Have you heard about the new Women’s Safety Hub on Facebook?

It has been announced that Facebook has pulled together its own team of female experts to help combat women’s safety on Facebook. The social media platform have stated that they believe women should have equal access to all economic opportunity, education and social connections that the internet provides. They’ve taken a comprehensive approach to making their platform a safer place for women. These security changes are applicable to Facebook business pages and groups.

Found on gov.uk the Home Secretary has noted that there are increasing reports of abuse and extreme sexism surfacing in the use of online forums, social media platforms and newer apps.

The hub hopes to be a place for all security resources that will help keep women safe from online abuse. These resources include tools such as comment control, keyword blockers, video on demand training and new procedures to help the public remove inappropriate content.

Amnesty.org has listed some of the main issues that are created from the online harassment of women on social media; apprehension using the internet, a sense of powerlessness and feeling a threat to physical safety. They gathered their statistics from an online survey comprised of women aged between 18-55 in eight different countries.

As Facebook is the biggest social media platform with over 2.85 billion users, it is vital that they take the lead in keeping women safe online.

Improve the way you use Facebook for business

The latest blog from Cardiff media consultants, The Media Angels. This week, we’re looking at how you can improve the way you’re business uses Facebook.

1. Add information to your page – opening times, what you do, contact details, website address

Facebook is probably the most customisable platforms you can use for your business. In settings, there are many templates you can choose from which suggest different features to highlight in order to get the most out of your page. You can modify your homepage to show a custom button, it could be “Visit our website” or “Book now”, depending on your business. You can also set a photo reel to show at the top of your page, and pin important posts to the top of your timeline. Your cover photo is also an important feature, unlike in LinkedIn, you get quite a lot of space to use and so it’s important to make the most of it. We try and change ours depending on events or the seasons.

2. Use analytics – see when your followers are most active, what posts generate the most interest

As with most social media platforms, it’s important to utilise analytics. Facebook’s are quite in-depth and you are able to see; page views, post reach and how recent posts have performed. This is helpful as it let’s you see which post format works the best for your page. Are they it photos, polls, blogs? You can also see an overview of your competitor’s pages, allowing you to see how their pages are performing in comparison.

3. Check out your competitors – what do they do, what posts work for them

On that note, it’s important to see what your competitors are up to! How active are they on social media? Are you using the same social media platforms as they are? Have a look at their pages and see what posts are working for them.

4. Use different formats – pictures, statistics, polls, light-hearted posts…

We find it helps to use a variety of post formats, to keep our page varied. Facebook has a lot of formats you can choose from including polls, pictures, carousels etc. We also try and vary between light-hearted posts and statistics or blogs from the industry. This helps get our personality across but also keep in touch with market news.

5. Use Facebook tools to make your life easier!

On Facebook you can schedule posts to upload at a set time and date. We find this feature helpful for finding out when our followers are most active and what times our posts get the best engagement. For our pages it varies from platform to platform, for example our Instagram page gets better engagement if we post in the evening but our Facebook and Twitter works better in the morning and afternoon. This is a trial and error process to see when your posts do their best, but it is worth doing!