Facebook Brand Pages: Updates and Tips

So the past few days I’ve noticed something strange in my newsfeed. I kept seeing different craft business owners whose Facebook brand pages I follow asking me to make sure that their post show up in my newsfeed. Now I knew that Facebook had made some changes to the brand pages and rolled out promoted posts, but this was news to me. I thought that all the page posts show up in your newsfeed by default. Well surprise, surprise, they do.

Some of you with Facebook fan pages may have heard about this already or even read a couple blog posts (like this one) that made the situation seem kind of alarming. I am here to tell you to not worry! A little Facebook Brand Page Insights 101 might help you feel better about the new promoted posts and more confident in marketing yourself through social media.

Facebook Brand Page Insights 101

If you’ve never looked at them before, you should. Your insights are a handy little thing, especially if you have a good amount of fans. You can access them by clicking that chart in your admin panel above your cover photo. This is where you used to have to go to see how effective a post was. By effective I mean how many people saw it. Now Facebook has made this easier and put these number right under your posts. Don’t worry, only admins of the page can see them.

This is great for you as a page because now instead of having to go into the insights tab you can quickly and easily see which types of posts are most effective and which times of the day work best for posting to your audience.

Now, what has some people alarmed when seeing this number is how low the percentage is. No worries! Even the biggest brand pages with the most engaged audiences only get about 20% of their fan base to see their posts. Yes, this is frustrating, but you have to think about how Facebook works.

In the newsfeed you can see stories by most recent or by relevance. If someone hasn’t been on Facebook for a few days and they have 200 friends and like 50 pages, good chances are they will never see what you posted yesterday. It’s just the nature of the beast. Also, the less that they interact with your page, the less likely it will be that you will show up in their Top Stories.

So before you panic, check your insights for the past month and see if your post have gotten and better or worse over the past week or so. If something has changed, make sure your posting habits haven’t changed. Have you been posting less frequently or perhaps at different times than normal?

Promoted Posts

Promoted posts were rolled out to 1. yes, make Facebook more money and 2. help you promote your pages. You do not have to pay to have your fans see your posts. They will see them as often as they normally would if you post with out paying. Promoted posts might be helpful for anything you really want to push and they can cost you as little as $5. If you own an Etsy store, it’s the same concept as promoting your listings, people will find them anyway, they will just find them faster this way.

I suggest saving promoted posts for big events happening for your page or shop that you want a large number of people to see. Are you having a week long sale or adding 70 pieces of merchandise to your shop? These are things you might what to think about promoting. Just keep in mind these should be your best and most engaging posts! Include a big, clear photo or logo and enough information so fans don’t have to go searching. This Knit-Along hosted by AllFreeKnitting would be a perfect example:

 

Moral of the story? If you want to reach your fans via Facebook you can still do so for free, just never expect to be able to reach all of them. However, there are some fun things you can try to constantly reach more and more of them! Here are some articles I found on changing up your Facebook posts to get people talking!

8 Facebook Status Ideas

6 Steps to Boost Your Facebook Posts

 

Do you have a Facebook page? How do you engage with your fans?