The labyrinth of ever-evolving Facebook changes can be difficult to keep up with, but there are always a few tips and tricks out there to help make your life easier on the world’s largest social network. Here are a few recent tips that can help you navigate the site more efficiently, and get more out of your efforts.
1. Tab + spacebar – If you ever need to invite a large number of people to an event, or you want to suggest your page to all your friends, clicking all those little checkboxes can get tedious. There are javascript one-click solutions for this, but if you just want a simple way to do it quickly, use the spacebar to select the first friend, and then hit the tab key to advance to the next checkbox. Hit the space again, then the tab again. If you can get a rhythm going, you can get through hundreds of checkboxes in just a minute or two.
2. “Other” messages – Did you know that you have more than one message inbox on Facebook? There’s your main messages area, and then another one called “Other,” where Facebook automatically stores messages it thinks won’t be important to you. However, it doesn’t always guess correctly – you might be surprised at what you find in there. To view your “Other” mailbox, click on the “Messages” link in the left sidebar (not the top menu bar) on your newsfeed page, and then you’ll see the word “Other” appears as a subfolder right below where you clicked.
3. Use Insights to track posts – If you’re wondering what time of day is best to post to your Facebook business page, or which updates get the highest response rate, your Insights panel (available from the main admin panel at the top of your page) can tell you which posts got the most feedback, how far they each reached, and the “virality” of each.
4. Content over Cover – Thinking about spending a lot of time and/or money designing the perfect Facebook cover image for your business page? Your efforts might be better spent elsewhere. Although you’ll want an image that reflects your brand, there’s no point in putting an undue amount of effort into the design of the image, as nearly all of your fans will just view your content from their newsfeed rather than visiting your actual page. Spend your effort on creating engaging content instead.
