What is Facebook and what is it used for? Facebook: what it is, features of use and interesting facts

Until recently, the Internet was used mainly for searching for useful information and exchanging messages via e-mail. Today, Internet users spend more and more time on social networking pages. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, human communication has reached a new level, the existence of which one could only guess. The social network has become an integral part of the lives of billions of people on our planet, and from time to time they have a question - what is Facebook for?

Ample opportunities for communication

Initially, Facebook was conceived as an online analogue of a university album with the names and photographs of students, but Zuckerberg decided not to stop there. He turned it into a huge social network where users can communicate through messages sent via PM or left on the wall. Today, the capabilities of Facebook have expanded significantly, but the main goal is still communication.

Why create an account on Facebook if you can communicate using traditional means of online communication? Yes, for the simple reason that this is a more advanced level. For a long time, the main method of virtual communication was email correspondence. With constant access to the Internet, users switched to ICQ, while representatives of the American and European Internet communities communicated on MSN Messenger.

Facebook is an international social network, which includes residents of hundreds of countries, and makes it possible not to limit communication with compatriots. In addition, it creates a feeling of real communication, because... users do not hide under mysterious nicknames, but have a profile that allows them to paint a more or less real picture. Thus, by registering on Facebook, you can simultaneously conduct a dialogue with a work colleague sitting in the next office, a friend located on the other side of the city, and a pen pal living in the United States. Fast, convenient and, most importantly, completely free.

Entertainment and integration options

In order to expand the user audience, Facebook management decided not to limit the capabilities of the social network to simply exchanging messages and photos. The developers received the green light to create applications for the site, including many interactive and multiplayer games. With their help, Facebook users enjoy passing the time by competing with friends and setting personal records. A nice bonus is the ability to play the same game both in the computer version of the social network and in applications developed for smartphones. In this case, the results will be summarized, for which you only need to log in to the application using your Facebook account.

By the way, another good reason to create a personal page on the social network Facebook is the possibility of integration with applications and other Internet resources. You can share interesting articles outside of Facebook with your friends with the click of a button. Or evaluate the information found using the same Facebook “like”. In addition, one profile will solve the problem of registration on thousands of Russian and foreign sites. Instead of entering your information each time when registering, you can simply click the “Log in with your Facebook account” button. We can say that a Facebook profile is a kind of universal “key” that gives access to a huge number of Internet resources.

SMM – expanding the boundaries of marketing

Naturally, Facebook is of interest not only to ordinary users, but also to representatives of the business sector. Marketers have long realized that social networks are a great place to promote a brand, and even created a separate marketing area called Social Media Marketing (SMM). As it turned out, the return on advertising in traditional types of media is much lower than on competent SMM.

Facebook is one of the most popular and effective SMM platforms. In the ranking of traffic to Internet resources compiled by the well-known statistical site alexa.com, the social network Facebook ranks second, second only to Google. About a billion users are active on the social networking site every month. This means that by creating a company page on Facebook, you are launching a mechanism for self-distribution of information. The main thing is to attract and interest users. Everything else will be done for you.

So, Facebook is a social network with really broad capabilities. For ordinary users, it is primarily needed for easy communication with friends, not limited by time or space. For business representatives, Facebook is a powerful SMM platform that allows them to expand their audience. And yet, to the question “Why is Facebook needed?” everyone must give their own answer, because, by and large, this is just a site that has become an Internet giant precisely thanks to the interest of users.

Greetings, dear readers! Are you satisfied with your success on Facebook? Are you satisfied with the number of fans on your page? Would you like to increase user activity and get more likes, comments and shares? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are in the right place, so read on.

This article is a logical continuation of the article ““, in which I talked about how everyone can easily and simply improve their Facebook page. After you have gone through all 10 steps and prepared the page, it is likely that you will begin to think, what to do with this page now, what and when to publish on it? We will definitely look into this. At first I wanted to fit everything into one article, but there is too much information, so I will devote the next few articles to this topic, where we will analyze everything in detail and look at many real examples of successful promotion on Facebook.

Before we start thinking about what to actually post on Facebook to get great results, I want to tell you how Facebook works so you can use this knowledge to improve your page performance in the future. Our goal is not only to learn how to drive a car, but also to understand how it works, so that in case of any malfunction, we do not stupidly look under the hood, but clearly understand what is malfunctioning and how to fix it, so that we can move on.

Let's start from the very beginning. I warn you that the article will be informative and voluminous, so get ready for a long read and go get some tea and a cookie :))

Introduction: some statistics

If you have a young page, then most likely silence or low activity on the page can cause you irritation and indignation, and sometimes the desire to quit everything and concentrate on something else. I went through this myself and therefore am very familiar with this feeling. When I first started, there wasn’t much information and I had to learn everything through trial and error. Previously, although there was less information on Facebook, the competition in readers’ news feeds was not so high. Think for yourself how huge Facebook is - at the end of last year there were more than 25 million business pages And 1.26 billion users.

Guys, check out the latest statistics here:

Just 4 years ago, the average Facebook user's list of likes included about 4.5 pages, while today their number is already more than 40! The record holders for page likes are US users - on average they like about 70 pages. In the past, pages were not updated as often - only about five times a month, but today the number of posts increased to 36 per month, i.e., on average, pages are published more than once a day. Considering the fact that the user is a fan of about 40 pages, each of which makes about 36 publications per month, then the user’s news feed contains more than 1,440 competing publications per month, or at least 40 per day.

Example from life: I decided to do a little research and check how many likes I myself and highly active and weakly active friends have. I discovered that I had 78 liked pages, that is, I outdid even the Americans :)) But imagine my surprise when I discovered that most of my friends had far more than 100 likes, and some had more than a thousand. Considering the fact that users also have friends, imagine now how difficult it is to get into such a busy feed!

Of course, it’s not easy to break through, but some people manage to do it. How do they do it?

How does Facebook work?

What publications appear in your news feed is determined by the secret Facebook algorithm. I will not go into details, since this topic is quite voluminous and 10 separate articles could be written about it, I just want to briefly explain what the essence of this algorithm is.

According to Facebook, every time you log into the social network, there are more than 1,500 news items (posts from friends, updates from liked pages, event information, recommended pages, advertisements, etc.) that Facebook can show you. It is clear that no one will view so many news stories in chronological order, which is why an algorithm is needed to show you those news that should interest you more than others. Thus, out of 1,500 potential posts, only 300 will appear in your feed.

How does Facebook decide what a user might like?

Facebook is constantly looking at how you interact with content:

— How often do you interact with posts from a specific friend, page, or celebrity?(for example, an actor, singer), that is, if you often communicate with, say, Masha, then Facebook will regard Masha as an interesting person for you, and will push the Publishing Machine higher in your feed, since you show more interest in her than, say, to Pasha. The same applies to pages.

— the number of likes, reposts and comments for the publication from all users and from your friends. The more activity there is on a certain post, the more valuable it is and, therefore, the more likely it is that the post will end up in your feed, especially if your friends have shown interest in that post. Like attracts like, so if you publish high-quality and interesting content that people like, then it will gain more and more likes, because because of these same likes, it [the content] appears in the news feeds of more and more users.

— how often do you interact with a certain type of content?(regular status, link, photo, video, etc.). Facebook also pays attention to which posts you prefer by liking them, commenting on them, and pushes similar posts higher in your news feed.

Advice: This is why you should publish a variety of types of content, and not concentrate only on images, as many do and are very mistaken. By publishing the same type of posts, for example photos, you are missing out on those fans who, for example, interact more with simple links or statuses, since photos will appear much less often in these people’s feeds.

— how often do users want to hide your posts?(no matter personal or publication pages) or worse, report them as spam. This algorithm element was added less than a year ago, encouraging pages to publish better quality content. Previously, negative reviews were simply not taken into account, but now they have a fairly large impact on whether your news will appear—or, more precisely, not appear—in users’ feeds.

I wanted to briefly talk about the algorithm, but it’s impossible to do so briefly. I think this is quite important information, so you, as a marketer, need to have an understanding of how Facebook works. The algorithm is constantly being updated and expanded, so you need to be aware of such updates in order to use them to benefit your page and achieve better results than competing pages. If you are interested in this topic, you can also read the following articles:

With the algorithm at this stage, I think everything is clear. Now I want to talk to you about statistics, or more precisely, their most important indicators that indicate the success of your work. Unfortunately, many marketers are confused about what is truly important and direct all their efforts in the wrong direction.

Facebook statistics: what should you pay attention to?

Very often, page managers set themselves the goal of having as many fans as possible on the page. Of course, we need fans, otherwise why would we even need a Facebook page? But fan to fan discord. Sometimes it's better to have 10 fans who actively interact with your page than 1,000 inactive fans who don't care about your page, so to speak. Honestly, I never understood why some managers buy fans, buy likes and comments? These are all too short-term strategies that will not bring much benefit to your page or your business.

Think about why you need a Facebook page?

You must have some specific goal, otherwise all your efforts will not bring the desired results and you will simply get confused along the way. If you have a store, then most likely you want to attract more customers and, accordingly, increase sales. If you have an organization or association that helps those in need, then you probably want to attract more attention to your activities and, thereby, receive more resources for its implementation. If you are a singer or an artist, then you probably want to have more fans of your talent and be able to sell more CDs or paintings. Whatever one may say, behind any Facebook page or Twitter account, there is one ultimate goal - to sell more. Everything else is just methods that, sooner or later, should lead to the desired end result - increased sales / conversions. How can you sell more? The options here can be different: attracting the attention of potential customers, increasing the loyalty of existing customers, increasing the frequency of sales, etc. Here you decide for yourself what works specifically for your business or organization. Unfortunately, many people very often forget about the final goal and all activity on Facebook is aimed at getting “likes”, where everything stops, since sales do not increase and in the future such a strategy leads to the conclusion “Yes, this Facebook of yours is nonsense.” dog! It doesn’t work for the hell of it!” I’ve heard this a thousand times, which is why I want to draw your attention to such a development in the scenario so that you avoid the same fate and so that you don’t have to redo everything after being disappointed and spending a lot of time and money.

So, always keep the focus on why you need a Facebook page and as soon as you notice that things are not going as well as you would like, be sure to remember the main goal and think about the best method to get to it.

The indicator you should pay attention to is not likes on the page, but user engagement and one more metric, which you will learn about below. As I said above, engagement determines the likelihood of a post getting into users’ news feeds. There is a simple pattern at work here: the more involved users are in relation to a post, the more likely it is that new fans will see the post, which, in turn, will increase engagement again, and so on, until the post becomes outdated.

What is engagement?

Involvement can be of two types:

• Engagement on a specific post. It is not at all difficult to calculate it (see formula below). In the new Facebook statistics, this metric is calculated automatically, so all you have to do is analyze it.

• Engaged users, i.e. the unique number of people who clicked, liked, commented or shared your posts within 7 days.

You can find this metric on the main Statistics Overview page.

The number of engaged users alone does not give anything, so it needs to be correlated with the number of fans of the page. In the example above, I provided a screenshot from my new Facebook page. As you can see, the page has only 30 fans so far, and the number of engaged users is 13, that is, the engagement is about 43%, which is a very good indicator.

Another important metric that I want to draw your attention to is the Discussions metric.

What does the “People Discussing This” metric mean?

The “Discussed” metric is public, meaning that every visitor can see how popular your page is by looking at the “Discussed” label, which is located under the page title.

This metric is much larger than engaged users, as it includes more elements. But first things first. Let's start with a definition.

"People Discussing It" = Engaged users(likes, comments, reposts, everything except clicks) + Other page activity(mentions about the page, location marks (check-ins), user publications on the page, etc.).

“People Discussing This” includes all interactions with the page other than clicks (which counts as engaged users but is not counted in the Discussing metric):

• new “likes” on the page;
• publications on the wall of the page;
• post likes;

It seems that every Internet user knows about Facebook today. Books are written about him, films are made about him, he is mentioned in almost every modern television series. And yet, the questions of what Facebook is and what its phenomenon is, continue to be asked by millions of users around the world.

How did Facebook appear and what is it?

The American website Facebook is the most popular social network today. The number of active users is more than 1.3 billion people - an amazing figure even for the Internet. When Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow Harvard students created the social network back in 2004, it was impossible to imagine how much it would eventually grow. At that time, Facebook, or more precisely, Thefacebook, was intended exclusively for American university students. And only in 2006, all Internet users over 16 years of age were able to use it.

Like any social network, Facebook is a resource whose main goal is to ensure communication between users. Every new member of this huge online community must register to take advantage of all its features. The more reliable data the user provides, the more likely it is that friends/acquaintances/colleagues/relatives will find him. In the future, account owners choose an avatar, publish photos, share links and, of course, communicate with each other.

Today there is both a web version of the social network and separate applications for mobile devices. By the way, statistics show that Facebook members prefer to use mobile versions of the site. Indeed, it is much more convenient - a mobile phone or tablet is more often at hand than a laptop or computer.

Social network features

With the growing popularity of the site, management began to think about creating the most “cozy” area for virtual communication. It became clear that limiting ourselves to banal exchange of personal messages is unacceptable if you want to keep the attention of users. Therefore, walls have appeared on the social network where you can leave posts, photo albums, comments and the legendary “likes”. It was the appearance of “likes” in 2010 that markedly distinguished Facebook from the rapidly growing list of social networks. With their help, users can mark published material as liked. Thus, “likes” became an evaluation tool, and later even began to be used in the algorithm for selecting recommended information for each individual account.

It's impossible to imagine Facebook without the apps that were first launched in 2007. The management has made it possible for third-party app developers to create and promote their products while making a profit. Today there are so many games and add-ons in the catalog that users have to carefully read the description of each one to understand how interesting they are. Almost all applications are duplicated in Google Play and AppStore and are synchronized with web versions, saving the players’ results. Thus, users received exciting time-killers, Facebook received interest and activity from visitors, and programmers received work and material benefits from their favorite activity.

Finally, we must not forget about such an important part of the social network as groups and pages. These communities immediately began to gain popularity. They are created in order to unite users by interests, belonging to certain areas of life, etc. Naturally, each community publishes posts on a specific topic, stirring up the interest of participants and drawing their attention. The issue of user activity is especially of concern to brand owners who have launched their Facebook page. Their task is to expand their consumer audience and beautifully advertise the products/services they offer. Today, hundreds of thousands of brands use Facebook as an advertising platform, and, as practice shows, the results of such PR are rarely disappointing.

So, the question of what Facebook is can take a very long time to answer. The history of this social network and its creators is interesting in itself. Not to mention the opportunities it gives to Internet users.

Polina Todorova

If you want to set up notifications properly, hide some people, and generally use Facebook like a pro, use these tips.

Saw something interesting in your feed, but don’t have time to read it? Save the news for later

All links, videos, photos, places and other content that you have bookmarked can be viewed in the " Saved» in your Facebook profile. In the Facebook mobile app, this section can be found in the “Advanced” tab.

Turn your profile photo into an animated GIF

In the Facebook mobile app, select your profile photo and click Make New Profile Video to upload a short looping video of yourself. The result will be something between a GIF and a live photo from Harry Potter.

A small lightning bolt icon next to a story indicates that it is an Instant Articles story. These articles tend to load faster and have fewer ads.

Facebook Instant Articles is a native element of this social network, which means it is loaded directly into the application. Many digital publications use this format. According to Facebook, these articles will load tens of times faster.

You'll know you're reading an Instant Article by the small lightning bolt icon in the bottom left corner of the news thumbnail.

Disable automatic playback of videos in your news feed

If you don't want all the videos to play automatically while you're browsing your news feed, turn off autoplay.

In the right tab of the Facebook mobile app, you will find the Settings section. Select "Account Settings" and the "Videos and Photos" section. You can make videos play automatically only when your device is connected to the Internet directly or via Wi-Fi, only via Wi-Fi, or disable autoplay altogether.

Unfollow people you don't want to unfriend but want to remove their news from your feed

If you want to get rid of someone's news in your feed, but you don't have the courage to unfriend them, simply unfollow them.

Go to the profile of the person you want, click on “You are subscribed” and select “Cancel subscription to updates.”

Look at what you were doing on this day on Facebook a few years ago.

The On This Day feature allows you to see what you were doing on the social network on this day several years ago. You could say it's your personal Facebook time capsule.

All activity displayed on the “On This Day” page is visible only to you. You will find it at this link: Facebook.com/onthisday. You can hide some people in your past history so your exes won't show up in your memories.

Your Activity Log stores all the posts you've shared, liked, or commented on.

The event log records all your activities on the social network. It can be easily viewed on the website and mobile application.

Select people and pages whose updates you don't want to miss in your feed

If you have people or favorite pages whose news you want to see first in your feed, set them to appear in the Facebook mobile app.

Select "Settings" in the "Advanced" tab and click "Display Priority".

Tag people and pages that interest you. Now their news will appear first in your feed, marked with a blue star.

Please indicate the correct pronunciation of your name.

Are you tired of your name being pronounced incorrectly? Then show us on Facebook how to pronounce it.

When editing your profile, go to the “Information about you” section. There you can also indicate your nickname or maiden name.

Understand the difference between a "friend" and a "follower"

On Facebook you can become a friend or follower of someone.

The status of friends indicates that you have confirmed your connection with each other and probably know each other. If you are someone’s subscriber, it means the person has not confirmed your friend request.

Your subscribers see only those posts that you post publicly. At any time, you can prevent anyone from following your account in the " Filters and tools for public publishing ».

Hide the post from specific people

You can share your posts with friends, friends of friends and any visitor to your page

To choose who can see your post, select the appropriate settings item in the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the post. In the mobile app, click on “Privacy Settings” and select one of the options. On the Facebook website, you will need to click on the icon in the form of a globe or user icons next to the time the post was published.

If you want the post to be visible to everyone except some people, select "User Settings" and set them in the "Do not show" section.

You can easily see what your profile looks like to other users and to individual friends from whom you have hidden some information.

To do this, go to your profile, click on the three dots icon and select “View as...”.

Hide your friends list from everyone

If for some reason you don't want others to see your friends list, you can hide it.

Go to your friends list and, by clicking on the pen icon, select “Manage”. There, select “Edit privacy settings.” You can customize who can see your list of friends, followers, and people you follow.

Make sure your marital status changes don't show up in your friends' feeds

Sometimes changing your marital status on Facebook can backfire if it's seen on your friends' feeds. You can set your marital status so that changes are visible only to you, and your friends won't know about them.

Just go to your profile edit page, go to the “Family and Relationships” section and select “Only Me” in your privacy settings.

Hide individual albums and events from your timeline

If you don't want everyone to see some of your albums but don't want to delete them, hide them so that only you can see them. The same goes for certain events in your life, such as changes in your marital status, job changes, etc.

Just look for the little gray icon next to the album or post. An icon in the form of two people means that the post is available only to your friends, a globe icon means a post that is visible to everyone, and a padlock means that it is available only to you.

Block people so they can't contact you

If someone is bothering you with messages, or you want to block access to your page for some person, go to their profile and click on the three dots icon. Select “Block” from the menu that appears.

In your security settings, you can enable notifications about login attempts to your Facebook account.

There you can set up alerts so that you receive an email or Facebook notification every time you try to log in. If you enable Login Verification, you will have to enter an additional code from SMS each time you sign in to Facebook on a new device.

Get rid of tons of notifications

Choose what types of notifications you want to receive.

Moreover, you can set up notifications differently on the website and in the mobile app. Go to the "Notifications" section and do this.

Turn off all notifications for posts you commented on

Surely you have had the experience of commenting on some post and then greatly regretting it because you started receiving a lot of notifications about new comments.

You can unsubscribe from notifications of any activity associated with any post. This feature will definitely save you the next time your friends decide to start a political debate in the comments.

Once you receive a notification about a new comment, click on the cross to the right of it and select "Mute".

The function also works in the opposite direction. You can enable notifications for any activity on a post by clicking on the arrow to the right of it and selecting “Enable notifications for this post” from the drop-down menu.

Turn off birthday reminders

If you're tired of Facebook constantly reminding you of your friends' birthdays, turn off this feature.

In your account settings, go to the "

Alexander Ivanov

In this article we will talk about what Facebook is, its capabilities and why it is needed for any business.

This social network is designed both for communication and for attracting customers. It was founded in 2004 by the now well-known Mark Zuckerberg while studying at Harvard University and is one of the five most visited websites in the world.

In 2017, Facebook's audience exceeded 2 billion users. There are many thematic communities where you can find like-minded people and friends with similar interests.

Any user can easily expand their professional contacts, search for clients and colleagues. To establish business connections, certain information that can be provided during registration helps.

Initially, Facebook was intended only for communication, thanks to which companies have the opportunity to receive almost instant feedback from personal clients and partners.

Reviews play a very important role in the promotion process, since a person will always trust the opinions of others. Therefore, just creating an advertising company is not enough. This is where business begins.

Features on Facebook

1. Testing demand for new products or services.
2. Attracting partners and clients.
3. Receive instant feedback on published information.
4. Advertising of goods or services.
5. Posting information about the company and its activities.
6. Direct communication with your audience.

In addition to all this, you can create business pages, personal pages, groups (communities), applications, and so on. This is how groups of people are formed according to interests, views and type of activity.

On their pages, users can publish fresh and useful information for a specific target audience, thereby increasing interest in their project.

If you manage your account correctly, you can quickly and successfully expand your customer base and, of course, increase sales.

How to Create a Successful Business Page

The basic principle is that the page should convey the idea that is reflected in the title. The design should also match the theme so that users can quickly find their way and make their choice.

Your main task is to gather as many target audiences as possible, which includes not only people interested in this idea, but also potential buyers.

The name should be unique and immediately catchy, and not repulsive.

Facebook has a personal internal search that many people use. Therefore, it is recommended to mention the keywords for which you would like to rank in the title of the page.

The main business idea should be written on the wall: add the necessary links and contacts so that the user can easily go to your site or contact you somehow.

The first thing the user notices is the cover, which should be bright and catchy. It should also reflect well the idea of ​​your business.

The left menu contains tools that you can use to create tabs or any other purpose.

The next step is to fill out the page.

In addition to posts that will bring potential customers to your site, you should note other interesting information on the topic.

For example, you can post news from your personal website once a day and provide useful advice or educational and training materials the same amount.

Be sure to add a survey, generate a review, and post a video once a week.

It would be nice to organize some promotions or competitions once a month. This way you can quickly engage visitors who will like, comment, and repost.

How to promote your business page

To promote, you can use paid or free methods.

The free ones are as follows:

• leave comments on behalf of your business page. The title will appear as a link, which will encourage you to go to your personal page. To do this, next to the “main” inscription, select the desired one from the list;
• you can join an unlimited number of thematic groups that suit your topic, and attract users from there using posts with links;
• You can attract traffic to business pages from your personal Facebook profile;
• if you have a website, then use it to promote the page. Install relevant widgets or links;
• You can exchange posts with other public pages of similar topics.

Paid promotion methods include:

• Targeted advertising - in the right column or news feed;
• Advertising through the owner of the community you are interested in, who, in turn, publishes your post on his page or group.

In order to make the most of all the features of Facebook, you can check out this cool online training .

What can you promote on Facebook?

Before we talk about what exactly can be promoted on this social network, let's figure out why Facebook?

In the vastness of the RuNet, about 30 million users visit this network every month, which is several times less than the audience of VKontakte. But at the same time, the age range of these people is from 18 to 45 years.

This is a fairly active audience, which, moreover, is much more solvent. And this has not been a secret for a long time.

You can only register on FB from the age of 13, and it does not contain free content such as music and films.

A business page can act as a business card for your own or corporate website. On it you can publish announcements of new materials or articles on similar topics, thanks to which your site will be constantly visited by the target audience.

Information businessmen who sell courses, trainings, seminars or coaching, owners of their own businesses, online stores, and networkers are actively promoting on Facebook.

Conclusion

To summarize, I would like to say that Facebook is a powerful marketing tool. Profiles, pages and groups make it possible to quickly achieve success, expand your customer base and increase sales!

A huge number of companies are proof of this.

This is where I end. Don't forget to subscribe to blog updates and the Telegram channel t.me/site, as well as share information on social networks.

Happy promotion!