Does keeping up with all the changes to Facebook business pages ever make you feel like a juggler trying to keep too many balls in the air?
It’s hard to keep up with all the new options when Facebook is just one part of your marketing communications job, so here’s a list of five relatively new tools that we think PR people and page managers will find helpful.
Post Scheduling
Many of us have long used programs like Socialyzer and Buffer to schedule all of our social media posts for us. One problem with that is that if you use the same scheduling app for Twitter and Facebook, your Facebook posts appear with Twitter hashtags in them.
Now, Facebook has rolled out a scheduling feature that enables brands to schedule posts directly from Facebook. It’s not easy to find – look for a small clock in the left hand corner of the box where you add new posts. That’s the scheduling feature.
Pro Tip: You can backdate posts to create milestones for your company’s Timeline – an especially useful feature if you need to make a new page look better established, or clean up a previous administrator’s errors.
Post Editing
If you haven’t yet used the pencil icon (which appears in the upper right corner of any post), it’s time to make it part of your regular Facebook review process.
If you spot a mistake, or want to make a change in a new post (less than 24 hours old), just click on the pencil icon and enter the new content. To edit an older post, click on the time stamp, then click on “edit” under the post. Note: This seems to work on posts with pictures, photos and captions, and posts with videos or hyperlinks – but not on those that contain only text.
Facebook says that editing for all posts will be enabled soon, however.
Video Sharing
Yes, you’ve been able to post a completed video on your Facebook page for a long time. But there’s a new app called Broadcast with Friends or BFF from Ustream. BFF is like Instagram for video: it lets you stream a live video to your friends or the public, and collect comments as it streams.
It’s an iPhone only app for now, and it’s still in beta. The press reports so far are very positive, however – and sign up is still free.
BFF was designed as an app for personal streaming, but large brands like Pepsi are already jumping on the bandwagon, live streaming concerts, corporate events, and video news releases. We expect to see it used to live stream conference speeches, product demos, and behind-the-scenes tours. The possibilities seem endless.
App Rearranging
Once upon a time, adding an app to your Facebook page meant costly hard coding from a professional developer. No longer. Now you can simply select an app and embed it in your page. Unfortunately, when it came time to rearrange where the apps appeared, things weren’t quite so simple.
Now, rearranging where an app appears on your Facebook page is only a few mouse clicks. Start by clicking on the pencil icon in the top right-hand corner of the app, and go to ‘swap position with [app of your choice].” For example, you can move the app that prompts your audience to subscribe to your blog or showcases your YouTube channel so it’s among the things people see first when they visit your page. The possibilities are endless – and you can update the page layout whenever you have something new to feature, or when your analytics tell you it’s time to promote one feature over another.
Adding Administrators
Getting help in managing an active Facebook page is now as easy as adding new administrators. Just click on “settings”, and change the admin roles. It couldn’t be faster or easier.
Before adding an administrator, take time to update your Facebook marketing plan, so your new helper(s) understand the big picture for your brand’s Facebook page, and review the company’s social media policies with them. This is a place where an ounce of prevention can prevent big problems, so it’s wise to review them every time you make adminsitrative changes.
Graphic Credit: Urs Steiner made his graphic available on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.