out on
Are you making the most of the free opportunities that your business Facebook page presents? Discover 10 brilliant (and free!) Facebook features you may be missing out on.
As busy mums, we love quick wins – fast and easy tweaks that can help save us time and make a bigger impact. So we love these 10 tips from Facebook expert Chloe Adlington.
Using Facebook is harder than it used to be
Using Facebook to spread the word about your business is harder now than it used to be. However, if you know how to use it well it’s one of the best marketing tools out there for small businesses.
Why? Because it’s where your customers are! Of course, it depends on who your target market are but for most small businesses it enables you to really focus your efforts on your ideal customers (for a very small investment), which makes it incredibly powerful and effective when done right.
10 brilliant Facebook features you may be missing out on
Even without spending any money on Facebook ads you can still take advantage of Facebook’s features to build relationships and gain new clients online.
To help you make the most of your Facebook page, here are 10 useful Facebook features that can improve your page in less than 10 minutes. If you aren’t already using these, you’re missing out on them!
1) Pin your best posts to the top
If you’ve shared something really important on your Facebook page or posted something your fans have particularly enjoyed you can ‘pin’ that post to the top of your page.
This stops the post being pushed down each time you post something new and ensures that any new visitors to your page will see your best update first. A pinned post will stay at the top of the page until you ‘unpin’ it or you decide to pin something new to the top, allowing you to always make sure you’re putting your best foot forward!
2) Re-order your tabs and sidebar
Along the same theme of sharing your best information first another quick tip is to re-order the page sections down the left hand side and across the top navigation bar of your Facebook page.
Just click on ‘manage tabs’ then drag to re-order your sections, putting the sections your customers will be most interested in first
3) Invite your friends to like your page
If your Facebook page is just getting started or you want to grow your followers, a great place to start is with the people you’re already friends with on Facebook. You can easily send them an ‘invite’ to like your page here:
4) Schedule your updates in advance
Trying to remember to post on your Facebook page every day can be easily forgotten. There are so many brilliant tools out there to help you schedule social media updates in advance (I use Buffer.com) but you can also do this really easily directly from your Facebook page for free.
If you spent 20mins every Monday morning scheduling all your Facebook posts for the week ahead then (apart from checking in for a few minutes daily to respond to any comments) you can relax and focus on growing your business in further ways, knowing that Facebook is already working for you.
5) Customise your link posts
If you’re posting a Facebook update that includes a link to your website or a blog post, you’ll notice that Facebook automatically pulls through a photo and a short description to create a ‘click-able link’ box as part of your post.
You can make the photo or description better by simply clicking on it to edit and then re-type or upload a new photo of your choice to make the link as effective as possible, rather than using the automated one:
6) Give your content the best chance of being seen by your fans
At the top of your Facebook page you’ll find the ‘Insights’ tab. This holds lots of interesting information about your page and for starters click on ‘Posts’. Here you’ll be able to see the days and times where most of your fans are online. If you’re going to invest time in posting good content you might as well do it when it has the best chance of being seen by your target audience!
Further down the page you can also see how well your recent posts have done in engaging your fans. You can click the ‘reach’ column to order your posts by how many people have seen them and if you find something that works, do more of it!
7) Learn from your competitors’ successes using ‘pages to watch’
Staying in the ‘Insights’ tab there’s one more brilliant feature worth pointing out. In the ‘overview’ section, right at the bottom of the page is an area called ‘pages to watch’. This enables you to keep an eye on your competitors’ pages and see which of their posts are the most successful each week.
It’s very useful to see what’s working for them (and therefore what you can learn and apply to your own page) and to compare your engagement levels with theirs. Click ‘add pages’ to get started and once you have a few pages listed you can click on each one to see a pop up of their best posts from each week!
8) Tell your fans to turn on notifications
Did you know that your fans might not be seeing all of your posts, if they haven’t turned on notifications! Likewise you may have a liked a really great page recently but then not seen any updates because you haven’t clicked on this too!
It’s worth posting a little update to your Facebook page with a screenshot to show your fans exactly how to turn on notifications and therefore make sure to see more of your content:
9) Boost posts to increase engagement from your fans
Increase the ‘reach’ of your Facebook posts by experimenting with the ‘boost post’ button, for a small cost. This feature is at its best (and most cost effective) when you use it to promote key posts to your own Facebook page fans, rather than using it to promote your posts to new people.
For just a couple of pounds over two or three days, you can ensure that important posts, for example a post announcing the launch of your website, a new product or a special offer, are seen by hundreds more of your fans than it would organically.
10) Save links for later
This feature is brilliant for saving time when you’re procrastinating on Facebook but also really useful for storing great links to share with your fans at a later date too.
If you spot an interesting article (or page) that you’d like to read or share later you can hit the ‘save’ option and come back to it when you have more time or you’d like to post something really useful with your fans at the right time.
Just click on the drop down menu in the top right hand corner of the post you’d like to save and it will be filed in the ‘saved’ section on the left hand side of Facebook for you to check out when you have more time!
Want to improve your Facebook results even further? Download Chloe’s free e-book with 15 brilliant Facebook posts for small business owners to steal, then you’ll never be stuck for what to post on your page again! It includes lots of examples and tips to increase your fan engagement levels too.
