Facebook
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 17th, 2010
Facebook is quickly becoming a major challenger to Google when it comes to web traffic. Not only can Facebook drive traffic to your website but the traffic it brings is more targeted, more likely to visit more pages and more likely to stay longer. This, combined with the fact that having a Facebook page can help you reach and communicate with new audiences, means that Facebook should be a major component of your social media strategy (especially if your audience is consumer).
Once you have created a Facebook Page for your organization the challenge becomes attracting an audience and getting people to “like” your page. Here are 10 tips that will help you do so.
Tips To Get More People to Like Your Facebook Page
1. Content - content is key to growing your following. If your content: adds value (by that I mean tells your audience something the didn’t already now) and stimulates conversion, more followers will come.
2. Website widget – add a Facebook widget to your website so that people can click from there to like your page.
3. Invite friends – use the suggest to a friend link to find and send invites to friends but be selective and only invite Facebook friends who might actually be interested.
4. Add your Facebook Page URL to your business cards. Once you have 25 Facebook “Likes” you can request a vanity URL like ours: http://www.facebook.com/outsmarts -which is much more concise and easier to fit on your cards.
5. Tell people – when you are networking both online and off, tell people about your page. If you use Twitter or other social networks, link and tell your followers in those forums too.
6. Update regularly – update your Facebook page regularly (refer to 1. when doing so!). You should update at least once a day but not so frequently that your posts become intrusive and annoying.
7. Place an ad – Facebook ads are highly targeted. Use them to spread awareness of your page with people who will be interested. You might be surprised as to how many new “likes” this will generate. You can also use Google adwords campaigns but this isn’t as effective.
8. Avoid selling – it is not good Facebook etiquette to simply use your Page for promotional purposes. Use the 20/80 rule and ensure that you only promote your company, products or services 20% of the time (focus the rest of your posts on adding value and building loyalty with your followers).
9. Make your Page Stand Out - use FBML to make your Facebook page more unique and attractive to potential new followers when they first pop by.
10. Promote your Page – make sure your Facebook Page URL is highlighted on all direct marketing and tradtional advertising vehicles, add “Like on Facebook” information to letters, packaging and shipping materials to spread the word in other media.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 06th, 2010
Privacy and Social Networking
An article in today’s Vancouver Sun raises the Facebook privacy issue again: the article discusses the increase in bogus online identities and points out that many business individuals are steering clear of Facebook as a result.
Every time Facebook makes changes, like those we mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, the inevitable wave of hysteria follows. Whilst privacy is undoubtedly an issue, it shouldn’t be a reason to avoid social networks completely. Given that 400 million people (and counting) use Facebook, if you are in a professional role where building your network is part of what you do, then it is simply foolish to ignore Facebook completely.
How To Mitigate Facebook Privacy Concerns
Privacy is indeed a concern, as is identity theft, but if you take a few simple precautions when social networking you can really help limit the risk of these eventualities actually transpiring. What better a time then to review some simply steps you can take to mitigate these concerns:
1. Use the privacy settings (in Facebook click on settings at the top right hand side of your screen then privacy) to make sure that your personal information such as date of birth, home address, email etc are not there for all the world to see – dont want to encourage identity thieves or spammers do we?
2. Off the Wall – dont use peoples wall to communicate personal information or communications. If it is longer than a couple of sentences take it to Facebook email.
3. Remember that the first thing recruiters do these days is to check out candidates on Facebook. If you intend on ever applying for another job you should be cognizant of this. Boasting about your drinking prowess to the world will not land you that coveted job. Always do the granny test, be careful of what you post and again use the privacy settings accordingly.
4. Be authentic – upload a profile picture so that people can see that its really you – or what you look like after all these years, as the case may be.
5. Be selective about who you add and which pages you like. Dont add every TD&H who invites you and remember what mother said about strangers! Seriously though, being selective about who you connect with gives you more control if safety is a concern: this is not about quantity – it is about quality.
6. Never Buy Friends or Followers – never use sites that promise you thousands of new followers or views. There is always a catch. (Thanks to the a forementioned Sun article for that one!).
7. Be respectful and dont use profanities too much – you never know when someones kid is watching over there shoulder (take it from me – this happens a lot!).
8. Be true to who you are. Transparency is key to effective social media participation. Dont try to present yourself as something or someone you are not. Imagine how embarrassing it will be when someone crawls out of the woodwork and points out the truth – to everyone.
9. Say It - If it is not worth saying out loud, it is not worth saying on line. This is a good mantra to bear in mind when considering your status updates.
10. Block Em – If someone is rude to you in comments or on your wall, you can block them. Again go to settings, privacy and scroll down to Block List to do so.
11. Applications – you should be aware that most of the games and applications on Facebook are from third party companies you know nothing about and are often set up for the simple purpose of collecting you marketing info. Once you add the application, they have access to your information. Be wary of which applications you add and again use the privacy settings to control this.
Thanks to Tailor Ransom for the great Flickr image!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 04th, 2010
Facebook is changing – again. Here is a resume of recent Facebook changes – to keep you abreast of the latest developments with the popular social network.
Facebook Fans
Alas, Facebook Fans are no more. You can no longer become a “Fan” of a Facebook Page but you can “Like” one. Instead of the “Become a Fan” button you now click its replacement, the “Like” 
button 
if you like a Page and want to tell the world.
Overall functionality remains the same and apart from the wording, the only difference is that you will see a breakdown of which of your friends “Like” a page as well as the overall “Like” count. Apparently people are more likely to “Like” something than become a “Fan” of it.
There has been some controversy over the fact that your profile image appears in the “Like” section of a Page without consent so perhaps people will be less likely to “Like” than to “Fan” after all – only time will tell.
Facebook Events
Facebook this week announced that it was making it easier to post events. You will still be able to create events as before by clicking on the tab on the right hand of your profile but in addition to this you will be able to quickly create events on the right hand side panel too. To do so, click on “What are you planning” on the “Events” panel on the right to quickly begin entering information about your event and to invite your friends.
Facebook Insights
Facebook Analytics
Facebook Insights allow you to track the effectiveness of your Facebook page. If you have a Page already, you might have noticed that a few weeks back you started getting a weekly email “Your Weekly Facebook Page Update” informing you the number of fans, wall posts and visits to your page. Click on the link to view the the data in more detail. You can also do this in Facebook by going to any page you manage and clicking “insights” (below information on the left hand side panel). You can view graphs showing interactions,posts, reviews and so on as well as gaining valuable analytics on demographics such as sex and geography.
This is perhaps the most important change to Facebook recently as it allows you to determine whether your page is effective and to allow you to ascertain what can be done to improve it. You can even export the data to CSV for further analysis if you so choose.
Related posts:
Recent Facebook Changes
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 24th, 2010
As the Facebook population grows, more and more businesses are using Facebook Pages to promote their business in this forum and to reach out and connect with fans there.
Your Facebook page may be the first contact a prospect has with you and it is important to stand out from the crowd. One way to do this is by customizing your Facebook page to include tabs that go beyond the basic “Wall” and “Info” tabs in the vanilla page set up. Once you have created these new tabs you can customize each page. Here’s how:
Customize Your Facebook Page
First thing you need to do is add the Facebook Mark Up Language to your Page. To do this, Facebook search “FBML” find the FMBL application and click to add it to your site.
Once you have added this, go to your Page and click edit. Under “Applications” you will see FBML. Click to edit to add a new tab.
The box title shows “FBML”, edit this to show the title you want to appear on the tab on your page. Click to save. The new tab will now appear on your Facebook page.
To edit and add content to the page click to edit your page again and click to edit on the pertinent FBML application you just created. Finally, add the code you want to appear on the page.
The easiest way to generate the code is to use a CMS editor. I used WordPress to generate the code for the connect tab content I created on the Out-Smarts Page.
To add images to your new tab page, upload them to WordPress and use the hyperlink functionality if you want to link the image to an external page (exactly like you would if you were uploading and linking an image to a blog post).
Once you are happy with the content, copy and paste the HTML code into your FBML window. To find this click on applications then edit as before.
Click to complete and save. Go back to your Facebook page and voila, you will have a new tab there and if you click on the tab the content you created in WordPress will appear there.
4. Add your Facebook Page URL to your business cards. Once you have 25 Facebook “Likes” you can request a vanity URL like ours: http://www.facebook.com/outsmarts -which is much more concise and easier to fit on your cards.
