Out Serve Web Facebook Business Pages Guide

8/14/2019 Out Serve Web Facebook Business Pages Guide

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Outserve Ltd 2010 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share alike 2.0 Page 1

Facebook Business Pages - Notes

Course Notes

By @philoakley (Twitter.com/philoakley)

From @outserveweb (Twitter.com/outserveweb)

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England &

Wales

February 2010 Outserve Ltd


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ContentsIntroduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Facebook Lists ................................................................................................................................... 6

Business Accounts ............................................................................................................................... 7

Create Facebook Pages ......................................................................................................................... 8

Create Facebook Pages ......................................................................................................................... 9

Vanity URL ........................................................................................................................................... 9

Multiple Business Pages ...................................................................................................................... 9

Standard Business Page Functionality .................................................................................................. 10

Name your Page ................................................................................................................................ 10

Upload photos ................................................................................................................................... 10

Wall ................................................................................................................................................... 10

Events ................................................................................................................................................ 10

Notes ................................................................................................................................................. 10

Video ................................................................................................................................................. 10

Discussion.......................................................................................................................................... 10

How to send updates directly to your fans ........................................................................................... 11

Connect your Facebook Page to Twitter ............................................................................................. 12

Connect your Twitter to Facebook ..................................................................................................... 14

Instructions to connect Twitter to Facebook .................................................................................. 15

Find your Twitter RSS feed .................................................................................................................... 18

Facebook Applications ........................................................................................................................ 19

Slideshare .......................................................................................................................................... 20

Twitter ............................................................................................................................................... 21

Polls ................................................................................................................................................... 21

Static FBML ....................................................................................................................................... 21


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Facebook Badges ................................................................................................................................ 22

Facebook Widgets ............................................................................................................................... 23

Facebook Insights ................................................................................................................................ 25

Facebook Groups ................................................................................................................................ 26

LinkedIn .................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Linkedin Applications ............................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.


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Introduction

With over 22 million users in the UK, over 50% of all UK internet users, and 400

million users worldwide (as of February 2008) Facebooks popularity is

undeniable. Users have taken easily to updating profiles, joining groups andcommunicating with each other on a scalable web platform.

With the introduction of fan pages and business pages it is now possible to

engage with Facebook users without becoming their friend on your personal

profile. Just because you wish to update someone on a new business

promotion does not mean that you want to share pictures of your kids with

them.


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Keep Your Personal Profile Private

If you are setting up a business page or just want to ensure you are aware of

your privacy settings go to:

Settings>Privacy Settings

Click Profile Information and it will show what privacy settings you have for

all your information.


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Facebook Lists

If you do want to use your personal account for business or want more

granular control over your account you can create lists of contacts (e.g. Family,

Friends, Business etc) and then select different setting for each list. For

example you may want to allow Family and Friends to see your photos but not

your Business Contacts.

New lists can be created from the Create New List button from the top of

your connections screen and from the Add to List button next to each

contact.


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Business Accounts

If you do not have a personal Facebook account and do not wish to have a

personal account you can open a business account. A business account is

designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages andtheir ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same

functionality as personal accounts. Business accounts have limited access to

information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the

Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to

view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not

live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be

found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests.

Maintaining multiple accounts, regardless of the purpose, is a violation of

Facebooks Terms of Use. If you already have a personal account, then you

cannot allow you to create business accounts for any reason. You can manage

all the Pages and Socials Ads that you create on your personal account.

Fans of any of the Pages you administer will not have visibility or access to your

personal account or profile. Any actions that you take as a Page administrator

on your Page will show the Pages name as the actor and not your personal

name.

Unlike personal profiles Business pages are public by default and as such can

be searched by Google so it is good to use any keywords you may have in the

text on the page.

You may create a business account if you don't already have a

standard Facebook account. To get started, you will need to

first create a Facebook Ad or Facebook Page. Once youve

entered in the required information, you will be taken to the

"Facebook Login" page and asked if you have a Facebook

account. If you do not currently have a Facebook account,

then at this point, please select "I do not have a Facebook

account." You will then need to enter your email address anddate of birth.


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Create Facebook Pages

Facebook Pages have been designed to promote businesses and organisations

and are essentially separate from individuals personal profiles although one or

more Facebook users can be setup as admins to control the settings of the

page and make posts and adjustments that only admins are allowed to.

A Facebook Business Page can be seen as a mini website for your Business

with all of the items you might find on a web page or a blog plus Facebook

style updates. But in addition to this you will be able interact with any

fans/customers who can post to the wall, comment on page updates or enter

discussions on the business discussion board. If you do not wish people to be

able to post comments then the settings can be altered to disallow users

posting.

Facebook Pages can be accessed from the Ads & Pages link from the left, the

Advertising link at the bottom of the Facebook homepage or go direct to the

link below

http://www.Facebook.com/pages/create.php

Basics

1. Upload an image/logo/picture

2. Add a brief description

3. Add info if applicable (Address, opening times etc)

Facebook Page Admins

Facebook Page admins are the people who have control

over the page. They have the power to add new content and

updates. They also choose what fans of the page can do from

entering discussions to posting updates. There can be multiple

admins setup for each page and you can take admin rightsgiven to another user although you cannot take away admin

rights from the page creator.


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Create Facebook Pagescont

Profile pictures on Facebook can have a maximum size of 200600 pixels. This

applies to Pages Profile Pictures as well. Facebook Pages do not allow

background images like Twitter. When picking profile picture also considerhow it will look as a thumbnail as this is what is shown on each post on the

wall.

Vanity URL

A new Facebook page can have a rather long and complicated URL or web

address such as:

http://www.Facebook.com/pages/Stafford-United-

Kingdom/OutserveWeb/254814673522

Once you have 25 fans or more you can create a vanity URL here you can

choose your URL after the Facebook.com for example:

http://www.Facebook.com/LottyBox

Having a vanity URL which is shorter and clearer. Vanity URLs are also

available for personal profiles at

http://www.Facebook.com/username/

Multiple Business Pages

Although it is against Facebook rules to have multiple accounts it is notagainst the rules to have multiple pages so you can set up as many pages as

you would like.


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Standard Business Page Functionality

Name your Page

The name you give your page is permanent, so make sure it's the one your fans

and customers will recognise.

Upload photos

You'll be able to upload an unlimited number of photos. The most important is

the profile picture that Facebook users will see (as a thumbnail) in News Feed

when their friends interact with you. A logo, storefront, or group photo may

work well. Make sure the image is still clear when reduced to thumbnail size

Letting fans tag your photos will mean that their friends can see the link to

your page.

Wall

The home page of a business page defaults to a wall. The wall will show all

recent updates to the page and any comment from fans.

Events

Organise events with your fans and alert them of an upcoming events. Any

events that are happening at you organisation can put on not just your physical

events they could be events you are attending or webinars. Also a promotion

could be an event if it is happening at a certain time. Events have priority inpeoples news feed so use them wisely and do not over use them.

Notes

Lets you share posts about your business with your fans. Can also be used for

importing RSS see later for guide to adding a Twitter feed to Facebook.

Video

Provides a high quality video platform for pages. You can upload video files.

Send video from your mobile phone and record video messages to your phone.If you are wish to embed videos that have been put on Youtube (or similar

video hosting services) a copy of the link url added to the posts box will embed

the video on the web page.

Discussion

Allows you to engage with your customers and community in a forum style

discussion


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How to send updates directly to your fans

You cannot send en masse messages to all of your fans. They should be

receiving your updates on their home page. In their Newsfeed. But not

everything appears in everybodys Newsfeed Facebook decides what should

appear based on an algorithm which works out what is important to that

person.

What you can do though is send an update. An update is similar to a

Facebook message but it is sent to the update section of the fans inbox.

How to send an update

Click on the Edit Page link on the sidebar. On the right hand side under

Promote Your Page you will see a link which says Send an Update to Fans.

This will then open an input box to send a message to your fans with some

additional options.


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Connect your Facebook Page to Twitter

As at time of this guide Facebook will currently automatically show a box on

your Facebook page to link a Twitter account to Your Facebook Business

Page.

Or alternatively can be accessed from http://www.Facebook.com/Twitter/

You should see a list of your pages with a option to link to Twitter. Clicking the

Link to Twitter will link to Twitter.com asking permission to link the Twitter

account you login with to the Facebook Page.


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Once you have linked your Facebook page to your Twitter Account you can

select what Facebook page information you want to automatically post to

your Twitter account.

For example if you ticked to link Facebook Page Events to your Twitter

account then when you add an event to a Facebook Page like:

Then automatically an update and a link will be posted to your linked Twitter

account like:

Notes

The tick for Notes, on the previous page, has been deliberately taken out as

this will be used to receive updates from Twitter and if you left this ticked it

could create an endless circle of posts


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Connect your Twitter to Facebook

If you have followed the instructions above you have linked your Facebook to

Twitter meaning that Facebook Page updates (and other selected

information) will automatically get posted to Twitter with a link back toFacebook.

In addition to this or alternatively you can link your Twitter to Facebook

meaning that your updates to Twitter can update Facebook.

There is not an official application to support the sending of Twitter updates to

the Facebook Page Wall (there are third party applications see the apps

section) but you can use the Notes application to do this. The Facebook notes

application is just that a box where you can enter some notes (any notes asoften as you want). Somewhat useful, but one of the best uses for the Notes

Box is to is to bring in an RSS feed from any RSS enabled site (Blog, Twitter etc).

The RSS just allows your regular updates to your other sites such as your blog

or Twitter to be automatically posted to your Facebook business page. This is

very useful for keeping your Facebook business page up to date with your

latest content and links without any extra work.

Unfortunately the Notes application is restricted to one RSS feed so one ofyour sites. If you would like to bring in multiple RSS feeds one solution is to

combines multiple site feeds into one combined RSS feed using a service like

Yahoo Pipes. Yahoo Pipes is a free service (requiring you sign up for a free

Yahoo account) that as well as many other things can combine multiple RSS

feeds.

If you do link both ways Twitter to Facebook and Facebook to Twitter

then when using the instructions below it is important to untick the Notes

field from the Facebook to Twitter updates as otherwise this could create

an endless loop. There still maybe some duplication but this should be

manageable and often posting twice does no harm.


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Instructions to connect Twitter to Facebook

When you are logged into Facebook and on the Facebook Business page

click edit page from the top left under the Page Logo

In the applications box you will see the Notes Application:

Continued...

Any applications that you install on your page should show in this

application box. Notes is an official Facebook application and is

installed by default (it can be deleted if required)


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Click edit on the Notes Application box

Continued...


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This should bring up the settings box and from here you can click import

blog. This function can be used to import a blog or any RSS feed, in this case

we are going to connect to a Twitter feed.

This will show the following screen where you need to enter the RSS feed for

your Twitter account (see below to find your Twitter RSS)


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Find your Twitter RSS feed

To find your Twitter RSS feed click on the link on your Twitter home page

Click here and it show you a page like below but all you need is to copy the

web address/URL to copy into the Web URL requested for importing a blog.


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Facebook Applications

Similar to a personal profile the functionality of a Business Page can be

extended by adding specific applications. Although there are many 1000s of

applications for a Facebook personal profile only a small percentage of these

can be applied to Business Page. Most apps are not of a type that you would

want to add them to a business page.

You can search the Facebook applications from www.Facebook.com/apps as

below

When you find an app you may want to use you will have to confirm that it

can be used on a page this can be confirmed on the apps page by having the

add to page link as below:


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Below are a few applications that can be applied to a business pages:

Slideshare

http://www.Facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2490221586&ref=appd

(or search Facebook applications for slide)

Slideshare.net is a website that allows you to upload your slide presentations

to the web. Once they have been uploaded they are hosted by Slideshare

website and can be embedded on any website or blog. The Slideshare

Facebook application brings the Slideshare website functionality to you

Facebook Business Page including showing your own presentations.


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Facebook Applications Continued

Twitter

http://www.Facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2231777543&ref=search

&sid=500655701.376077238..1

or

Social Tweet

http://www.Facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=111757625714&ref=app

d

Will add a Twitter tab to your page to show your latest Twitter updates and

links to the full Social Tweet too.

Polls-

Polls are a great way to engage existing and new fans. Add a poll application

like the one below and you can ask questions, get market research or just have

fun.

Poll Daddy Polls

http://www.Facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=138079047824&ref=app

d

Poll Daddy Polls has the option to create polls which can go on Facebook

pages.

Static FBML

Static FMBL is an application that allows you to create boxes of content either

as a tabbed page or in the sidebar. The boxes allow web design code like HTML

and CSS to be entered so a Business Page can be further tailored and

customised. In additional to standard HTML and CSS, FBML can be used. FBML

is Facebook Markup language.


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Facebook Badges

Facebook badges are a quick and easy way to link people to your Facebook

Page. Often these badges are put on an organisations website or blog. The

simplest badge, which has become very popular, is a Find us on FacebookBadge normally a simple Facebook logo promoting a link to your Facebook

page. As below:

The badge above is available from Facebook

(http://www.Facebook.com/note.php?note_id=12259414821)

If you have access to your website or blog the HTML code below should be

enough to create the button and link. Of course you will want to change the

link, in bold below, to be your Facebook Page (the image link refers to my

Flickr page but this should work for everybody)

HTML

If you do not have access to your website then hopefully a request to your

website administrator should get a button on your website.


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Facebook Widgets

As well as the simple button above Facebook also make available other

buttons with additional features called widgets. These are available from

http://www.Facebook.com/Facebook-widgets.

The fan box widget will create a box for your website or blog having a link to

your Business page with a snapshot of your fan profile pictures. You can also

add to this a selection of your page posts. This box can be quickly and easily

created for the blogging services Blogger and Typepad alternatively a script can

be produced to embed the box for any website.


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Facebook widgets continued

In addition to the widget box simple badges can also be created from the

badge link


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Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights measures user exposure, actions, and behaviour relating to

your Social Ads and Facebook Page. By understanding activity and

performance, fans and ad respondents, and trends and comparisons, you are

better equipped to improve your business on Facebook and elsewhere.

Insights is a free service for all Facebook Pages and Social Ads.

Only Page admins can view this information, and it is displayed in the left

column of the Page. To view comprehensive Insights, click "See All" in the left

column.


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Facebook Groups

Groups are a bit different than Pages. Permissions can be set on groups so

that they are either open to anyone, closed (where users must get admin

approval to join) or private (invite only). Groups have administrators that

manage the group, approve applicants or invite others to join.

Groups postings are linked directly to a persons profile where business pages

are not for this reason Groups are seen as a more personal than Pages.

Importantly Facebook groups are not indexed on Google where as

Facebook pages are. So if you want to be found then a page is preferable.Both Groups and Pages allow you to create related Events. Ads can be

purchased to promote either groups or Pages. Groups cannot add

applications to their pages while Pages can.

As long as a group is under 5,000 members, you can send direct messages

that will show up in the users Facebook inbox. A Page can send its fans an

update and this will arrive in the update part of their inbox.

Groups are better for organising on a personal level. Pages are better for

brands, businesses, bands, movies, or celebrities who want to interact or

engage with their fans or customers without having them connected to a

personal account.


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Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England &

Wales Outserve Limited

Philip Oakley 2010

Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

Documents

Out Serve Web Facebook Business Pages Guide