As we discussed a few weeks ago, though anyone can create a Facebook page for their business at no cost, to make the most of the tools this social platform has to offer, you’ll need to set aside a social budget. In an effort to monetize their services, Facebook has limited the use of certain tools by requiring a minimum fan base before they are activated. Let’s take a look at these applications and the fan count necessary to use them.

• Page Insights:

  Insights provide valuable metrics regarding engagement on your Facebook page. Not only will you be able to see your total number of likes, you’ll also see the reach of each post, the number of people talking about each post, the number of engaged users, and the post’s level of engagement. The catch: you must have 30 likes before you can access this feature.

• Offers:

  Offers allow you to provide a coupon or discount directly on Facebook, giving users a reason to follow you on the social platform and keep checking your page for additional offers. In order to post an offer you must have at least 100 likes.

• Promoted Posts:

  This feature allows you to pay to get more exposure on Facebook. You can set your desired budget and your posts will be pushed up on the news feeds of your fans and your content will also reach friends of your fans. Again, 100 page likes are required to promote posts.

Facebook has deliberately set minimum fan counts on these tools in order to encourage businesses to use Facebook Ads to reach the requisite number of likes to use them, again proving our point that social media is not really a free marketing medium. Still, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. With the right targeting technique and well written ads, you’ll not only gain enough likes to use these exciting features, you’ll attract fans who have a need that your product or service fulfills, increasing the likelihood that they will interact with your page and take the next steps towards making a purchase.

Ready to begin taking advantage of these Facebook tools but don’t yet have the obligatory fan count? Call us for a free consultation. We’ll work with you to develop a well-rounded Facebook strategy, increasing your number of likes, boosting fan engagement and helping you leverage these additional features.