Top Facebook Updates You Should Know 馃槈
It’s good to know that as COVID-19 continues to affect people everywhere, Facebook finds and introduces new ways to support consumers and businesses alike. Here are some of the most recent and relevant updates they've made:
Supportive Hashtags & Stickers
For this month’s Facebook update, we are happy to say that the #SupportSmallBusiness hashtag has been doing the rounds. Facebook users may use this hashtag, as well as use “in support of” tags to promote small businesses.
Basically, you can use this new tool to get your favorite business more followers and more customers. This is how it works:
- Find the Support Small Business sticker on Instagram (it’s together with the rest of stickers).
- You click on it and you write down the username of the business profile you want to tag until it shows up beneath the tag and select it.
- Few posts from that profile will appear, but you’ll be able to remove them by clicking on them if you don’t like how they look.
- You can add a copy above or below the tag. For example “This place drives me nuts, you have to check out the sushi there”.
- When you’re done, click on “Your Story” at the bottom left to share it there. When somebody sees the tag, they’ll be able to share it on their story with just a click.
When somebody clicks on the tag, they'll be able to visit the business profile, and the rest is history. It’s actually easier to do than to understand by reading, so just go and check that out if you haven’t yet.
Warning Prompts
Inevitably, some bad people started abusing Messenger by using it unethically – scammers, imposters, abusers trying to reach people out of the blue. Facebook knows that and is taking strides to block those messages with this new update.
This refers to giving a popup warning when someone contacts you and Facebook's machine learning algorithm flags something suspicious. It weeds out “businesses” that may affect the reputation of genuine sellers. It looks like this:
This way, Facebook is especially interested in protecting minors. As they say themselves “Our new feature educates people under the age of 18 to be cautious when interacting with an adult they may not know and empowers them to take action before responding to a message”.
If you don’t want your business to fall into the no-no group of Facebook, fill in EVERY business field available within your account so FB’s algorithm has no doubt that you’re a legit business.
Facebook Shops
Of course, we couldn’t exclude Facebook Shops. We talked about it a few weeks ago in this article. Here’s a quick summary if you’ve missed that one.
It will be an online store within FB and IG that will allow businesses of all sizes to offer their products directly on Facebook and Instagram Apps so that customers can complete the purchasing journey in only once place.
It’s like opening new cool and advanced online stores for free. Actually, it’s just like that.
“CatchUp” App
It’s a new voice calling-only app launched by Facebook that permits creating group calls in a flash. Startups, families, and, especially friends can consider using it for fast group meetings. It looks like this:
What’s special about it? When you create a group and want to add more people to it, those available will be shown as “Ready to Talk”. It can be very convenient for specific situations. Right now it’s only available in the US.
Will it be a future placement for ads? Many years from now… maybe. Why do we say that? Just look at how long FB is taking with WhatsApp. If they’d use it as an ad placement too soon, it would surely kill the app for good.
That’s it! Consider yourself updated to what Facebook has been launching recently. As always, try to stay on top of these new tools and test them out when possible to find new ways to give value to your customers.
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