Using social media is an affordable option for small businesses that are looking to productively engage with their audience and generate buzz for their products and services.  However, staying informed about changes to existing platforms presents a serious challenge to marketing professionals as even the savviest of Facebook users might be unaware of new features that could benefit their efforts.

CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts Penny Sansevieri understands this unique challenge, and in her latest article posted to PR Newswire’s Small Business PR Toolkit, discusses various ways to harvest the power of Facebook.

Facebook Ads With its endless choices, the Facebook dashboard can be daunting for first time users. Sansevieri suggests focusing your efforts on “boosted posts” and “ads with a specific call to action.”

Boosted posts: This cost effective option is usually the go-to because of its low cost and ease of use. For a nominal fee you can boost posts that your audience is already engaged with and limit the exposure to your targeted demographic.

Ads: Consider driving your audience to a blog post that contains a great call to action such as a newsletter sign-up. To be effective use casual language in the ad with an eye-catching image. Both of these can help to engage your existing fans and also build up a new following.

Facebook posts. To optimize your Facebook posts without spending any money consider the following:

Posting times. Identify the specific time slot from your posts that have the highest levels of engagement. If you uncover a trend, Sansevieri suggests you continue to post during those times.