Top Five Things You Need to Know About Facebook

That your friends will wonder how you know....

How to schedule posts in advance

Often, small businesses don't have time to send regular Facebook updates during the work day. Luckily, Facebook has launched a tool that enables page administrators to schedule updates.

When you post a photo, video, offer, or status update, you will see a little clock symbol below the update that lets you choose the exact time that your post will go live.

This is the perfect tool to schedule all your posts in advance for the day or week. The one word of caution is that interaction is also important, so it would be wise to jump back in to answer queries from your fans and customers in your spare time. What this tool will do is allow you to get back to work and possibly even enjoy a day off, or the whole weekend.

How to promote your updates

Most people think that when they post an update, photo, or offer, the amount of people who “like” their page automatically see that content. The truth is much different. Facebook uses something that it calls EdgeRank to decide who sees your content. Because of EdgeRank, it would be normal for only 10 to 15 percent of people who “like” your page to actually see your content.

To remedy this situation, you can use Facebook’s advertising tool to get people to see your content. Under each status update, you will see a little button saying "Promote This Post." Clicking on this, and paying Facebook some money, will help your post get seen by more people who “like” your page. You wouldn’t do this with every post, but it is a good way to push out important content and updates that you want everybody to see. 

How to set up a Recommendations box

You have a comment box for fans and users, but a Recommendations box is one great place to help build a rapport with followers. Recommendations are only made available when a page provides a location, so you must give an exact address in the "About" section before you gain access to it.

How to integrate WordPress blogs with Facebook

If you have a dedicated blog for your company, and you use WordPress, you can easily tag and post onto your own page and the brand pages you manage. You can also mention the names of pages and friends when you make your blog live to alert them to your latest post. This is useful if you want to help get your posts shared across the site. 

How to Optimize Your Page 

Although it’s not your main site, you should still optimize your Facebook page because they appear in search engines.

There are numerous ways to optimize your page. Make sure you’re using keywords in your updates, on your "About" page, photos, links, and updates to help improve your chances. There’s quite a lot that you can do to improve your page’s chances of appearing on search engines, and you can find out more here.