Do you have a Facebook page for your business?

For many companies these days it’s a yes.

And you’ve no doubt come across the many useful features that Facebook has available to pages in the way of customizing your page, analyzing your audience preferences and tracking your results.

I’ve put together a list of some of the most helpful features I’ve encountered along with tips on how to use them to your advantage.

Let’s get started:

Schedule Your Posts

Being able to schedule posts is such a time-saver. It’s perfect for evergreen content (a message that can be shared now or a month from now that won’t be outdated) or time-specific posts (ex. announcing an upcoming sale or event).

To schedule a post, start by entering what you want to say in the update field at the top of your Page’s Timeline. Then click on the downward facing arrow that is next to Publish.

Then select Schedule. Below that select the date and time you want the post to publish then click Schedule. Be aware that times correspond to your current time zone you are in.

Hide Negative Comments

Someone has left a nasty comment on your page. Now what do you do?

Thankfully an offensive or inappropriate comment on your page can be hidden.

To do this, use your mouse to hover the arrow over the offending comment. Three dots will appear on the upper right side of the comment box. Click the dots which will then create a drop down list. Click on Hide Comment. You will then get the message:

“Now this is only visible to the person who wrote it and their friends.”

Featured Likes

When you like other businesses as your page, these likes show up in your Liked By This Page section. The pages you have liked show up three or five at a time and if a visitor wants to see more of your likes they can click the sideways arrow.

The five shown pages you like rotate through with each visit to your page so that a different page could be shown with each visit. You can adjust this to always feature a specific page by changing your Featured Likes. You can select up to five pages to feature.

To do this go to Settings which is located in the upper right corner of the screen, then Featured which is on the lower left side, then select Add Featured Likes.

You then select the pages you want to feature. This is beneficial in promoting or showcasing a partner’s page, a complimentary service or another business you own.

View Who Has Liked Your Page

To see the people and pages that have liked your page first go to Settings, then People and Other Pages. You will see a box that says People Who Like This Page. If you click on this a drop down will appear which will allow you to select People Who Like This Page or Pages That Like This Page.

Activity Log

In a previous blog post I discussed how to view your Activity Log for your personal page. It’s the place where all your activity is stored such as articles you’ve shared, comments you’ve made and posts or photos you’ve liked. The Activity Log for your business page will show all this history, plus more. To access your Activity Log, click on Settings, then click Activity Log on the lower left side. 

And don’t worry: only you have access to your Activity Log.

Respond to Your Mentions

It’s important to keep track of what people are saying about you on social media.

It’s much easier to do this by using the Mentions feature. To access it, go to Notifications then Activity then Mentions.  Now you can respond to what people are saying about you whether it is addressing a concern or giving thanks or praise.

Verify Your Page

Verifying your page adds legitimacy.

It tells the world that Facebook has confirmed that this is the official page for your business. To verify your page go to Settings then click on General. You will see Page Verification. Now click on Edit.You will then see Verify this Page which you will click on. A pop up window will appear. Click on Get Started and follow the instructions. The benefit of doing this is your page will show up higher in search results to attract more visitors. Once Facebook can confirm your page is authentic and belongs to your business you will receive a verified badge next to your name which looks like a gray check mark with a circle around it.

View Your Insights

This is all your analytics and statistics for your page.

There’s a lot of useful information here so be sure to explore this area.

There are two analytics called Posts and People that are especially helpful to gaining insight into your audience. To access these analytics, click on Insights which is near at the top of your page. You will find Posts and People on the left hand side among other options.

The Posts section tells you how well received your post were by your audience (number of likes, shares, comment etc). You will also get information on when your audience is online which is helpful in determining when you should post your content.

The People section lets you know about your demographic (age group, gender, language, location). This is useful in determining what your audience may be interested in hearing about.

Monitor Positive and Negative Feedback About Your Posts

Click on Insights, and then Posts.

You should now see a listing of your most recent posts. Look at the columns labelled Reach and Engagement.  This has all the positive information related to your post such as how many people saw it and how many people liked, shared and commented on it.

To view the negative feedback, select the upside down arrow next to Reactions, Comments & Shares. A Drop down will appear. Now click on Post Hides, Hides of All Posts, Reports of Spam, Unlikes of Page.

A column will appear called Negative Feedback. Hopefully you will see zeroes. If not, you can click on the post to see details. You will see four actions people can take:

They can hide that particular post, hide all your post so that they no longer see any of your updates in their news feed, report your post as spam or unlike your page so they no longer follow you.

What do I do if you see negative feedback?

First, don’t be too discouraged. Second, you can learn from this information.

Use this feedback to your advantage and create content that is different from the content that was received negatively.

Setup Your Message Settings

You have no doubt noticed that pages display statistics related to your responsiveness to messages. This is broken down into two categories: how many messages you have responded to (based on a percentage) and the time is takes for you to respond.

Obviously you want your responsiveness to be stellar (100% response rate and a “typically replies in minutes” response time).

But what happens if you receive a message overnight and you don’t see it until the morning. Does your responsiveness statistics take plunge?

The answer is it doesn’t have to thanks to auto-messaging.

You can set up an automatic reply that helps preserve your responsiveness rate. You can set this up by going to Settings then Messaging.  This will take you to Messaging Settings. Scroll down to Response Assistant and make the necessary changes.

Over to You Now

Which tip did you find most useful? Were there any not discussed here that are super helpful? I would love to hear from you. Leave your comments below.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Trites is a Social Media Consultant and Owner of Knockout Social Media

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