What’s the difference between tagging or mentioning someone on Facebook? And why am I seeing someone else’s post on my timeline? In this fourth edition of our series How to Use Facebook, we’ve decoded some terms and laid out a few helpful tips on using these engagement tools effectively to help you reach and grow your audience.
We’ve also put together a short tips for engagement infographic, and provided some links to Facebook’s Meta Business Help Center resources.
Tag or Mention?
Tags and Mentions create a linked connection of your content with the person or page that you are talking about or highlighting in your post. To do either, you must be friends or following the account you want to link to. Depending on privacy settings in the receiver’s account, it may not be possible to tag or mention them. In any case, your content may not be added to the receivers timeline automatically, but a notification will always be delivered, at which point the receiver can choose to add the post to their page. A note of caution here: it’s considered bad practice to tag multiple unrelated parties in a post, or on a regular basis just to get attention, as it could lead to a spam report and a flag on your account. Use your discretion as to who you want to connect with and include in your content.
The term ‘Tag’ is most often used for both tagging and mentioning and while they are very similar, there are a couple differences:
- Tags are for when you want to say you were with someone
- Can only be done by the content creator
- Can only be used to link personal profiles (friends)
- Can be applied to photos or in the post content
- Tag by simply typing the recipient’s name, their account will pop up and you click on it to apply the tag
- May automatically add your content to their timeline
- Notifies other parties to your post
- Can be used to notify all members of a group at the same time (@everyone)
- Mentions are for when you want to talk about someone
- Can be done by anyone
- Used to link to a page or group you want to be seen by
- The creator adds it in the body of the post or comments section
- Mention by using @StartTypingName and if it is allowable, the account will pop up. Click on the right prompt to create a link
- Followers can create mentions and share your post to their connections through the comments section
- May add your content to their timeline
- Notifies other party to your post
- Can be used to notify a large group of people at the same time (@followers)
Use your privacy settings to control what can show up on your timeline. Best practice is to set it to:
- Allow only approved admins to post content to your page
- Review posts you’re tagged in before allowing it to appear on your page.
Use Hashtags
Using Hashtags turn your post into a clickable link to help people find your content in a search for specific topics, phrases, events or geographic area. People can use hashtags in the search bar and see a list of content created with that hashtag to find accounts with information on that subject. This information is shown as far as your post or page privacy settings. If your post is for friends or group members only, using hashtags may not have much advantage. If your post is for public awareness, using hashtags is a great way to be included in search results.
- Hashtags can be a word or phrase but must be written as a single word with no spaces
- Add hashtags at the end of your post after all the important information
- Include topics, phrases or geographical places you would like the post to be found for: #WEAAD2024 #HealthyAging #BCCRN #ElderAbusePrevention #Vancouver
- Popular hashtags will show up when you start composing a word, giving you a choice to click on a suggestion and adopt what’s most used or trending, or continue to do your own thing
FOLLOW UP
This may seem a little repetitive but it cannot be said enough. If your focus is only on putting content on your page and do not pay attention to how others interact with your page, your page may not grow as quickly as you like, and in some cases, may even cost you followers.
- Reply to any comments left for you
- Like and comment back to people who make comments on your content
- Thank anyone who shares your posts
- Remove any inappropriate comments from your content
- Turn off commenting if the conversation gets out of hand
- Block accounts that are offensive or spammy
- Check your notifications regularly for information on updates and account activity
Beyond maintaining good engagement, if you need to understand or report on how well your page is growing, there are tools in Meta that will show you insights to your page and give you measurable statistics on what kind of content hit the target.
Join Us
The purpose of this How to Use Facebook series of articles is to help people who are already on Facebook to connect and share information more effectively with their communities. We’ve gathered some information on how to best use Facebook for organic growth and put together a short infographic with some basic rules of engagement.
Catch up on previous articles in our series if you’re not sure why Facebook is the most popular social media platform online, or how to engage, reach and grow your audience.
Watch for our next installation for tips on how to recognize different types of Facebook fraud and protect the security of your account.
Follow us @BC Community Response Networks to catch all the latest information and resource updates and share with your local community. We invite you to tag us in your posts so we can celebrate with you and share your events too.
And be sure to check back here on our website regularly for all our event updates, resources and information on a wide-array of topics.
Facebook resources for engagement in this article:
Tips for engagement infographic
Tag a person or page on Facebook
Mention a person or page in a post
Manage tags & mentions on your page
Remove offensive comments in a post
Turn off commenting for a post
Block offensive or spam accounts
Explore our website to learn more about BC CRN or connect with your local CRN for more information or resources.
