Facebook continues being one of the most powerful social hubs for promoting yourself and businesses with no slowdowns in sight. One of the greatest aspects of Facebook is how they continue bringing updates to improve all their features. Everything from Facebook Stories to how marketers and creators collaborate allow for ever-efficient marketing tools.

So what are the latest updates for this year? You’ll want to know what’s going on so you can use them to your advantage. Whether you use Facebook for a fan page, or to promote your business, these updates shape how people find you and your brand.

1. Some Boosted Posts Are Being Retired

If you’ve ever used the boosted post feature on Facebook to help your marketing or creative projects, Facebook is about to retire the function. Previously, it allowed people to promote their posts to specific people with one click of the notable blue button.

While Facebook plans to keep some features of boosted posts, they didn’t have enough people using it to keep all features going. They’ll be removing numerous boosts for specific things. Some of these include poll sharing, videos and images uploaded through the Facebook camera, and all political endorsements.

Take a look at the complete list to see how this affects you.

2. Video Placements

Those of you using in-stream video placements to promote yourself can now get more control over where you post these videos. They’ll let you place videos directly on Facebook, or on Audience Network.

This is only going to increase your viewership while subsequently better targeting your intended audiences.

3. Facebook Stories Now Let You Share Publicly

We all know Facebook lifted from SnapChat when creating Facebook Stories. Nevertheless, it hasn’t diminished the latter’s usefulness. Facebook recently expanded on this thanks to letting you share Stories to the public.

Beforehand, you could only share Stories to friends or those who followed you. Now it’s possible to gain a wider reach to everyone. It’s likely going to help establish more internet celebrities that SnapChat and Instagram always nurture.

4. Integrating With Instagram Stories

It seems Facebook is never afraid to integrate things if it helps improve ways to create more compelling content. With Facebook Stories becoming more popular than ever, the company recently allowed users to take Instagram Stories and automatically post them to Facebook.

Thanks to Facebook owning Instagram, it only makes this integration easier. However, it’s bringing a smart consolidation to help users reach wider audiences. In turn, this could bring a combined audience measuring up to the numbers SnapChat Stories typically receives.

5. Introducing Facebook Watch

A unique feature recently added to Facebook is Facebook Watch, which essentially allows the public to create their own “shows.” Available to watch on any platform, you can create mini streaming programs wrapped around your brand, or for a fanpage.

The most successful Facebook Watch pages are ones that engage fans, broadcast live, and have a compelling narrative arc.

6. An Updated Ads Manager

Facebook Ads have brought a lot of amazing gifts to businesses that need to reach targeted users. They continue to update and evolve the process, including a recent update to Ads Manager. It occurred by integrating Power Editor with the Manager system.

Now you have the power to review your draft items in ads before they go live. With this new workflow, you can take on your ad campaign in a non-linear way if needed.

7. Background Colors for Text

Fortunately, Facebook continually thinks about the aesthetic value of their site. Earlier in the year, they added colorful background choices to give more incentive for people to post in the “What’s on your mind?” box.

You can customize these color choices to suit the particular post you’re creating. It’s all part of a campaign to get more people to post original content to engage among the community. Thanks to so many other great tools Facebook continues evolving or creating, color may seem only secondary in the equation.

Whether you’re just getting started with building your professional presence or Facebook or have been managing a page for years, these updates are sure to reshape how you handle your Facebook marketing. What’s been your favorite change from this year and how are you using it to your advantage?