Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook has always been touchy about members spamming, but in the earlier period they’ve really opened up opportunities for businesses and professionals to represent themselves on the site.  The greatest way to make your presence known if you hope to use Facebook for marketing is to make what is called a “Fan Page” in the name of your business or organization.

The main difference between a Fan Page and a usual user profile is that the Fan Pages are public.  For people to view your own profile on Facebook, they must first register and then request to be added to your list of contacts.  Other than a Fan Page can be viewed even by non-members.  It does not contain your individual name (unless you want it to), personal photos or other information that you don’t necessarily want to share with the general public.

One more great feature to Facebook Fan Pages is that whenever anyone becomes a “fan” or adds you as a contact; it is broadcast via their profile to all of their contacts, reaching potentially thousands of other people who may not have heard of you before.

So what are the elements that will create your Facebook Fan Page stand out?  Here are five:

1. Apply a simple page title such as your business name or something else that clearly describes what you do.
2. Apply an easily identifiable logo or profile picture.
3. Keep your page updated, new, and interesting without adding a bunch of lame apps to clutter it up.
4. Join in on conversations that ensue on your page.  People love to know that a real one is watching and listening to what they have to say.
5. Be willing to create changes and add features that your fans are asking for.  They are major contributors to creating your Fan Page successful, so let them participate in its design and operation.

Obviously, the equal rules apply to Facebook Fan Pages that apply to all other social networking:  don’t be pushy and don’t force yourself on your contacts.  The great thing about Fan Pages, however, is that people who select to be a fan of your page know that you will be talking about your business or product on there, so you don’t have to worry about them getting indignant at you when you post business-related things.

Facebook is presently the most popular social networking site in the world, so if you are not using it to support your business you are simply missing out.  Make sure you have links to your Facebook Fan Page on your blog and your usual Facebook profile so people know it exists.  You may need to do a little bit of promotion when you first start it up, but eventually it will hold on as people see your updates posted in their friends’ public timelines.

get time to set up your company’s Facebook Fan Page, put some real thought into it, and then use it as yet another tool for generating awareness about your company online.  Do you have a Facebook Fan Page for your business?  put down us a comment with a link so we can check it out!

Privacy and Facebook Gets Its personal Fan Page

Upset about your privacy on Facebook? You’re not the just one, and Facebook has officially responded to the widespread unease with an official Facebook and Privacy Page. Following weeks of negative press on the topic from blogs to typical media alike, Facebook announced in a blog post today that they have launched a Page that will cover up all things privacy on the site. According to the post, the reason of this new Privacy Page is as follows:
The Facebook and Privacy Page serves as a living reserve and a venue to help an interactive discussion about privacy with all of you. We’ll often post updates on relevant new content, products and news stories related to online privacy.
Already the Facebook and Privacy Page (Fan Page, Like Page, Business Page… anything you like to call it!) has a wealth of information about how to set privacy controls, with articles, videos, and pictures. We’re impressed with their landing tabs that present even more information, including the Resources Tab and Experts Tab.
The only thing misplaced is a Facebook fan Pages Design landing tab from FaceItPages, but hey, we might be just a bit biased in that regard.

Fan Page Photo – Quick Tip

While creating your Facebook Fan Page, one of the first things you must do is add a Page Photo. This establishes your identity at a look (many times that’s all visitors will do — glance) and helps to solidify your branding, so it is an absolutely essential step when setting up your Fan or Business Page.
Because most places around the web require or re-size profile images to be square, many people assume the same is true for Facebook. Not so! Your Page Photo can be up to 200 pixels wide and 600 pixels high, which is a pretty good amount of real estate to send a quick message and make a first impression. We suggest taking the time to create a Page Photo that includes your logo or branding, as well as a simple “first impression” message to your Page visitors. While the size is up to you, it is helpful to be aware of the possibilities.
Lastly, keep in mind that your Page Photo will be used for the thumbnail image that is displayed next to all of your status updates and posts. The thumbnail image is automatically re-sized to 50 x 5o pixels (yep, a square), which sometimes looks weird if you’ve uploaded a long Page Photo. To modify this a bit, hover over your Page Photo and click “Change Picture”, then “Edit Thumbnail” (see screen shot below). This will let you select an area of your Photo which looks best as a square. Don’t overlook this last step, since your thumbnail is what everyone will see in their news feed!

Facebook Joins the Patent Smack down Culture on a New Front

Mobile patent wars have raged for a few months. Currently it’s time for high tech battles, part II: patent infringement suits in social networking. Like part of a now year-long ongoing dispute, Facebook filed go with against Phoenix Media/Communications, which owns an alt-weekly and an alternative rock radio station in Boston. Given how young and in change the social media industry is, this type of early assault is likely to recur.

A process for providing a personal page on a computer system accessible to a plurality of remote users during a computer network, the remote users having profile information stored in the computer network and easy to get to other remote users, comprising the steps of:

a.       suitable profile information from a plurality of remote users;

b.      prompting a page-creating remote user with a plurality of page templates for the individual page and receiving a template selection from the remote user;

c.       prompting the page-creating remote user to enter content to the personal page and receiving entered text from the remote user;

d.      prompting the page-creating remote user to select or enter graphical information to present on the personal page and getting the selection or entry from the remote user;

e.       storing attributes representing each choice or entry made by the page-creating remote user in one or more databases;

f.       providing the page-creating remote user with means to input safety parameters for the personal page, the security parameters specifying authorization of at least one other remote user to access the personal page;

g.      storing the security parameters in one or extra databases; and

h.      Displaying the personal page upon request only to remote users who are allowed to access the personal page.

Although Phoenix used the technology for online dating, the patent — filed for in 1997 and granted in 2001 – would seem to cover the personal pages on Facebook … or many other online services. (Why perform I suspect that Facebook is not the only company to hear from Phoenix?) Now, a year later, Facebook is asserting two patents in a countersuit.

This might seem like an aberration, but then so did the opening patent infringement suits in the mobile space, and look how knotted up that has become. And, as additional correlation, when I wrote about Face book location-based social networking patent, I received a digit of emails from special patent holders and lawyers who all seemed to think that they had applicable patent claims that predated those of Facebook. Between to facilitate and the tensions building up between Facebook and Google, I think this could be just the opening of a wave of social networking patent fights. Remember the saying: Follow the wealth and eventually you will run into the lawyers.

Facebook Tests “Find equal Browser” for discovering real Life Friends

Facebook appears to be check a find Friends Browser feature like a new part of its tool for helping people connect by Facebook users they before now know in real life. In it, users can choose to view friend suggestions of public who share their same location, work, education provider, or who are friends with a exact friend of theirs. The Find Friends Browser makes it easy to find people you know, other than haven’t essentially contacted before through email, instant messenger, or another service from which Facebook imports contacts.
Users can before find which friends shared some of these attributes with them through filters on the search interface, or by going to the mutual friends section of another user’s profile, clicking see all, and selecting the “Browse” tab. However, the “Friends of…” and home town options are not accessible elsewhere, and the Find Friends Browser is specifically designed for adding new friends.
Helping new users discover their genuine world friends is crucial to them graduating from a nearly empty news feed to being communally attached to Facebook for the long term. The corporation has been busy introducing features to make that process easier. In July, it promoted the locate Friends tool by prompts on the main page. The Find Friends Browser can also offset the potential reduction in friend finding capabilities resulting from Google no longer allowing Facebook to import Google Contacts.
It is currently unclear how users can steer to the Find Friends Browser, but those in the test group preserve access it at http://www.facebook.com/find-friends/browser/. present they’ll see inputs and drop-down menus for the various parameters during which they can find friends, plus high school, college, employer, hometown, currency city. For example, users can see communities who have the same hometown that they currently list in their profile or that they’ve before listed, or the user can type in another home town to search. This helps users find people from their early days who they force not have talked to in years.
The previous limitation is “Friends of…”, which shows suggestions of people who are friends with a specific friend of the Find Friends Browser user. This is particularly helpful for when you are away from home, form a close relationship with one person and friend them, other than want to send friend requests to others you met on the same vacation or business trip.
The suggestions returned show how many friends you have in common, and the tool appears to use this number and other factors to rank results by relevance. while a user mouses above one of the suggestions, an “Add as friend” button appears, allowing them to quickly send multiple friend requests without leaving the browser.
The last stricture is “Friends of…”, which shows suggestions of people who are friends with a definite friend of the Find Friends Browser user. This is specially useful for when you are away from home, form a close relationship with one someone and friend them, but then would like to send friend requests to others you met on the same vacation or business trip.
The suggestions returned exhibit how many friends you have in common, and the tool appears to apply this number and other factors to rank results by relevance. While a user mouses over one of the suggestions, an “Add as friend” button appears, allowing them to speedily send multiple friend requests without leaving the browser.
You can be less likely to know Find Friends Browser suggestions than those based on imported records of people you’ve emailed or immediate messaged with. However, being in the similar high school class often provides more basis for real friendship than simply sharing a professional email exchange. In this mode, the Find Friends Browser helps users find distant associates they might have otherwise forgotten

Facebook Fan Page Promotion Tips

Facebook fan pages have become a very significant branding tool when it comes to building up a nice fan base of cheerleaders. Facebook fan pages are a bit different in the wisdom that you almost have to let the fan be part of what you offer from being who you are. In order for that to happen you need to attract people to come over to your fan page and join your message.

Here are some habits to increase Facebook fans and promote your Facebook Fan Page:

Facebook Fan Page “Like” Box
Every Facebook fan page has the capability to be entrenched directly into the structure of your website increasing the amount of people that might strike that “like” button. Once they strike the like button and they are signed into their Facebook account (which many are) they automatically turn into a fan of your page. Now whenever you post something on your businesses wall your Facebook fans will see it.

Twitter Stream
If you have a Twitter account that is a bit active feel free to drop in the link to your Facebook fan page once in a while in order to see some new fans come on board. As long as you are not posting a link every 10 minutes your viewers will respond over time with some new fan sign ups.

Social Bookmarking
You can even obtain your Facebook fan page and submit it into the social bookmarking websites once in a great while. I wouldn’t advise you to doing this often because it might look spammy but if you do it once a very great while you could generate some nice fans approaching over to see what you have to offer.

Email Newsletter
If you have a regularly planned newsletter submit a link to your Facebook fan page in your newsletter. If your newsletter recipient list has a good deal of emails you could really see this work to your advantage especially if you have a nice progression of new sign ups coming aboard to your newsletter list.

There are many ways you can create and promote your Facebook fan page online. Do not try using any rapid scheme software programs to get the job done because I can assurance you that you will ultimately have your account shut off. Facebook does not obtain gently to that approach. Do it with experience and marketing and your efforts will be rewarded tenfold.