The last major change Facebook made for business fan pages was the introduction of Timeline. Not very well received by some and widely ignored by others.

The announced changes for Facebook business pages made this week however should not be ignored because they directly benefit the small business community on Facebook and these changes can be a big deal for the DIY small business owners because the functionality that was introduced is available to them at no cost.

While the new changes are not going to be a lifeline for businesses looking to enhance their marketing efforts on social media, nor are they necessarily designed to attract and build a larger audience, the changes do allow for better organization and time management potentially resulting in more frequent posting promoting visibility and interaction.

So what are the big changes?

Post Scheduling. There is a strong camp of people who believe that automating posts negates the purpose of social media and there are some that believe that scheduling posts is an essential time management tool. Whichever side of the camp you are on, know this, the Facebook post scheduling tool is not and was not designed to be an autopilot feature for administrators to schedule posts several weeks or months in advance and never come back to the page. The Facebook post scheduler does however allow for the small business owner to take advantage of some downtime or a slow time of the day to really put some thought into when their target market is most active and accepting of their posts. Take the scheduling option off the table and these posts probably would not occur.

Remember, scheduling should not take the place of a person. People need to participate in the conversation in order for social media to work. Scheduling posts should be looked at as time management tools and should only be used for that purpose.

How to schedule a post. In the Status window, where you would normally write a status update, there is a clock icon in the lower left corner of that window. Clicking on that icon will present you with Year/Month/Day/Hour/Minute options of when you would like the message to appear on your wall post.

Can I delete a scheduled post? Yes, there are two possible ways to delete a scheduled post,  before you hit “schedule” and once the post has actually been scheduled.

If you have not hit schedule and received the “Your Post Has Been Scheduled Confirmation” you can simply click on each drop down field and scroll up to the top where you can select the delete. This will delete the field.

If the post has already been scheduled, you can manage your scheduled posts in the Admin Panel by selecting “Manage” to visit your activity log where you can cancel the post.

Facebook Administration. The new changes allow for the owner of the page to assign different levels of administration. In the past, you would grant administration access to an individual and that person could assume complete control over your fan page. The new administration options allow you to specify individuals and the roles they can play with regards to administering your Facebook business page. These roles are:

  1. Manager – A Manager is full control of the page from creating posts & edits, editing the page & apps, commenting, deleting comments, sending messages and viewing the Facebook Insights.
  2. Content Creator – The Content Creator is one step away from the Manager and has a lot of authority however it cannot manage the admin roles.
  3. Moderator – The moderator can send messages, respond to messages and delete comments. They are not able to create new posts.
  4. Advertiser – An Advertiser can only create Ads and view the Facebook Insights.
  5. Insights Analytics – This role can review and analyze the Facebook Insights data only. It is the lowest of authorities but could potentially be one of the most important in that if no one is delving into your data, you could be missing some big potential.

The new roles are important when thinking about how companies will use Facebook for their marketing efforts. There is a lot of data that the small business owner can collect to allow them to better serve their target marketing.

Special Offers: We announced the coming of the Special Offers feature in a previous blog post (http://www.e-mergemarketing.com/social-media/use-facebook-to-provide-offers-to-your-customers/). These changes have now been rolled out and implemented with the newest suite of tools made available by Facebook this week.

e-Merge Online Marketing’s goal is to stay on top of these breaking announcements and bring you the latest tools to further assist you with your online marketing and social media marketing efforts. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help with implementing these tools or any other social media strategy you may require.