Business owners have encountered a brand-new look for their business pages over the past month or so, and along with it came a number of questions about how to best take advantage of the changes. Page posts, for instance, have streamlined into a single column practically begging for a striking photo, while the lefthand column now allows you to choose the features of your business you’d most like to highlight, whether that’s your apps, customer photos, product videos or something else.
Some of the most important changes have come to the admin tools, which are easier to both access and navigate, and which also have added a range of features.
To really get Facebook for your small business right, let’s take a deeper look at just what these admin tools are, how they work and how you can best take advantage of them.
1. Easily Access Ads
From rollout through evaluation, managing ads on Facebook has always been more than a little confusing. In fact, in the old layout, even figuring out how to access your ads admin panel was a bit of a conundrum. That’s no longer the case with this new rollout. By clicking the “Build Audience” tab in the top right of your page, you’ll easily spot your activity, insights and settings, as well as your ads account manager. Here you’ll see both campaigns you’ve run previously and those that are currently running. With the “Create an Ad” tab, you can now more precisely choose the kind of experience you’re looking to create, whether that’s page likes, app engagement, events or an offer. In the Reports tab, analyze the efficacy of your ads at a detailed level, tweak them accordingly, and try new strategies. Each tab holds new insights for more powerful targeting.
2. Track Competitors With Pages to Watch
Located in the “Insights” tool, the “Pages to Watch section” will help you analyze your performance against similar pages, so you can easily track your competition. Features include important statistics about how many likes and shares posts are getting, which should help you further determine what kind of content your fans like most and the kinds of tones and styles that get them commenting.
To access this tool, scroll down to the bottom of the “Insights” page and choose from five suggested pages to watch. Try experimenting with pages that are direct competitors as well as those that may not be as closely connected but they may attract a very similar audience. With your 5 selections made, compare likes, new likes, number of posts and engagements to see what’s working and what’s not. Clicking on each post will give you an even more up close look at content, which will help you see whether or not your target audience prefers, say, videos to photos, and so forth.
3. Pin Important Posts
The new look for business pages is all about streamlining, so it’s not surprising that Facebook is now giving you the ability to pin important posts to the top of your page. This could be anything from a product announcement to a story offered by a particularly loyal customer to an expert how-to piece that user followers really want to see. Pinning posts in this way allow you to frequently update your page as you should, while curating your own content to prioritize pieces you know will get the most engagement.
To pin a post, just hover your mouse over it, click on the downward arrow on the right side and choose “pin a post.” Voilà! Post pinned.
4. Streamline Your Management
Another target for streamlining is the layout of the admin tools themselves. Now, everything happens in one place. Respond to comments and messages, see how many people your posts have reached and access pages to watch all in the “This Week” section. In the Insights tool, simple tabs will show you how many people like your page, where those likes are coming from, how each post is performing at each posting time, and what your demographics look like.
The Takeaway
Taken together, the changes that have come to the Facebook admin tool make it much more intuitive for small business owners—even those with low levels of tech savvy—to analyze their activity on the site and re-strategize accordingly. And it’s with these insights that you can really turn your Facebook page from a one-sided ad platform into the kind of community that gets your fans engaged and ready to buy.
How do you use Facebook page admin tools for your business? Let us know in the comments below.
Britt Klontz is a Digital Content Strategist at Distilled, an online marketing company. Say “hi” and give her a shout @Britt_Klontz, she’s always up for having a conversation about digital marketing tactics and social networking in general.
