Category: Facebook

On September 22nd, Facebook announced a broad sweeping change to personal profile. Here’s what your profile will look like on September 30th at the new roll out.

It is cool looking, isn’t it? The new profile photo is a thumbnail of you and then a cover photo of your choice. The rest of the profile is very graphic and video oriented as well as offering a timeline of your life in status updates and photos. It is almost a resume of your life. You can only see the new look if you are a Facebook Developer at this point, but on September 30th all profiles will share this same new look. For some of us, this gives us a jump on fixing up our personal profiles ahead of the changeover.

For Facebook Business Pages, Facebook has not said just how much will change, but I would imagine that the cover will also be a big feature. Some of the things we do know is that these items are going away for Business Pages:

• The ability to send out email updates to all fans with one click. This important feature for Business Pages will disappear after September 30th.
• The ability to feed your blog to your notes page. This feature disappears for both business and personal pages on September 30th as well.
• Users will not need to “like” your page anymore to interact with your business content. The value of a “like” will be significantly changed.

It appears that Facebook is really pushing to move Business Pages into Facebook stories or product/service pay per click advertising to get the exposure they need.

As a result of these changes, look for new Facebook Services on our website as we understand what will work for businesses and Facebook.

So you are doing everything right, you are updating Facebook regularly and trying to interact with clients and customers there. You are sharing photos and occasional videos, but are concerned that your fan base is just not growing. What can you do?

First, your social community grows by a combined online and offline effort. Yes, it is important to make sure that you have something valuable for fans and potential fans to read when they hit your Facebook Business Page, but your fan base will not grow all by itself. To grow a Facebook fan base you need to be doing the following to drive traffic and create your own “buzz”.

1. Make sure you have a Facebook icon on your website and blog. You would be amazed at how many people forget this important step.

2. If you are blogging and you really should be, make sure you are blogging about what you are doing on Facebook and link in your posts as well.

3. In your newsletter, which you should be doing also, you need to link to Facebook and also talk about the valuable tips and tricks you are listing there or the other things you are routinely sharing on Facebook.

4. On Twitter, which you should be doing as well, you should be driving traffic to your Facebook page. Again talk about value and link to the videos or pictures you are sharing.

5. In your email signature you should be linking to all your online properties: website, blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Let everyone of your emails be an advertisement of how people can connect with you online.

6. If your fan base is still stagnant after aggressively pursing these avenues, now’s the time to consider a Facebook contest, giveaway, or even Facebook pay per click ads.

There is great value in building your Facebook fan base. Doing so allows you to market using the Facebook encapsulated email client directly to your fans’ inbox bypassing spam filters. You want to consider this access as a special trust. Don’t spam your users and really try to have your notes provide value as well as highlight service offerings.

The more you work your network, the more it will grow, but remember it does not grow over night, it does take time. If you need help getting started on Facebook, I invite you to check out our services.