Like any highly functional online platform, Facebook has expanded its capabilities significantly since its inception to include a host of features you may not even realize existed! The evolution of Facebook has been a long and winding one, and often, functionalities that aren’t part of your daily social media routine get forgotten. Still, just because they aren’t the most commonly used features does not mean they aren’t incredibly useful when it comes to generating content and staying connected. We’ve rounded up the top ten Facebook hacks that are sure to change the way you use the platform you thought you knew inside and out!
- Tag pages to leverage reach. One of the best things you can do to increase the number of fans your post is shown to is to tag other pages. Leverage their fan base (as well as your own) to gain exposure.
- Download your page’s history to analyze your business. Facebook’s analytics are highly robust, which can be very helpful if you know where to find and how to interpret them. Track the performance of posts you’ve shared, click through rates on your photo albums, etc. Enter settings, general account settings, and at the bottom, click the link to download a copy of your Facebook data.
- Watch the competition. Don’t get left behind as your competitors are promoting their pages. Stay up to date by monitoring their pages and understanding what you’d like to emulate, and what is your point of differentiation. In the ‘Insights’ feature of your page, there is a section at the bottom titled “Pages to watch.” This will allow you to track your progress compared to the pages Facebook deems similar to your own.
- Pin important posts to the top of your page. Using the drop down arrow in the top right corner of every post, select “pin to post” to ensure that particularly important posts stay at the top of your timeline. This way, your time sensitive updates don’t get buried.
- Mark all notifications as “read” to stop the madness. It can be tempting to avoid managing a Facebook page when all day, notifications are peppering your inbox like a firing squad. In order to maintain your page and respond to comments and posts accordingly, enter your settings, scroll to the notifications section, and select the “mark as read” option.
- Use post attributions to avoid multiple personality disorder. When managing multiple pages that are both personal and professional, it can be easy to post as the wrong identity, which, depending on your line of work, could be a huge faux pas. Facebook allows you to set your default profile, this way you always know by default who you are posting as. Go to settings, click on post attribution in the sidebar, and select your preferred default identity.
- Track your ad relevance to monitor your ROI. We’ve already explained the benefits of Facebook advertising, but this feature takes it a step further by giving you the tools to track your own ads ROI. For each ad, Facebook assigns a “relevancy score,” a number between 1 and 10, and the higher the number the more quality users your ad will be shown to. To access this information, go to ads manager, click on campaigns, find the campaign name, and review your ads “performance.”
- Leverage interest lists to stay organized and focused. Weeding through all the content on your newsfeed can be overwhelming, and lists are a great way to organize and make sense of all that material. The best part is that you can create a list based on your own interests, or for an easier, less personal option, follow other people’s lists. These lists will show up in your “interests” section on your page.
- Weed out fakes or illegitimate profiles. We’ve also already discussed at length the ways in which purchasing fans works against you on Facebook, but this is a feature that allows you to be proactive about vetting your fans. Enter settings, select “banned users,” and trim away the fans that either don’t interact or spam your page.
- Save articles for a rainy day with “save for later” feature. This is a great way to save content for a rainy day, or just to create a library of material that you can always refer back to. This material will remain private until you choose to share it. To view what you’ve saved, go to facebook.com/saved.
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