When utilized correctly, Facebook goes beyond casual social networking between family and friends. The massive social media site can be used to amp up your company’s social media marketing strategy and bring in new business. If you’re thinking about changing the way you use Facebook, or just looking for new ways to improve your marketing strategy, here are 4 important Facebook features you should know about.
1) Promoted Posts
If you’re a small business that doesn’t have a very large budget for marketing, the promoted posts Facebook feature might be just what you’re looking for. For as little as $5 a post, you can promote your content and make sure it appears higher in your followers’ newsfeeds for a longer amount of time. The more you spend, the longer it remains at the top.
The Promoted Post Facebook feature also allows you to set your audience—people who like your Page and their friends, or people you choose through targeting. You can also set your maximum budget in order to make sure you don’t spend more money than you’re willing to. All this can be accessed under the Boost Post tab, which is underneath everything you post on Facebook.
2) Scheduled Posts
For the past few months, Facebook has allowed users to schedule their posts, which lets you post company updates at any time you choose. Instead of posting something immediately, you can manually schedule something to update later in the day. This is useful if you know you’re going to be away from your computer, or you just want to make sure something gets posted at the appropriate time.
This Facebook feature can be found on the bottom left corner of your status bar. Since you should try to spread out Facebook updates in order to avoid overloading your followers with posts all at once, this is a feature you might want to consider using. It could also help you stay consistent and organized.
3) Milestones
In order to keep your followers updated and engaged with your company’s page, it helps to memorialize important events using the Facebook milestone feature. Not only does it show your followers that your company is remaining active, it also lets them know that you’ve been successful.
Setting up a milestone is an easy process that will help you keep track of company offers and events. All you have to do is go to the status bar, click the Offer, Event + menu and select milestone. When adding a milestone, you can even upload a photo and a story to go along with it.
4) Page Insights
At the top of your company’s page, you can find the Admin Panel, which allows you to access all of your page’s insights. Much like Google Analytics, Facebook’s Page Insights lets you view data. With this data, you can monitor how well your page is doing through page likes, engagement, shares, etc.
Business owners can use this data in order to gain insight on what posts get the most engagement, which will help you understand what your customers are interested in seeing and improve your posts in the future. It’s a great free Facebook feature to get to know your customer base better and create content that will better engage them in the future.
Since some Facebook features are hard to find, it helps to go through your Facebook business page and explore all available options. Finding what works for your business might take some time, but social media marketing offers many features that will help you along the way. Do you use Facebook for your business? What features have helped your company succeed? Share with us!