Facebook is now allowing, even encouraging, businesses to merge their
fan page with their place page. This can be good for some businesses but
it can also be very bad for some businesses. Make sure you know what you are doing before you click the unchangeable “merge” button.(UPDATE: 1/6/11 -As of Dec. 2010
Facebook added the option to unmerge.)
Merged Fan Pages and Place Pages
Pros: 1. People who visit your place page can see
what other friends are their. They can also
see which friends were recently there. 2. A map is provided at the top of the info tab which allows people to
see exactly where the business or event is located.
Cons: 1. The default landing page cannot be changed. The default landing page is
pretty much the same thing as the wall. 2. Custom pages cannot be seen on the place page. FBML<> are an
exception to this. (UPDATE: 12/14/2010 – I can’t speak for every app
that makes custom pages, but Pagemodo.com is now able to
make a page that works. Still, be careful if you use a custom page
that isn’t provided by Pagemodo.) FBML pages will work, but you have
to know how to do Facebook’s version of html. If you have a page using a
custom Facebook application it will not be able to display. This could be
very bad if you paid a lot of money for an expensive custom page that isn’t
in FBML. 3. The tabs that are ordinarily across the top of the fan page (i.e. wall, info,
photos, notes, etc.) are moved to the left side of the Place page and are
much smaller than the fan page tabs. 4. The only people who can view the Place page are people who use smart
phone. Desktops and laptops cannot view the place page.
There has been a growing group of people who are against the merge. You
may want to follow this link to view the Facebook group and see why they
don’t like the merge.
If your business or event relies heavily on having high volumes of
traffic you may want to consider merging your page. This is especially
true if a large number of your visitors use smart phones.
For many businesses it may be a good idea to wait to see how Facebook’s
place page evolves before merging your page and losing the ability to set
the default landing page and possibly lose your custom Facebook tab.
In most cases I would highly recommend that you do not merge your page.
There are several reasons for this. If you would like me to go into more
details as to why I think most businesses should not merge you can read Don’t Let People See Your Wall! (For Fan Pages) or you can add a comment
What you want to do is let your friends know about your page and ask
them to like it. Here is how you should do that.
Every Facebook fan page administrator has the ability to “suggest to
friends.” This suggestion option is only available to page administrators
and can be found just under the profile picture on the top left of the
fan page. The customized Facebook message is sent to the inbox of each
friend the administrator selects. The message also has a link to the fan
page you are trying to promote.
The average Facebook user has 130 friends. If you suggest your
fan page to all your friends you could easily have over 100 people
“like” your page in just a few days. This step is so simple, yet extremely
effective.
Also, if you really want to take advantage of this feature you can ask a
few of your closest or most trusted friends to become temporary
administrators for you fan page. Then ask them to suggest the page to
all their friends. If you have seven of your friends do this you could have
over 1000 fans in no time.
Take advantage of the “suggest” option and watch the fan number sky-
rocket!
I hope this helps.
Thanks for reading,
~Joshua Lyons
P.S. Please leave some feedback on this if you have a second.
This post is very different from everything else I have done on this
blog; but it should help drive home the point that social media platforms
should work in unison and not independantly.
Here are three of the best minions I have ever had working for me. I have
given each one some orders. They are as follow:
Minion #1: Twitter – Twitter, when someone runs a Google search there will
be 10 results on the first page. Your job is to make my name, my
reputation, and what I have to offer appear as all ten of those top search
results. By doing this we can knock all opposition off the first page of the
search results.
Minion #2: Blogs – Blogs, your objective is to continually give the world great
information. Tell them what they want to hear and give them a longing to
come back to see what you have to say next time. Then, create interest and
desire within the reader. Persuade the reader that we are awesome and that
they will do anything for us. Convince them that they need us!
Minion #3: Facebook – Facebook, your mission is to direct our fans. If we are
needing to push them to our blog and feed them information you will give
them incentives to go there. If we need people to go to Twitter, to help
increase page rankings, you will convince the fans that they need to go to
Twitter. Do whatever is necessary to guide the world in the direction we
desire.
By having my minions work together I can create an effective plan for world
domination. If they do not work together I will be left with a team of
minions who are aimlessly trying to do something but will not be able to do
so effectively.
1. Use Twitter to get your company, products, and services all over the first
page of Google.
2. Use your blog to inform your target market and to create a desire for
what you have to offer.
3. Use Facebook as a way to guide your fans to do whatever it is that needs to
be done. This could be retweeting your tweets, posting comments on your
blog, giving feedback about a product, or something else. Facebook should
be used to direct your fans.
By making your social media platforms work together you will find your
social media campaigns to be much more successful than if they are not
working together.
Your business just made a website not too long ago. Why would you need
to have a fan page now?
From what I’ve seen a fan page is almost like another website. You can add
tabs, give promotions, say whatever you want [within reason] and you can
even insert a couple of PayPal applications.
The reason you want a fan page is because a fan page allows you to
interact with your visitors (fans). A website is generally a final
destination site that allows people to read about and purchase the products of
interest.
A website does not usually develop interest in or desire for the
products you sell. This is where a Facebook fan page comes in.
By having a fan page your company can talk about interesting
topics. Talk about the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the bed bug epidemic going
on the US and anything else that is deemed interesting. You can talk about
topics that are of interest to your target market. This shows that your
content is interesting.
Facebook vs Website
When you have a product you
really want to push you can
bring that up as a topic of
interest.
Now that people know you
speak about topics that are
interesting, and you have
developed a relationship with
your fans, you can more easily
convince your fans that your
product is both interesting
and desirable. From there you
can lead your fans to the
website or store to actually purchase the product that was pushed.
Facebook fan pages are used, unlike websites, to create targeted
relationships and to encourage product interest and desire to grow in
the minds of your audience.
You can just stick with a website, but why do that when you can use
Facebook to actually get people interested in what you have to offer?
I’m sure there are many other difference between a fan page and a
website. If you think of something that I didn’t talk about please
submit it in the comments field below. With any luck we will soon
have long list of pros and cons to a fan page.
So, what is StumbleUpon? You may have heard of it.
StumbleUpon is very useful to me. I am a social media consultant for a few
businesses but I have not yet created a Facebook fan page or a
website to market my services as a consultant. [I’ve been too busy helping
other people get their social media going.]
I really want to look at the Facebook pages and websites of my competition to
see what they are doing and how they attract clients.
StumbleUpon is very beneficial to me because even though I
don’t have time to look at my competitors I can put their sites into a
cache that I can come back to later. Every now and then I will
go to my StumbleUpon account and look at these competitors. I can put any
web page into my StumbleUpon account.
This is very useful because it allows me to come back to these sites later…
when I have the time to really look at them.
When you create a StumbleUpon account you are prompted to select the
types of sites that interest you. If you like sports, for example, you can
specify sports. Then you can click the “stumble” button. Every time you
click it a new site in your category(ies) of interest will appear in
your window.
You can indicate whether or not you like the sites that are paraded across
your window. Every time you like a site, StumbleUpon takes
note of the type of content you are interested in. As you “like” and
“dislike” more sites StumbleUpon will customize the
types of sites that appear. This way you are eventually given the
sites that interest you the most.
This could really help you with research. Enter the type of research you are
conducting as your category of interest and stumble over site
after site. Eventually, as you like more sites, you will only see
sites that are truly relevant to your research.
So, StumbleUpon is valuable for two reason.
1. You can save sites to come back to later by putting them into your
StumbleUpon account.
2. You can create a custom showcase of sites that interest you.
Also, if you enter your site into the StumbleUpon database people who are
interested in your industry will have your site appear in front of
them. This could be very helpful for getting some traffic.
I hope this helps and I hope you enjoy taking advantage of StumbleUpon.
It doesn’t matter what kind of site you have. You must
get traffic to your site!
If you don’t get traffic you might as well not develop and
maintain an internet site.
What is the best way to get traffic to your site without having to
spend a million hours on Twitter and Facebook to let people know about
your site?
Before I answer that question I’m going to talk about Twitter and
Facebook for a minute.
Twitter is great because there are so many people out there who use it. If you send a tweet there could easily be thousands of people who see it!
Twitter has about 160 million monthly users. Granted, only a
few of them may click the link to your site; but still, that’s better than
nothing. That’s free traffic!
Facebook is great for virtually the same reason. Facebook has about
500 million active users [Check both of the links above for stats.] When people comment on Facebook the comments are not as ignored as they are on Twitter.
Twitter is like almost blindly hunting with a shotgun and Facebook is more like hunting with a scoped rifle.
My advice for getting traffic to your sites without having to work too hard is to add tweet and like buttons to your
pages. [I would add the like button to my blog but it’s not
available for WordPress.com.] *There is a like button that is automatically built into WordPress.com.
This is important because every time someone sees something they
like they can shoot the shotgun and rifle for you. This means
you have people encouraging their friends [people you don’t even know] to visit your site.
All you have to do is post interesting content, add a couple of
share buttons and let your visitors do the work for you.
I would still recommend doing your own tweets and
Facebook status updates to let people know about your updated content, but don’t do it alone. Let your visitors help you.
I’m sure you will see how helpful this is. Also, keep an eye on what
people are tweeting. This will help you have an idea of what
type of content your visitors like. Keep this in mind as you prepare more content for your site.
Thanks for reading,
~Joshua Lyons
P.S. Check out my Facebook and Twitter categories and “Tweet” them if you like them. I’d like more traffic so feel free to fire the Twitter shotgun and Facebook rife for me. =)
If you don’t know how to use keywords your business will die. This is because
keywords are vital to getting your site seen on the internet.
Prehaps the best way to get traffic to your site is by understanding and
using search engine optimisation (SEO).
Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo look at titles, bios, and articles for keywords. Keywords are used to show the reader and the search engines what the website or article is about.
The first thing to do is find out what the best keywords for your industry are. If you go to Google keywords you can enter
keywords to see how popular they are or you can enter a competitor’s website URL to see what people type in Google to find them. This could
be extremely valuable! The top keywords you see are
the keywords you should consider using for your website, blog and articles.
Whether you are using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, a website or you are writing articles it is important to know and use your keywords.
By including keywords in your titles, bios, and content you can tell the search engines what your site is about.
When people search your keywords your site will appear! As you drive more traffic to your sites you will get a higher page ranking. The higher your ranking the more traffic you will get to the site.
There are so many different social media platforms to use. How do you decide on which one(s) you want?
When you are working on developing a social media presence you want to focus on three key aspects of communication. These aspects are visual, informational and conversational. Ideally you will make use of all three of these types of communication.
The following is a list the social media platforms that I came up with in a brainstorming session. I will indicate why I am or am not planning to use them for the signage business I work for.
YouTube – Yes
YouTube falls under the category of visual. Like a said, you need to show visual imagery. This is good because it allows people to see a face to your organization. They feel as though you are more personable. On the same note, that is why you want to use a profile photo for your avatars and not a logo. People don’t connect to logos, but they do connect and build a rapport with people. I will also use YouTube because it allows me to explain how to make signs and how to care for them. I can show funny sign videos. I can use it as a tool to connect with my audience.
WordPress – Yes
Conversational communication is important. You always want two-way communication. If you are lacking this you can talk till your blue in the face [or fingers from typing] and never communicate once. Feedback allows you to know that you are getting somewhere. You can customize your communication to fit the needs of your audience. If you don’t know what your audience is thinking, and they aren’t communication with you, then you are probably not saying what they need to know. Establish two-way communication through a blog like WordPress and get to know the heart of your target audience.
Twitter – Yes
Twitter is HEAVILY used for search engine optimization (SEO) which I will talk about in more detail later. For know I will just tell you that it is very important to do two things with twitter. 1. use keywords that relate to your business in your tweets. 2. try to give relevant information in your tweets so that people are interested in what you have to say. You want people to read your tweets and share them with others. If you always tweet useless information you will be looked upon as a waste of time and nobody will ever read your tweets.
Hootsuite – Yes
I will talk about this more later. Hootsuite is extremely useful for organizing your tweets on twitter and for monitoring what people say about you.
Pingfm – No
Pingfm is a lot like Hootsuite but in my opinion it is not quite as good. There is no point in having two Hootsuites.
FourSquare – No
For my business this is not a very relevant tool. If you are in the type of business that caters to frequent visitors, such as a restaurant, amusement park or something of that nature I would highly recommend looking into FourSquare.
Facebook – Yes
This is perhaps the most important platform when it comes to informative communication. Facebook allows you to make use of video, blogs, photos and just about any other type of communication method that you can imagine. Also, if Facebook were the size of a country it would be the third largest country in the world. http://tinyurl.com/22ofvb5Facebook has more than 500 million users and is used around the world. If you want to communicate with your audience you need to find where they are. They are most likely on Facebook, so don’t be left behind.
MySpace – No
Facebook is very useful but for my business it is not. The signage industry caters more to the business world with customers having graduated from college. Facebook’s median age is in the 30’s. MySpace is focused more on the younger demographic. This would be more for teenagers. We don’t generally have too many teenagers buying signs in Pensacola, Fla. If your industry has a strong teenage presence I would highly recommend getting involved with MySpace.
Let me leave you with one note to summarize this posting. You want to communicate visually, informativly and conversationally. Also, you want to find your key target audiences and make sure you are communicating to them. Don’t worry about everyone else. You want a rifle approach and not a shotgun approach. Get your key audience.
Thanks for reading and I hope this was helpful.
If you have found another platform that you think should be included please leave a comment.
So you decided it’s a good idea to have a welcome page that is not the wall. This conclusion leads you to ask yourself how. How does one change the default landing page? The answer is not too complicated. Here it is.
First, go to the fan page and click the link Edit Page under the profile photo.
This will lead you to the next page which shows all your applications. Near the top of the list you will see an Edit link beneath the Wall Settings application. Click on that link.
Now you will see two drop down boxes. You don’t have to worry about the first drop down box, but for the second one you will want to click on the drop down menu and then select the page that you want as your default. From now on, unless you change it, your first time visitors will always go to your selected page instead of the wall.
A note – When I first tried this out I saw that I only went to the new default page once as a visitor. This is a good thing. Once people have seen your default page they already know who you are. From then on they most likely want to go to your wall first to see what’s going on with you. The default landing page is only for first time visitors.
Thanks for reading and I hope it is helpful.
Leave a comment if you have a moment. I’d love some feedback.
If you were interviewing for a job would you prefer the interviewer to ask all of the people you know about you, or would you prefer that he ask you directly? Of course you want the interviewer to ask you directly. This is because you want to give him/her a positive first impression. Not that the people who know you would say bad things per se, but you don’t want to risk anything. You want to be sure that you will provide a positive first impression.
This situation is virtually the same with a Facebook fan page for a business. Why would you want potential clients looking at your muddied wall? Sure, you may have great content on the wall, but the first impression a guest gets should be controlled. It should be a perception of you that you want the visitor to have. Now, after they have seen your customized welcome page and gotten a first impression, they can certainly look at your wall. Just make sure that you create a quality welcome page that can help form a positive first impression about your business. Don’t leave that job to the wall which can be tainted by “friends.”
My next posting will talk more about how to set a custom page.
it can also be very bad for some businesses.
Social Mediaing Blog 