by Ryan Shell on August 25, 2010
“Facebook Marketplace Scam: A Scam to Watch out For (1st Hand Experience)” was the name of a post I did on May 13, and I think it’s worth highlighting for three reasons:
- I think you might find it educational and could potentially share it with people you know.
- A representative from the company that supposedly runs Facebook Marketplace has now left a comment providing instructions on what to do to help catch the scammer.
- [Learning opportunity] If the company that runs Facebook Marketplace used a listening service, something as simple as Google Alerts, they would have seen this post a long time ago.
Do take a moment and read the previous post about this scam; I think you’ll enjoy reading my exchange with the scammer (also take note of the comments).
by Ryan Shell on August 23, 2010
Shortly after Facebook Places launched last week I started tooling around with the new location based service in an effort to have a better understanding of how it works.
My first thought was, “this is going to be a big deal.”
And today, that’s still my thought about Facebook Places.
There is one question that that came to mind last week that I couldn’t find an answer for, until now, and I’d like to share it with you. The question had to do with the process of businesses claiming their Facebook Places page.
Click to enlarge.
The image above if of the form that businesses have to fill out in order to claim their Places page.
Facebook Places pages are set up for a business after someone checks in at the businesses location for the first time. Take note of the second line, “Place URL.”
When I saw that I instantly thought to myself, “I wonder what would happen if you put the businesses actual Facebook page URL in instead of the Places URL?”
I never tried it, primarily because I learned that doing so wasn’t needed. After a business claims their Places page they can then merge it with their current Facebook page.
One item to note is the fact that businesses will have the chance to use targeted Facebook advertising to reach individuals that have “Liked” a businesses Places page.
In my opinion, this may fall a touch short – primarily because I’ve not “liked” any of the locations that I’ve checked in at using Places. It would seem more effective to somehow have the chance to use advertising to target anyone that has previously checked in at a location.
[Note: If this was confusing, remember that going forth there are two types of pages on Facebook: the standard page (referred to here as a Facebook page) and the Places page.]
by Ryan Shell on August 19, 2010
Facebook Places has launched and you’ve probably heard a lot about it at this point. What you may not have done is actually used the new location based service. Here’s a quick photo walkthrough of what you can expect.
This photo is what it looks like when you check in using Facebook Places on the iPhone.
This is how the check in will look on your profile and in the timeline on Facebook.
All location check ins will be lumped in on a community page, which is kind of a cool feature.
At the bottom of each community page there’s an option for business owners to claim their page. When that’s done the community pages change over to standard Facebook pages… which causes a bit of confusion.
If business X already has a page, but claims the community page, it becomes a typical Facebook page. Confused yet? Basically, it seems like theres going to be a way to link community pages to “official” pages so that businesses don’t end up having two pages. Sorry, I’m not sure there’s a very easy way to explain that.
At first glance it seems like Facebook Places is going to be pretty cool – especially when you get a mass number of people in one location.
by Ryan Shell on August 18, 2010
“The “Like” button and now the “Tweet” button will soon be on virtually every web page and blog post you see, but we may have a missed opportunity sitting right under our noses.
Where else could those buttons, or something similar, be placed? Allow me to toss out an idea.”
That’s from an article I wrote over at Social Media Today – one that I really think you’ll want to read. It answer’s the question of “What’s Next” and I think it highlights a great call to action at a time that you have your audience engaged.
The post is titled “What’s Next” with the “Like” and “Tweet” Button?” Click here to give it a read.
by Ryan Shell on August 3, 2010
There’s an article over at Teach to Fish Digital that I was reading a while back and I wanted to share some of with you.
In short, the article highlights one important fact that will make you want to continue reading this post.
“According to the Facebook consultants at BrandGlue, 1 in 500 updates make it to the news feed.”
The article points out three things that help decide whether your posts show up in the news feed or not:
- Affinity
- Weight
- Recency
Now for a little added detail on each.
“Affinity Score – This number defines the relationship between object creator and recipient. Those who comment and like your personal updates have a higher affinity than those that do not.
Weight Score – Each object is assigned a score based on the number of comments and likes it earns. An object with 15 comments and 20 likes has a much greater weight than an object with 0 comments and likes.
Time / Recency Score – This number is a reflection of how long ago the edge was created. Each edge will lose its mojo very quickly. For example, the oldest edge in my news feed right now was created 42 hours ago. Most were created in the past 18 hours.”
Chris has done a good job explaining what each of those items means to you so click over to the article to learn more.
It’s very important for marketers to have an understanding of what this information means and how to apply. Pushing out updates that aren’t getting seen (unless people view the Most Recent feed in Facebook) doesn’t do you much good.
by Ryan Shell on May 20, 2010
UPDATE: It appears so many people were vocal about this change that Facebook went back to its old practices… for now. Stay tuned. Info below is still relevant if the change is put back in place.
Facebook landing pages (tab) are a great tool for prompting people to like a page, but a vast number of pages no longer have the luxury of a landing page.
As Facebook continues to evolve they now only allow pages that have been liked by more than 10,000 people or those that have worked with an ad rep have the landing tabs. Basically, you either have to have a massive user base, or must have spent a substantial amount of money with the company.
From the Facebook developer forum,
“We apologize for not messaging this earlier. Facebook recently made a change requiring that Pages be authenticated before enabling the ability to set a landing tab beyond Wall or Info. To be eligible for authentication, a Page must have greater than 10k fans or the Page admin must work with their ads account manager. If you are already working with an account representative, please contact that representative to begin the authentication process. If you do not work with an account representative, you can use this contact form to inquire about working with an account representative.
Also, for advertisers who don’t have a representative or 10k fans, and want to run ads and land users on a specific tab, you can still do so with standard Facebook ads by making their Destination URL as the URL incl. your tab. Unfortunately, this currently will not work with “Fan” ads.”
I’d say this is a significant blow for businesses as people will now simply get dumped onto the wall. Of hand, there are a couple things you can do to help combat this change:
- Change the wall setting to only show posts by you/the brand. Doing so will help control the messages new visitors see. I
don’t love this idea, but it’s a way to help control the initial messaging.
- Utilize the page boxes. You could use the top page box (left sidebar) that can be customized to ask people to like your page. Again, this isn’t ideal, but at least it will give you a chance to provide an action item.
I don’t think this change has been fully implemented thus far because I run a page with around 5,000 fans and it still has a landing tab that works. Granted, the account associated with the page has advertised on Facebook, but we’ve never worked with an actual account rep.
Hopefully Facebook will not continue to evolve in such a way that makes it less and less effective for non mega brands.
by Ryan Shell on May 19, 2010
Honestly, I don’t know if this is a new Facebook feature or not, but it just stood out to me for the first time last night. Maybe I’ve not been paying attention.
I gave away some free tickets to Carowinds, an amusement park just outside of Charlotte, NC, via my Facebook page yesterday. Upon visiting the page last night to prepare to draw the random winners, I noticed a little link under the thread that said “Promote.”
Click to enlarge.
I have no clue if the promote option has been around a while or not, but I clicked it out of curiosity. When I did, a box popped up (see image above) that let me know I qualified for a free $25 ad credit that I could promote the post with.
Maybe you knew about this, maybe you didn’t… but I just wanted to share. Regardless, give one of your page posts a click and see if you qualify for the free credit.
by Ryan Shell on May 6, 2010
You know that nifty little feature in the Facebook news feed that allows you to hide updates from applications, people and pages? Ever wondered how many people have hidden your page?
Now, thanks to an enhancement to the page insights you no longer have to wonder. To find the info:
- Go to the Insights section of the page dashboard
- Click “All Page Insights”
- Scroll down to the box that says “All fans of….”
- The number of fans that have hidden your updates should be represented by the yellow line
The chart below is an example of what you should be looking for.
One might imagine that all pages will have people that hide the updates, but if your number is substantial, you might take a moment to check your content and make sure it’s on point.
And on a random note, I’ve not figured out what we’re calling people that have “Liked” a page. They can’t be “likes” – that’s just dumb. Page members? Who knows…
by Ryan Shell on May 4, 2010
I’m not sure if you noticed or not, but I made a big announcement yesterday. Several days prior to doing so I started thinking about how I was going to spread this news to as many friends as possible.
To do so, I decided to use my blog as the announcement hub, but to also use Facebook in a pretty large way. I simply made Facebook event called “Ryan’s Big Announcement” and invited all of my Facebook friends (Have you liked my page?) – this took a decent amount of clicking, but was worthwhile.
Here’s the description that accompanied the event,
“I have a pretty large announcement to make on Monday, May 3 at noon. I created this Facebook event so that I could easily spread the word to as many of my friends as possible, at one time.
I hope you’ll click “attending” so that I can send you a message at noon on Monday to tell you the BIG announcement.
And this isn’t a joke – not at all. I’ve got something big to tell you that I’ve been keeping to myself for quite some time. You might say I’m excitedly nervous.”
I had never given much thought to the idea of using Facebook events to make an announcement, but it made perfect sense. Why? Facebook doesn’t give you the ability to easily message your friends from your Inbox, but when you create an event you have the ability to message everyone you invite. For this instance I simply invited all of my friends – it took some heavy clicking, but was worthwhile.
In the invite message I let people know they didn’t have to actually attend an event, but instead that I’d simply be sending them a message.
The process worked wonderfully and it helped me quickly spread my news to a large portion of my friends. Not to mention the message got shared a decent amount on Facebook and drove a ton of traffic to my website.
There is one important note though. Facebook typically blocks, or breaks, links you send in messages to event attendees. That being said, you’ll need to point folks in the right direction – such as getting a link off of a profile or page.
by Ryan Shell on April 19, 2010
You may have heard that Facebook was going to change their pages a bit so that people no longer “Become a Fan.” Instead users will now “Like” pages.
It seems as though the change has been implemented, or at least it’s getting pushed out to various users. From Facebook,
“Starting today people will be able to connect with your Page by clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan.” We hope this action will feel much more lightweight, and that it will increase the number of connections made across the site.”
They’ve gone a step further and added a second box that shows you which of your friends are a fan of your page. At first glance it seems like the new box might have some glitches, as the number seems to top out at 100.
The photo above is of mynewly created page (You should “Like” it - that just sounds funny); click it to see the changes.
Think about all of the marketing materials that have “Become a Fan” on them. Looks like it’s time to go back to the drawing board and make some edits. “Like us on Facebook” will be all the rage.
