Posting regularly, sharing links, adding photos—these are best practices we use every day with Facebook. But have you considered incorporating all of the handy-dandy tools that live within the administrative panels on Facebook into your everyday strategy? These tools will broaden your reach and help gain attention, which is really important considering less than 13% of posts actually reach your fans. With these simple additions to your usual Facebook ritual, you’ll see more “Likes” on your page, and hopefully more participation too!

Boosted or Sponsored Posts

These are posts that you pay for or “boost” in order to reach more people. Boosted posts show up in more of your fans’ newsfeeds, or sometimes in the newsfeeds of your fans’ friends, meaning they are more likely to see your post. The more money you pay, the more people you will reach! Click “Boost Post” in the bottom right of your Facebook posts to use this tool.

Ads

Facebook advertising takes both demographics and psychographics into consideration when showing your ads to specific users. So if you grow fruits or vegetables, you can pay to have Facebook share your ads with users who have “Liked” brands associated with fresh food, farming, etc.

Scheduling Posts & The Activity Log

This is quite possibly one of the biggest time-savers of all the tools, and it’s free! As a business, you can schedule posts on Facebook in the same place that you create a status update. Instead of clicking “post,” simply click on the clock icon at the bottom left of the status update box, and choose a date to post—you can schedule as many as you’d like. (Don’t forget to keep in mind holidays and other important days when you’re scheduling!)

If you ever want to check in or edit the posts you’ve scheduled, just click on “edit page” at the top of the screen and choose “use activity log” from the drop-down menu. Hover your mouse over the top right corner of any post to see options to either edit, reschedule or delete your posts.

BONUS: Blogger Takeovers

This isn’t so much a tool as it is a tip. Bloggers carry a lot of influence on social media (something we mention in our Pinterest Guide) and letting them “takeover” your Facebook has the potential to bring all of their followers…to you. Stay tuned for more exploration of this topic on The Core.

The moral of this story? Facebook is much bigger than you realize if you’re a brand trying to reach your target audience. But hopefully with these three tools, your company will have an easier time spreading the message of your brand!