Facebook Features For 2015

Facebook has been the number one choice for marketers for the past couple of years. And Facebook has never disappointed their users or marketers with the features they launch every year. The upcoming year has a lot of promising new Facebook features for the marketers which will help them to analyze the data, more in-depth insights, and many more. Some of them are mentioned in this blog post.

Facebook Features For 2015

Trending

Last January, Facebook introduced Trending to help discover the latest trending topics. This not only helped the brand to create awareness but also helped the marketers to keep a check on topics being talked by the people. This gave marketers to share the posts which were related to the topic and grab a few more eyeballs.

Trending was later made available to 399 million people who are Facebook mobile consumers. Trending conversations are now organized in the following sections:

1. Articles: Displays how news organizations are covering the story.
2. In the Story: Displays posts from people who are part of the story.
3. Friends and Groups: Shows what people within a network are saying.
4. Near the Scene: Displays posts from people near where the story is unfolding.
5. Live Feed: Offers a real-time stream of reactions from people around the world.

These categories are especially beneficial for news organizations, journalists, local businesses, and public figures. The only downside is that not everyone can enjoy the update just yet. The new Trending experience has already rolled out for members in the U.S. on the web and Android; however, support for iOS and other countries is coming soon.

Search

This is by far the best Facebook feature released, according to me. This helps marketers as well as users to broaden the search and find the exact query they are searching for. For example, you can conduct a search about the details of your page’s fans. Marketers can see things like a list of followers who like a certain musician or TV show, who live in a specific town, or who are currently engaged.

Not only for the marketers but Graph Search is also very good for people who want to interact to a specific group of interests. The Facebook Feed makes it difficult to manage friends and hence Graph Search comes handy in such situation.

According to the update on Facebook, instead of scrolling down endlessly the users can search efficiently and effectively with Graph search. They can search for a fun video from a party they attended in the past, or they can search for people who attended the same school, or people working in the same company. The updates are also available on Facebook for iPhone in addition to desktop.

Although, this is not a major update, this particular Facebook feature will be very useful for engagement.

Publishing

To increase your sales or boost up your sign up rate, reaching the fans is the most important thing. You don’t need to worry on how you can achieve this feet as Facebook has created some new tools and insights for publishers. Let me give you a quick tour for the same.

Interest Targeting

Facebook has a rich profusion of targeting options on a broad scale, but with this new Facebook features we can get even more precise. To reach your target audience, Facebook now offers you the ability to target posts according to gender, relationship status, educational status, age, location, language, interests. For example, you can use Interest Targeting to post a story about an event that will only be shown to people that like those certain events. By doing so, you increase your chances of interactions without alienating anyone else.

Smart Publishing

Until now, it has been a challenge for large publishers to predict which stories will impact their audience. Smart Publishing is a new, optional tool that identifies and publishes stories that are popular with people on Facebook.

Once you enable the setting, frequently shared links to your website can appear in News Feed for people who like your Page. Those posts will not appear on your Page, but you’ll have access to a new dashboard in Insights to see analytics, moderate comments, and choose which you want to post to your Page. This Facebook feature is limited to a certain media organizations and will be rolling out to others soon.

Post End Date

This Facebook feature allows page admins to set an end date to the particular posts which prevents visitors from seeing out-of-date content. For example, you can use it to remove yesterday’s weather report or a teaser that has since been revealed. This can prove very useful to pages which serves movies, or daily weather forecast, or sports matches scores.

Improvement to Insights

Accurate and actionable analytics are critical for media organizations to understand and optimize how their content is performing on Facebook. As there are only improvements in this Facebook features, a huge changeover is expected within the next few months. A bug was recently fixed that caused many third-party analytics tools to under-count the percentage of their organic traffic from Facebook. The referrer data issue has been fixed for iOS and will be patched for Android soon.

Call-to-Action Button

This is the latest addition to the list of Facebook features. Check out our page to see how a call-to-action button works.

Apart from the Contact Us button, there are other call-to-action options. The links can be added as per the requirement. This button is very helpful when a campaign is planned and implemented for Facebook.

Whether you’re looking for a couple of last-minute enhancements or preparing for next year’s strategies, these tools and updates should be considered. Review them with your team and think about how they can support your main objectives. And for more information about these tools, or any Facebook feature in general, visit the social network’s Help Center.

You can share your experience or thoughts on the topic in the comment section below.