Facebook Features That Will Help Your Small Business

Facebook has introduced a variety of new features that allow businesses to better interact with customer feedback and expose their brand to more users than ever before.

The most significant of these changes is the new ability of users to add their recommendations to the business page. In addition to traditional tabs such as ‘home,’ ‘photos’ and ‘about,’ recommendations will appear next to these pages on your business page.

The new recommendations page brings up visions of Yelp, but for any type of business. Facebook users start with a basic text post, which has a minimum character limit of 25 characters to ensure review quality and are able to add photos and a brand-new feature in tags.

The new tags are a hashtag-esque approach to labeling businesses and informing consumers about what type of service or atmosphere the business offers. When leaving a review, users are presented with an option of often-used tags that might describe the business or they can choose to add their own tags to the page.

These new recommendations help users find the exact services of a business and streamline the process by which Facebook categorizes pages in the search results. Additionally, if users search for a certain keyword, such as “friendly service,” if a page has been tagged with that option, it will be recommended to the user.

Pages need not worry about the potential for fraudulent, incorrect or paid reviews on the recommendations tab, though. If a business suspects that a review on their page is fraudulent or that another page is paying users to create false-positive reviews, there is a reporting option available. Once reported, Facebook will examine the case and determine whether the reviews are indeed fraudulent, so it is important to stay on top of what reviews are being posted on your page.

Additionally, Facebook has improved the functionality of stories for business pages. The new system for stories operates similarly to the way that Instagram organizes stories. If a user is following your page, an update to the page’s story will appear at the top of their Facebook feed along with all other story updates. The new change is that clicking on the page’s profile picture while a story is active will now display the page’s story, which is a new function on Facebook. While this is not a massive overhaul of the way that stories work on Facebook, it adds importance to the previously under-used feature and allows for new ways for businesses to reach customers.

Lastly, Facebook has tweaked the way that information is displayed on pages. Key information such as hours, pricing or contact information is elevated directly to the top of your page. Additionally, businesses can feature new posts on your page that draw in customer attention. Depending on your business, Facebook has also introduced the ability to set quick-action buttons that include options to book an appointment, contact the page or write a recommendation in one quick click.

Facebook has updated some page functionality once again, and the changes are aimed at helping businesses better reach their customers. With all new options and features, now is the time for your business to reach Facebook users.

If you would like more information on Facebook features, or any other social media channel please reach out to info@pinkdogdigital.com or call us at 410.696.3305. Pink Dog Digital can be found on the web at www.pinkdogdigital.com.