New Facebook Features Help Businesses Better Manage Their Pages

http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/223714?cm_mmc=Newsletter-_-sales-_-June%2012,%202012-_-New%20Facebook%20Features%20Help%20Businesses%20Better%20Manage%20Their%20Pages

BY Mikal E. Belicove

If you manage a business or brand page on Facebook, you'll be happy to know there's a slew of new features that can help make your job easier. Here's a rundown:


Administrative roles: You can now assign administrative roles to the people who help manage your page. There are five different roles: manager, content creator, moderator, advertiser and insights analyst. To assign roles to your Facebook page's admins, login to your Facebook account, visit the Page you manage, click Edit Page above the Admin Panel, and click Admin Roles in the left column.


Scheduled posts: You can schedule your updates to post at a future date and time using the Facebook sharing tool (that's the box you use to create and post a Status Update). Until now, the only way to schedule a post in the future was through a third-party app. But now, simply by clicking the symbol resembling a clock in the bottom row of the sharing tool and selecting a time and date that you'd like it to go live, you can post a Status Update, photo or video up to six months in advance.


Promoted posts: You can pay a fee to promote a post so it will be shown in the news feeds of more of the people who like your Page than you would reach normally. Friends of Facebook members who have interacted with a promoted post will be more likely to see the information in their news feeds. Promoted posts cost $5 or more.


Only pages with 400 or more likes are eligible to promote posts, and similar to scheduling a post to publish on a particular date, promoted posts are initiated from within the sharing tool. To promote a new post, click Promote on the bottom row of the sharing tool, where you'll be asked to set your budget and confirm a method of payment. To promote a post you've already published and is less than three days old, click the Promote dropdown menu in the lower right corner of the post from your Page's Timeline.