As you know, Facebook has changed a lot in the last couple of weeks, and will continue to evolve as time goes on.
The changes have done one major think to the social network: made it more visual.
Recent Starbucks update.
As I’ve posted updates and interacted with the new layouts, I’ve made a decision that marketers, and anyone else running business pages needs to pay attention to.
If you want your status updates to standout, you need to make sure they are accompanied by a photo or video moving forward.
And I’d almost go as far as saying try to not post anything that doesn’t at least have a photo.
Photos stand out in an amazing way now that thumbnails are larger and albums are being displayed in a different way, and when the changes are implemented for brand pages, you need to seize the opportunity to be visual.
Facebook advertising is a tried and true way of attracting new people to a Facebook Page. Organic attraction is great, but if a brand, for whatever reason, doesn’t have a large audience to promote their page to, advertising will certainly help the cause.
While recently having a discussion with someone about Facebook advertising, the targeting options and the costs per click payment option, this person said the following about the price, “That seems like a lot per click.”
The cost per click can have a pretty big range depending on your target audience, but for the previously mentioned conversation the range was in the neighborhood of $.65 – $.95.
If you think about the history of advertising for a moment, it’s almost comical to think that $.65 per click is high (for this example). For years companies have spent massive amounts of money on things like newspaper ads that have no way of saying how many people saw the ad, and then took action.
Facebook ads, and other online ads, are allowing you to pay for action – not the chance for some sort of action to take place. Impressions might be a fun selling point in the TV and print world, but online, it’s all about conversion.
If you’ve never used Facebook advertising I’d suggest you give it a shot. The result might just surprise you.
Oh, and here’s a little tip. I’ve run a series of campaigns with the new Sponsored Story ads and they are proving to be highly effective.
Facebook Questions is, without a doubt, important for brands and businesses in general.
Brands that have focused on building a community within Facebook can now put said community to work to get swift, direct feedback from their audience.
Yes, there are other Q&A sites already up and running (Ex. Quora) and companies like Wildfire have polling applications, but my thinking is that Questions is going to offer benefits and features that other services haven’t/can’t offered.
For example, Wildfire is known for building good tools, but they typically require access to personal information via the “Applications Permission” box that sketches people out. Questions doesn’t require that step – it just works.
It’s going to be interesting to watch how brands utilize the power of Questions and to also see if this feature is a wake-up call for those that have only seen Facebook as a place for status updates and photo/video sharing.
Earlier today Facebook announced a Deals component to Places, their mobile check in service.
In short, Deals allows businesses to offer incentives for people that check in at their location. Thus far, Deals appears to have pretty good functionality and I think it could be big for businesses (especially local).
When creating a deal there’s a section titled, “Add details and restrictions,” (click picture above) that has to be filled out, and it includes things such as the start/end date, quantity and repeat claims.
Deals, for Places, could function very much like Groupon by taking advantage of something like the quantity or start/end date fields.
Imagine if a clothing store had a flash “50% off sale” or if a restaurant did something like a “buy one get one free” lunch special.
There’s a ton of opportunity for businesses to take advantage of Deals and I’m excited to see where this goes.
Note: If you are creating a deal there will be a bit of a lag time. From Facebook,
“Thanks for submitting a Facebook Deal! Our team will review your offer within 2 business days. Please check your email for a notification about the status of your deal and important steps for implementing your deal. Once approved, your deal can’t be edited. However, you can stop your current deal at any time.”
Facebook pages that have thousands of fans can be somewhat time consuming for administrators that are trying to catch spam simply by looking at their page on occasion. That is, until now.
Facebook has implemented a new spam feature in an effort to help page administrators – fight spam.
The image above is of the Facebook status update section found on profiles and pages. To get to the new spam feature click “Options” lower right-hand corner. Here are the steps.
By clicking “Options” you’ll see a series viewing options come up such as: “Your Page Name + Others,” “Just Your Page Name,” “Just Others,” and “Spam.”
Click “Spam.”
Upon clicking “Spam” the area where you typically see posts will turn to white (meaning no spam posts have been found) or you’ll see a series of new wall posts that have been flagged as potentially being spam.
By hovering over an individual post a blue X will appear in the top right-hand corner of the post. By clicking the X you will have the option to remove the post, unmark it as spam (will leave it on your page wall) or report abuse (confirming it’s spam).
If you click “Report as Abuse…” an box will appear that will let you mark the spam post accordingly.
That pretty much sums up the new Spam feature on Facebook Pages – let me know if you have any questions.
This video highlights a Facebook feature that I think would have a lot of value: the ability for users to tag pages when uploading photos/video to their profiles.
I’ve decided (consider this an official proclamation or something like that – ha) that Facebook needs to add a feature to pages. This item in particular has to do with photos and tagging.
You’ve heard time and time again that businesses/organizations should have pages, not profiles. That’s great and all, but if you don’t have a profile you in theory can’t tag people that are in pictures. Why? If you don’t have friends you can’t tag.
But… in the age of sharing, pages should be able to somehow tag people in pictures. If you’re worried about privacy, we could go a step further and require tags from pages to be approved by the person being tagged.
Why is this feature needed? There are plenty of reasons, but let me give you one simple example. If I load a video of my boss on to our Facebook page it would be nice to be able to tag him in the video… but I can’t because we aren’t friends on Facebook. He’s a good guy and all, but I don’t know that we should be Facebook friends. Get what I’m saying?
Shortly after Facebook Places launched I started the process of claiming a location for a business.
I received an email yesterday from Facebook letting me know the Place page request had been approved and how it could be updated. One thing the email didn’t mention, nor was it mentioned on the Place page, was how to merge the Place page with an existing standard brand page.
The business in question only has one location and per previous Facebook documentation would have been a good candidate for the merge option. I became curious and replied to the email previously sent by Facebook; here’s what I asked,
“How can I merge the Place page with our existing brand page?”
And guess what? They responded. Here’s the message I received.
“Unfortunately, the functionality you are requesting is not currently available. We will keep your suggestion in mind as we continue to improve the site. Let me know if you have any further questions.”
Given that response I’m not remotely confused. Facebook has stated that the two types of pages could potentially be merged, but the email message you just read states the functionality isn’t available.
I, along with thousands of others were at the US Open last night, and I thought it would be fun to check in with Facebook Places and to see what others were saying about the events of the evening.
Allow me to highlight my experience of trying to use Places with my iPhone last night by showing you a few photos (pay attention to the time at the top of each photo). Note: this went on for several minutes before I decided to start taking screen shots.
It's thinking about working.
Still thinking...
Not happening.
In the end, I never did manage to check in with Places. But hey, Facebook Places would rock at large events if… the network you relied on actually worked.
