Here at CalmLogic we spend a lot of time trying out different social networks, as you would expect, what with us running so many of them and all. But, because of this we are constantly discovering new ways to use those pages, shortcuts and tricks if you will. And because we’re all nice we thought we’d share a few of those rarely discovered features with you.

You don’t have to thank us, but if you want to cake is always good. Just make sure there’s something dairy free for our resident vegan.

Anyway, lets talk Facebook for a moment.
I’m pretty sure we don’t need to have too much of a discussion about its hidden features, you’ve probably clocked up enough hours yourself stalking your friends and untagging unflattering pictures of yourself for there to be too many things you don’t know about. But here’s a few hints about stuff Facebook can do for your business that you might not have known.

Firstly, and this is something we do, you can edit links. So, you’re perusing the web and you find a link to something you want to share with all your Facebook friends, just copy and paste that into your status bar, and although your link is there so is the URL with all its nasty numbers and dashes and dots. No one wants to see that, not good at all if you’re a business with some really important things you want to show your clients. The good thing is if you clear what’s left in your status the link doesn’t disappear! Stick your own title in there and get everyone’s attention! You can decide which picture to have too if there’s more than one on the page. Awesome.

Whilst we’re talking status updates, have you ever wanted to link someone to a song before? Perhaps this rad tune has been roaming around your head all day, maybe you’re a musician or a company that deals with music. Whatever, if you copy a link into your status that ends with .mp3 , good old Facebook will create a little music player for you in the middle of the post making it easier for friends to listen. Isn’t that nice of them?

One great feature that you business types can use to gauge a public reaction is a poll… Now, these pop up from time to time but how do you do them? Where do you find the poll button? What’s the meaning of life? Well, hiding just above the little status box is a tab that says “ask questions.” Click that and your status will become a little questionnaire that you can post your own questions too. How cool is that? *

Want to make it look like you’re working whilst you’re untagging those photos or trying to look up that really hot red head from the bar Saturday night? Well, here’s just the thing! Using Facebook you and your colleagues / customers can collaborate on documents. If you’re all part of a group then there’s a little DOCs tab at the top of the page, it’s a bit like having a google doc or one of those posh ones they offer with Microsoft Live. But on Facebook, so you can work and stalk that red head.

If you’re a successful business, and I’m going out on a limb here and assuming that you are because you’re using us for your social media, you can use Facebook to inform all your friends/ clients of all your upcoming events. I’m guessing you guys have some sort of fun social gathering for real people to attend right? And you want people to come along and drink all the cheap wine and eat all the nibbles and generally enjoy your company and its products right?
Well, then, make them aware of it, using your Facebook page. Don’t just post a wishy washy little status about it, not everyone is going to see, these people are busy and popular and probably have a million friends with relationship issues posting and over flowing the time line. Instead, you want to make a calendar.

The Social Calendar app wasn’t designed by Facebook, but it works well with it. They’re like Morecambe and Wise. Or Ant and Dec maybe. Anyway, head to facebook.com/socialcalendar, there will be a link so that you can add it to your page, and voila! Your page now has a calendar! Awesome sauce. What’s more, it’s a really clever app and it’ll automatically put in all the events you’ve already created, which means less work for you! Or us… If you’re just instructing us to do it.

Another great business tool is the insights feature. This’ll show you a pretty graph so that you know how many people have been on and read through your page, because likes can be deceptive sometimes. Chances are your mum will have clicked like but it doesn’t mean she’s checking your page every five minutes. You can even export that little graph into excel if you want to, that way you can show your boss that we’re a really great use of company expense.

Now would be a good time to bring us that cake you promised.
Remember, there needs to be something dairy free for the vegan, but alls fair in love and cake. Just no carrot cake. Because vegetables should not be a primary focus in the cake baking process.

*We did a poll on Facebook. Apparently, its very cool.