As a marketer or social media manager, Facebook is an integral part of any marketing strategy.  In order to manage a successful Facebook business page, you have to remain in the know about all the features that they roll out on a daily basis. Many of these features are not only going to help you have a better experience but your audience as well.

 

Below are 6 Facebook features to help you get the most out of your Facebook Business Page.

 

1. Customize your news feed

Facebook is constantly updating their algorithm which affects what posts you see in your news feed.  This can be frustrating for marketers since they could be missing out on seeing important updates from customers, colleagues or influencers. Luckily, Facebook does offer features that help you control what comes through in your feed.

Here are some ways you can do some customizing:

• Segment Your Friend Lists – These are private lists you can put together of anyone you do not want to miss a post from. If you go to your friends list tab, they are easy to create from there.  Keep in mind, though, that it only stores a few days worth of posts so you do need to check back regularly.  You can also use these friends lists for sharing specific posts to, so by creating these lists, you are able to have some control over who sees your updates.

 

• Choose the updates you want to see first in your feed – Time is money and you want to be able to see the updates of the business pages and people that are most important to you.  You can do this by updating your news feed preferences and you can stop seeing updates without unfriending someone.

• Filter group content- If you are part of a group, you have the option to see all the posts, just highlights or only posts from friends.  If you do not choose one, highlights is the default setting. If you run a Facebook group for your business, give your members a heads up to change their settings to see “all posts”.  Many of them are probably just seeing highlights.

2.  Give a boost to your page engagement

The number one thing every business strives for is to boost their organic reach.  We all know by now that your organic reach is pretty low without buying Facebook ads but there are tools that Facebook provides to help you make every post as effective as possible.

• Use the “save draft option” when putting together a post – If a stroke of creative genius has hit you and you have the perfect post in mind, save it as a draft.  When you create a post, you are given this option as well as the option to schedule your post or backdate it.
• Encourage Private Messages – Let your audience know that the best way to contact you is through private messaging.  It is a great way to build trust and also boost engagement.  This is also great for customer service since someone can ask a question privately without everyone seeing.

3. Get access to royalty-free music

If you are not incorporating video into your posts, you should be.  When sharing a video, you may find that adding some music to it just might give it that extra edge.  Facebook makes it easy for you to do this and you do not need to worry about any copyright issues.  If you go to the Publishing Tools tab on your page, you will see an option for sound collection in the left menu.  This will give you access to tons of royalty free sound effects and music.

4. Keep an eye on competitors

With the pages to watch feature, you can follow up to 100 different brand pages.  This allows for a quick overview of each page’s activity, engagement and their audience growth.  This is very useful for comparison purposes.

To access this page, click “Insights” and find the pages to watch tab.  From here you can start adding your pages. You will see a detailed view of each page’s posts from the current week.

 

5. Invite people to like your page

If you are a small business, you are looking to get the most out of every post you make.  Facebook has a feature where you can invite anyone who has interacted with a post to Like your page. Just look at the section under a post where it shows you how many people like it and click on that. A list will pull up with everyone who liked the post and on the right hand side, it will show which of them currently likes your page.  Anyone that does not, you can invite them to like your page and this can be done within the list.

6. Create more community with your group

Lets roll back to Facebook business groups.  You should have one already and Facebook now offers more features to help you manage them more effectively while making it a better experience for your members.

• Welcome new members with a special post –  As new members join, Facebook makes it easy for you to welcome them into the group.  It brings together all the new names into a pre-written post and it will also tag them for you.  Just personalize the post and it is ready to go.
• See who the most active people are in your group – Check out your group insights tab for details on engagement levels for your posts as well as which days and times are proving to be the most popular.  Take it a step further and click the “more member details’ option to see who has been the most active with comments and/or posts. This is great because you can then show appreciation to your top contributors by publicly acknowledging them.

Conclusion

If you want to get the most out of your Facebook business page, it is crucial that you know what features it offers.  This will help save you both time and energy that you can put towards building your community and your brand.