Pure Protential Musings

Dependable professional writing services for feature articles, technical reports, websites, books, and reviews. Albert Einstein once stated, "If you can't explain it to a six year old you don't understand it yourself." I hope to be able someday to explain things that well. It is often said that "the only problem with history is that we are doomed to repeat it." Learning from history and each other is a way to gain our pure potential, not repeat history, and stay out of a new dark age.

Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts

Saturday, November 17, 2012

The takers vs the makers

Thought for the day.

For years I worked for you.

You took my skills.
you took my labor.
you took my knowledge.
you took my talent.
you took my time.
you took my best ideas to improve the firm's profits.

In return:
you took my health care to improve your profit line.
you took my pension plan to return more profits to the hedge fund.
you took wage concessions that were to save the company, and instead,
     you took bigger and bigger bonuses.
you took away company profitability, then,
    you took my job and gave it to foreign people.
You then took the firm and sold it to others,
    and took away huge profits for your investors.

Yet you consider yourself makers,
    and me a taker.

Modified from Milwaukee Iron Worker's FB post.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

111008 - Announcing and linking options for your Facebook page-Part 4

Welcome to Part 4 of Putting up a Facebook business page, announcing and linking options in the October 2011 Facebook business page series. Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Overview
For me, the technical parts were the easiest parts to perform and write about. Since I know a good bit about the Internet, servers, web languages and other features related to programming, search engine behavior, and other Internet related features, the technical activities described in previous articles were more comfortable ground for me. The technical issues did present significant frustrations and difficulties for me, but they seemed to be possible to be overcome.

Announcing and "linking" pages and comments is different. It is filled with the nuances of Facebook. The environment Facebook generated within their programs are a part of their view of the computing world, as they want it to be. Within that world they set a terms of service (TOS) stating how they think businesses should be done in that Facebook world, and the ramifications of violating it in their world. Their view of the world works for them, and others, as they claim that they currently have more than 750 million user accounts.

Disclaimer
I am not, and do not, claim to be an expert in Facebook. I find lots of people who make that claim and when I try to perform their procedures, I find that what they say should happen, does not happen for me. I am sure some of this inconsistency is related to Facebook nuances, and not their expertise.
Thus, I can only discuss what I have run into, and relate them in the hope that others will benefit from sharing the experiences. Every time I think I know something, a Facebook rule or result seems to change. This is consistent with a statement that I heard from a user in Facebook, "after all, the Internet is all about change." I hope that my lessons learned and shared in this series helps you too.

Comparing business aspects of two social experiences
The stated purpose behind social sites is to share. Linkedin and Facebook are two major social sites. I belong to both, and they are distinctly different. As my primary social activities are business related, I am usually more interested in the business aspects of the two social experiences. Thus, I have been on Linkedin for 3-4 years. I joined Facebook in about a year ago.

Linkedin. My experiences with people on Linkedin is that we tend to share professional activities. Most of the discussions are purely business related. We share business expertise, and what is going on within each company's business practices. Telling someone about your weekend yard cookout grill burning your fingers is not considered professional. In all the years I have been using Linkedin, I don't think I have ever seen that kind of information shared.

Facebook. My experiences with people on Facebook is that it is a group who tend to share most, if not all, their personal life activities. Some share very personal experiences. Not only will you tell someone about the weekend grill burning your fingers, you will take pictures of the injury and upload it for all to see the blister. Who turned up at the yard cookout, who did not, and a lot more is both shared and given high priority in the distribution for the event, its photos, who liked it, who didn't, and so on. I saw this the first week after joining Facebook. I have seen it many times since. Personal issues are the most common post to personal wall.

Activities and people are "liked" by an individual, and who they interact with is highlighted, shared, and put into a news feed. I think of The Facebook news feed as a partially open voice mail that lets other people listen in to its playback. The default assumption is that we have an interest in sharing our daily activities "voice mail."

Business and Facebook
A business in Facebook can obtain a business page, but it is attached to a person. Business pages are pretty much viewed in terms of the consumer perspective.

Facebook seems to give priority to business activities that are more b2c (business to consumer). When a person clicks a "like" of a business they are considered to be a fan of the business. The fan count increments, and announcements from the business get added to the news feed for that fan.

Activities between businesses is not given the same level of importance. For example, if you have a business that "likes" another business (b2b), the fan count does not increment. A fan display of businesses "likes" is available and up to five who have acquired a b2b "like" by the business being displayed, will rotate in the business page "likes" area. The business has an option how this display will occur, or limit its display. The default is to display it five and rotate it for each visitor.

Remember: In Facebook, the b2b contact is deemed less important than the contact from the individual to the business (b2c), which will increment the fan count. A b2b relationship does not increment the fan count.

Can they see the business posts: It is a good idea to make all post shown and your wall posts available to everyone. As a business, you do not want Facebook to limit the display of the work you do on Facebook to be limited to just fans or cut back to reduce the complete story line.

As it behaves presently (page behaviors were significantly changed in summer 2011), if I have a business page, and want to interact with another business page by receiving the complete news feed from that business, Facebook forces me to become an individual fan of the business. This clogs my personal news feed with information about my business. (It also generates an inconsistency in the Facebook terms of service (TOS) that says you cannot use your personal account as a business account, as it is almost impossible to not mix it some.)

Note. Unless your friends are also a fan of that business, they are unlikely to see nay of the news feed of the business for which you signed up as a fan. Thus, your friends and family are unlike to be fettered with this b2c fan activity. You can confirm this with the "view as" feature in your personal page.

Facebook being used
as my personal page

Is this activity as the business or as a personal issue?
Some people do not realize that your Facebook the business page activities can, and should be operated as the business page. You can "switch" to your business page so you making your likes and other actions from that business page. Once done, you can switch back to your personal profile, or another business or community page. You can tell that you operating as the business page when the logo near the right top of your page is showing the logo of the business page.

Facebook being used
as biz page

To operate as the business page, and visa versa. Look at the far top right of the page when one of your pages, personal or otherwise, is displayed. Click option arrow \/ to the right of "home" and select "Use facebook as page. " An option box will appear with the pages that are not personal pages listed and a switch to their right. If you are using a non-personal page, that page will show as "logged in" and you can switch to one of the others if desired, or cancel if you want to continue as the logged in page administrator. When you want to go back to your personal page, click the same down arrow and select the "Switch back to name" with the name being your first name that you used for your personal page.

Announcing your Facebook Business Page
Now that your site has stabilized, the wall notifications should be more manageable and less likely to overwhelm those who wish to be a fan. As discussed previously, to avoid losing fans, announcements by your business to your business wall should be limited in number to less than one per day, if not less.

Number of fans is a perk- not the goal. The first step is to realize that it is not the number of fans you have, but the interest they have in your business. Schemes to just raise the number of fans typically do increase the number of fans, but they rarely translate into fans who really are interested. This does not mean that it is still not a good idea to participate in some form of discussions that tend to let you know of other Facebook pages. Participating in these does allow you to learn of other businesses and develop meaningful Facebook contacts with them.

Business to Business "likes." While Facebook does not give as good a priority for b2b fan signup's and posts, I do think they are a good practice. This lets their business know your business is interested in them, and allows wall posts between each business. If you do not hamper the likes rotation displays for the b2b relationship, each of business will be advertising each other, for free, to any and all visitors, just by being fans of each other. If you do not have a logo loaded for your business page, the b2b display will not be as effective.
1. Start with the businesses you know. Every business, even a start up, already has some relationships with existing businesses. The relationship with your existing business vendors, associates, and other b2b relationships database should be used to develop any available b2b "likes." Check Facebook search for the business name. If you do not find it, go to Google and enter "facebook business name," where business name is the name of the business you have interest in. I find that often I cannot find a person or business on Facebook itself, but I can through a Google search. Don't be surprised if they do not have a business page on Facebook. While this is changing, a very large number of businesses don't. Encourage the business individuals associated with those b2b relationships to receive any special announcements by your business, by clicking the thumbs up symbol next to the name of the business at the top center of the page. I suggest staying away from the terms "like" and "fan."

2. Contact friends and associates you know. Next, move to the friends and associates you know. Let friends and associates know that you have opened your business page. An announcement on your wall will probably not be very noticed. The "suggest to friends" is often ignored as well. You may need to contact them directly. Do not ask them to become a fan. I myself don't want to be a "fan" of any business. The fan nomenclature is counter intuitive to how people feel and behave. Ask them to join with you and others in commenting on your new endeavor.

3. Let your customer base know. You have a relationship with your customer base already. Some may prefer a particular media, such as Facebook. Let them know you are present on their media of choice.

4. Use other social media contacts. Your Linkedin or other social media can be used to let others know about the new business page. You can announce it as an addition to other available services. "We are now on Facebook. Join our Facebook news update system by..."

5. Add the link for your Facebook page to your e-mail signature. It is just another way of contacting you. People that prefer contacts through Facebook need to know you have made it available. If you do not put it on the signature, less people will know.

6. Add all social media links to all your web resources. Your website, blog, Linkedin, Facebook, twitter, and other business capabilities can interact more if you put a link to make use of them available on every page of every web resource you have. For an example of this, see my page at: http://www.purpotential.com and my blog at http://purepotential-musings.blogspot.com. You will note the website has a table of the four resources Pure Potential Writing Services currently offer in various media and social resources.

7. Place all the social media on all printed materials. You have an address, why not show the rest?

8. In discussions, blog, and other posts, add the signature after your name. Again, some people prefer the Facebook link and connection process, so make sure they know it is available and where it is located. This applies to twitter and other social media as well.

9. Find a discussion that relates to your business and participate in it. Share shows your expertise, helps you learn from others, and displays your presence. This developers the b2b and b2c relationships you are looking to create and maintain. Don't forget to include your signature in all posts. They may want to contact you more directly and it can be hard to find that contact means, so use the tools you have to do your best to help them find that contact means.

10. Use a social network to learn of other businesses in your field. For example: a civil engineering firm is always looking to know about other businesses who are working in construction, creating building products, and are performing the other disciples that make up the engineering effort. Using other social media, your new Facebook status and theirs, and sharing the experience, is a great way to get to know each other. Just set the ground rules that it is not for the purpose of just getting the fan numbers up, but for the purposes such as I previously stated, or similar. (You will probably end up needing to remind some people of this as the thread continues.)

Operate as the business page
Make the business page your "page" by clicking the option arrow to the right of the home and select "use facebook as page." "Switch" to your business page so that you making the likes and other actions from that business page. You can tell that you are, when the logo near the right top of your page is showing the logo of your business page.

Liking a business page as a business. Remember that you probably want to operate and "like" as the business or product page of the group you are looking at, and not just one of their comments or announcements. To like the business or product, while the logo at the top right is showing the appropriate business or product logo, click the small "thumbs up" next to the site name near the top center of the page.

Liking a business page as a consumer. If you want to receive more news feeds from the business, you also need to "like" the business page from your personal page. In that case you need to switch back to your personal and like it again. When you do this, you are stating you want to follow them from a personal sense as a business owner, or as a consumer. Don't be afraid to do this because of your friends and family seeing it, they probably won't, see previous discussion.

Monitor your progress and reciprocate
Monitor your b2b contact list, personal contact list, and reciprocate as much as you can. It does not help the fan number, but it allows both businesses to receive the displays of each others logos and links in the rotating "likes" section for each business. Make a personal subscribe, or like, as well, as appropriate for your interests, to follow their announcements feed more closely. This will increase the fan number for that business. Make comments or story likes to their feed stories as appropriate. It helps them learn about how people react to their efforts, and helps them learn to better make businesses responses.

Remember. You can make a personal work group to collect and better monitor the business related contact people's discussions.

Reciprocating difficulties
Sometimes it is difficult to find the business or personal name involved in a "like" received.

Find the owner. If you are on their business page and you want to find the owner and/or administrator, check the "owned by" information at the bottom of the left of the page being viewed.

Find the business. If you are starting from the person's name, and you have trouble finding their business page, you might find it on the left bottom of their personal page. If not, click the info for the person, and see if where they work shows the business page. If not, hopefully their info page with have an e-mail to send a query to them, so you can find out out the firm page.

Wondering if someone has "liked" you?
Make sure you are using your business page. You can tell that you are when the logo near the right top of your page is showing the logo of your business page.

When displaying YOUR business page, click the "liked this?" on the left navigation tab area and a window will pop up with who has "liked" you.

Now, find a person or business that has stated they "like" your business. If you have several you are checking out you will want to be able to go back without losing your place.

Not losing your place. To be able to go back without losing your place, right click the name of the person or business that liked your business, and open the result in a new window or tab. This will make things easier for most people.

Like them back.
As the page name and type desired, click the thumbs up "like" at the top center to the right of the business name. Usually, at this point, you can leave a comment for everyone to view. When you are entering a comment, if you need to put an empty line or paragraph in your comment, press and hold down the shift key and the push enter key. That will end the paragraph and keep the comment window open. Do it twice to make a blank line for things like a paragraph. Remember that you are posting to the "world," so make it professional and avoid errors if you can. If you make an error, you rarely get to take it back, and- there it is, for all to see.

You might want to then "like" any specific post they have that you enjoy or find useful. You can comment on those as well. These do not increase the fan count and, since they will eventually scroll off the page, are often considered less important than a general post. However, they often appear on more personal news feeds and can have much more impact on the business. The more fans a business has, the more impact it can have.

Don't spam. Spam is no longer that cheap. It cost more per pound than many other meats. In the Internet, it can be costly too, as you can lose your rights to surf, have a website hosted, or be on Facebook. If you put close to the same message to a comment or other feature more than five times within a specified time (which is set by Facebook and is a secret), you can be put on suspension or even kicked off Facebook. All Internet providers have rules like this. If your messages are too close to the same, they are considered spam. If you enter "I liked you so you like me," that is considered spam.

Don't drop your fan status just because they did not like your business too. Your endeavor here should not be about that. Plus, they may not understand how to operate Facebook as well as you do and may be having problems doing that. Further, if you have genuine interest in their business activities and their personal activities, your comments and discussions with them over time will encourage them to undertake a "like" on their own for your business page.

Once you are done, click the x on the far right of the tab or window you are working within. Usually this will close that window or tab, and bring you back to the window with your pop up present.

Continue to go through the same process for the next person or firm, until you have responded to all the "likes" or other response you are planning to do.

Keep track your fan progress. When you get new notifications you can do this again later and just stop when you reach the last person to which you previously responded. If you keep you fan list in a database, you can feed it into your Goldmine or other program.

Don't flood your business page's outgoing news feed
One issue is some people do not realize that every announcement they make from their business page sends updates from that business. Some people announce far too often on their business, and it fills the consumer's news feed up with their posts. People may then "unlike" them to stop it. That is not the optimal thing to do when that happens.

What to do when a post is not of interest to you
Here is my suggestion for the post you don't want to have on your page. Perhaps it is just not a story you like, or something like that:
Process. Where the story appears, place your mouse cursor over the story and a little x or block will appear to the right of the story. Click it and you will get some options to unlike, block, report, and -- this is the one you want -- hide the story. Click hide. This affects the page rank and how news feeds are disseminated.
That action only takes care of the specific announcement and it will not appear again on the page you specified (personal or business). If you get too many posts from a group, rather than dropping them as a friend or business followed, immediately after hiding a story you will get an option in the area where the story formerly appeared to hide all stories from that group or business. Click that and you will not see their stories at all. Of course, that removes you from knowing what they are doing unless you take the time to go back manually to their page. Recently, if you have enabled your subscription services, an unsubscribe option has also been made available which performs a similar activity.

Have a happy Facebooking
Facebook is a large social sharing site that has over 750 million users. It never hurts to bring that community to your business. You will probably find that, even if you are totally and completely business oriented, Facebook will introduce you back to many old friends and family that you have lost touch with. You may find that you enjoy hearing back from them. If you only care about their business potential, remember they are consumers too.

This article completes this series on Putting your business page up on Facebook. Hope this helps. Good luck in your business or community page endeavor.

Sam Martin
Website: http://www.purepotential.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PurePotentialMusings

111006 - Installing three Facebook content tabs, step-by-step - Part 3

Here is Part 3 of putting up a Facebook page, content tab install and content, step-by-step

Woe, oh woe, is me; I just put up a business page in Facebook. It may be easy for some, but it was an effort to me.

Part 1 was the easiest part. You just use the Facebook tools to create a business page. Part 2 was selecting content tabs. This is Part 3 of the account for the trials and tribulations of generating a Facebook business page. The discussion here is about installing special "tabs" and installing content in them for a business page in Facebook. While this section is highlighting business pages, much of the apps discussed will apply to any personal page too.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

As described in the previous article, I had selected three content tab managers for the content I wanted to install. The reasons behind that selection are covered in Part 2 of this series. All but one of the solutions discussed here, require you to edit as the admin from a personal account. I will discuss that more later.

app link word of social

Word of Social app
The first tab to enter content I want to discuss is Word of Social. This is by far the easiest to use of the tab app products I tried for a person that does not coding. You do not have to go to the third party site to do your edits and updates. It includes an html editor, and allows you to edit the code. The editor leaves some to be desired, but it is pretty simple and does not confuse a less technical user with options they probably do not understand. It allows you to create a landing page for both the fan and non-fan. It loads pretty fast and is very popular. The app owners show a positive effort to maintain and assist their users.

Actual url of app I used to install app

I found it hard to find the correct app and its link from the Facebook app search. It appears to me that there are a lot of scams going on. Scammers often take a good name, and try to pretend they are that group. They trick the user into installing their app instead of the real one, then taking advantage of everyone. For that reason I included the current app link in this article. I covered some of the pitfalls of installing an app in part 2 of this series, so I will not repeat it again in this segment.

Non-fan welcome page option that appears

The word of social page offers to install the app when you first arrive in the app landing page on your first visit. If you install it, it is also operates as a "like" and the content will change to a support information content. This demonstrates how a person could properly use the non-fan and fan page very well.

app add tab options on left side

If you do not see this, or do not want to use it, you can use the add app on the left navigation tab area.

When you install, by the non-fan link or the "add to my page" link, it will check to make sure you are a Facebook user, and if you are not logged in, require that you log in so it can install it. It will then requie you accept the risk of installing an app and the fact it will need access to your data to function, and make you agree to any terms of service issues (TOS).

Next it will then ask you to select which business, product, community, or other type specialty page you administer that you want it to install the app. You can also share, get updates, contact the developer, and so on from these navigation tabs.

edit info appears under your page name

Now you need to return to the business page with your personal page option selected. You are now the admin for the app installed on your page. Go to the business page and click the edit info tab immediately under the name of your business page name. The snapshot to the left is what my edit info tab looks like.

Once you select this, you will be presented with a series of options tabs. When it first appears manage permissions will be highlighted. Click on apps to be tab to be presented with the apps loaded for this business page.

You will probably have to scroll near the end of the list of apps to find the appropriate app that you are going to work with. Facebook installs a number of apps that they think most people like and use by default. You will need to get display the ones you installed. The three I installed are shown in the screen shot below.

The list you see will undoubtedly be different. Perhaps because you have yet to install these, or perhaps due to different choices in app programs you want to use.

Click "use this tab." Answer any questions involved including security. Then click "edit settings." Change the tab name to what you want to display to inform your visitor what content will appear when they click the tab link.

Return to the page by clicking view page on the top right. If it does not appear, then click on your admin name at the top right. This will return to your personal page. You will then need to navigate back to the business page again. Some apps have a limit display option in the setup. Since this is a business page, you will probably want to select to display the page to everyone in the privacy selection.

When you are back on your business page, you will see a new tab for the app. Select that tab. You will then see the content for that tab with a box "edit page" hovering over the content. At this point, you probably do not have any content, so it will probably only have a white, blank background behind it.

Click edit page, and you will see the content entry page and its options. A non fan tab content is for people that have not subscribed in some way to your business page. They are people who have "liked" your business page yet.

The fan content is for your visitor that has subscribed. You can enter the same data, or have it be different. You saw an example of the different fan and non-fan operation when you installed the app.

Using only an image is a simple process. You just make an image and save it in jpg, gif, or png format no larger than 520 pixels in width. You can have a fan and a not a fan image, or a fan image and html or iframe content, or whatever. The combination you chose is up to you. You just change the content accordingly. The iframe gives more control over the content. However, it is more complicated and, as such, is not covered in this discussion.

The previous image is with html code visible and available for editing option. The app remembers your last settings and returns you to them. The last time I entered before taking this snapshot I was editing the html code, so it brought me back to that when I came back. You can tell because you can see html code displayed.

The app information "jumps around" the screen when you change between editor and source, and other options. This makes editing a little harder. If you are editing in html, it tries to help you, and it may get you in some trouble. It can make it hard to get the error out. It did it to me several times. When you have entered both your fan and non-fan page content, just click the save option at the bottom of the edit text box. You will return to the content behind the edit box option shown previous.

Next, you may want to make this tab your landing page for visitors. The landing page is the greeter for your business. It says hello to the established visitor differently than someone who has not said they want to come to the site. They must "like" the site to become a fan. You do this by selecting "edit info," and then manage permissions.

You can make some choices here. You can see the ones I made. I called my landing page website and have a medium profanity limit. At the time of this writing, I have yet to block anyone for bad comments, but I could add or remove them here. You specify the type of viewer allowed here as well.

At this point, your specialty tab should be fully operational. I suggest you have others come and visit the business page and see what they think.

Do not announce it yet, you have more to do.

url for tabfusion tabmaker

The Tab Fusion page
Now that you have seen the word of social, we will examine the next content tab option I selected. The link for tabmaker is shown on the right and you can just click it to go to that page. Tabmaker and its companion website option are free for up to ten different tabs as of the date of this writing.

Tab fusion is a process with two major steps. You need to generate the html code for both the fan and non-fan, and then select and install a tab related to that content. If you develop your code in a third party site or program, you need to process it on their website to make sure the code complies with how tabfusion uses the code.

url to application link

The html editor in tabmaker is more robust than word of social. You can see that by the number of options provided in the images provided. When you click an option, you get a very professional set of actions for that option. Again, you can edit both raw source or use the editor, nut the option is not two buttons here. It is either light blue or dark blue. If you see html code, you are in the code edit option. You may need to use a text editor to save the code for later use. Otherwise, you may find you have to generate it again. Some less technical users may get put off by the options because they do not know what to select. You can ignore most of the options. It will reduce the useful capacity of the content, but it will not hurt it.

When you have your code, in the tab fusion website, select the applications link. After that you select the website option. At the time of writing it was on the right side of the web page, just below the table title.

You will be presented with a tab series as shown on the left. When you first enter you will need to install to the selected page. You can install the app to any business page, or all of them. You select an icon. Select the website type, if needed. Then select the pages you want to apply the results of your selections. Don't forget to name the page tab to something you want the visitor to see and use as the tab link.

Next click pages. Two windows are given for the fan and non-fan code. If they are to be the same, just copy paste the same result from one to the other. You will probably need to use a text editor to save the html code for each option, and then copy and paste into this page for saving the content. Once you save it, you can visit your business page and see the result.

In tabfusion, you can do this for up to ten tab link and content options for each page. You just slect the icon indicated and insert the code requested.

FBML
The third app option I had selected was a simple Facebook Markup Language (FBML) tab app. It is very similar to the previous discusses except that it does not have a html editor, and expects you to do the edits through your own means. I used Dreamweaver and the copied the code into it for mine. The nice thing about this is that the edit is simple and overhead is low. No checking is done. It just tries to do it. If you break it, it is your problem. A professional would love it because it requires no real effort in a specialized editor that you have to learn. It also does not limit you in that you can edit the page as the admin, or in the the page selection display "use as Facebook page."More about that in Part 4.

Arrange the tabs and links
Now you can arrange the tabs and links so they are ordered more to your liking. On the left side under the tab links, click edit. Use the mouse to move a particular tab link to where you want it on the left. Do it again for the other links. Facebook will not let you put a special link above the info link. Once you like what you see, click the link done under the links and it will turn back into a edit link. The link locations are set until you decide to change it again.

It is still not time to announce it
There is still work to do before you announce your page. So I do not advise you to advertise or announce it until you go through Part 4.

In Part 4, I will discuss the announcing and linking options, and problems you may run into. I will also go through some of the step-by-step of some types of activities..

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Sam Martin
Website: http://www.purepotential.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PurePotentialMusings

Friday, October 7, 2011

111005 - Selecting Facebook welcome and other tabs- Part 2

Here is Part 2 of putting up a Facebook page, Generating special tabs - Selection

Woe, oh woe, is me; I just put up a business page in Facebook. It may be easy for some, but it was an effort to me.

Part 1 was the easiest part. You just use the Facebook tools to create a business page. This is Part 2 of the account for the trials and tribulations. The discussion here is about selecting special "tabs" and selecting content in them for a business page in Facebook. While this section is highlighting business pages, much of the apps discussed will apply to any personal page too.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Having your page come up under the Facebook defaults does not allow you to tell people much about your business. If you do this, your visitors are pretty much limited to viewing your information tab, and seeing your news feed. That is not very satisfying. The local business info page has you put business hours and the physical location information, but that does not apply to many home based or other businesses, and is still very limited. What you need is content. People usually come to a site for content. Your news feed is pretty much a series of little teasers to that content, and your businesses activities that people may find interesting. When they come to your site and look at your news feed, it is like a party line voice mail. You have little control of what others actually peek in to listen to, if they visit it at all.

Entering content
To enter content beyond the basics, you will need to add some apps. These apps are Facebook oriented program bots that allow you to add content, and generate a "tab" to link the page navigation to the content. Facebook installs a few they think you may be interested in when they install the page. But I am looking for more.

The most commonly used app used is a welcome page. Everyone that enters a business should be greeted. The welcome page can serve as that greeter. The others tabs are dependent upon what else you want to do.

On the Internet, it is often said that "Content is king." I agree with this. I rarely go to a website to get a sales pitch. I go to find out information, and based upon that information I make choices. Those choices determine if I return for the sales pitch.

Marketing plan
Before going to this next step of content and enter it, it is time to determine what your business page objectives are.

The content will need to follow your marketing plan. Some questions for the page content include:

who are you making it for,
who do you expect to see it first,
who do you expect to make a follow up visit,
what do you want each of them to know about your business,
what will they do once they arrive,
how will you get them to keep in contact with you, and
converting the visits into business returns.

Below are some of the key thoughts for the content and its purposes for my site. Your issues will probably be similar, but different in some key ways.

I will not be trying to play a "numbers game" to just get "likes" (fans). I have worked with websites since about 1996. I have played the numbers game and seen the scams, issues, and problems related to going that direction. Thus, it is my opinion that the often declared objective to get large numbers of viewers is not particularly effective for most businesses. My main reasons for that are:

Having a large number of viewers in a day creates server traffic problems. This causes expense for the site owner. Your Facebook page is subject to the whims of that company and if they don't think the traffic is legitimate, and profitable to them, they will dump it. Their terms of service (TOS) tells you this, so you were warned when you signed up.
If it is not an interest related to genuine content interests in your business., having a million fans is not necessarily profitable to you, or anyone else. A fan base of less than 100 can be profitable, if they are active in your business endeavors. Facebook recognizes this displays a count for both these metrics.
People are turned off by sites that push just being "liked." When I go to a site that has a big graphic to like them, I usually jump off the page as it shows they are more interested in my adding to their count than getting to know my consumer needs, or feeding me some content that interests me. Worse yet is the one that you click like and once you do it, they shove you into a contest, sign up, or apparent scam. For most of us, that will get them "unliked" quick.
Facebook is a socialization site. Unless the company is large, a large number of likes means that the site owners are unlikely to be able to pay attention to my needs, should I decide to work with them. If I am not that big of a company, fan posts to me will get missed in the "chaff" that is occurring. That means I am missing on socializing opportunities. The obvious biggest downside is that my business will not grow, because I will not convert anyone to a client.
Thus, a small number of genuine clients, suppliers, and associates can be more valuable than a large number of people that just "liked" the page or follow it without interacting with your social efforts.

I will be attempting to show expertise and examples of work. That means:
- I need to understand the process involved in installing and using tab apps, in addition to obtaining their results. Thus I will need to go through the process step-by-step.
- While generating likes is not the mission, a large number of likes that are legitimate is beneficial. Someone who likes your page is considered a fan in Facebook. A fan can want to follow your page for many reasons. Examples are:
  - for a band- where are you playing,
  - for a consultant - what is your latest expertise sharing effort,
  - for a writer - where is your latest work located,
  - for a storefront, the weekly circular or coupon. Note that I do not want daily updates of offers for the day. I do not shop everyday and, with gas prices as high as they are I am not likely to start.
- As a consultant and writer, I have a blog showing some of my expertise, articles, and other activities related to the services of the business. This is one feature I will want to display in acontent tab.
- I also have an array of examples scattered on the web that could be viewed. Since some of these do not stay published or move around on a third party site, I will avoid the problem of continuous edits and potential broken links by pointing to stable locations (URLs) as much as possible.
I will be showing a brief statement of the available qualifications and expertise.
In time I may like to add more, so any plan needs to be flexible.

Looking over this list, it is apparent that I will need to create three content specific pages. I may add to it later, but that is a good number for a start. Three pages will allow me to learn from traffic to see if I should consider adding content or modifying it later.

The search for an app
The next issue is to find the apps to let me put that content on the site. This is where I had the most problems. A search of Facebook just gave me app names with no information of how well it worked. Facebook did not help me much in my search. It helped at the end point, but I determined that the beginning point needed to start elsewhere. In my review just before writing this I noticed Facebook was much more helpful. So they are changing all the time.

What the tab links can look like

"I don't have a clue"
My first thought was to find Facebook business pages that had an app that I thought worked well, and find out what app the page owner was using. After many attempts, including contacts with some of the page owners, I failed to obtain a single worthwhile recommendation. Most page owners had apparently hired someone to do it and had no clue what I was taking about. Once they had the page tab features completed, they ended the designer relationship. They did not know how to change the content, or how it actually got there. Apparently, most Facebook page owners are not highly technically knowledgeable. Most created their business page themselves and stopped when they ran out of Facebook supplied options. Some page owners did not reply at all. Either they were ignoring contacts, or refusing to take the time to share with another Facebook user who was not directly asking about their business products or services. It can be hard to find the link you used again, even after you have selected an app. I don't think Facebook makes it easy to do this, and the Facebook standards for the app my not be followed by the app maker you selected.

Networking sites
My next step was to try and gain feedback from Linkedin and other network sites where I have a presence. I got much more response and results from this. Some only wanted to sell me their service and would not share how to do it. I understand that, but one of my objectives was to learn how it worked. Having someone else do it would not do that. Plus, as I discussed in Part 1, programmers often put together a site that is what a programmer thinks is cool, but is not business friendly. I needed to learn enough to guide the programmer, or hire a consultant to do it for me. Since learning was a goal for me, buying these service were not an option.

Others were willing to share, but did not know enough of the answers to give best guidance. Since I only program as a part of my activities, and do not keep up with it like a programmer does, most of the network resources I had available to me did not tell me enough about the details of the programs involved, advantages and disadvantages of each option, and how to perform the tasks.

Google search to the rescue
Once my direct and networking knowledge attempts failed to meet my objectives, I turned to Google and made searches for articles about Facebook apps. A search of Google gave me ideas, but some of those recommendations were not optimal, and some others led me astray into bad problems. I decided that I would use a different app for each content tab I planned to make. This would let me determine the advantages and disadvantages for each one, give me some expertise, and would assure that if one tab failed the others would, hopefully, remain working.

The bad
When you install an app you open your Facebook information to the app developer. In my opinion, it generates the potential for a huge security breach. If they do not misuse it, great, but what if they are a scammer. You have to trust the app developer with all your information, including your friend list. This is a potentially bad bug which appears to have bitten a lot of users.

One such app I encountered was welcome tab. It had a high recommendation by a well established author. Perhaps I got a malware clone by mistake. Facebook reported that it had 11 million users. What it did for me was refuse my content and put its own like button, contests, and other content in. They made it very hard to get rid of them too. I thought that the 11 million user count reported by Facebook indicated it was popular. I think it showed how many people made the mistake and could not get rid of it. I should have looked at the reviews before making the choice. It was filled with curses and complaints and the ranking appeared to reverse your actual vote. If you voted 1, it counted it as 4 and so on. The effect of that is that it made it appear that they had a nice ranking. I will show how I got rid of bad apps in Part 3, technical aspects and how to's for the selected apps. Within a week of my finding it, I could not find it again to show what it looked like. Perhaps Facebook caught them and killed their app. Most of the other bad apps I tried had disappeared within the week span of performing the tab content install activity, and time it took to write about the effort.

The ugly
Some content editors required you know programming. I selected and used one of them. It allowed me to fully control the content. It also reminded me how much I appreciate that the web advanced enough that html and other editors that take care of coding and give you a spell checker were developed. After doing it once I used my Dreamweaver to create the code, and then copy and pasted the correct html portions.

One app I tried had a nice discussion page, testimonials, nice ratings results shown, and looked like they would be a good choice. I installed the app and received a notice that it used another app to work that was $9.99 per month with my first 30-days being free. My immediate response was, "Wow, that is an ugly practice," and I promptly went through the removal process. While removed their app, I left myself subscribed to their business page, as they do share information about what things mean, even if they do conduct a "bait and switch" when you make the mistake of trying it with their tools.


Even though they are a good service, word of social had some problems during install - it is all fixed now

The content for an app is hosted with the app provider. Thus your content is subject to their hosting restrictions and bandwidth. This can slow the display of the content and makes it hard to know if it is displaying in the way you think it is, and if it is displaying it all the time. For that reason, I think that every app has an ugly side to it. If they go down or out of business, change their policy, or whatever, your content will disappear. This is one reason why you must edit the app content using your personal account as page (more about that in Part 4).

You will usually need to maintain two versions for each page, the fan, and non-fan. The fan has visited and "liked" your page. The non-fan may have visited, but has not "liked" your business page. It seems inconsistent to me that Facebook tells you they do not want spam on their site and how they will kick you off if you do it, and then give you a programming flag for tools to do just that. However, I can see how it can work as a benefit. One of the apps I selected used the non-fan to tell you to install the app to make it work and why. Once you did it, the content changed to show how to obtain support for your installed app.

The good

URL of tabmaker

For the second tab, I selected the app tab fusion. They had ten tabs to select from and I selected the website tab. If I understand correctly, they will let you have up to 10 tabs at no cost. They have been doing that for a long time, but there is no guarantee that they will keep it that way. Remember, the web is all about change. You have to go to their site use their editor to make the pages. You edit the html with an html editor on one part of the site, copy both the fan and non-fan section into notepad or another program, and then go to the application location on the site and paste each part into the upload sections for non-fan and fan. Low technical skills are needed, but I think it is a bit more than many Facebook people possess. If you have the technical ability, you can edit the html directly- provided you know .html, css, or other languages. Alternatively, you can use an external html editor and drop the correct parts into their editors to get the code cleaned by their system to meet their restrictions, and then go through the upload process. On the plus side their html editor is very helpful for the less technical user.

Actual link to app

The third content tab app I selected was Word of Social. This is the least technical as the edit activity is on the page site you request, and you do not have to go to the third party site, that is actually keeping the content, to make the edit (such as tab fusion makes you do). You can edit the html and put other script languages in it. However, when you go back into the html mode it may change your source code to what they think it should look like. They also do what the old html editors used to do. They will sometimes add code for you that will cause your page to not appear as you expect. They mean well, as they are trying to help. However, if you use the option to enter the source html code to change it, it can be very hard to find the offending code. (Note scams are rampant in Facebook apps. During this writing someone tried to pretend they were word of social so they could scam off their good name.) The actual url of the app I used is shown below.

This is the actual link to the real app

url of word of social

Please keep in mind that the apps I used are not necessarily the best ones. They are the ones I selected that I thought met my criteria. There are many other very fine apps out there.

In review, putting up a tab for social content may be more than the typical business page owner would want to try on their own. I did not find it to be as easy as I thought I would. Considering I had an extensive history and knowledge about the Internet before I began, I can see how others might not want to make the attempt.

It is still not time to advertise it
There is still work to do before you announce your page. So I do not advise you to advertise or announce it until you read Part 4.

In Part 3, I will show the main steps to enter content into the three app tools I selected. If you are willing to make the attempt, I will try to show you how I did mine, and you can use the discussion to do it for your own.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Sam Martin
Website: http://www.purepotential.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PurePotentialMusings

Thursday, October 6, 2011

111004 - Putting up a Facebook business page - Part 1 of 4

Woe, oh woe, is me; I just put up a business page in Facebook. It may be easy for some, but it was an effort to me. Here is the accounting of the trials and tribulations, and how I overcome it all, to put up a business page in Facebook. While there is a lot of how to in this discussion, it is not intended to be a technical manual, so "what it looks like" diagrams are limited. It probably would not help to get to detailed, because Facebook is notorious for changing things with telling anyone.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Part 1 - The mission is born
About one week ago, I decided I should put up a businesses page in Facebook for Pure Potential Writing Services. I have found a good number of people live their Internet life on Facebook. If it is not on Facebook, they don't know about it.AOL users are much like that too.

The reason for deciding to put up a business page in Facebook was simple. Facebook is now the second most used site on the Internet, so being present there seemed to be a wise choice. Based on the details on how my business works, I should get more potential notice on Facebook than the yellow pages. In my area, the local yellow pages is sent to only 60,000 people, and opportunities in this local area are very limited. At a cost of $50 to $1,000, or more per month, per directory (city), for just a simple yellow page listing, the yellow pages are not that good for a business that is not tied to a specific locality and does not have a physical shop for clients to visit.

But why run a business page? Here are my main reasons:

Running a business from your personal page is against the terms of service (TOS) you agreed to when you joined Facebook. Failure to adhere to the TOS can get you kicked off Facebook. If you try it, you could lose your investment.
Mixing my personal posts and business does not work well. Facbook was originally designed as a personal share site and most of its behavor and activities still appear to revolve around that assumption. My family and friends do not necessarily want to hear my business related posts, and businesses I deal with do not want to hear my personal posts. Thus, a separation of the activities is needed.
The number of "likes" you make on a personal page limited, and those that can like you is limited too. Business pages are unlimited.
You can advertise a business page.
It is easier to follow business activities when it is not mixed with personal issues, and visa versa.

Not all that tough, I thought
Now I didn't figure it would be so tough. I have been working with computers since 1976. "Couldn't be that hard," said I, as I sat down to my personal Facebook page. I thought, "less technical owners than I have already done their business pages" I already know html, css, php, cgi, and a bunch of other Internet used computer languages, "so what could be that new?"

The first surprise
First, I found that it might be a good idea to check within Facebook (FB) to see if your business is already listed. I found lots of businesses that I knew and liked, already had a Facebook page that was not claimed. I do not know where the unclaimed pages came from, but I found them.

If you have an existing Facebook page for your business, then some of the work behind creating the pages, and what it looks like, already has mistakes waiting for you to fix. You will want to go and adopt the existing page as your page, because you may already have people subscribed to that page. These are people that have clicked that they "like" that page thinking you are maintaining it- like you knew it was there. You will want to try to keep them, because you may not be able to get them back if you try to move them off that existing page. It is a good thing to have a start of FB clients knowing about your page, so don't give them up. You may regret it if you do.

Location of create page as of this writing

Where did that create page option go?
No such luck, or extra work perhaps, for me though. I had to start from scratch. First, I had to find the create page option, which seemed to move around on me within Facebook. I eventually found that at the far bottom, near the end of a page scroll, when the "wall" was showing, it was reliably available.

Once I found a stable spot for the apparently wandering create page link, I clicked "create a page" and began the next stage of the "easy to make a business page project."

The next issue appears in the form of a selection

Business or org select

At his point, I had to select what kind of page was my page. Was it business page such as a corporation or similar, and some other features about it- or was a brand or product within a my business or endeavor.

Product or brand select

The main problem I ran into in this step was that none of the direct service or product options within Facebook fully describes what I do, and what I think the Facebook page should display about the business. I do some consulting, writing is not even listed, and listing as local business is not proper because I can write and consult for someone anywhere the Internet reaches. It is a business, and not a community, so the product or business page seemed to be the issue.

So off I went on a search of learning what others, who do what I do or close to it, selected. My assumption was that if they selected it, it must be what they learned people used to find their type of business. Silly me, I found that was not the case.

Accordingly, I made some searches within my professional database and programmer resources, talked with a few colleagues on Linkedin and e-mail, and came up with some ideas of the directions to pusue.

It took a few hours; but, I amwas then armed with new knowledge of what others had been doing, plus some new understanding of how Facebook navigation takes place. I have also learned that people that make their own pages do not know what people search for. Thus, I came back to this screen and I picked out what I thought were the best choices.

The information tab data shows on other pages

If you put it here, it will appear over there
The next major issue was to fill out the basic business information. This may not be as easy as you think. I found that that the information used in the Facebook information section will be automatically be displayed in various locations throughout the Facebook site, and any applications (apps) you load into it.

Your first impression about what you should enter and where may change based upon the results you receive. For example, I found that modifying my mission statement and putting it as the company overview created a better reading result on the Facebook page displays that use my company page information.

The next to last section is a search section
As best I can tell, the next to last section is not only for viewing, but it is also used in search results. Thus what you put in and how you put it in is a marketing decision. I assumed that the format is similar to that used in the keyword tag for a search engines, so I used that as a guide. This seemed to be what others were doing. With that in mind, I used the products and services performed, separated by commas, as my products. Your investigation of what others have done should give you an idea of what you should put here as well. I have some doubts that Facebook is using search engine technology. Its searches do not appear to be very sophisticated and mainly uses titles. I entered my data assuming that it does behave like a search engine, or will in future. Using general current search engine rules, most of those algorithms give a preference to the first 3-6 items. Thus, the ones that mean the most to your business should be in those first 6 terms. This is not the place to alphabetize, it is a place for marketing.

Your website address
You can post your Facebook site without a website domain. You can put it in later. However, if you do not have a website, you should see my discussion below.

Final steps
Save the results and go through the page and its "tabs" (the links on the left side), and see if what appears is what you expected. At this point, I suggest you stop and "sleep on it." When you come back to check it out the next day, you will notice things that can be improved and can make those changes. You do not have to publish it right away. It is better to make sure your errors, spelling and grammar issues are removed from the page as much as you can make it before your publish.

Publish it
When you think you are ready, publish it; but, do not advertise it yet. I suggest you get some friends and colleagues to look it over and make suggestions. They can use the "wall" for that activity, because no one but them and you should really see it. Remember that if you start getting clients subscribing to the page ("like"), they will get a notice of every little change. They probably won't like that. It is better to get the page stable, and to the point where you do not think you will need to change it much. You will be doing enough changes later as you learn more.

Oh my, it did what I told it to do
It will never be perfect, and if you are making it work for you, it will never stop changing. When you go to a major business page, it often changes everyday. Your business page does not need to be that active, and probably should not be that active. If it is too active, you will drive clients away from your page, and away from your business.

Next article, Part 2 adding content to your page
Add some features that make you page more than just a series of news posts that may be of limited interest to your client. Content will help your page be more than just an ignored resource.

The total time to create my Facebook page without any added tab content features was 16-hours. I could have done it in less than an hour. However, the pages would have been unfocused and, I think, less useful to the visitor, and my existing and potential clients. About half the time I spent was in researching the best way to perform the activity and how it would show. Now that I have done it, it would probably take half as long or less to do it a second time. Thus a designer, should you go that direction, should easily be able to complete what I did in a very short time.

Some special notes about websites

Get a website
If you don't have a website, shame on you. What kind of business today does not have a phone number. A website is like a really big phone number. For many businesses, a hosted website is more important than a having phone number. Facebook has a large number of clients, but the number is small compared to everyone who is on the Internet. Not everyone is on Facebook.As many users as it has, the number is still not a majority of users.

Domains and hosting
A website consist of a domain, content, and a host to place the domain and content upon. Find a good hosting service and pay them to get the domain. Figure $20-$30 for a good domain service and $10 to $30 per month for a good hosting service. Buying cheap usually requires you buy a some extra features that the low price did not include, you need, but did not know you would need, That is what those kinds of services are counting on: the up-sell.

Put some content on that website
I don't understand why some people have a Facebook business page, and a website that just says under construction. In creating the Facebook page, they have already done most of the work. At first, just use what is already done, the Facebook content, in the website. If you are just getting a Facebook business page and don't already have a website, a three page site, that replicates what Facebook does, hosted outside the Facebook world may be all you need on the website. I know of several one page sites that have been working just fine for more than ten years, and bringing in business too, If you have a programmer do it, expect to start at $500. Unless you are selling programming or technology, it is better to not get too fancy in appearance.

Think about hiring a website consultant to guide you.
Using a business website consultant to guide you will run about $500 or more. Since I often work as a consultant, I am biased; but I think good consultants are well worth their cost. The consultant can can help select a domain, pick a website host, generate content, select a website designer, and guide that designer. My experience is that the final website will produce more results when the client has had a consultant help them. It often costs less than not hiring a consultant and allowing a programmer to make the choices for you.

The consultant can guide you to a best solution. Website designers always like a big website site with lots of bells and whistles. Most small businesses end up a website that has too much "fluff" on it, and not enough of what clients want.

What do customers want when they visit a website? Content. They want the hours of business, map of location, pictures of the building, and so on. If you sell rocking chairs, a cute flash program of a rocking chair may get noticed, but what most really want to see is the actual chair they want to buy. You can spend a lot of money on the flash, and get very little "sizzle" that causes the client to contact you.

That's it
Before you announce or advertise that Facebook page, add some features that make your page more than just a series of news posts. News posts are more interesting to the client that knows you. It may be of very limited interest to the potential client. The potential client needs to be sold on why they should receive the business posts. We will cover this in the next article.

Additional edit: Here is a summary of the stories in this thread:

Sam Martin
Website: http://www.purepotential.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PurePotentialMusings