It’s no surprise that Facebook’s development team is constantly on the move. They often tweak and sometimes completely, overhaul their site. It may seem hard to keep up with these ceaseless changes, but, if you do, your business’s presence on the site could be better for it. Below are three recent updates that you can use to your site’s advantage.
1. Premium Video Ads
Although currently only available in the UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and Japan, premium video ads are sure to be an exciting update if your company has found Facebook’s current ad platform. The 15-second clips will start playing immediately as users scroll through their timelines, although they will have to click on them to hear sound and have the videos extend to full screen.
Aside from being a creative dream, these high-quality clips will come with metrics so that you can see how many people have stuck around to watch your clip, whether organically or through paid placement.
2. Auto-Privacy on Posts
Facebook is looking out for your privacy by making your friends the automatic audience for your posts, rather than the entire Facebook user base. This is an important thing for you to know as a business owner, especially one who might be starting a new venture and, therefore, a new Facebook page.
While your friends and followers are most likely to care about the latest addition to your company’s line of covers for grills, you will probably want this information open to the general public in the chance that they, too, are interested in a new piece of outerwear for their equipment. That’s why you should make sure that you unclick the “friends” symbol so that your words, images and videos can make their way to as many browsers as possible.
3. Entertain Yourself and Others
This one might not be as useful to a wide variety of business, but Facebook recently revealed a new feature that makes it easier for you to identify and share the media that you’re enjoying. When you go to update your status and click the smiley face in the lower portion of the update box, you can type in what you’re feeling, listening to or watching. Now, rather than spell out the latter two, you can simply use your phone’s microphone to identify the song or movie.
You’re probably wondering how this applies to your business.
Let’s say that you are a Zumba teacher running your own business and, therefore, your own Facebook page. Your students love a song that you’ve decided to play in class, so while it’s blasting in the background, you update your status to say something like, “Here’s the song from today’s class!” With it, your Facebook will automatically add the song’s title so your students can find it easily after seeing your update. No matter how you use it, though, your clientele and Facebook followers alike will appreciate any sort of update that reveals a human edge to a business and its employees.
Thanks to Facebook’s development team, your user experience on both your personal account and your business’s page is constantly improved and streamlined. The changes, and those that are likely to roll out in the near future, can be harnessed by the majority of businesses so that their pages are the best they can be. The moral of the story, though, is to never sit on your laurels when it comes to social media. This ever-changing industry is sure to switch up the rules of the game no matter how little or how much time you’ve been playing.