Remember when Facebook consisted of personal profiles–and that was it? No newsfeed, no “wall,” definitely no graph search. Upload a photo, add your favorite movies and musical preferences and you were good to go. Although it’s been less than 10 years, Facebook has morphed into much more than just a place to share your interests, hobbies and photos–it’s a way to connect with friends, family, businesses, celebrities and more. For marketers, social networks offer endless ways to connect with an audience, and increasingly, they offer tools to efficiently spread messaging and connect with new potential customers.

Wondering how Facebook can help your business? We’ve compiled some useful new tools that will make the most of your online presence.

• Hashtags: 

Simply put, hashtags are a way to group conversations together around the same topic. While Twitter has been using the concept for years, Facebook recently adopted its use to create a clickable way to follow different subject matters. How can this help your business? Organizing your posts under hashtags will create specific URLs for each of your post categories–pages that will also come up under any searches of similar hashtags. By choosing relevant topics and staying informed on trending topics, your brand will likely be exposed to a much wider audience through the use of hashtags. Try experimenting around with a few different topics and see how your audience responds!

• Commenting: 

The biggest change to Facebook’s commenting system in the last few months is its “reply” feature. Whereas comments used to appear in one long block that didn’t specify which comment was in response to which, this new feature allows for threaded conversations and greater ease in following individual conversations. This offers a great way for businesses to individually reply to commenters in a clear manner. Remember to use the @name feature to create a clickable link and notify the commenter that you’ve replied to their post.

• Cover Image: 

While the cover image has been around for a while, Facebook recently made changes to its rules that especially affect business pages. For the early part of its existence, the Facebook cover photo could not include your website name, contact information, calls to action or arrows pointing to features. More recently, these rules have been dropped in favor of a caveat dictating that only 20% of the photo can be text for paid products. This new system opens the door for text driven and informational cover images that will graphically appeal to your audience.

Have any questions? Which Facebook feature do you find most helpful? Let us know in the comments!

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