5 Facebook features to help you gain more visibility.

Facebook marketing works best when you use your profile, groups, and pages together to reach a wider audience and connect with potential customers.

In this article you will discover how to use the resources that Facebook offers to promote your business.

1: Use the "About" section of your profile.

If you're connecting with potential clients through your Facebook profile, you want to make sure they know how to easily find your page. To do this, add your page as your employer in the "Work" field in the "About" section of your profile.

To edit your work history, click the pencil icon next to your workspace. Type the page name in the Company area and select the page from the drop-down menu. You can also add your position within the company.

Remember, even if you list your page on your profile, your profile isn't visible from your page unless you connect it yourself. Your privacy remains intact.

2: Activate the Follow button

The Follow button allows anyone to follow your public updates. If fans want to follow you, they just have to visit your profile and click the follow button. When someone sends you a friend request, they will automatically follow your public updates, even if you don't accept their request.

Facebook has a limit of 5,000 friends, but you can have unlimited followers, so your Follow button allows more people to connect with you.

Here's how to enable the Follow button:
1. Click the down arrow in the upper right corner and select Settings.
2. Click on Followers in the left sidebar.
3. Select Everyone in the “Who can follow me” section (the default is friends).

3: Share the page's posts on your profile.

Personal profiles are gaining significantly more visibility in the news feed than pages. If you have some important page posts that could benefit from a wider reach, share those posts through your personal profile.

One good thing about sharing a post on your page is that the page's name travels with the post, giving your page a boost in terms of reach and introducing your friends and followers to your page, resulting in more fans.

4: Create groups to gain visibility.

When people like a page, they don't receive update notifications unless they manually set them up. This is not the case with Facebook groups. When someone joins a group, notifications are set by default. This means members can receive notifications about posts that are getting the most interaction in the group or if their friend has posted something in the group.

Since Facebook's algorithm favors group visibility, many companies are creating and using groups as a Facebook marketing tactic.

You can create and use a group to promote new products or services, but since groups are generally a place to inspire discussion, it may be better to encourage members to ask and answer questions (this will likely require you to moderate the group more closely than your page). The more members collaborate, the stronger the community around your brand becomes.

There's one important thing you should know about groups: You can only create and join Facebook groups using your personal Facebook profile. You cannot use your page's identity.

This could be a concern if you want to participate in a Facebook group as your page, comment on a post in a group as your page, or simply keep your personal profile out of the equation.

Before creating or joining a group, consider its settings. Groups are either secret, closed, or open. Secret groups offer more privacy – Facebook users outside the group won't see who's in the group or what's being posted. A closed group allows Facebook users to see who's in the group, but they can't see the posts. An open group shows everything to everyone.

5: Boost posts only to fans.

When you boost a post to gain more visibility, focus only on your fans. It won't do any good to have someone like your post if that person isn't connected to your page. It might help them discover your page, but if you're going to use a different targeting strategy, it's better to have a focused objective for those types of ads (for example, growing your email list).

Want to know which posts to boost? Ideal candidates are those that are good posts, offer valuable tips to your audience, or are more promotional. Remember that if you want to boost a post, the image you include must adhere to the 20% maximum text rule.

Should you keep your Facebook page?

Given the usefulness of the Follow button and groups, do you really need to create and maintain a page? The answer is yes. There are advantages to having a Facebook page, such as being able to add custom applications, run Facebook ads in the news feed, and run contests and giveaways.

If you want to conduct promotional activities, you must have a page. Facebook's terms state: "You will not primarily use your personal timeline for your own commercial gain, and will use a Facebook page for such purposes."“

This guideline is a bit strange because the word "firstly" isn't well defined. In any case, I still recommend maintaining a page, leveraging your profile to share content that is less promotional.

What do you think about this? Are you using all the Facebook features mentioned here to promote your business? What's working well for you? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/