One of the things that the new Facebook pages design makes obvious above all others is the lack of updates on a Facebook page. While updating your Facebook page on Facebook itself is recommended, many businesses will still prefer to use a social media management tool for the sake of productivity and ease of use. This post will show you six tools that social media experts and marketing agencies use to update their Facebook pages.
Why You Should Use Facebook
Before we get into third-party tools and applications, I want to suggest that you use Facebook itself to update your Facebook page for the following reasons.
EdgeRank
Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to determine which updates are shown in your fans’ news feeds. You can learn more about it in this post from Econsultancy. One thing that EdgeRank has the potential of doing is lowering the value of an update from a third-party tool and prioritizing updates that are made directly on Facebook. This means that pages with updates from third-party apps may not get as much engagement.
Users Can Hide Third-Party Apps
Facebook users have the choice to hide updates made by third-party apps from their news feed entirely.
If a friend, subscription, or page annoys a user with updates from a particular third-party app, that user might hide any updates from that app altogether. This means that they would never see your page’s updates from that app.
Updates Lumped Together
You also have to worry about updates from third-party tool getting clumped together. This doesn’t happen with all apps, but it does with some, especially if there are an over-abundance of updates from one particular app.
This will likely lead to less interaction with your updates when people come to your Facebook page.
When You Should Use Third Party Tools
If there are good reasons not to use third-party tools, then why would you want to use them at all? The fact is, some will simply not want or be able to make the commitment to going to Facebook on a regular basis and make updates. Updating your Facebook page using a third-party tool would be better than not updating your page at all. The last thing you would want a visitor to your page to see is something like this.
With all of this in mind, here are some of the top tools that social media experts, brands, and agencies are using to update their pages. Keep in mind that most use these apps in addition to making updates on their Facebook page from Facebook itself.
Buffer
Buffer is one of my favorite tools – it allows you to schedule and publish updates. Unlike other platforms where you have to schedule each update at a specific time, Buffer allows you to set up a specific scheduling pattern. When you add an update to your Buffer, it will be set out at the next available time slot.
Updates can be sent to your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. You can use Buffer to update one Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn account for free with up to 10 updates scheduled at a time. There is also a Pro plan for $10 per month that allows you to have up to six social media accounts and up to 50 scheduled updates or a Premium plan for $99 per month that allows you to have unlimited social media accounts and scheduled updates. See it in action on the Facebook page for Convince & Convert.
Dlvr.it
Dlvr.it allows you to add your blog feed to be updated on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, StatusNet, and MySpace accounts. Essentially, every time you publish a new post, it will be added to the social accounts you specified. It is a simple and free service to use to get your latest blog posts delivered to your social media accounts.
HootSuite
HootSuite allows you to schedule and publish updates across multiple social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace, and Foursquare. HootSuite also allows you to add RSS feeds to your account to update your social networks when new posts are available from your own blog as well as others. You can use HootSuite for free with up to five social profiles, or go with a Pro plan for $5.99 per month for unlimited social profiles, RSS feeds, and more. See it in action on the Facebook pages for Mashable and Mari Smith.
Networked Blogs
NetworkedBlogs allows you to automatically update your Facebook and Twitter accounts with your latest blog post. You will have to verify that you are the author of the blog by temporarily adding a widget to your blog or asking your Facebook friends to confirm that you are the author / owner.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social allows you to schedule and publish updates to your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. You can also connect RSS feeds to your account and have them regularly update your social media networks when new content is available. Sprout Social also includes influence and engagement monitoring on your social networks so you can see how influential you are. Their plans are $9 per month to manage up to 10 social profiles, $39 per month for 20 profiles, $59 per month for 40 profiles, and $899 per month for unlimited social profiles plus additional features.
These are just a few of the tools that you can use to update your Facebook page. Share your thoughts and favorite tools for updating your Facebook page in the comments.
About the Author: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing for personal, professional, and business bloggers.
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