Facebook for Business – Pages vs Profiles

January 8, 2012 By Anita M. Hicks

Do you own, operate or market a small business? If so, you are most likely using social media as a part of your marketing plan. While you are navigating through the multiple social media networks, remember to add a Facebook Page for your business. There are various reasons which I will discuss below why this can be an exceptional tool for your business. It is a different creature – a Facebook Page – then a personal profile at Facebook.

A Facebook profile is the one which almost everyone has and usually is in your name – Jane Doe – or in my case, Anita M Hicks. There are limitations to your personal profile and one is that you can only have 5,000 friends. A Facebook Page created for your business may have an unlimited number people “Like” it or be a “Fan”.

As part of the Facebook experience, your personal profile – Anita M Hicks – has privacy settings that you can have only friends or friends of friends etc to view your posts. Your limitations and privacy selections mean that your Facebook content on your personal – Jane Doe – profile will never be indexed to search engines.

But, a Facebook Page is indexed to search engines! You must have a ‘username’ or ‘vanity url’. Your Facebook Page will be indexed to the top three search engines once this criteria and 100 people that “Like” it or “Fans”. Having words like “home” indexed to search engines for a real estate agent is a valuable tool.

At your personal – John Smith – profile on Facebook, you can only add tabs that they supply Apps for and those are very limited now that they are feeding ads to the right of your profile. A Facebook Page allows Custom Tabs for Welcome or Landing Pages, Testimonials and more!

A Facebook Page is an excellent way to connect with your customers!

A closing tidbit —

33% of Facebook users are “Fans” of brands – more than 132 million people!!

Enjoy your social media experience and get the most out of it for your business!

Facebook “Lists” – Better than Ever!

September 30, 2011 By Anita M. Hicks

Well, how are you surviving the new enhancements to Facebook, my friends? The new changes are just about complete and beginning on October 1st, all of us with personal profiles at Facebook will now have the new “Timeline”.

As many of my Facebook friends just stopped reeling from the new changes to our News Feeds and the addition of the “Ticker”, I cannot imagine what will be posted next week as status updates! My suggestion – just take a deep breathe and accept it! These are the new changes that Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team has been working towards for almost a year now! They are here to stay! From what I have seen on my team’s profiles, it looks fantastic!!

As the News Feeds have changed, many folks have begun to embrace Facebook Lists. A tool many social media folks have been using for quite a while now. Personally it was at Twitter that I first learned how to use “Lists” to limit what person’s content I followed. At Facebook, they are even more prominent now.

See "Lists" on Left Side of my Home Feed - Click on this Image to view Larger

“Lists” appear at your News Feed or Home on the left side (see photo – mine show “Family” and “VC”). Most of us have at least Close Friends or Family now. Acquaintances will be automatically added for everyone to use as of October 1st! On the left side if you hover over where the lists appear, a “More” will appear which when clicked on, opens a window to add, edit or create new lists.

Click on this Image to Enlarge

In this window you can create many lists. I have ones for “Clients”, for my sister VAs (virtual assistants), for “Facebook Info” and even “Just for Fun”. The lists allow you to see the folks you place in the lists data that they post only. It limits your News Feed to those people or pages you add to that list. In addition, the “Close Friends” List sends you notifications when that person posts anything!

You can even create a list with just one person; for instance I have one for my daughter as at 13 years, I want to keep a close eye on what she is doing at Facebook.

There is a way to create a List that is titled “Most Recent” and have it feed all of those posts also. Try working with it; playing with it and if you have any questions, please let me know how I can help!

Stay cool in this beautiful Fall weather!

Branding – in social media, really?

July 2, 2011 By Anita M. Hicks

This is just me thinking out loud again, but really – I keep hearing and reading all these articles about branding your business on social media. Branding seems like a cold, withdrawn word. It reminds me of branding cattle; I suppose as I grew up on farms and watching westerns. LOL.

But, branding as a tool to use in social media seems kind of out there to me as I always look at social media as a way to build and strengthen relationships.

But, then I Googled the word branding and here is what I received in search which makes me a much happier camper!

One – Branding for social media means helping people remember your reputation, value and promises. For instance, I promise to make your social media fly to new heights using social media by creating personalized profiles which use custom details to set your business aside from others. I love dragonflies, so I help you fly!

Two – Branding in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and You Tube means creating an emotional connection. Yes, emotional connection. Let’s think about this for a moment using a name brand we all recognize – how about Pepsi and Coke? I interviewed 6 people and asked which they preferred. Which ever it was, they had an emotional connection with it. For instance, I love Pepsi, and first drank it with my grandmom and so there it is – an emotional connection. This is what folks need to have with your business as they will then remember you and give you referrals to others!

Three – Branding is one of your greatest assets in social media marketing. By creating a presence in folks minds through valuable posts, interactions and frequent contact, you are obtaining an intangible and very valuable asset for your business.

Branding through social media is sort of like branding a cow, but a lot less painful with a bunch more relationship building!

Wishing everyone a most joyful and safe July 4th holiday! 🙂

How to be in Two Places at One Time

January 16, 2011 By Anita M. Hicks

Okay, how do you manage to be in two places at one time? Sometimes as a virtual assistant people ask me how do I manage to get so much done. It seems I’m on the computer a ton of hours and yet, I do make meetings and do some networking, have a family and love to volunteer my time to help others. How do I manage? Well, sometimes, I don’t. But, to help with social media – one way to give the appearance of being in two places at the same time is to use a scheduling tool.

There are Free services like Social Oomph and Hoot Suite where you can schedule your posts and content to your social media sites. This will give you an ability to do all your posts at one time of the day, week or month. You then tell the scheduling tool when to post and it does it automatically for you. This is how a very good friend of mine has 7 to 10 posts a day and yet is always meeting people!

The two I’ve listed above are just a few of these types of services out there. TweetDeck and many others are available through Twitter and there are many more out there. I especially like Hoot Suite and Social Oomph but for different reasons. I really love Hoot Suite for posting and content. I can administer many fan pages for Facebook and various Twitter accounts besides my own from this great site. Hoot Suite is user friendly for the most part, as it does take a bit of learning to set up. 🙂 Sometimes it has some issues actually feeding but about 90% of the time I am very happy! I like Social Oomph because it has a few unique and helpful other tools. For instance, I can use Social oomph to automatically follow those who follow me on Twitter. Although sometimes you have to glean those out which are not a ‘good fit’, this seems to work for me to auto follow others!

So this is how I am at a network event and yet, posting for 10 clients and myself at Facebook and Twitter and Linked In!

Shhh – don’t tell my secret to anyone of how to be in 2 places at 1 time! LOL! 🙂

Happy New Year & Facebook Changes!

December 31, 2010 By Anita M. Hicks

Happy New Year to All!

It is a New year – 2011! New possibilities, New abundance and a New Hope for 2011!!

As we all settle back into a regular work schedule from the holidays, remember that 2011 means many New changes at Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg and his team have been informing us through Facebook reminders and many media outlets that 2011 will have new software changes allowing users to connect more easily. In this You Tube video, by CBS titled, Mark Zuckerberg & Facebook, we are told Facebook is moving forward!

What do these changes mean? Oh, you want it in English not Facebook language?

Okay – here’s what I can do for you – Facebook changes will include a few of these things –

New Profiles for both Personal and Business pages
No more Boxes or Customized Tabs
New Page coding changes – No more FBML boxes by January, 2011

Here are the few things we know about the new profiles and pages. Many of the almost 600 million users are now experiencing the new profile pages. These are showing the work, education and location information from the “Info” tab right at the top of your profile. Your featured photos are the ones based on who has tagged you recently in a photo. The new profiles will also give you to the left the important people in your life. You can manipulate this data by inputting or removing the data from the Info tab. Or by clicking on “Featured” Photos and move them around. Your family pics only show if you give that info.

These new changes will become the profile template for business pages soon.

Well, it sounds pretty good so far, what are we missing? Okay, did you have a “Flair”, “Sports Favorite Page” or any other customized navigational tab before the new profile? Well – ta dah – they are gone! Did you like being able to put your status in the left ‘status’ box and at the top of your profile? Too bad, they are gone. The status was a ‘box’ and remember, boxes are gone!

As far as Facebook Pages for Business (new name they are calling them now – no longer ‘Fan Pages’) – there are going to be changes to the way “Welcome pages” are created. Any custom page or navigational tab is creating through Facebook’s code (FBML). During the first week of January, the FBML will be eliminated. Any pages created prior to that will be fine! But, if you are a virtual assistant or computer programmer / designer of Facebook pages, you had better begin learning Java Script or IFrames ASAP!

Those folks who have custom tabs for their testimonials, charts or data for your business or any other personalized tabs may experience some sizing issues after the first of the year, also. The 500 pixels existing size is still under review by Facebook.

Welcome to the New Year! Here’s wishing you the most abundant 2011 possible! 🙂

Bye Bye Facebook Boxes – Are YOU ready?

August 20, 2010 By Anita M. Hicks

This Monday, August 23rd, 2010, Facebook developers will roll out the new software. This will mean many changes for users. One of the biggest ones all social media specialists are talking about is – Boxes are Going Bye Bye! We are now hearing some suggestions from my colleagues in social media that if you do not move your boxes onto tabs by Monday morning, you will lose the information contained in the boxes altogether.

Are you ready?

What are boxes? Do I have any? These are the questions people I know on Facebook are asking me. Sure you have boxes on your personal profile, if you are a sports fan of some team and added a box down the left sidebar for your team. You have a box if you have a Cause that you support and added the box showing their great non-profit information. If you have a cute family box, smiley faces, flowers, hearts or any of these personalized boxes on your Wall / Profile’s left sidebar. What if you had some smart person help you add an icon for your Fan page – YEP – that is going away also! If you have your photos down the left sidebar in a box or Links these are affected also.

Look below and you’ll find a screen shot of my profile which is showing the box for Flair. To remove the box, click on the pencil icon. A new box will appear that says Remove Box. Click on this and the box is removed. Never fear, it did not disappear. The box is now on your tabs – navigational tabs. (These are located at the top of your Profile – starting with Wall, Info, etc. )

Below is another screen shot showing the extra navigational tabs and where they can be found. In this shot, you can see when you click on the “>>”, it gives you a list of your extra navigational tabs. When I clicked on Flair, it added it to my navigational tabs that others can see.

Facebook limits us to 6 (Six) navigational tabs for your Facebook profile/wall or Fan page. that others can see without clicking the extra ‘>>’ icon. Last year I had read that Facebook developers were considering allowing 2 rows of navigational tabs, but I think that has been thrown out the ‘software developers window’ now.

I have to admit, honestly, it took me a bit to figure all this ‘Boxes’ stuff out and I hope this helps someone out there. 🙂

Thinking out loud about … Facebook changes

August 15, 2010 By Anita M. Hicks

Here they come – More Facebook Changes … Oh joy… Can you sense my sarcasm?? I know, I know change is good, right? I am embracing it and accepting it. This is one of my steps to realizing that it is what it is, as by blogging, I am hoping to share some bit of knowledge that some you may not know. This may make the change easier for us all.

It seems that every few months Facebook developers in their infinite, 500 million users, wisdom decide to make changes. The newest version of their ‘upgrades to make it easier to navigate’ will roll out for ALL of us on August 23, 2010. I just have to say I am not very pleased that the gist of it is that we are losing space. What does Facebook plan to do with all the new space that the 500 pixels custom tabs and loss of boxes will create.

There are two parts to the new changes. The first one is the boxes. All box applications are being removed. Boxes will go away. For those of you that do not grasp what boxes do for us here are some examples:

Hold cute hearts, puppy dogs, your favorite football/basketball etc team
Create a place for your FLAIR
Create a place for your favorite charity box
On Fan pages – boxes hold your customized FBML – like social media icons, website graphic links and much more
On Fan pages – Favorite boxes – Favorites of other fan pages

Ok these are just a few of the applications that boxes are used to help us personalize our walls for our personal profiles and for our Fan pages. These boxes down the left sidebar are going to ‘disappear’ on August 23rd, 2010 – Poof – Gone! I have yet to find one article, forum or post from Facebook or any other social media blog, writer, or company that explains how we are going to replace these valuable items.

Navigational tabs can be used for some of these items, but at this time, Facebook limits us to only 6 navigational tabs per profile or fan page at one time. 🙁

The second part of the changes are to Fan pages at Facebook. These are now going to be limited to only 520 pixels per customized page or as Facebook calls them – custom tabs. Translation here is – all Welcome Pages or Landing Pages that are created for your Fan page usually are in 760 pixels. Now they will be missing 1/3 of their page if you do not update the data to 520 pixels by August 23rd. At this time all Admins of pages can see the way their Welcome or Custom Tab/Page will look, but only Admins – the rest of the Facebook community will be able to view them at 520 pixels on August 23, 2010. This means much smaller pages for all Fan pages – urg. Why less space?

It also applies to anyone that has a Fan page with a Custom Tab for Testimonials or for a Newsletter Subscription box as most of those are created in 760 pixels, also and will require changes.

Needless to say, changes are coming – Are you ready? My staff is gearing up here! Hope this is information that may help some of you. Have a great day 🙂

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