{"id":24241,"date":"2013-02-25T15:10:27","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T22:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/?p=24241"},"modified":"2019-07-12T15:01:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T22:01:37","slug":"4-ways-to-start-optimizing-your-facebook-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/4-ways-to-start-optimizing-your-facebook-presence\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Ways to Start Optimizing Your Facebook Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Companies will often have a Facebook presence but are still not quite sure what to do with it. And while the opportunities are seemingly endless, we’re gonna get back to the basics on this one and talk about how a few simple steps can help you lay the foundation for a more successful Facebook experience. Today we’ll go over:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Understanding your Facebook Insights.<\/li>\n
  2. Promoting your status updates.<\/li>\n
  3. Optimizing your about section.<\/li>\n
  4. Creating a schedule for posting.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    1. Understand Your Facebook Insights<\/h2>\n

    As a Facebook Page owner, you have access to Facebook\u2019s analytics for your page, Facebook Insights. Get intimate with your Facebook Insights to understand what your audience is looking for. This is an area that should be monitored regularly to see how your community is engaging, and what sorts of things it responds to. The goal is to experiment, and give them what they want.<\/p>\n

    For a crash course, check out this document from Facebook<\/a>\u00a0circa 2011 on getting to know Insights.<\/p>\n

    The following snapshot shows the Insights landing page graph — what you first see when you go to the analytics from your page. There’s a lot of data to mine, but let’s just look at a couple graphs you can learn from quickly.<\/p>\n

    Explore the data on the main graph on the Insights home page as well as the data below it. This is where you can see how the page is performing over a specified period of time, and which posts have proven to have the most engagement.<\/p>\n

    \"Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n

    Find the posts that have a higher engagement percentage or \u201cvirality\u201d (as indicated by the shadow boxes), analyze those updates and use that as fuel for creating more posts like those to see if they consistently receive higher engagement.<\/p>\n

    There could be many factors contributing to the success of a status update on Facebook. It could be the topic or an element within the post (like including an image or a particular tip, etc.). Consider creating a spreadsheet that breaks down common elements of your status updates to see if the more popular updates have anything in common.<\/p>\n

    2. Promote Your Status Updates<\/h2>\n

    If and when a post becomes popular as defined by your Facebook Insights, consider using the \u201cpromote\u201d option to get even more eyeballs on it. This has worked well in our experience and is a relatively inexpensive solution for visibility. Take care to promote only those status updates that you feel are important to your goals.<\/p>\n

    \"Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n

    We\u2019ve seen several posts enjoy more reach and bring in more likes to our page from the promote feature. Check out the results of this one:<\/p>\n

    \"Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n

    There\u2019s been some controversy <\/a>about the promote functionality. Mainly, people are worried that you’re going to have to pay to play in the future; however, a Facebook rep tells us in this post <\/a>that they apply a similar approach to both paid and organic stories in news feeds:<\/p>\n

    “Regardless of whether you\u2019re paying to promote a story or just posting one to your Page, the news feed will always optimize for stories that generate high levels of user engagement and filter out ones that don\u2019t.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    3. Optimize Your About Section<\/h2>\n

    The \u201cAbout\u201d section is a perfect place for branding your organization. Use this section wisely to clearly communicate what your organization is about and use keywords that are important to your company.<\/p>\n

    The arrow on the following image indicates the area on the home page where the short description you have created in the About section will render.\u00a0Use this space well to quickly convey what your organization is and consider putting your website so people can click through directly from the Facebook landing page.<\/p>\n

    \"Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n

    The About section offers ample opportunity to go into more detail about your company:<\/p>\n