It’s critical that Facebook Page managers take time to regularly audit their Page and ensure that they are not missing out on new features.
This Facebook Page Check-up List INFOGRAPHIC outlines 12 key items to review to help maximize your Page’s potential.
Facebook changes often—audit your Page to keep up!
1. Maximize Use of your Page Cover Image
The latest key change is that the 20% rule for text is gone! Facebook recently updated its guidelines and loosened the restrictions on the amount of text you can display on your main Page cover image. (View updated Facebook Guidelines.) This prime cover image location now lets you display items such:
as your web address,
a call to action / special offer
a featured product
a coming event
Since the 20% max rule is dead, Facebook Page Admins should use the cover image well. Best practices would be to feature something each week (product, event, news), and to direct fans visually to your key tab apps on the page.
Be careful, however, to NOT make your page busy with all sorts of combinations of messages. Rather use the cover image to highlight and focus ONE key message or ONE key item along with your logo for branding.
If designed creatively, cover images now afford Pages a powerful new opportunity to communicate key pieces of information to visitors. Make sure to take advantage of this change.
Here’s a FREE Cover image PowerPoint template that’s free to download and can help companies easily create custom cover images.
2. Maximize Use of Tab Apps to Increase Page Features
Tab apps are great ways to boost engagement on your Page. They offer interactive and incentive options that can draw visitors to your Page and boost engagement.
A great way to boost traffic, engagement, and leads via Facebook is to use a tab to host a contest or promotion. In fact, using a third-party app is the only way to run a contest or deal that meets Facebook’s promotion guidelines. At a minimum, Pages should feature a tab app that lets visitors sign up for the company email newsletter list.
Ideas for Real Estate Professionals >
Tips for Hotels, Resorts, and Bed and Breakfasts >
Read more about how Contests can boost marketing and reach for Facebook Pages >
Another idea is to add a key page from your website to your fan page via a tab. Using a tool like TabSite’s WebSite ReSizer, it can take less than 10 minutes to add your website listings page to a custom tab and have it fit perfectly!
This adds a great dimension of functionality to your fan page. When people are on Facebook, they want to stay on Facebook, and this allows them to do so by giving them the featured listing right on the Facebook page tab. Simply share a post about the property and include the Smart (mobile friendly) URL in the description so users can easily access it.
Make sure that your apps stay up to date and that your most important apps are visible in the three slots below the cover image. More about this in the next item below!
3. Clear and Concise Tab Thumbnails
Your tab thumbnails appear below your cover image and lead to the apps in use on your Page. You have the opportunity to showcase three tab apps that are always visible to visitors on your Page. Make sure these capture attention!
The best way to do this is to use simple fonts. Shorten the call-out to a few words and consider using your cover image to point to them via an arrow or other visual means to drive the visitors eye to them.
Here’s a great example in use by Hotel Capstone that identifies clearly in simple text what is expected on the tabs.
4. Use the Short Description
Your Page can show a brief description of approximately 155 characters that displays below the cover image and the profile image at the top of your Page. This is great space to outline a concise statement about your business and list your website URL. Too many people overlook adding a visible URL here! Don’t be one of them!
To update this area, go to Edit Settings in your admin panel, and under Basic Information look for Short Description (see image under #6 below). Amy Porterfield makes excellent use of her Short Description. NOTE: This area is not available to those who have their page category set to Local Business. Facebook forces your hours of business and phone if you use the local business category. See more in next point below.
Key Tip: Include your website address in the Short Description so it is always visible to those coming to your Page.
5. Review Your Category, Especially if You’re a Local Business
Facebook offers quite a variety of category options, many of which are similar and some that offer different features for your Page. One of the biggest feature differences that any local business should take advantage of is the Check-in option.
If your business has a physical brick-and-mortar location where you want potential customers to visit, be sure to change your Facebook Page category to Local Business.
This will allow users to check into your location, which is helpful for at least two reasons. First, it can raise awareness of your business and location with friends of the user checking in. Second, check-ins can be part of Graph Search results, so that if a Facebook user is searching for a restaurant in Chicago that friends have visited, check-ins appear in results. Be aware that there is a trade-off, as businesses categorizing themselves as Local Businesses do not have the Short Description option. However, the value of the check-in feature for local businesses in my opinion surpasses the short description value.
To check or change your Page category, go to the Admin Panel and select Edit Settings. Then go to Basic Information, and find Category at the top of the list.
Review and update your Short Description and complete the About section.
6. Optimize the ‘About’ Section for Graph Search
After adding your Short Description, make sure to review and complete the remainder of the About area, which has subsections such as Company Overview, Description, General Information and Mission. The About area is indexed by search engines, so make sure it contains your keywords. The exact subsections you see will vary depending on the Page category you have chosen.
Complete the Company Overview, Mission and Products fields to help optimize your Page for product searches. Include your address, city, state and zip code in General Information to optimize you Page for local search. Now that Graph Search is rolling out to all users, the About section becomes even more important because it is indexed by Facebook and can return in Graph Search results for user searches on Facebook. Learn more about Graph Search.
7. Customize Your Facebook Page URL
If your Facebook Page URL still has “pages” and a set of numbers in it, it’s time to move up to a custom URL!
You can customize your Page web address by selecting a unique username that contains letters or numbers but no dashes, etc. Your Facebook URL can be changed only once, after it is originally set, so choose wisely.
Adding a username to your Page makes it easier for people to find your business on Facebook, and your Page’s custom url can be used in marketing communications and more!
8. Activate Replies to Comments
Replies is a newer Facebook feature that was released in March 2013. When the feature is enabled, it allows Pages to offer their community the ability to reply to a specific comment in a thread. This threaded comments feature allows for more specific and richer interaction around a comment.
Previously, adding to a discussion required you to tag someone (using the @ symbol and their name) and hope that other readers understood which of the previous comments it related to. No need for that now, as each comment will have a “reply” link to reply specifically to that comment.
The Replies feature is activated by going to the Admin Panel. Select Edit Settings and then Manage Permissions. Toward the bottom of this section is the Replies area with a checkbox to activate. Be sure to click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
9. Update Admins and Roles
An often-overlooked item is ensuring that admins with access to manage your Page are up to date. Are the Page admins who are listed still part of your team or working with you to manage your Page?
There can be frequent staff transition or marketing support changes and this is an important item to check and ensure that only those you trust have access. Did you find anyone listed that is long gone and shouldn’t be a Page Admin?
You’ll also want to review the roles of each person listed. Is the role accurate based on their involvement with your Page? Facebook offers multiple roles with varying degrees of power and access, so make sure the permissions are set appropriately for each admin.
10. Check Your Notification Settings
It is definitely recommended that Page managers take the time to go to the Your Settings area and review the notification types that are active. These are specific to you as an admin of the Page. You want to be sure you are aware of when a visitor comments or messages you! Studies by SocialBakers found that fans want a response within 30 minutes and often within 10 minutes. While that may seem unrealistic to respond within 10 minutes every time, the point is that timeliness of responses matter!
Even as I was reviewing the Facebook Pages I manage while writing this article, I discovered one area where I needed to make a change! In order to respond quickly to comments, posts and messages for my Pages, I like to have all notifications on.
I found that I did not have Onsite Notifications active. This is important, as it will send me a notification on Facebook when people post, like, comment or send me a message.
Being aware of visitors’ interactions with your Page is the first step in good customer service. You have to know about interactions to be able to respond to them!
11. Review your Content Posting Type and Frequency
Are fans interacting with your content? How often are you posting?
Content posting is critical on Facebook! The majority of time spent on Facebook is users surfing their News Feed. This is where they scan posts from friends and pages they follow. So this is the key place where you would capture the attention of a fan, and it comes down to your posting.
Tips for Posting:
Craft posts that inspire interaction and sharing!
80% content, 20% promotion
80% add value to help others, 20% to promote yourself (you can earn loyalty by becoming a trusted resource!)
Use a mix of post types including images and videos, links, and simple text status updates to boost engagement
Frequency matters! At a minimum, most pages should be posting at least 2-3 times a day. With the average post being seen by 10-22% of your fans at any given time, regular posting is important in order to be seen. For a great page study on this, visit JonLoomer.com.
12. Evaluate your own Response Engagement
How are you responding and engaging to comments others make? This is key to loyalty and being someone others want to follow and connect with. Take time to go through your past few weeks of posts and note your responses against this criteria:
Have you enabled Posting Ability by Others (see image below) – First, make sure others can post! This is important in order to be “social.” Yes, there are times and places in mega-popular or controversial pages where you may want to limit to comments on posts you make, but for the majority, enabling posts by others is important
Always be courteous – Take time to respond professionally and with helpfulness. Yes, others can be in the wrong but you will not help by fighting back publicly.
Allow Photo tagging of your page. This can help extend reach of your photos to others.
Use @ Tagging in replies to alert the user to your reply. (see image below) This personalizes your response and makes it clear on mobile view who you are answering.
Never delete posts by others unless they violate clear terms you have outlined. It is always best to respond professionally and attempt to take the conversation offline. This shows others you do respond and how you respond. If you have built loyalty, fans typically understand that a disgruntled person is just that, and not representative of your customer base.
Try to always give commenters a response. At minimum, give them a Like but typically it is even better to take the time to reply. This humanizes your company and builds respect and loyalty.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of items to audit for your Facebook Page. Hopefully these 10 items can help you review your Page to ensure that your information is up to date and that you are utilizing Facebook’s newest features.
What do you think? What would you add to this list?
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Additional Resources:
- Cover Image PowerPoint Template Download
- 12 Ideas for Great Cover images
- Facebook Page Image Dimensions for Cover Image, Posts, and more