5 Awesome New Facebook Features That Your Business Need to Know About

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5 Awesome New Facebook Features That Your Business Need to Know About

5 Awesome New Facebook Features That Your Business Need to Know About

Are you looking for ways to streamline and improve your marketing efforts on Facebook? The site is always rolling out new tools and features to help you improve your business' performance on the site - hopefully leading to increased engagement and sales as a result. In this blog post, I'll show you five of the most recent Facebook features that your brand needs to know about. Let's get started!

1. Facebook Page Publishing Tools

Have you ever wanted to find an old post on your Facebook Page, but been left scrolling endlessly in order to try to find it? Fret no more! Using the Publishing Tools feature (the link is in the bar at the top of your Facebook Page), you'll find a list of all of your most recently published, scheduled, and drafted Facebook posts - and the ability to search through them. Handy!

2. Allow Fans to Subscribe to Local Facebook Events

Do you regularly launch and host Events via Facebook? If your fans are tired of receiving invite notifications for events that aren't being held in their area, you can now ask them to subscribe to your Events. Fans who subscribe are notified when you create events that will be held in their area - there's no need to invite them. Once notified, your Page's event will also automatically show up in the Subscribed section of that user's Upcoming Events page. Ask your fans to subscribe to your events by doing the following:

1.Click Events or More then Events below the Page's cover photo.
2. Click Subscribe.

3. Add "Call Now" and "Get Directions" Call-To-Action Buttons to News Feed Ads

We're all used to seeing call-to-action buttons on Facebook ads like "Shop Now" and "Learn More," but did you know that you can now add a "Call Now" button, allowing customers to call you directly from your advert in News Feed? When clicked, it will automatically dial your business. Another new call-to-action button is "Get Directions." When this is clicked, a user will be guided directly to your location from their phone.

Both of these call-to-actions are great for local, targeted ads, as a way to help drive more traffic and sales to your business.

4. The News Feed "Save Link" Feature

This one's been around for a little while longer than the features above, but it's so useful, that I had to include it. Whether you want to save a post to read later, or curate awesome News Feed content to share with your fans, the "Save link" feature within the Facebook News Feed is a nifty tool that makes it possible. To save a News Feed link, click on the drop-down arrow next in the top-right corner of the post, then choose "Save link" from the drop-down menu. To access all of your saved links, click the "Saved" link in the top-left section of your News Feed.

5. Create Instant Articles (Soon, Hopefully!)

Typically, the slowest loading content for Facebook users on mobile is external links like a blog article. Instant Articles makes your content load faster in the News Feed to deliver a better reading experience - a load time 10x the speed of standard mobile web - and hopefully a more engaged audience. Instant articles are also interactive and immersive. Users can zoom into high-res photos, watch in-article videos, scale into maps, and listen to embedded audio.

Unfortunately, Instant Articles are, currently, only available to a select set of large brands... but it's one to keep an eye on for the future.

Over to you

Are you already using any of the features listed above, or are you going to start? Let me know how you're getting on in the comments below!