7 Things You Can Do with Your Facebook Page You Might Not Know About

You’re an old hat when it comes to Facebook marketing. You’ve had a business page for years and nothing surprises you.

Let me see if I can’t give it a shot anyway.

Here are 7 things you might not know about when it comes to your Facebook Page.

1. Learn More about your Fans than you Thought Possible

It’s likely you already know about Facebook Insights, the platform’s basic analytics tool. It tells you things like the demographics of your Fans (age, gender, location, etc), which is all well and good.

But that only gets you so far. What if you are looking for creative ways to reach out to prospective Facebook Fans, or looking for a little more information about the makeup of your target market?

Facebook has your back, but we’ll need to dig a little bit deeper. I’d like to introduce you to Facebook Audience Insights, the analytic platform which not only gives you everything you get with the standard Facebook Insights, but also the Likes, Interests and “more demographics” of your Page as well as the Pages of your competitors.

Here’s a snapshot of the Pages most Liked by Hubspot’s fans (to do this I just type “Hubspot” into the “Interests” section, which gives me Likes of the people connected to that business’ Page):

A very cool function of Audience Insights is that the audience you create can be easily exported and targeted with a Facebook Ad in one step. Once your target audience is exported simply choose your preferred Facebook Ad manager, plug in your copy and image, and you’re good to go:

2. Change Your Facebook Page URL

Let’s say I’m a photographer who started business taking wedding photos. I chose my Facebook Page’s URL to be “www.facebook.com/WeddingsByJames”. But then I realized that there was way more money in taking family shots. Can I change the URL?

You absolutely can. Once. So make it count.

You’ll need to be an admin to change your page’s URL:

Head to facebook.com/username
Below Create your Facebook web address, select a Page from the dropdown menu
Type a username and click Check Availability
If the username is available, click Confirm. If someone hasn’t already claimed your URL the change should occur immediately.

Note: Usernames can only contain letters or numbers, must be at least 5 characters long, and can’t contain extensions.

3. Change Your Facebook Page Name

Let’s say I started a small business with my wife, entitled J&D Custom Furniture. We created a Facebook Page and loved it. But then the stress of furniture becomes too much for us, and we separate. We’re no longer “J&D”, but just “J”. Sad, I know. But now I need to change my Facebook page. Otherwise I’ll have to stare at a depressing Facebook Page name for the rest of my days.

Here’s how to change your Facebook Page name:

If less than 200 people like your Page, you must be an admin or editor to change your Page’s name:

• Click About below your Page’s cover photo.
• Click Page Info in the left column.
• Hover over the Name section and click Edit.
• Enter a new name and click Save Changes.

If 200 or more people like your Page, you must submit a request to Facebook in order to change your Page’s name. If your request is approved, you won’t be able to change your Page’s name again. You can only change your Page’s name once.

To submit a request:

• Click About below your Page’s cover photo.
• Click Page Info in the left column.
• Hover over the Name section and click Edit.
• Click Request Change.
• Fill out the form and click Send.

If you don’t see the option to submit a request, it might mean:

• You’re not an admin. Learn how to see your Page role.
• You or another admin previously submitted a name change request.
• This option isn’t currently available in your location (some countries don’t have the function).

4. Embed your Facebook Page on your Website to Get Fans

Want to drive Facebook Fans from your website without having to send them to the Facebook platform?

Who wouldn’t?

Think about it, how many people see your Posts or Page on Facebook on any given day? And how many people traffic to your website? If you’re anything like Wishpond, we get significantly more traffic to our site than we do our Facebook Page. But of course we still want to generate Facebook Fans.

Embedding (part) of your Facebook Page on your website is a great solution and a fantastic way to give more people a chance to Like your business.

Facebook has a great how-to walkthrough on the site, but it’s a pretty straightforward process. Simply choose how you want the Page embed to look (width, height, whether or not you want to show your most recent Post or the faces of possible Fans’ friends) and copy the code supplied by Facebook into your site (or blog article):

People can Like your Page and Posts directly on your website, like a mini-Facebook on your About Us page.

Pretty cool.

5. Get Advanced with Facebook Video

If you’ve been paying attention to your Facebook newsfeed recently you’ll likely have seen a few more videos on the platform than previous years. This is because Facebook’s algorithm (the thing that determines what percentage of your Fans sees your Posts) has started to rank video higher than link, text, or image Posts. And I’m talking way higher, like 300-400% increase in impressions.

So we need to be creating more videos, it’s as simple as that.

And there’s a couple cool things we can do with videos on Facebook that you might not know about.

Firstly, head to the “more” tab of your Facebook page.

Here you can choose to create a “featured video” which will show as soon as people arrive on your Facebook video page. I recommend creating an Intro video for your brand, something with a personal feel and face-to-face interaction.

You can also create a playlist (or five) of your videos. Consider, instead of a 5-minute walkthrough of your tools, five one-minute walkthroughs which break it down into bitesize, palatable pieces. Shorter movies are easier to film, edit, and create a sense of completion in your viewers and Fans.

6. Drive Leads from your Facebook Fans

Your Facebook Fans aren’t quite leads, not yet. Sure, you might know their names and like how much they engage with your brand, but how many of them are actually prospective customers?

One of the best strategies to turn your Facebook Fans into leads is to run a Fan-only sweepstakes.

Here are a few reasons it makes sense:

• You learn which of your Facebook Fans are actually interested in your product, and which are just there because of a random “Like” click a couple years ago.
• You don’t need to pay for advertising your contest, as you can organically reach all of your Fans. (That said, if you are finding low engagement with your contest, check the percentage of your Facebook Fans that are seeing your promotional posts. If it’s below 10% each time, I do recommend dropping a few dollars on Facebook Ads.
• Leads are far more likely to become customers than Facebook Fans are

Top Tip for Turning Fans into Leads: If you’re looking to collect emails from your Facebook Fans, upload your email list as a custom audience and then “exclude” that list from your post or ad to be sure that you’re not wasting paid or organic reach on people you already have in your contact list.

7. Merge Two Pages into One

Like renaming your Page, merging Pages is only possible if you’re an admin (of both pages), and even then is restricted to Pages that represent the same thing and have similar names (for instance, if you’re shutting down one of the smaller branches of your business, you might combine the Facebook page of “Acme Restaurant, Smalltown” into the page of “Acme Restaurant, Largetown”).

To merge your Pages: Go to facebook.com/pages/merge
Select the Page you want to keep from the first dropdown menu, then select the Page you want to merge from the second dropdown menu
If your Pages can be merged, click Confirm

Facebook will combine’ your Pages Likes and check-ins, but will delete the posts, photos, reviews, ratings and the username of the page you’re merging (so be careful that you merge the smaller, less important page into the more popular one). The page you merge into will remain unchanged except for the added Fans. The page you merged will be removed from Facebook forever.

Note: If you can’t see the option to merge your pages, it may mean you’re not admin of both or your pages aren’t similar enough to be merged. If you see an option to “request” to merge, Facebook will have to review your merge before accepting or denying it.

Conclusion

Facebook is a constantly-changing and versatile marketing platform, so it’s easy to miss some capabilities as it develops. Do you have any other Facebook tips that you’ve found on the platform that you don’t think other people have seen? Let us know in the comment section below.

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