Answers to Your Top 10 Questions About Facebook #FB4Biz

Earlier this week, we co-hosted the latest in our series of highly successful webinars with Facebook, this time focusing on how to engage your Facebook fans with quality content . Nearly 40K people registered for the series, and the attendee response was both insightful and fascinating, including a great discussion about the newly-released Promoted Posts tool on Facebook.

We were unable to answer all of your questions during the live webinar, so compiled in this post are ten of your most compelling questions we think warrant some additional discussion and clarification.

1) Are Promoted Posts only shared in the news feeds of users who have already liked your page, or can you reach additional users who aren't yet engaged?

You can, in fact, reach certain users who are not yet engaged with your Facebook business page. Organically -- because of Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm -- a page's posts will only reach about 16% of your fans' news feeds. But Promoted Posts are not only engineered to show up in a larger percentage of your current fans' news feeds. In fact, when one of your fans interacts with (i.e. clicked/commented on, shared, liked, etc.) your Promoted Post, it will also show up in the in the feeds of their friends, even if those friends aren't directly fans of your page. The post that would show up in these second-degree connections' news feeds would show the interaction between the fan and your business page.

2) How is the viral reach of my company's Facebook posts measured?

Facebook defines the viral reach of a post on Facebook asthe number of unique people who saw one of your posts through a story that was published by a fan of your page. Facebook's explanation notes that the stories in question can include liking, commenting on, or sharing the post, responding to a question, or responding to an event. The number of friends per fan who see the story in their respective news feeds is then calculated to determine each post's viral reach.

3) Is it okay to promote multiple products in the same day on my company Facebook page?

While we don't exactly recommend a product-heavy Facebook presence, that doesn't mean you can't publish multiple posts per day. One of the keys to a successful Facebook presence is achieving a well-rounded balance of content you share, and sharing only posts about your products and services goes against the true nature of social media, wherein engagement is crucial. Remember, there are other types of content you can share besides mentions of your products/services. Your business has a blog, right? (No? Let us help you get going with that! ) If so, be sure to share your recent blog content through Facebook. But that's not all you can share. What about links to your lead-gen offers, surveys for feedback, visual content, or questions to spark discussion? For more ideas of the content you can share via social, check out our full blog post on the subject .

In regard to the frequency of your Facebook updates, the exact number of posts you publish per day will vary based on your particular audience and may depend on factors such as size, industry, and level of engagement. In a nutshell, we recommend doing a little bit of experimentation and testing to understand what resonates with your fans and determine your optimal Facebook update frequency. Remember, while posts on Facebook have a longer shelf-life than on say, Twitter , users' news feeds still move fairly fast, and because of EdgeRank, not all your fans will see every post you publish. Therefore, we recommend publishing fewer updates than you would on Twitter, but still posting often. On the HubSpot Facebook page , for example, we tend to publish about 4 to 5 posts per day.

4) Is there an easy, inexpensive way to monitor mentions of my company on popular social media sites?

We've talked before about how the positive, real-time benefits of social media . Lucky for you, there are many free social media monitoring tools available out there. We recommend using HootSuite, setting up Google Alerts, or using a SocialMention account to allow you to keep tabs on the social buzz surrounding your business, competitors, and industry as a whole. Check out our free guide, How to Monitor Social Media in 10 Minutes a Day for some other tips, and if you're ready to graduate to a paid social media monitoring tool that incorporates additional social media marketing tools and integrates with your other marketing tools and analytics, we happen to sell all-in-one software for that!

5) I've heard that Facebook's page guidelines do not allow contact information in my business page's cover photo. Is that true?

Yes, this is true. We wrote a comprehensive post about how to successfully set up the new Facebook page design with timeline , but to put it simply: Facebook's business page guidelines explicitly state that cover photos (which are the banner-style images on the tops of brand pages) may not include contact information such as email/mailing addresses, website addresses, or information that otherwise belongs in your page's "About" section. Also banned from your page's cover photo is price and purchase information (e.g. “40% off” or “Download it at our website”), any call-to-action statements (e.g. “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”), and explicit or implicit references to Facebook features or actions such as "Like" or "Share" (or arrows pointing from the cover photo to any of these features). So save your contact info for the "About" section and your calls-to-action for status updates, pinned posts, and dedicated page tabs. You can learn more about all these page elements in our free ebook about the Facebook page timeline design .

6) Do clicks on video content I've shared on Facebook impact my page's ranking in EdgeRank?

Just as with every other type of content you share on your Facebook page, video content carries a weight that can impact your EdgeRank score. Facebook gives weight to every object or story that your company shares through its Facebook page, and in essence, a piece of content's EdgeRank is based on three factors: the relationship between the creator and the user, interaction with the content (i.e. likes, comments, etc.), and timeliness. While only Facebook knows how much weight is associated with each of these factors, it's no secret that it's based on the interactions Facebook users have with your stories, and video content can be some of the most compelling types of content brands can share. If your video content is something that users interact with frequently beyond simply clicking to watch it, it's a safe bet that it impacts your page's EdgeRank in a positive way.

7) I just created a Facebook page for my company. The page has fewer than 30 likes. How do I attract more fans?

First things first. There are quite a few little things you should take care of (such as making sure the information on your page is complete, accurate, concise, and includes a link to your business's website) to ensure that your page is well-optimized and engaging in order to attract more likes. But in addition to the low-hanging fruit, to truly increase your Facebook page's social reach and attract more fans, you need to do much more. Some guaranteed ways to do this include sharing useful, valuable content regularly; promoting your presence via your website and other marketing channels (think other social accounts, email marketing, etc.); adding social plugins and sharing buttons to your website and all your content; building relationships with industry influences; interacting with current fans; and offering incentives for new fans.

8) If I am in a bilingual market, should I write in both languages for each of my Facebook updates, or release separate updates for each language?

If you are operating within a truly bilingual market, the best course of action we can recommend is maintaining two separate Facebook pages for your business, if possible, noting in the page's vanity URL the language for the page. The pages can certainly be cross-promoted, and both should be linked to via social plugins on your company's website. Take care to maintain both pages equally, but also pay attention to which types of posts resonate with the audiences of each page. This guide and video will specifically help you learn how to analyze your Facebook Insights (Facebook's internal analytics tool for pages) to improve your content strategy.

9) How can I get users to spend more time on my company's Facebook page?

If you want fans of your page to spend time on the page itself, it's going to be all about creating and sharing content that is engaging for your audience. Take note that a recent Facebook study revealed that brand-related content is the highest driver of engagement on Facebook pages, so make sure that the content you share on your page is on-brand, rather than product-focused or completely unrelated, like an internet meme that has nothing to do with your brand. Marketers should pair this knowledge with the data they gather from their own page's Facebook Insights to make the best decisions about their Facebook content strategies.

10) Can I delay the promotion on a promoted Facebook post in order for the promotion to coincide with high engagement times?

Simply speaking, when you use Promoted Posts, you can run the promotion for up to 3 days after the post was originally created. You can either promote the post at the time you create and publish it, or promote a post that has already been published on your page. In other words, if you decide to promote a post 1 day after you originally published it, the promotion will only run for 2 days. Therefore, if you want to make sure your posts are only promoted during peak hours and avoid wasting your money during off-peak hours, you can hold off on publishing posts you intend to promote until your peak hours, and then pause the promotion during off-peak hours (you can always resume it again during peak hours). This way, you're only paying to promote the post during the hours you think will maximize its exposure to your audience. While Facebook only just started rolling out the ability to schedule posts on Facebook , our fingers are crossed that this functionality gets integrated with Promoted Posts to make our lives even easier!

Don't miss your chance to attend the final webinar in our series with Facebook on June 27, where you'll learn how to influence the friends of your fans through word-of-mouth Facebook marketing. Click here to register today ( #FB4Biz )!