Articles Posted in Facebook Tools

Since Facebook’s transition to Timeline in early 2012, the social networking giant has embraced a much more visual layout. Cover photos, one of the most prominent features of Timeline, allow individual users to add a bit of personality to their online personas. This same feature was also extended to brands and businesses, although these pages do have some restrictions that come along with them.

For starters, it’s important to realize that cover photos are public. Anyone who visits your Facebook fan page, whether that person is a fan or not, is going to be able to see your cover photo. Next, it’s important to understand the intended use of cover photos is not to promote your contact information. That is, cover photos are supposed to display an image that represents your brand. This image cannot (or isn’t supposed to) contain more than 20% text, and formerly could not display contact information of any kind (per Facebook’s current terms of use as of July 2013, there is no longer mention of cover photos not being able to feature contact information, but it’s probably good practice to avoid images that include contact information just in case the rules revert back). Furthermore, brands are not allowed to encourage fans to upload and use brand cover photos on their own individual timelines.
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It’s a well-known fact that if a business wants to be successful in these modern times, they need to be online, but being online does not just mean having a one page website. Businesses that want to market themselves successfully online, whether they are B2C or B2B, customer-driven or client-driven, must have a strong online presence and that comes from a website that provides potential clients with the information they need and want and from being present and active on social media. At the very least, every business owner should have a Brand page on Facebook.

Still Not Convinced?
These enlightening statistics may help you decide whether your business can benefit from having a presence on Facebook:

• Facebook does, in fact, matter to a business. 42% of marketers affirm that Facebook is important or even critical to their business.
• Since 2009, 75% more businesses claim that Facebook is important or critical to their business.
• 62 % of marketers say that social media has become more important to business marketing campaigns just within the last 6 months.
• Social media boasts a 100% greater lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.
  43% of B2B companies say they got customers from Facebook.
• A whopping 77% of B2C companies say they got customers from Facebook.
  80% of social network users in the U.S. prefer to connect to businesses/brands through Facebook.
• User engagement has increased 46% since the implementation of Facebook Timeline.
• You can’t just put half an effort on Facebook, however. If you’re going to take advantage of it, you need to give it the attention it requires. Auto-posting onto Facebook has been shown to decrease comments and likes by 70%.

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For many users, the transition to Facebook Timeline hasn’t been without its share of headaches. Whether it’s picking and choosing posts that you wish to be a public part of your Timeline, or authorizing applications to automatically post to your Wall, some individual Facebook users had a lot of work to do prior to their Timelines being ready for public viewing. For businesses and brands, however, the editing of posts hasn’t been as much of a problem as not having any posts to edit in the first place.

Previously, fan pages differed from each other in one major way: activity. That is, pages that had more activity were oftentimes considered more valuable than pages that didn’t have as many posts or comments. Even if a company or brand had only recently created a page, frequent/regular activity promoted discussion, would inevitably lead to more “likes” and page visits, and would ultimately bode well for the social media campaign at hand. However, Timeline changed things…if only just a bit.
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The countdown has begun and brands are working hard to prepare their Facebook fan pages for the transition to the Timeline. At the end of this month, all pages will (supposedly) be converted to Facebook’s new Timeline format, a blessing for some brands and a headache for others. Depending on the type of business you are in, populating your Facebook Timeline may be a piece of cake. However, there are many other companies that are going to have to be a little more creative in order to put together a well-rounded Timeline.

The Timeline structure is inherently flawed when it comes to local businesses and brands on Facebook. That is, whereas some businesses have been around for 50 years, Facebook has not. Furthermore, brand pages themselves have only been around for a few years, so whatever presence a company has on Facebook is typically going to be limited to but a fraction of the length of time the company has actually been in business. With the inception of Timeline for brand pages, companies must now deal with sizeable gaps of time that they (ideally) need to fill in in order for their Timelines to be complete. Like we stated earlier, this task will be relatively easy for some companies, and somewhat difficult for others.
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Attorneys and other businesses with a Facebook page have a new way to increase discussion and commentary on their websites and blogs. Facebook just released a restructured Comments plugin to allow publishers to sync comments throughout a site and a Facebook page. The updated plugin also includes threaded comments and moderation controls.

According to Mashable, the new Comments plugin will put Facebook in the spotlight more than ever. The updated plugin also offers a way to improve and contextualize commentary and bring a Facebook-like conversation to other websites. As users read through various comments left on a website off of Facebook with the plugin, they can mark comments as spam or report inappropriate or abusive comments. There is also an option for users to share comments left on a website with the Comments plugin by posting the comment to their wall and being distributed to their Facebook friends. In creating threaded conversations, the new plugin is designed so that comments on an article or a post are shown together in the same conversation so no one misses a part of the conversation.
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Have you ever sat back and really looked at your website? Is it interesting? If it wasn’t yours, would you explore it? Is it easy to navigate? Does it provide pertinent information and invite viewers to contact you if they need more information?

Hopefully, you answered yes to all of those questions. If you didn’t though, an effective Internet marketing campaign can correct those issues.

Once you feel as though your site is interesting, you may want to consider adding a “Like Button” to it. What’s that? You have no idea what a “Like Button” is? Don’t worry; it’s pretty easy to explain.
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