Posts Tagged ‘fan pages’

Ready For Your Facebook Timeline?

Monday, October 10th, 2011

According to John Jantsch, Facebook’s new Timeline will be rolled out to everyone on October 14 (but you can get yours early, he says). I haven’t seen anything yet that says the official date is October 14, but I’ll take his word for it. The question I have for small business owners is, Are you ready?

This could be the most important change to Facebook for small business owners since Fan Pages. In fact, you’ll have the option to exchange your fan page for a subscriber base. But should you do that?

It’s clear that the subscriber feature on your profile page is a huge benefit, especially if you do a lot of public posting about business topics related to your niche. Currently, you can manage your fan page as the admin and even assign others as admins over your page. That’s a big benefit if you don’t have the time to do your own posting.

But one of the big pluses to Facebook’s new Timeline feature is you’ll be able to give your Timeline a header photo. This photo can be anything as long as it is the right size. Why not the head to your blog or website? You’ll be able to effectively brand your Facebook Timeline right out of the chute. Are you ready for the change?

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Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

Facebook Changes Page Layout Features

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

It used to be that Facebook fan pages weren’t allowed to interact with other pages or with Facebook profile walls. Now, that’s no longer the case. You can interact with others on Facebook as your branded Facebook page. This is a great opportunity for brands that are using Facebook for marketing.

The downside is it will likely lead to more page spam, but that downside notwithstanding, the positives are a lot better.

Here is a summary of the recent changes Facebook made to its page layout features:

  • An upgraded navigation bar (on the left side of the page)
  • Ability to upload five photos that appear at the top of the page, which can be used for creative page layouts
  • Ability to interact with page followers as yourself or as the page Admin
  • Ability to Like other pages as a branded Facebook page, and also to comment on other pages
  • The ability to browse Facebook as a page

These changes give brands on Facebook a lot more flexibility and can lead to some creative marketing efforts.

In the past, Facebook has been reluctant to allow brands to browse Facebook and interact with Facebook pages as brands. You had to do that through your Facebook personal profile. But that didn’t do much for getting people to visit your pages. You had to actively promote those pages. Now, you can interact on Facebook as your page, which puts your page front and center. Can you say “Pages Ahoy!?”

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Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

New Study Shows Facebook Is Effective Marketing

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

For those of us who have used Facebook we don’t need the survey results to tell us how effective Facebook is for marketing, but a new survey shows that is very effective.

I’m particularly encouraged by the following paragraph in the above article:

“The fact that only about 5 percent of the firm’s 13,000 customers became Facebook fans within three months indicates that Facebook fan pages may work best as niche marketing programs targeted to customers who regularly use Facebook. Social-media marketing must be employed judiciously with other types of marketing programs.”

Five percent is nothing to sneeze at. That’s 650 new Facebook fans in three months. For some small businesses, that would be fantastic growth. And 650 new fans could lead to a few good sales. Just a 1% conversion rate on that would be about 2 new sales a month with zero expense. If your average sale is $100 then you have a $200 return on investment per month.

The size of the numbers don’t matter. Some will be larger and some will be smaller. The fact is, Facebook fan pages can be effective marketing. Even if effective as niche marketing programs, which can often be more effective marketing programs anyway, Facebook fan pages work. The evidence is in.

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Posted in Social Media | 5 Comments »