My Take on Facebook For Business, Instagram and Meta + Google and Twitter/X
When it comes to social media platforms, I often refer to the “big four” in order of importance for businesses: Facebook For Business, Facebook and Instagram plus Twitter/X, and Google My Business.
Facebook For Business – A Shift Towards Business
In recent months, Facebook has impressed me with its evolution on the Meta platform. What once felt like a space for casual family and friend interactions has matured into a more professional, business-oriented platform. This shift aligns well with my business-focused approach, and I find myself relying on Facebook more frequently for client strategies.
The Facebook For Business Features I Like
Scheduler: Facebook’s built-in scheduler helps you optimise post timing by suggesting the best times to publish when your audience is most active.
Integration with Instagram: Facebook makes it seamless to link your Instagram account, allowing you to manage both platforms efficiently. You can easily add ALT tags to images for accessibility and include mentions to engage with associated Facebook pages.
All Followers Handle: This feature lets you give a gentle nudge to your followers, though limited to one per day.
Mobile Accessibility: Whether you’re enhancing images, making posts, or editing on the go, Facebook’s mobile-friendly tools ensure you can manage your content effortlessly from a smartphone.
These features make Facebook an invaluable tool for engaging with your audience and streamlining your social media strategy.
Instagram: More Than Meets the Eye
While I’ve historically considered Instagram less relevant for business—perceiving it as a hub for socialising, events, and youth culture—recent collaborations with influencers and media strategies have changed my perspective. I now see Instagram in a more positive light and recognise its potential for connecting with broader audiences.
Instagram Stories
• What Are Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories allow users to share photos and videos that automatically disappear after 24 hours, appearing as a vertical slideshow at the top of a user’s feed. Unlike regular grid posts, Stories are quick and ephemeral, often including interactive elements like polls, questions, and stickers to boost engagement.
• Why Use Stories?
Stories let you share content that disappears from your profile, feed, and messages after 24 hours—unless you save them as highlightson your profile. They’re perfect for creating quick, engaging content and building interaction with your followers in real time.
Instagram Reels
• What Are Instagram Reels?
Instagram Reels are short, vertical videos that users can create and share on Instagram. They’re a popular way to express creativity, educate audiences, and engage with followers.
• How Do Reels Work?
• Reels are 15–90 seconds long.
• Users can record, edit, and combine photos and videos.
• Reels can include voiceovers, effects, and music.
• Users can access Reels from the feed, Explore tab, or Reels tab.
• Reels are scrollable, allowing users to swipe up for new content.
• What Can Users Do with Reels?
1. Express their brand story.
2. Educate their audience.
3. Get discovered by new people.
4. Engage their audience with fun and relatable content.
5. Showcase products and services through educational Reels.
6. Run competitions or giveaways to boost visibility and engagement.
Features Worth Highlighting
Here are a few Instagram features I’ve recently come to appreciate:
1. Stories and Highlights: Great for keeping content visible and engaging beyond the usual 24-hour lifespan.
2. Reels: Perfect for creating bite-sized, captivating video content.
3. Shopping Integration: Ideal for businesses to showcase and sell products directly.
4. Insights: Robust analytics to track performance and engagement.
Each platform has its strengths, and tailoring your approach to suit your business goals is key. Let me know if you’d like insights into using these tools effectively!
Understanding the Facebook Professional Dashboard and Algorithms
In the Professional Dashboard, you can view key statistics about your Facebook business page’s performance. Recently, there have been changes to the way data is displayed. While some metrics were temporarily unavailable, things seem to have stabilised with new data categories like Views, Reach, and Interactions.
For our clients, we regularly monitor these metrics and note whether they’re trending up or down. While fluctuations are normal, the overall trajectory should ideally show growth. This is something we focus on improving consistently.
Navigating Algorithm Changes
Facebook’s algorithms have tightened up significantly, limiting the amount of free exposure businesses used to enjoy. To counter this, the key is to stay active on your Facebook and Instagram platforms. Regular, relevant, and consistent posting is crucial, and it’s a core part of our standard operating procedure.
We ensure that our clients’ posts follow a consistent theme that communicates effectively with search engines, keeping them in the good graces of the algorithms. However, a major advantage comes when the business page owner themselves posts directly. These posts carry more weight with the algorithms, signalling to Facebook that the page is actively managed by the owner.
To maximise impact, we encourage direct posts from the business owner while we optimise and share these posts across multiple platforms. This approach combines the authenticity of the owner’s voice with the power of our optimisation, ensuring the content performs well and reaches a wider audience.
By staying active, posting strategically, and leveraging optimisation, we can help clients navigate the ever-evolving landscape of Facebook algorithms while achieving steady growth.
Facebook For Business Statistics
How Facebook Reports on Your Page Activity
How Facebook provides insights into your page’s activity. Below, I’ve outlined the latest ways Facebook reports these metrics in the Professional Dashboard within Meta, along with my notes to help you better understand what these statistics mean and how to use them effectively.
Facebook Views
The number of times that your content was played or displayed. Content includes videos, posts, stories and ads. If a video for example is viewed a few times, each view is added to the stats.
Facebook Reach
This metric counts reach from the organic or paid distribution of your Facebook content, including posts, stories and ads. It also includes reach from other sources, such as tags, check-ins and Page or profile visits. This number also includes reach from posts and stories that were boosted. Reach is only counted once if it occurs from both organic and paid distribution. How many people your posts reached.
Content Interactions
The number of likes or reactions, saves, comments, shares and replies on your content, including ads. Content can include formats such as posts, stories, reels, videos and more. When people click or share etc.
Facebook Follows and Likes
The number of times that accounts followed you in the selected time period. Likes and Follows are almost the same thing – a like is a public way to show support for a page, while a follower is someone who receives updates from a page in their news feed. When someone likes a page, they may also automatically follow it.