Enhanced Facebook Tools For Businesses and Better Personalized Experiences
Facebook’s focus for the past few years has been to build meaningful connections between its users. Some of those efforts have included shifting to a mobile-first mindset, personalizing ads and providing an online community for businesses to interact with their customers.
As behavior has shifted over the past year, consumers are looking for more ways to buy online safely and privately.
Because of these changes, Facebook is prioritizing four key areas that will help businesses innovate and reach more customers online.
Privacy-enhancing Technologies
Facebook has always been about personalization, but sometimes it was unclear how user data was being gathered for that personalization. Users felt intruded upon when they didn’t understand how Facebook ads were so personal.
Because of those concerns, Facebook is prioritizing more privacy-enhancing technologies that will tone down the amount of personal information that is processed. It’s unclear how that is happening, but Facebook is assuring us that ads will still deliver to the most relevant audience.
Product & Business Discovery
It’s no secret that businesses are using more and more tools on Facebook to help drive brand awareness, traffic to their websites and increase customer engagement. Some tools that businesses have used in the past include Facebook Profiles, Instagram Pages and advertising.
Facebook is looking to expand the ways customers find and interact with businesses, so they are working on the following assets:
- A “business” experience in News Feed where users can browse through business posts related to certain topics and find more content from related businesses
- More context-driven advertising experiences, like showing restaurant ads if a user is watching food-related content or shows
- Better tools to encourage community-building around businesses that align with user values
Commerce
Sped up by the pandemic, consumers have begun a shift away from in-store buying. Even if buyers are going in store to purchase products or services, they want to research and get shopping ideas online.
Facebook Marketplace has also been gaining in popularity, with over 300 million monthly visitors even though it is just a year old. All of this points to Facebook and Instagram being prime destinations for consumers now and into the future.
Because of that, Facebook and Instagram are building out more robust commerce systems to meet consumer demand across ads, messaging and communities. These improvements should help users discover products, learn about them and give them the option of paying directly on the platform. By making it easier for consumers, businesses should see even more success with their commerce efforts through Facebook.
Business Tools Beyond Marketing
Businesses want to save money on their marketing efforts, but saving time can be just as impactful on a business’ bottom line.
Facebook is developing new tools and products that will help solve tons of unique business problems, from customer relationship management to business messaging.
Here are a few of those products:
- Facebook Business Suite — A time saving tool that allows businesses to manage their entire suite of apps across Facebook and Instagram
- Increasing access to Messenger API for Instagram since more customers are looking to message businesses instead of call
Conclusion
Facebook is continually rolling out new products and tools for businesses. We’re always testing these new tools out to see just how beneficial they can be for businesses and implementing those tools into our arsenal.
Optimize Social Media provides social media & reputation solutions that evolve with our clients. As social media experts we manage Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yelp, YouTube and Instagram accounts for our clients daily. We help the modern business owner implement a specialized social media strategy so they can make more money in real life. Enjoy our blog.
