If you’re still playing catch-up from the holidays, you might have missed a few important changes that if used and understood properly have the potential to dramatically improve your Facebook outreach at no cost.

First, and most significant is that page administrators can now use Facebook tags to mention other pages in their status updates. For an excellent walkthrough of how this works, check out: "How To Post Status Updates on Other Facebook Page’s Walls.  Essentially what this means is that page admins can, and should (when appropriate) use Facebook’s @ tagging feature to have their updates appear on the public walls of other pages.

Secondly is that as of November 23rd, Facebook has now made per-post impressions counts available to all pages, rather than just those with over 10,000 members.

facebook_pages_adminAs explained by the official the Facebook Pages account, admins now have access to data on impressions in two places:

1.  Interactions portion of your Insights page

2. On the Page wall directly beneath each post

In terms of what this means for your business, non-profit, corporation or candidate; whether you’re an established presence or just getting started, these new insights make it quick and easy to tell how engaging your content is and whether or not your fans are paying attention. Some things to consider:

  • Try examining the ratio of impressions to your total fan count. If you total # of fans is 2 or more times the number of impressions your are getting, your fans may have hidden you from their newsfeeds.
  • Does the length, language or timing of your posts make a difference? Do updates with lots of facts and number do better than emotional appears? Are some messages more effective than others at certain times and days of the week?
  • Does including a link to a Facebook note, attaching a photo, video or asking a question get a better response rate? Linking to 3rd party content off Facebook generally has a lower response rate. If you can and have the time, a short excerpt with a link to the original content on your page / site is better than sending traffic away.

Finally, as reported on the blog All Facebook- If you come across an application that seems to good to be true, do not give it access to your data or let it update your status! Once again, thousands fell victim to a scam involving an app that promised the ability to tell who has viewed your personal profile, but instead used short links to send people to malware and spam sites.