Beware of Facebook’s Offer to Merge Fan and Place Pages

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

to this posting.

Thanks for reading,
~Joshua Lyons

#1 Way to Get Lots of Fans

This step is so simple yet often overlooked.

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.

Are Social Media Your Minions?

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.

Use your minions and rule the world!

Thanks for reading,

~Joshua Lyons

The Easiest Way to Get More Traffic

Get traffic!

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. =)

Twitter Tips – Things You Should Know

“If excellence is an option why settle for anything less.” by Mike Gorman. If you are going to use Twitter you should use it with excellence. Here are some tips that can make the difference between mediocre Twitter use and excellent Twitter use.

• Make sure your bio includes keywords. Google looks for keywords in the bio. Because of this you should try to include as many keywords as possible in this section.

• You can create a custom Twitter landing page to prevent people from seeing a bunch of random 140 character tweets. You may have great content on your news feed, but the first impression a potential customer gets should be controlled. You are able to ensure that your first time visitors will see what you want them to see by creating a custom Twitter page. This is the same principle that can be found from the “Don’t let people see your Facebook wall!” post.

• Make every follower you get count. Don’t get followers just for the sake of getting followers. Get followers that can benefit you. This could include industry peers, customers or some other specific niche audience.

• Use a profile photo. People relate better with humans than they do with inanimate objects and logos. Do you want to relate well with your audience? Use a human face for your avatar.

• Use Twellow to find your target audience. Twellow is the “yellow pages” of Twitter.

• A word of warning, don’t become follow happy. If you follow too many people too quickly your account could become suspended. You are thought to be spamming “If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time;” by Twitter.com.

• How not to get suspended – The Twitter Rules

• Putting a Twitter feed on your website can help with your website search engine optimization.

• Here’s a link to get a twitter widget

• Here’s a video about Twitter and website SEO

I hope these tips help you  as you develop your Twitter presence.

Good luck with your tweeting and on Friday I’ll explain the importance of custom selecting your social media followers and fans.

Thanks for reading,

~Joshua Lyons

How to Change Your Default Landing Page

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.

~Joshua Lyons

Don’t Let People See Your Wall! (For fan pages)

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.

Thanks for reading,

~ Joshua Lyons

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