Since this Friday I am teaching a webinar for ActiveRain University titled Customizing Your ActiveRain Blog that it was time for me to share about the importance of building your brands across all social media platforms. Instead of writing a 3,000 word novel to cover all of the different platforms that exist and tips to customizing each, I figured I would break this down into a series.
The first network I want to talk about today is Customizing your Facebook Page. But before I get into what to customize and how, I first want to share the difference between the three main categories Facebook offers. The first is a Facebook Profile. A profile is your personal page on Facebook. It is where you have "friends" and can connect with people on a personal level. What many do not realize about these profiles is that Facebook frowns heavily on you doing any business on them. In fact, section 4.2 of Facebook TOS says this: "You will not use your personal profile for commercial gain." Pretty self explanatory.
A Facebook Group is the second category of Facebook that I wanted to discuss. These pages are limited to the number of members you can have. Also, they normally require each person to be accepted into the group. They also have several limitations to the customization end of things. So while these might be good idea, they have some major limitations when it comes to being effective for business.
The third Facebook category which I want to talk in detail about is Facebook Pages. These are designed for businesses. They allow many customizations and also unlimited number of fans. Many times though, when I look at Facebook Pages, I see so many things that could use some improvement.
Here are my 4 most important things to do when customizing a Facebook Page.
1. Fill in the about me section on your main page. Facebook pages have a small about me section on the main area of your page. Make sure you fill this area in with a brief description of what the page is about. The other thing that is good to do here is add a link to your website. You can do so by just typing out the full URL to your site.
This is a quick and easy way to share a little bit of information about the purpose of your page and also your business. Like I mentioned, keep this brief. Don't try to get into a sales pitch here or you will lose the consumer before they even take the time to click to become a fan.
2. Custom avatars- Did you know that you can create your own custom avatars for your Facebook Page? Instead of using a standard 200x200 photo, you can actually have something that is up to 540 pixels long! One of the big advantages to the larger custom avatars is that they will stand out from your competition when someone is searching for pages to join. If the logos for all the other pages are small and yours is over twice the size, you have a much better chance of them noticing you. Here are a few ideas for other things to incorporate into your avatar. You can add additional text, graphics, & colors to it. While the links you add are not going to be able to be clicked, you can give people valuable information like a quick reference to your phone number, twitter account, etc.
Here are a few that I recently designed for clients. You can see what I mean:
The key though to making these larger avatars is that you have to keep in mind the logo that will show up on your thumbnails on the wall. So it is important that you use the correct spacing, sizing etc for your main logo/image. If not, you will end up with half of your head, or logo showing up on the thumbnails and that doesn't always look the greatest. If you are graphically design challenged, I can help.
3. Integration of Blog- There are several ways to integrate your blog into your Facebook page. While some work better than others, you have to go with the process you prefer. I personally like mine coming in as an RSS feed through social RSS, but you can also use the notes function if you wish. The key though is to feed in your blog information so that there is a steady stream of content other than just your regular wall posts. One word of caution though, remember when you set up the RSS feed that it feeds everything posted to that domain. So if you set it up & then place a blog post that is off topic or slightly offensive, it will be visible to your Facebook page as well.
4. Custom Welcome Tab- This is by far the most effective thing you can have on your Facebook page. You can set this to be the tab that greets every single guest to your site. That way they can get to know you immediately. Our Facebook Page which was built by Mike Mueller, has a nice welcome video from myself & Jason Crouch that greets every single fan to our page. We kept our video under a minute and just thank people for visiting & encourage them to become a fan. In less than 10 days, it has been viewed 100 times!
These custom tabs can also have all types of things added to them. Including good keyword rich content, links to pages of your website, links to other services you offer. If you know FBML, you can really do some awesome things on a page. But, if you are like me and are not an expert on FBML (Facebook Markup Language) then I would HIGHLY recommend you contact Mike Mueller to build your page. He has done over 200 of them & is really up to date on all the changes in specs to the pages. That way you do not have someone build a great custom page for you to find out the next week that Facebook is making major changes to size allotments & other specs. If you want a page, contact him here. Also, because he likes me so much, he told me I can offer a 10% discount if you mention my name. So tell him Jeremy sent you!
Take these 4 simple steps, place them into action, and you can really have one really awesome custom page that is branded to your business. This means that if they find you on a website or on Facebook, it doesn't really matter because both sites look, feel & act in very similar manners. If you don't believe me, take a look at our website & Facebook page. You will definitely see the correlation in our branding between the two.
If you want to learn more about how to customize your Facebook Page, feel free to contact me directly or register for our workshop on 3/17/10 at 2PM EST. Mike is going to teach you more on how to build awesome custom Facebook pages like ours!
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I am the Co-Founder of 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors. If you would like more information on any of the topics discussed in this blog, please contact me directly. Also, please visit my other online consulting blog for more social media tips, tricks and enhancements.
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I have had this subject on my mind for a while now. It was good to read about it.
Hi Jeremy, this is just what I needed. I have been stumbling around on Facebook, learning as go. So far no major mistakes, but infomation like this helps a lot.
By the way, thanks for connecting on my friend and fan pages! Thought I had subscribed to you blog. About to do so now. :)
Jeremy this is the bookmark post, I look forward to more info on this stuff and will try to tune in on Friday. Thanks for the info.
Great content here Jeremy. Superb job as always. I always think the Avatars are great for businesses but no so for individuals.
All of these will be implemented this week and will be presented and credited to you in a class that I am presenting on 3/26/2010 in our Market Center. Thank You
Thanks Jeremy, just a quick question. My AR blogs go directly to my Facebook profile but I have to manually add the link to my fanpage site. Is there a way to have it sent there automatically?
Jenny- you have to add a tab to your FB page with a RSS feeder.
Great information Jeremy. I am looking forward to learning even more on Friday.
Great information as usual. Thanks Jeremy
Now THIS makes sense! I keep seeing all these ads, asking people to pay for training on setting up their Facebook page. I couldn't believe they were serious. This is a great explanation and breakdown. But I've intentionally NOT setup a business page. So far, I've been too busy with all the other social networks. But I do believe Facebook will take over in that area, since the social side is so popular. Up until now, LinkedIn has been where I get the most activity... and of course, Twitter.
Hi Jeremy. That comes in handy. You know the word customizing is misspelled and is missing an s? :-) Long entry that is much appreciated.
It's wild that I just saw this post. I was just on my facebook profile trying to customize it for marketing. Thanks for the tips!
I saw one RE social media guru tweet that you should NOT use notes to post your blog to facebook. Just saw that this week,..,. or maybe that is NOT what he meant. It is hard to keep up. I set up one page with notes following the instructions in Mariana Wagner's post here a couple of weeks ago. I had previously set up another page using directions I found here.
I think I like the notes look better but it takes longer for the content to show up from my ActiveRain Outside blog. Now I am worried it is a faux pas to post your blog via notes... or maybe I don't care...
Hi Jeremy - I believe only non-fans land on your custom Welcome tab. Those who are already fans go directly to the Wall. (Mike taught me that.)
Thanks Jeremy, I look forward to the Friday webinar
Jeremy, you always write great posts chock full of information. After I finish tweaking my ar stuff, I am going to have Mike do a fb page for my mother and I!!!
Hi Jeremy,
I have been trying to figure this out for quite some time... I have also been trying to figure out how to feed all of my blogs to each other so that I don't have to keep copying and pasting to each individual blog... I could use some help... If you don't mind I could e-mail you a couple of me blogs and sites and you could let me know what you could do for me?
Barb
Thank you so much, Great Information and great timing. I have been working to get my fan page up to par! Will try to clear my calendar for Friday and learn more.
Thank you Jeremy, I finally understand now the difference between a Facebook profyle and a Fan page.
I'm dizzy with anticipation!
Jeremy:
Thanks for the advice, I am looking forward to creating a better fan page, and being part of your webinar.
Thanks Jeremy, I'm still tweaking my Facebook fan page! Don't have a lot of fans yet but I'm working on it!
Jeremy,
Thank you~! I bookmarked this for later.
Marianne
Great information. I am still working on setting up other social media things, but this is on my list. Bookmarked. Tere
I have been trying to learn all that I can on the subject, thanks Jeremy for sharing all this information =)
You guys continue to do so many great things to help us advance our social media skills! Thanks and I will see you later today at the Facebook webinar!
Doh Lana! I can't believe I did that! That is what happens when you rush to get to dinner!
Maureen- I don't think that it makes a huge difference which way you post it. The notes function is a little more reliable, but it doesn't always format everything correct.
John- You are correct! Non fan can be directed to whatever page you wish on your page. Fans go directly to the wall.
Betsy- Sounds like we have a great plan layed out!
Barbara- Email or call me!
See you Friday Amy!
Catherine- Glad I could help out!
Lenn- We are gonna do some great & awesome things! I am excited to work with you on this!
See you then Lorraine & Loretta!
Pam- If you build it, the fans will come!
See you today Russell! It is gonna be an awesome workshop!
Thanks Jeremy for all the info. I am bookmarking for future reference and have already signed up for Friday. I need all the help I can get. Thanks again for sharing.
I wish more realtors would read your rule about using your personal profile. I see realtors cramming real estate down people's throats on Facebook. Facebook is for farming and being a part of the community. I enjoy the opportunity to humanize myself into a real person not an avatar. Hope my schedule permits me to attend.
great post...thanks for sharing I will include your suggestions on my FB
Jeremy - more great information about Facebook. Wish I did not have a commitment this morning so I could sit in on Mike's talk. Some other time.
Jeff
Hi Jeremy,
Looking forward to learning more!
Thank You,
Bookmarked this to come back later when I can focus on it. Like maybe 1 am!
WOW! Thanks for this. I have been working on improving my FB pages and this is most helpful! You are awesome!
Jeremy: Thanks for these great tips. I have some of this stuff but it needs some work. Now to find the time to do it! Have a great day!
I like all of these ideas. Just putting the time in to work on implementing is holding me up........................chris
Thanks for the great info, Jeremy, I will go forth and customize!
Hello Jeremy - Thanks for the Facebook tips. I need to get this set up. I'm long overdue. Thanks again.
Jeremy,
Thank you! I have been trying to figure it out and I am 100 times better with contracts than I am this techno stuff. I love you for sharing this information!!!!!
Lisa
My head is spinning a bit with all of this. I will have to bookmark and reread later after more coffee!
My head is spinning a bit with all of this. I will have to bookmark and reread later after more coffee!
Jeremy, great post. I already have an appointment at 1:30 so cannot attend the webinar but would love to. Thanks for all the information.
Jeremy, any idea how much he charges to design the fb pages? I have tried learning and messing around with the fbml and cannot seem to get it right. If it is not too expensive, then I would love for him to design it.
Hi Jeremy,
I'd love to see a detailed post on how to get fans for your business page as part of your series.
Hey Justin- Just emailed you, his prices are really reasonable for what you get. Let me know if you have any questions.
Carol- Great idea, i will add that into this series!
Jeremy - great info, looking forward to webinar.
I don't seem to have a "welcome" tab available. is there something special I have to do?
Thanks Jeremy for the information. It would be nice if Facebook had a WYSWIG editor to customize your own page. I took the webinar on Activerain University, and it looks like Mike does some really great work at a reasonable cost. I definitely plan on taking advantage of his services soon!
It's great that you can keep your branding simliar on all platforms.
Jeremy, thanks for the info. This is a definite goal for me.
I recently added a custom welcome page on my company's facebook page. It looks much more professional! Thanks for the great tips!
Jeremy: Awesome!
Now featured on the Optimist Group.
Jeremy is there somewhere I can go to learn how to intergrate my AR blog to my facebook page?
Thanks for the information its was most helpful. I just created a business page.
Welcome tab is great. I am going to get one.
David- You have to create a custom tab to get one that is a welcome tab like ours. It is pretty complext to do. My suggestion is to have Mike build one for you.
Woohoo Mirela! Thanks!
Christa- I am not sure if there is a place, you can only integrate in minimal parts of AR to Facebook. Mainly just your blog posts through an RSS feeder like social RSS or the notes section on facebook.
Jeremy, I have a welcome tab but it is for my community...I need to check into this more deeply. thanks for all the info and links for helping make better FB pages.
thanks for the helpful FB tips! I appreciate it
Hi Jeremy, This is a great post. I always learn so much from your posts...thank you! I will have to integrate the Welcome Tab!
Hi Jeremy -- Thanks, I'm a fb newbie so I've bookmarked this is a very good overview and helped me to connect the dots with these differenty types, I've never seen it explained in one post before, thank you.
Jeremy, have to bookmark this to read when my eyes aren't cross-eyed from such a long day. You brought up some great points and new info. Wish I could join you Friday, but my schedule won't permit. When are you doing it again?
The show you guys had today on Facebook fan pages was great, even if it got a little over my head right at the end.
Chris- if you have any questions, please, feel free to contact me & I will do my best to answer them.
Frank & Sharon- Not sure when friday will happen again. I am gonna try my best to record things to share later.
Christine- Thanks, I know things got really technical at the end. Unfortunately FB makes building awesome pages very complex. That is why I always recommend Mike make the page. Like I said, if you tell him 210 sent you, it will get you 10% off the price!
Great info as always Jeremy. I'm not sure I want everything to look the same on all platforms. I do believe it will be easier to have them all look the same (aka branded) but I'm not sold on it as of yet. Question: if you like the color red, does everything have to be red?
Jeremy,
Custom welcome tab is news to me. That needs to be explored thoroughly and then do what you are proposing here. Altogether good stuff.
Esko- If you need help with the welcome tab, contact me, I can assist you with it.
Thanks Jeremy. Friday's class was great. I look forward to the full series on social media!
Thanks for the info I hope to be able to follow up with some of it.
I will be trying some of these tips (like the custom avatar) today. Thanks.