The Changing Face of Facebook for your Business

As of April of 2016, there are over 1.65 billion monthly Facebook users, a 15 percent increase over last year.

One in five page views in the United States occurs on Facebook.

At a billion plus, Facebook has more monthly active users than WhatsApp (500 million), Twitter (284 million) and Instagram (200 million)—combined.

Zephoria Digital Marketing reports that 42% of marketers consider Facebook critical or important to their business.

You get the idea.

Love it or hate it, Facebook is simply too big—you almost HAVE to be using it for your marketing. Whether you have been using Facebook extensively, and are practically an expert, or you have yet to do more than create a simple page for your business, there is always something new going on in this ever-changing social media platform.

One of the most beneficial features that you may not know about, is Facebook's new e-learning program called Blueprint. Blueprint courses, which cover subjects like creating ads and using Instagram for your business, take about 15 minutes to complete. In addition to these courses, Facebook also conducts webinars from time to time; which you can sign up for by simply emailing them.  

While Facebook has updated some of the features on their lead and video ads, and has introduced a new full-screen mobile ad experience called Canvas, they seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on having your business use Messenger to communicate with your customers. There are also other new features, such as putting your typical response time on your page, which could draw more customers in, whether it is to complain about your service, or to ask about your product.

While you're pondering what's new, let's talk about some of the older features you may already be familiar with.  

• The Call-To-Action button. With a simple click, your customer can choose among eleven pre-made buttons, such as “shop now” or “book now”.
• The Cover Photo. At 851 by 315 pixels, that's a lot of real estate—are you taking advantage of it? Since the photo is the first thing people see when they come to your page, use it to advertise events and other promotions.
• Boost Your Post. Using this link in the lower-right hand corner of a post you've created, allows you to choose your audience and budget, based on how many people you want to reach and how long you'd like your boost to run.

Most importantly, remember that although the statistics at the top of this article are quite impressive, your target audience is nowhere near that large. Always keep your customers in mind, and use your Facebook page in a way that is helpful to them, as well as interesting.
 
Happy marketing!