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Strategy

19 Facebook Tricks and Tips You Need To Know [2024]

Level up on social with these Facebook tricks that save you time, give you an edge on your competitors, and improve your overall performance.

Holly Stanley June 20, 2022
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Think you know your way around Facebook’s top business features and tools? Even if you’ve been on the site since the Stone Age (aka 2004), there are always some new Facebook tricks and tips to discover.

With 2.91 billion active monthly users (that’s 36.8% of the world’s population!), Facebook is still the largest social media platform. And since the average user spends 19.6 hours a month on Facebook, there are plenty of opportunities to get in front of your target audience.

But competition is tough and organic reach is down. These days, you’ll need more than engaging content to reach your target audience.

Here are our top Facebook tips and tricks to kickstart your engagement and reach.

Bonus: Download a free guide that teaches you how to turn Facebook traffic into sales in four simple steps using Hootsuite.

General Facebook hacks

Stuck on how to take your Facebook Business page to the next level? These general Facebook tricks can help improve your reach and engagement.

1. Optimize your Facebook profile

After setting up a Facebook Business Page, spend some time optimizing your profile details.

Before liking your Page, people will often head to your About section to learn more about your business. So give them what they’re looking for! Fill out all the details to set audience expectations and encourage users to like your Page.

Share your business’s unique story, mission and values in the “Our Story” section. If your business has a physical location, fill in key information like the address, contact info, and opening hours.

Cosmetics brand Lush uses the About section to share their values and contact details:

Lush about page

2. Cross-promote your Facebook Profile

If you’re just starting out on Facebook, let your existing audience on other platforms know about your profile.

You can get more Page likes on Facebook by adding Follow or Share buttons to your website or blog.

Here’s how fashion brand Asos cross-promotes its social media channels on its website:

social sharing buttons on Asos

You can also cross-promote your Facebook Page by including links to your Page in your other social media bios. After all, more than 99% of Facebook users have accounts on other social media platforms.

3. Pin your most relevant content

You can pin a post to keep it top-of-mind for visitors. Try pinning an announcement, a promotion, or a high-performing post that your audience already loves.

How to do it:

1. Click on the ellipsis button in the post’s top right corner.

2. Select Pin to top of Page.

Pin to top of Page

Pro tip: Keep your pinned post fresh by rotating it every few weeks.

4. Use Facebook search operators

Searching Facebook for competitive intel can be tricky, especially since the platform got rid of Graph Search. But Facebook search operators let you filter Google search results for Facebook-specific information.

Here are a few ideas for how Facebook search operators can help you optimize your marketing campaigns:

  1. Research your audience. Understanding your audience and the type of content they like will help you publish more engaging content.
  2. Find user-generated content (UGC). Search for your brand name to find people who mentioned your brand but didn’t tag you.
  3. Research your competitors. Look at the content your competition shares, how much engagement they get, and what their audience looks like. Identify new competitors in your area.
  4. Find content to share. Search topics or phrases to identify content your audience will engage with.

To use Facebook search operators, you’ll need to rely on Boolean searches through Google.

How do these work?

Boolean operators are terms that let you broaden or narrow down search results. For example, you could use ‘AND’ to search for two search terms at the same time.

How to do it:

1. For identifying relevant content and businesses, use site:Facebook.com [topic]

Type site:Facebook.com [house plants] into the Google Search Bar

Because you’ve specified the site, your Google results will only include Facebook pages that contain your search terms.

For example, if you own a house plant store, you could use this search command to find the top-performing Facebook Pages and Groups about house plants:

Facebook search commands house plants

2. For identifying local competitors, use site:Facebook.com [business type in location]

Type into the Google Search Bar site:Facebook.com [home interior store in Seattle]

For example, if you run a home interior store in Seattle, you could use this Facebook search command to see what your direct competitors are doing.

A list of home interior stores in Seattle will then appear in the SERPs:

search commands home interior store

This is an exact search match, so Google won’t return results that deviate even slightly. Search results for “home interiors stores in Seattle” versus “home interior store in Seattle” could be different.

Facebook tricks for business

Facebook Business Pages come with tons of features and tools to help you grow your business. Here’s our top pick of Facebook tricks for business.

5. Optimize your call-to-action

Facebook CTA buttons are located at the center of the top of Facebook Pages. You can customize this CTA to send interested audience members to the next step that’s most valuable for your business.

If you want to nurture potential leads or simply communicate more, consider adding CTA buttons like “Sign up” or “Send message.”

Design brand Threadless uses a default Send message CTA to encourage people to ask questions:

CTA button threadless

If you want people to purchase something or book an appointment, choose a CTA button like “Shop now” or “Book now.”

Here’s how to change your CTA button on your desktop:

1. On your Facebook page, click Edit Send message.

2. On the drop-down menu, select Edit.

Edit CTA button

3. Choose one of Facebook’s 14 call-to-action button options.

change tabs on Facebook Page

6. Claim your Page’s vanity URL

When you create a Facebook Business Page, it’ll receive a randomly assigned number and URL that will look something like this:

facebook.com/pages/yourbusiness/8769543217

Make your Facebook page more shareable and easier to find with a custom vanity URL.

This will look like:

facebook.com/hootsuite

How to do it:

Visit ​​facebook.com/username to change your Facebook username and URL.

7. Customize your page tabs

Every Facebook Page has some default tabs, including:

  • About
  • Photos
  • Community

But you can also add additional tabs so your audience can discover more of your business’s unique features. You can show off your reviews, highlight your services, or even create custom tabs.

How to do it:

1. Click on More

2. Scroll down the drop-down menu to Edit tabs

edit tabs on Facebook Page

3. Select the tabs you want to add to your Facebook Page

choose from 14 tabs categories

You can even work with a developer or use a Facebook Page app to create your own custom tabs.

8. Showcase your products in collections

One million users regularly buy from Facebook Shops every month. The feature lets you catalog your products into collections so customers can browse, save, share and buy your products.

Use Facebook Collections to curate and organize your brand’s products. That way, when customers land on your Facebook Shop, they can easily see your different product types.

For example, like many ecommerce stores, Lorna Jane Active separates its products by collections and product type. Collections are also more intuitive for customers to browse:

Lorna Jane Active Facebook Shops Collections

Organizing products by category also makes it easier for shoppers to find what they’re looking for:

Lorna Jane Active product categories

9. Set up in-app Facebook checkout

Facebook checkout makes it easy for customers to make payment directly on Facebook (or Instagram) without having to leave the platform.

Social commerce, or selling products directly on social media, is expected to generate $3.37 trillion worldwide by 2028. It makes sense — when you can buy something without navigating to a new site, you’re way more likely to spend money.

Note: You’ll need to have Commerce Manager to set up Facebook checkout, and currently, it’s only available in the US. Facebook has detailed guidelines on setting up checkout and eligibility requirements.

10. Create a community for like-minded customers

1.8 billion people use Facebook groups every month. And Facebook’s algorithm currently favors meaningful interactions. Knowing this, it’s a good idea for businesses to tap into the platform’s community features.

Facebook Groups are one of the most effective ways to build community among like-minded people. A group is where fans can learn about promotions and events, share experiences, or interact with each other and your business.

Athletics wear brand lululemon has a group called Sweat Life where members can post about upcoming events and interact with one another:

Lululemon Facebook groups

11. Go Live

These days, Facebook Live video has the greatest reach of any post type. It draws 10 times as many comments as regular videos, and people watch it for three times as long.

Plus, Facebook prioritizes Live video by placing it at the top of the feed. The platform even sends notifications to potentially interested audience members.

Jump on all these advantages by scheduling a broadcast, or just go live by selecting the Live Video icon in the Update Status box.

Here are some ideas for Facebook Lives:

  • Giving tutorials or demos
  • Broadcasting an event
  • Making a big announcement
  • Going behind the scenes.

The longer you’re live (we recommend at least ten minutes), the higher the likelihood that people will tune in.

Facebook tricks for publishing

Take the guesswork out of posting the right content at the right time with these Facebook publishing tips.

12. Schedule your posts

Consistently posting high-quality content will keep your audience engaged. But publishing engaging copy and top-quality visuals every day is challenging. One of the best Facebook hacks is batching your content or creating several posts before scheduling them in advance.

You can use Facebook’s built-in tools, like Creator Studio or Meta Business Suite, to schedule posts for Facebook and Instagram. If you post on other social networks as well, though, you might need a third-party social media management tool.

With Hootsuite, you can manage all of your social media activity in one place. Hootsuite supports Facebook and Instagram, as well as all other major social media networks: TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

You can create, edit, and preview posts within the platform before scheduling them. Hootsuite can even tell you when you should post based on your audience’s habits.

Want to test out Hootsuite’s scheduling tool and recommendation feature yourself? Give it a whirl with a free 30-day trial.

13. Use Facebook Page Insights to analyze performance

Publishing high-quality content is only half the story. You’ll also need to monitor your metrics to identify trends in engagement.

Keep a close eye on your Facebook Page Insights to see what works for your audience.

You can use the Page Insights dashboard to check out a snapshot of the last seven days of your Page’s performance, including:

  • Page likes. The total number of new and existing likes for your Page.
  • Facebook Page visits. The number of times users visited your Page.
  • Engagement. The total number of unique people who engaged with your Page and posts.
  • Post reach. Measures the number of unique views on your Page and posts

You can also view detailed breakdowns for each post, including info on reach, likes, and more.

If you’re trying to monitor metrics across multiple platforms, though, Hootsuite can help.

Use Hootsuite Advanced Analytics to calculate the return on your social media investment. You can set performance metrics and monitor your improvement over time. You can even generate custom reports to prove the value of your marketing efforts on Facebook.

14. Use Audience Insights to learn about audience behavior

Check out Facebook’s Audience Insights for a deeper dive into your audience’s preferences and behavior. This tool gives you detailed information about your primary audiences.

You get demographic breakdowns that include information on:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Relationship status
  • Education levels
  • Job descriptions

You can also find information on your audience’s interests, hobbies, and other Facebook Pages they follow.

Use this data to help you decide which content topics would be most interesting to your audience.

Facebook Messenger tricks

Facebook Messenger is a one-stop shop for interacting with friends, family and even brands. Many of the best Facebook secrets happen in Messenger.

15. Earn the Very Responsive badge

If you reply quickly to most users who message you on Facebook, you can earn a “Very responsive to messages” badge that appears on your profile.

You’ll need a response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes over the last seven days to earn the badge.

Clothing brand Zappos has the badge displayed on their profile:

Zappos About Very responsive message badge

Nothing will appear if you don’t reply to messages, so it’s not the end of the world.

But having the Very responsive badge is an important trust signal. It shows your audience that you care about their needs and are listening.

16. Use a chatbot to improve responses

If you need help improving those Messenger response times, consider using an AI-powered chatbot. Instead of having your customer support team deal with all queries, chatbots can answer simple FAQ-style queries for you. Then if customers need more support, chatbots can route these more complex or sensitive questions to your team.

Chatbots can also upsell or cross-sell products to your customers to improve their shopping experience.

Heyday by Hootsuite takes the strain off busy customer support workers by answering simple questions on their behalf. It lets you track all human and bot customer interactions in one unified inbox. In this hub, you can also filter conversations, resolve queries, and respond to customers.

Heyday chatbot conversations inbox

Request a Heyday Demo

Facebook tricks for advertising

Facebook ads have the potential to reach 2.1 billion users globally. Knowing a few Facebook tricks for advertising will help you reach more of your target audience.

17. Install the Meta pixel

The Meta Pixel lets you track conversions from your Facebook ads and remarket to website visitors.

It works by placing and triggering cookies to track users as they interact with your business both on and off of Facebook and Instagram.

For example, I spotted a jacket from The Fold I wanted to buy in my Instagram feed. I clicked through to check out the details and got distracted before adding it to my cart.

Meta Pixel ads retargeting The Fold London

The next time I opened Instagram, this ad popped up:

Meta Pixel The Fold London Stories Ad

This is known as retargeting, and it’s a great way to re-engage customers who have already demonstrated interest in your products. Installing the Meta Pixel can help you retarget shoppers close to making a purchase.

18. Promote your best organic social content

Ever created a piece of content you’re so proud of that you can’t wait to press Post? Maybe it’s launching a hot new product you’ve been counting down for months. Or it’s a new blog post you know will solve your audience’s problems.

Whatever it is, standing out on Facebook can be tough. And right now, organic reach is down to 5.2%. You can’t only rely on the Facebook algorithm to get your organic content in front of all the people you want to reach.

Using the Facebook Boost button can help you get your Facebook content in front of more of your target audience. With the in-built targeting options, you can reach people most likely to be interested in your content.

Instead of boosting a post using the Facebook interface, you can also boost a post from your Hootsuite dashboard.

boost a Facebook post in Hootsuite

One bonus of using Hootsuite to boost your Facebook posts is that you can set up automatic boosting. This boosts any Facebook posts that meet your chosen criteria, like reaching a certain level of engagement. You can set up a budget limit to stay in control of your ad spend.

Here’s how to set up automatic boosting and how to boost individual posts on Hootsuite:

19. Analyze your ad performance

Analyzing your ad performance is key to optimizing your paid campaigns. As well as allowing you to create campaigns, Facebook Ads Manager lets you see the results too.

Within the toolset, you can get a full overview of your ad account’s performance or apply breakdowns to see in-depth metrics.

  • Customize columns to check metrics like website conversions or social impressions.
  • Use suggested columns to view more data about your ads based on your objective, ad creative, and more.
  • View breakdowns to see the age of your audience, what devices they’re using, and their location.
  • Use the insights side pane to see a visual representation of your ad performance, like the overall ad spend.

You don’t have to use Ads Manager to check your ad performance, though. You can also get an in-depth view of your organic content and paid ad campaigns in Hootsuite.With one central dashboard, you can see both performance and engagement metrics across your Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn ads.

That way, you don’t have to jump between multiple platforms and can see all your efforts in one place. You can also pull custom reports on your ad performance.

Save time and get the most out of your Facebook marketing strategy with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today.

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By Holly Stanley

Holly writes and optimizes engaging, high-ranking blog posts for SaaS brands that both readers and Google love.

Read more by Holly Stanley

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