Category: Facebook

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Facebook Changes Fan or Business Page Look Again

In an effort to blur the difference between fan or business pages and personal profiles even more, Facebook this past week changed how business pages look. The basic behind the scenes control panel for business pages has not changed, but the look and feel has changed significantly.

First, I have to say that I don’t like the new look. Before Business pages had tabs across the top; allowing you good control over helping to focus your user on things that were important to you. Now tabs have gone away, imitating the look of a personal profile, and links to pages have moved to a lower left sidebar. For me, the issue was, if we created a Giveaway tab now this tab is hidden under the “show more options” in the left sidebar and so is not featured as in the old business page look. The end user may miss our giveaway or have to hunt to find it.

One thing I do like is the option to select entities from which you post. Now when you post updates to someone else’s wall, you have the option to choose to be posting from your personal profile or your business page profile. Actually, that is a good thing as when I post on other Business’ walls, my icon and link was to my personal profile. Not my choice but Facebook’s default. Now I can choose. By choosing to post as my business entity, my icon and link matches my Facebook business page and so drives traffic to my page not my locked down, family only, personal profile.

What do you think about Facebook’s new look for Business pages. Click comments and let me know.

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HootSuite Introduces Bulk Upload Option for Pro Accounts

If you have the HootSuite Pro version then you may have already tried this option. If you are using HootSuite Free then this may be the reason to upgrade, and if you are not using HootSuite at all, this may be the reason you take a look.

HootSuite is an online Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, and Facebook Page update and status scheduling tool. I have used it for team management and self management of small accounts. Just this last week I checked out the Pro account version Bulk Upload of status update features.

First although HootSuite offers a sample .csv file to review and to use for your own updates, I found that Excel kept changing the date format and did not offer the date format they wanted for load, and so I moved to Notepad to do my list creation.

This is the format to use:

09/02/2011 09:00,”Check out our blog writing prices and blog clients on this page.”,”http://ow.ly/3S5ru”

Note that the date format is day first, then month, then year followed by time on a 24 hour clock. The update must be wrapped in quotes, and then the URL wrapped in quotes. Each of these three fields is separated by a comma.  You may be able to leave your URL as pointing to your own domain, but to be safe, I shrunk my URL ahead of time.

Of important note is that HootSuite will not allow duplicate updates. So you can not load more than one version. Additionally the Bulk Upload feature allows for 50 unique updates to be loaded maximum at a time. I found that the load creation was time consuming, but was able to be used on multiple accounts and as I saved the document, will allow me to use and re-use this load anytime I go on vacation for coverage.

When you go to upload your text file, you will put your select your social network from the icon list, then put your cursor in the message field. The box opens and allows you (for Pro accounts only) the option to bulk upload. Browse to your upload file then click Okay. You will then see all your updates appear in the pending stream column.

I think this is a great new feature for HootSuite. Social Oomph offers this same feature for Professional accounts as well but without duplication restriction. Please note that if you click the links in this post and purchase either Professional level accounts from these suppliers that they will pay me a commission which will allow me to buy lunch at McDonald’s. Thanks for your support and try out these two applications they may end up being big time savers for you too.

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With Facebook and Twitter, Do You Still Need Blogging?

Many clients are now investing time and money on keeping Twitter and Facebook updated so with all of that do you still need your blog updated? Absolutely!

If your blog is installed under your own domain and resides on your website server then adding to your blog benefits the organic placement of your website as you build blog content. Twitter and Facebook are important ways to engage customers, search engines are starting to look at your activity on these networks as part of their SocialRank scale which impacts organic placement, but activity on these platforms does not build website content like blogging does.

When it comes to choosing where your money is best spent to improve organic search placement I like blogging best, then Facebook and finally Twitter. I place Facebook above Twitter as Facebook is where your prospects are spending a significant part of their time and I feel it is important to engage them where they are active.

Although SocialRank does not carry the same weight in organic placement as PageRank, both Google and Bing are actively now monitoring SocialRank. I feel that over time the activity you have on Facebook and Twitter will become more important in affecting your organic placement and where you appear in personalized search results.

In fact for national businesses involvement and engagement on Facebook and Twitter may be key to mitigating the focus of localize search results in organic placement that Google and Bing are both pushing at this time. I say that as search results are now personalized and focus heavily on showing results in your geographic area, but also include a social component where personal connections and interconnections are a factor of the results you see as well.

We invite you to find our more about our services for blog writing, Facebook updates, and Twitter writing if you have a need.

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Facebook Lessons Learned

My understanding of what people want from a Facebook Business Page is changing over time as we get feedback and interaction from colleagues, fans, and clients. Here are a few things that I have learned and am still doing testing on our own Business Page.

  • People are thirsty to connect with a person. Too much selling information or focus on your own services is a real no-no.
  • People want to have personal tidbits about you. Although you do not want nor have to reveal a lot of personal information about yourself on a Facebook Business Page. People do want to know who they talk to on the phone. They love to see photos to “know” who you are.
  • Fans and visitors love humor. A funny video, joke, quote, or funny photo can really elicit a positive response.
  • Asking questions and taking polls can engage visitors and clients.
  • Commenting back on a thread on your Business wall is a must. Make sure that fans and visitors see that you are interacting with what they write.

For us, we are testing and having fun with a new concept of engagement using our spokesdog. It is not hard nor time consuming to put a little bit of “personal” juice behind your Facebook posts. Remember people who are visiting you are used to the personal interaction from their own personal page on Facebook, your Business Page needs to reflect and feed this need to get the best response from your visitors.