By now everyone is going through the 5 stages of grief over the loss of default landing tabs as the fact that all Facebook fan pages will convert to the new Facebook Timeline for Pages Design on March 30, 2012 sinks in.

Questions about the content housed on the millions of custom tabs created by businesses and entrepreneurs such as contests, opt-in offers, streaming video channels and e-commerce pages have people scrambling and questioning whether or not Facebook fans pages will be a worthwhile investment for small to mid-sized businesses and entrepreneurs, in both time and money.

All of your custom tabs still exist. You just need to think creatively about how to market them.

As of this writing, all of the content on custom tabs is still live and accessible. The only change has been that you cannot set up a default landing tab for non-fans. So how does a page entice fans to search for and click on a tab now that they are no longer displayed on the left hand side of a page?

Page admins can upload a custom image to represent the tab or app as Facebook is now referring to all tabs. Imagine seeing a series of evocative, engaging images in this 180 x 180 pixel format under the cover photo.  Color, words, and images will call out to the reader like carnival barkers. “Come see the amazing offer.”

Page admins can also rearrange the order in which the apps appear. Four apps are “above the fold” and the rest live under the drop down arrow on the right hand side. Three of those app spots are available to admins to highlight the apps of their choice.  Photos will always display.  So admins can change the view to highlight specials, sales, contests or whichever three apps are most important to a page in any given time period.

I created two simple word images just to illustrate what’s possible. It was easy to upload the new app cover images and I expect to see brands and entrepreneurs doing some very creative work with these images.  If you have examples of fun, enticing or downright awesome images fan pages are using to highlight their custom tab offerings, please post their URL below.  Let’s amass some examples to inspire one another.

Large companies pay consulting firms big bucks for this information and Facebook gives it to entrepreneurs free of charge.

For newbies, you’ll find your Facebook Insights on the left hand side of your business or fan page under your avatar. Click on the Insights link and for the purpose of this tutorial, scroll down the page until you see a grid of your most recent posts called “page posts.”  We’ll be discussing the fourth column called “Engaged Users.”

Facebook Insights are a suite of information tools built into the Facebook platform to help you test and refine your marketing and branding strategy.  Understanding each of those metrics or insights is powerful information about your current communications style, the tribe you’ve gathered and whether or not your current messaging is hitting home or falling flat.

Engaged Users, according to Facebook, is a measurement applied to individual posts. It is the number of unique people who have clicked on a individual post. The data reflects actions taken on that post in a 28 day period.  There are several key pieces of information attached to this insight.

• Total Engaged Users: This overall number is interesting in and of itself and your insights can be sorted, high to low, to see which posts are garnering the most clicks. You can look for patterns, tone, and content to see which types of posts are most interesting to your current tribe. As a percentage of your total fans, this number also gives you an idea of the reach of your posts. If you have 20,000 fans and 12 engaged readers, it’s time to evaluate your conversation.
• Pie Chart: When you click on the Engaged Users number, you’ll see a pie chart to give you even more details about user behavior.  You’ll see metrics for photo views, other clicks and stories generated.
• Photo Views: The first number you’ll see tells you if users viewed your photos at full size.  This means they clicked on your photo to make it larger. This means they were highly motivated to interact with, spend time with, and look over your visual content.  This is an indication of how strongly Facebook values photos in their algorithm. Using photos in your posts will increase your likelihood of being served up in the news stream of your fans and Facebook believes (and I agree) that Facebook has evolved into a much more visual platform. Photos add value and appeal and attract more eyeballs to your content.
• Other Clicks: Other clicks is the measurement of additional actions your viewers took, within a post, such as clicking on the number of likes to see who else liked your post, people’s names, or the timestamp. Facebook says this is a strong indicator of the attention viewers are paying to your content. They’re digging deep, looking for more information, interacting with the content longer.
• Stories Generated: A story is generated when a fan likes, comments on, shares your post with his or her friends, answers a question or responds to an event. This is an important number because it reflects the ability of your content to cause a second action. Your fans actually read what you wrote, they were compelled to share, like or otherwise amplify your content, creating a story or action in their own news stream that subtly tells their friends they “endorse” you or at least found what you wrote to be engaging enough to make them take an action.
• Negative Feedback: This number tells you how many people hid your content in the newsfeed or otherwise gave it negative feedback, perhaps by blocking you or reducing the number of posts they see from you by choosing “only important.”  Again, this is great information and if this number begins to climb over time, you’ll know that some of the people you’ve gathered to your tribe are not resonating with your message. Do an audit of your posts and decided whether you want to adjust the message or gather a different tribe.  Both are valid choices.

Information gathered from insights is just that; information. What you do with that information is up to you. These insights can help you understand if you’re communicating to a receptive crowd or shouting into the dark. They can help you find “hot” topics that are important to your crowd so you can hit those more often. They can show you what doesn’t interest your readers and if what doesn’t interest them is what you care about most, then you’ll know you’ve got some work to do either on the message or on building a new, more diverse tribe.

Take a look at your fan page insights, and please let me know if you have questions.

You are a brand.  Your products or services are your brand offerings.  When you add something new to your offerings, that becomes your brand extension.

Let’s say you are a successful author.  You’ve written a great book on marketing.  You’ve promoted the book with advertising, personal appearances, traditional media and even social media.  Your brand, to the consumer, is “marketing expert.”  Now you’re ready to add something new to your services.  You might add consulting, coaching, webinars or live trainings.  But if you were to add a cookbook to your brand, you’d have a great deal of work to do in order to bring people along with you as you evolve your brand from business to baking.  BUT, if cooking is your passion and you’re using cooking as a metaphor for blending, mixing and creating a product, you’d have a brand extension.  If the book were about your favorite cookie recipes, you’d need a new branding strategy.

It’s possible for a personal brand to evolve and include a wide variety of products and services.  However, adding things far afield from a brand’s original DNA is best done once the brand is mature and the brand leader (YOU) is well established and has a strong and loyal following.

For the rest of us, annual evaluation and planning for our emerging brand life cycle is an exercise worth doing.  As you plan your growth, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Where’s the money? What is my most profitable offering right now? In other words, what are people buying from me now?  When people are willing to part with their money to purchase your products or services, that’s the simplest and purest market research.
2. Customer needs: are my current clients or customers asking me for additional information or services I don’t yet provide?  If those services or products are within your skill set, this is the proverbial low hanging fruit.  Put energy and time into providing your current client base with what they are already asking you to offer.
3. Next offer: after I’ve delivered my first product or service to a client, and I know they are happy, what do I want to offer them next?  This is the beginning of your funnel.  Take note of the needs of your clients. See if there are natural additional ways to serve your client base.  Repeat this question after every new product or service to create additional offerings.
4. Brand extension: once you’ve developed a client base the trusts you and is thrilled with what you offer, you can begin to stretch your brand. This is best done in increments.  Taking our example, the marketing book author might now write about sales by making the connection in the consumers mind between sales and marketing and letting marketers know they also have to be salespeople, especially if they are entrepreneurs or small business owners.  Next, our expert might branch out and claim mind share as a provider of information about product development, distribution and even sourcing.  He or she might divide upcoming product offerings into categories that provide deep knowledge in the how-to aspects of each phase of creating new products or services. Then our expert could create speeches, live events, webinars, DVD series, more books and other creative delivery systems for those new products.

Brand development is like story telling. Don’t try to take your reader from “Once Upon a Time,” to “the wicked witch was dead” in two steps. Tell the full story. Lead the consumer through your thinking process by offering logical, helpful, inventive product and service development. And, every step of the way, double check to see that your brand development is ringing true with your customer base.

Do you have questions about extending your brand? Let’s talk.

Among the new features being rolled out this week from Facebook are the enhanced friends lists options which many feel was a response to Google Plus Circles, and the introduction of a Subscribe button with multiple implications and applications.

The subscribe button is, by far, the most radical of the changes and for the first time, allows people who are not your friends to see your personal profile updates if you enable the subscribe button.  So, Guy Kawasaki or Pete Cashmore haven’t accepted your friend request.  Bill Gates is ignoring your pokes and messages.  You can now subscribe to their personal profile posts if they decide to enable Facebook’s new Subscribe button.  Why should you or your brand care?  You should care because Facebook has just opened up an interesting option for celebrities, authors, entrepreneurs, speakers and other high profile public figures to create great reach for their posts, beyond their friendship circle.  However, this comes with some challenges, privacy concerns and the need for those users to understand exactly how this works and what they’ll be sharing.

What does this mean for brands, small businesses and entrepreneurs?

For business people who use their Facebook profile as yet another entry point to their brand, albeit a more casual one, you can now place a subscribe button on your profile.  This allows people who aren’t your friends access to those posts you mark as public. This will be useful to celebrities, speakers, authors or other very public Facebook users who have reached their 5,000 friend cut-off, but still want to allow new friends to see their posts.  If you use your profile strictly for personal communications with family and friends, you’ll want to skip implementing the subscribe button and continue to decline or ignore requests for friend connections with business contacts.

What does this mean for you, the user?

As a user, you can subscribe to the posts of industry leaders, celebrities or political figures who set their personal profiles to allow subscriptions and you can decide what types of posts you want to see.  For example, you can hide all posts related to games so that you’ll never know when Lady Gaga hits a new high score on Bejeweled, but you’ll always be notified when she posts a new photo.

Facebook provides more details and the link to add the Subscribe button to your Facebook profile here. The profile owner can choose to be notified when someone subscribes, too. This is one to watch as it evolves in use.

Will you enable the Subscribe button?  Why or why not?

The successful entrepreneur will research, test, price and market according to the results of his or her testing or will go straight to market on a concept that has little or no developmental costs.  For example, a business coach who already has a program that he or she does one on one with clients could easily take the program to webinars without much testing by recording it using any number of programs such as Keynote for Mac, Camtasia or ScreenFlow to name a few.

If the entrepreneur has a product or service that delivers value, has identified the likely end user or client and is ready to test the waters, pricing strategies now come into play.

The number one question I get from entrepreneurs is “what should I charge?”

I can’t tell you what to charge for your product or service.  That depends on your niche market, the product or service itself, perceived value, quality of delivery, what your competitors charge and many other variables.  What I can share with you is that most marketing professionals see a significant drop off in opt-ins or purchases when a consumer is given too many choices.  In other words, make your offer simple and increase the chances of consumers taking immediate action and purchasing your product.

There’s a theory that offering more than three choices to people decreases the likelihood of purchase. They become overwhelmed, feel confused and in some cases, suspect that they’ll make the wrong choice and not get the best deal.  Here’s the pricing formula I see most often in researching internet marketing guru sites.  We’ll use consulting services for our example.

The A, B, and C Concept for Consultants

Package A:  This package offers people the chance to consult with you for your highest hourly rate and for the lowest commitment.  For example:  Two sixty-minute calls per month for $500 with a one month commitment required.   In the Package A scenario, people can commit to just one month and pay you $500 to “sample” your services and if your consulting proves valuable, you can convert them to a longer term package.  In this scenario, it’s essential that the consultant bring their A game to Package A, and deliver such value and solution based advice that the client can’t image themselves without your assistance going forward.  In our example, Package A works out to $250 per hour for a total client commitment of $500.

Package B:  This package offers the best value and is the one you really want people to choose because you know that you can make a bigger difference in your client’s business or life if you have more time to do so.  So you make it significantly more desirable financially to choose Package B, BUT you require the client to commit to a longer package and thus a larger financial investment.   For example:  Two sixty-minute calls each month for a three month period would be priced at a discounted $225 per call.  Clients save $25 per hour by committing to a three-month package.  Package B offers the client a total of 6 consultations at $225 each for contractual agreement of $1,350 and a savings of $150 over your standard hourly consulting fee.

Package C:  This package is your high-end offer and requires the longest commitment but gives the highest value.  Here you are rewarding clients who are willing to invest in intensive committed work with you by giving them the steepest discount BUT making them commit to the highest out of pocket cost.  If clients choose this package, they’ll be saving $3,000 over your regularly hourly consulting rate.  This package would offer one 60-minute call per week for a total of three months or 12 calls at $200 for $2,400.

The thinking behind these package strategies is that the clients who choose Package A are exploring.  The clients who choose Package B want to invest in their business but are cautious and careful and want experiential proof that you can deliver what they need.  The clients who choose Package C are ready to move forward in their business, believe you are the one who can help them and want to take advantage of the maximum financial discount you’re offering.

Whatever package they choose, your job there is to over deliver to the point that they feel they truly desire to have more of your time and they’ll contract for more or if their needs have been met, they’ll give you a great reference you can use to attract other clients.

At the end of any Package contract, always ask the client if their needs were met.  If not, work to rectify that.  If so, ask if they will give you a testimonial quote that you can use on your website.  Most people will say yes.  Then you’ll be promoting your services with positive, real life case study quotes.

First, when you share valuable information through social bookmarking, you position yourself as a resource to your online community.  You train your potential customers to follow you to stay up to date and in the know on advances, news and strategies in their fields of interest.

Social sharing creates social influence for you and the original content creator.

When you comment on a blog post, and, this is important–add to the conversation by contributing additional resources, original thoughts or insights–you also position yourself as an individual or brand highly engaged in your field of expertise.  The more interesting your comments are, the more likely people will follow your digital footprint back to your home base and subscribe, follow, friend or bookmark you.

Share to Position Yourself as a Leader

When you read a blog post you like from a writer whose work you value or respect, leave a comment. By doing so, you provide a service. Google and other search engines pay attention to the amount of interaction that takes place on a website and the more interaction, the higher the social authority of that particular blog.

Think about it in this way.

1. You’re at a business conference where you hear a presentation about a new technology coming out of a brand new start-up.
2. You go back to your company and tell your colleagues to check out this new start-up because they have some valuable marketing tools that might help you on an upcoming project.
3. Your firm hires these new innovators for a project which is hugely success because of their new technology.
4. They grow and continue to innovate and help your whole industry.
5. You are a hero at your company and you, in turn, consider that original business conference to be your new “must attend” event.
6. HOWEVER,  if you attend the conference but tell no one about what you’ve learned, their start-up fails to thrive and grow for lack of customers  and eventually they don’t produce any new ideas or products and perhaps even go under.
7. Everyone loses; the start-up, your company, and you.

The same thinking applies to blogs. If you find a blogger is consistently providing you with valuable tips and strategies, then commenting is your way of encouraging Google rank them well and ultimately to help others find this blogger. So being a conscientious blog content consumer by subscribing and leaving comments is a way for you to contribute to the ecosystems you inhabit. And, in return, you garner social equity for yourself as an aggregator of useful information, a leader in connecting your fans and followers needs to resources they can use and as an informed player in the marketplace.

Bookmarking Benefits

Social Bookmarking is another responsible way to help spread valuable or entertaining information. In addition to leaving a comment, go to one of the many social bookmarking sites and recommend the blog post to others. Social bookmarks are a way for you to save links to posts you’ve found helpful, and others can subscribe to your bookmarks.  By bookmarking a blog, story or news article, you create a home for it where you can easily access it and refer to it again later.

This serves as a visibility strategy for you because you found the post or blog, and now, by bookmarking it, you’re telling other that it’s worth reading.  You increase your own social currency as someone who passes on great information and ideas, and you increase the visibility of the original blogger.

It’s Called “Social” Media for a Reason

Social Media is, at it’s heart, people engaging and sharing ideas with one another. So remember to consume information and pass on the tips and strategies that you find most useful. In this way you become a valuable resource to your followers, you become more visible to those you follow and you foster a sharing mentality throughout your network.

Some social bookmarking site you might consider using include:

* Digg
* Delicious
* StumbleUpon
* Reddit

Please let me know if you have a bookmark list so I can consider subscribing. It’s time to create conversations about YOU by creating conversations about others.

Can you put your core offering into one compelling sentence?

I always ask them, for the purpose of achieving those goals, to shift their focus from the end result to the first challenge; clearly stating their unique value to a potential customer.  This “why to buy” focus helps businesses center their marketing, branding and public relations messages around the most important point of all—their offering.

F.O.C.U.S stands for “Find Our Core Unique Service.”  Figuring this out helps companies address one of the four key elements of branding; variation.  Asking the tough questions, doing the research and creating clear, concise communications will save entrepreneurs and even bigger companies time, money and frustration.

Some questions to ask to help define the unique service or selling proposition are:

How is this service or product different from all others in the competitive set?

• Less expensive, more detailed, easier to use, more conveniently located?

Does the personality of this business or service give it something special?

• Is the business or service provider more highly qualified, more experienced, personally enriched by the product usage?

Why would someone choose this product or service from all other choices available?

• Better customer service and support, first to market, more stylish packaging, more rave reviews, higher perceived value?

Try to put your core offering into one compelling sentence.  This exercise will tell you if you’ve nailed your F.O.C.U.S.  I invite you to post your F.O.C.U.S. statement here and I’ll give you my opinion on whether or not your statement conveys your F.O.C.U.S. to me.  Go.

Everything I know about Social Media Marketing, I learned in improv.

The four rules of improv can be summarized as:

1. who and what
2. when and where
3. yes, and
4. don’t deny

Who and What

Who you are to one another and what you’re doing are essential elements to establishing an interesting improvisational scene. They’re also key to establishing trust and social proof when engaging with others online. Establishing who you are and what you offer helps you attract potential clients who may be interested in your products or services. Demonstrate your expertise and provide social proof through actively sharing advise or strategies in your field. An improv actor might start a scene by saying, “Hello Nanny, it’s been a long semester and I’m delighted to see you again. Let me help you with those toys.” The audience will instantly know the relationship, and what they are doing. An entrepreneur might say, “When Forbes called me a “must follow” on Twitter, I realized I needed to share my techniques with others. My new webinar starts on Friday.”

When and Where

The when and where of an improv scene helps give the players clues as to how to communicate during the scene. The object of establishing a strong when and where is to help the players and the audience envision a scene with no props. On social media platforms, we’re using very few props other that words and the occasional video, photo or audio file. We need to establish help the consumer visualize our brand, our offering, our service. The actor in our scene above might say, “My playroom looks the same as it did when I was five. Even though I’m almost grown, I still have trouble sharing these toys with my little sister, Nanny.” Now the audience has a strong sense of the scene, the players and way they’ll interact with one another. To establish a clear when and where, the entrepreneur in our scenario above might say, “I’m thrilled to be offering this webinar, free of charge, this week right on my Facebook page, using LiveStream. Join me!”

Yes, And

In improvisation, a sacred rule is to listen to your fellow actor speak, then silently say to yourself, “Yes, and…” then add information. If one actor says, “I love your beautiful dress,” and the next actor says “I think I’ll walk the dog,” the audience and the actors suddenly seem confused. But if the answer to the first statement is “Why thank you. I bought it with the money you generously sent me in my birthday card, ” now we have a scene and a deeper relationship between the two characters. So our entrepreneur above needs to listen to his or her fans and followers to see how they responds to the LiveStream news, silently say “yes, and” and add more information. Example: “Will the event be recorded so I can listen later if I miss it live?” (Yes, and) “It will be recorded, Joyce, and I’ll be answering questions all week on my Facebook fan page.”

Don’t Deny
Denying someone’s statement in improv is tricky and can bring a scene to a halt, causing. If the first actor says, “What a beautiful, sunny day,” and the second actor says “No it’s not, it’s raining,” the next several moments will be a battle of wills to see who defines the scene, creating chaos onstage. In our entrepreneurial world, think about keeping the flow of ideas and questions coming and encouraging conversation to build relationships. Our entrepreneur above would be struggling to keep clients if he kept denying their needs or the way they receive his products. How would their future relationship go if our entrepreneur said, “You didn’t do the things I recommended, so you can’t expect the results I promised.” While that might be true, a more productive way to move this relationship forward might be, “I understand that you’re not ready to move forward on my original list of suggestions. Let me come back to you with some new ideas to see if we can overcome your concerns and still produce the result you’re hoping for.”

Every entrepreneur is really an improvisational artist. He or she works with new clients or customers and new situations all the time. Entrepreneurs need to be quick on their feet, flexible in their ideas and creative in their leadership. Everything I know about social media marketing, I learned from improv. All the web is a social stage, and remembering the four rules of improv can improve our social interactions.

How are you employing the rules of improv in your business? I’d love to hear ways in which you’ve set the scene, communicated clearly, turned a negative into a positive and added information. If you enjoyed this post, I’d very much appreciate it if you’d leave a comment.

Secret Millionaire stars share some common practices entrepreneurs can adopt to create their own success.

Dani Johnson was homeless at 21 and a millionaire at 23. She now speaks, writes and conducts virtual home study courses and live events designed to help people get out of debt. Her story is compelling and inspirational.  The tone of her communications is all about having experienced the fear and frustration of financial debt herself. By sharing her personal story, helping people identify with her, then modeling a success route, Dani acts as a mentor, cheerleader and coach to those who follow her program.

James Malinchak is a speaker, consultant and internet marketer who models hard work and reward.  He is everywhere, all the time, with boundless energy and a message that you can create the life you want if you just have the will.  He’s a mindset coach and people aspire to the life he has created for himself through relentless hard work and strategically brilliant marketing.  Among other things, he coaches people on becoming paid speakers, something he is very good at doing himself.  He understands creating ambient awareness and brand connections. His newest offering is called the Millionaire Apprentice Program, which piggy backs his programs SEO nicely with the buzz Secret Millionaire is garnering, and authentically ties in by teaching the techniques that helped him become a millionaire.

Gary and Diane Heavin are the founders of Curves, the fitness franchise for women. They have a different model.  They’re not internet marketers.  The majority of their work is hands on, with people who buy a Curves franchise. They model the in the trenches, “do it with you,” style of business. Even though they’ve created the largest women’s fitness franchise in history and have become very wealthy in the processes, they still operate like entrepreneurs. Gary’s philosophy is “Entrepreneurs don’t get paid on effort. They get paid on results.” He and Diane believe “success is not about who runs the fastest but rather who gets up the fastest after they fall.”  This year they’ve teamed up with Zumba to create a new Curves Circuit with Zumba Fitness class to add to club offerings and are in the process of adding a diet counselor certification program through the Cleveland Clinic so clubs can provide better diet counseling to their members.

Ali Brown is a high profile coach for women entrepreneurs.  She’s offers a tiered system of coaching programs that go from free webinars all the way through a very elite high priced personal coaching program and she has clients lined up to work with her.  Her personal story of leaving corporate America and struggling as she launched her own business helps entrepreneurs identify with her and her “my gamble paid off and yours can too” mantra is appealing.  She models success, glamour and adventure.  And, she works hard.  From that first business in her living room, Ali has expanded her brand into a magazine, an online style boutique, women’s retreats, info-products and more.

So what lessons can other entrepreneurs learn from these successful self-made millionaires?

1. Poverty is a strong motivator in each of their success stories.  A driving passion to improve your life can be a powerful influencer.
2. Creating a business from the ground up takes more hard work than anything you’ve ever done before.  Persistence is the key.
3. Continued success lies in continued reinvention. Successful people never stop innovating.
4. Financial freedom is a strong motivator and there are millions of people who want and need the information you may have on how to create financial security. A down economic climate may be the ideal time to launch a business that solves a problem.
5. Sharing your personal journey helps others envision themselves as potentially successful.  People want to do business with successful people and modeling success can produce powerful results.
6. A great career or business is less about making the next sale and more about building lasting relationships.

If you enjoyed this article, I’d appreciate hearing from you. Please leave a comment below or on my Facebook page and share your thoughts.

Brands can now post to Facebook as brands. This is huge.

1. Posting as a Brand: The most important change is that administrators can now post throughout Facebook, on both other pages and on profiles, as the brand. This means that if a brand could potentially comment on the Facebook page of a popular television show with millions of fans and gain visibility with those fans. Conversely, a magazine or television show could comment on the pages of their advertisers to thank them for their support and again, gain additional visibility. We’ll be watching for best practices in this area.  To use this feature, administrators can toggle between posting as themselves and as the brand simply by using a drop down menu at the top of the page under “account.”
2. Visuals: Just as on the new profile designs, business pages will now feature the panel of five most recent photos across the top of your page.  This means that brands must exercise particular care when uploading images.  When another brand or individual tags a company in a photo, that photo will now appear above their newstream, giving less control of the images a business wants to show and making it more essential to have someone monitor the page regularly.
3. Changing Categories: Many companies set up their fan pages using either the wrong category or one that no longer is a good fit for their growing brand.  For example, a business might have been local but has grown to be regional or national. Or, a speaker with national reach might have set himself up as a company but now wants to represent himself as a “person” and a consultant.  For the first time, business pages can now change their category.  This changes the fields under the info link.  If a person wants to be a local business, changing categories will allow him to enter store hours and location along with details on parking.  If a local business wants to become a consultant, the new fields will provide spaces to share product offerings and packages.
4. Featured Likes: A fan page can now, for the first time, “like” another fan page.  Companies can use this feature to associate themselves with sister companies, clients, like-minded organizations and industry leaders.  The pages a business page “likes” will show up on the left hand side of the brand’s page.  By clicking “Edit Info” to the right of a business page name, administrators can now select a feature called “Featured Likes” and choose the top pages they want to have shown on the left hand column of their page.  Again this will be useful for companies that include multiple brands and divisions.
5. Featured Page Owner: Under the “Edit Info” link, business pages may now designate one or more “Featured Page Owners” to be displayed in the left hand column. This can be useful for pages with multiple voices or owners posting.  This definitely gives a public and individual face to a business page, however, and for small business owners or others not wanting to share their personal profile link with the world, this is a feature to understand clearly before utilizing.
6. Filtered News: This is the feature that has people concerned today and hopefully Facebook will listen to the discontent and reverse this.  As of this morning, Facebook and Facebook alone controls the newsfeed of a business page, serving up posts they deem “most interesting.” This seems to create a feed where the posts with the most interactions show up first, leaving the brand without the ability to feature their newest updates first.  This one new feature is counter intuitive to encouraging brands to use Facebook to promote their businesses.  Without control over the order in which their messages appear to fans, a huge opportunity has opened up for outside developers to create something that better serves brands. (*UPDATE: March 5, 2011: Facebook has reverted back to allowing fan pages to post in reverse chronological order, after an uproar from users.)

Over the next week, there will be additional updates on the nuances of using Facebook fan pages to promote businesses.  We’d welcome the sharing of best practices here and feel free to include links to those pages as examples.  If you found this post useful, please let us know by leaving a comment.