Facebook Archives | Page 2 of 2

4 Powerful Digital Platform Updates Your Brand Needs Now

By Cindy Ratzlaff September 26, 2013

Blink and your social media marketing strategy will be out of date. The rapid-fire tweaks and updates to platforms can leave your brand’s marketing messages looking dated and, even worse, invisible unless you keep on top of what’s hot, what’s new, what’s trending and what works. Here are four important recent changes to help you stay on top of your social game.

Finding and learning to use the newest digital tools and techniques can be as simple as finding and following those early adopters who live to try new things. ~ Cindy Ratzlaff

Pinterest adds a New Rich Pin for Business Accounts

Pinterest business accounts already have access to a suite of free analytics and the ability to use Rich Pins to enhance the information appended to a pin. From a marketing perspective, this is huge. In addition to Recipe pins, Movie pins and Product Pins, Pinterest announced this week the newest Rich Pin tool called Articles Pin. Articles Pins will help you create boards for “Pin it Now, Read it Later” use and include headline, author, and story description, helping pinners find and save stories that matter to them. If you create something for sale or write something for general consumption, you should consider converting your Pinterest account to a Pinterest Business Account and enabling the Rich Pins tools. Details and information are available on Pinterest’s Business Hub.

Use Facebook Interest Lists to Grow Your Page and Social Influence

By Cindy Ratzlaff November 15, 2012

A consulting client recently confessed to me that his Facebook news stream is overwhelming him and he’s ready to give up on the brand visibility strategy we’ve outlined for building his personal brand through social media. I asked him to make a list of the top 25 people he’d most like to do business with, be on stage with or have as a strategic partner. He was able to make that list in just minutes, of course, because when he focused on his business goal, it was easy to identify those people most likely to be a part of that goal. This social media strategy technique saves him time daily.

Strategic Influence Building

I showed him how to put each of those top 25 influencers into a Facebook Interest List, which we called A-List Influencers. Now he can filter his news stream each morning and quickly scan the posts of the people he most wants to connect with and add to their conversations, comment, compliment, create value and in general develop a relationship with these highly desirable contacts. Facebook will always revert back to the standard news feed view but any time he wants to check in on his A-List Influencers, he can do so with just a click.

How to Customize App Images | New Facebook Pages Timeline

By Cindy Ratzlaff March 9, 2012

2015 UPDATE: Since the writing of this blog post there have been several updates to the Facebook page design. The tab app “boxes” are now located on the left hand side of your page and not displayed underneath the cover photo. All the other instructions, below, are still valid and creating a custom image for your Apps is very easy to do. Any questions about this or other social media marketing strategies can be directed to me on Facebook at https://cindyratzlaff.com/BrandNewBrandYou.

Now that the default landing tab is gone and all tabs are now “views and apps” according to Facebook, brands have an opportunity to customize the image that invites a fan to engage with a custom app.

Custom images for Apps Are the New Advertising on Facebook Fan Pages

There are four boxes “above the fold” on the new Facebook Fan Page Timeline. The first position is occupied by the Photos app. This box position is permanent and cannot be moved to another position. The next three boxes to the right of photos can be moved, customized and featured at will, IF you created the app (or former tab). If it is one of the suite of apps created by Facebook, you cannot change the image. If the app was created by a third party, the option to change the image is controlled by the third party app and you should check with them. But if you created the app, you can change the image.

Step-by-step guide to customizing the app image on your Facebook Fan Page wall.

Make sure you have enabled the preview of Timeline on your Facebook page by clicking the blue “preview” you will see at the top of every fan page that has not yet migrated to Timeline.
Click the down arrow at the right hand side of the currently visible apps just underneath your page name and cover photo space to reveal all of your former tabs, now referred to as “views and apps” in Facebook language.
Select the app you would like to customize and mouse over the upper right hand corner to reveal a pencil. Click the pencil to reveal a drop down menu.
Go all the way to the bottom of the drop down menu and click on “edit settings.”
You’ll now see a box that allows you to name the app and a link to change the custom image. After keying in the new name of your app, click on the “Change” link.
You’ll be taken to a page where you can upload a custom image. Click on the “Change” link on this page.
The familiar “Browse” option will pop onto the screen allowing you to upload an image from your desktop. Facebook recommends 111 px wide by 74 px high and will resize and convert images that are larger. I’ve had great luck with 280 x 180 sized images. Select the desired image from your computer and upload. There is no save button. Don’t waste time looking for it. Now go back to your page and look at the box image. The customized image is in place.

That’s all there is to it. You can change these images whenever you like and you can feature a new set of custom apps “above the fold” on Facebook Fan Pages whenever you like.

You can post a link directly to your custom app in your timeline and pin it to the top of your page for seven days to give it extra importance. I’ve created some simple custom designs for apps here to show you what’s possible. I’d love to see yours, too, so feel free to post a link to your custom apps below so we can inspire one another.

Facebook Fan Page Changes | How to Highlight Your Custom Tabs

By Cindy Ratzlaff March 3, 2012

UPDATE: New Facebook page designs cause a great deal of anxiety for business page owners as we get used to the new look and functionality of our pages. I wrote this update for people during the 2012 redesign. Stay tuned because a new design is rolling out in September 2015.

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.

Facebook’s New Fan Page Features Cheat Sheet | Facebook Victories and Missteps

By Cindy Ratzlaff February 11, 2011

Facebook began offering the new fan page design yesterday and it will become mandatory sometime in March according to reports. Here’s a quick cheat sheet of some of the most important features for brands and businesses to familiarize themselves with as they manage their brand image on Facebook.

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

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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Facebook for Authors

By Cindy Ratzlaff June 24, 2010

Facebook has emerged as a driving strategic tool for authors to use in marketing and promoting their own book or books. This platform is free in terms of initial investment, but very expensive in terms of time. An author, or any other business person for that matter, can make costly errors in setting up and using their Facebook presence IF they do not understand the nuances of Facebook. Here are my top recommendations for authors, speakers, solopreneurs and other business people to consider as they prepare to enter the social media fray.

Facebook is effectively, in addition to being a micro-blogging and communication platform, a search engine. One of the reasons an author needs to be on Facebook is to increase his or her visibility and therefore, help readers find his/her work. Facebook provides three different types of pages to choose from and each has rules, advantages and disadvantages.

Personal Profile
A personal profile is, by Facebook’s own terms of use, a page for people to list themselves by their real name and interact with friends of their choosing. People who connect to a personal profile are referred to as “Friends.” It is against Facebook’s rules to set up a personal profile for your business, your book, your dog or a dead saint. Facebook can, if it chooses, close fraudulent profiles and all the work you’ve done to create that page will be lost along with all of your friends. I recommend that you set up a personal profile, adhering to all of the rules before setting up a Facebook Fan Page (see below). Having a personal profile and setting up a Facebook page from that profile will allow authors to utilize more custom application on the Fan Page. A Fan Page can be created without first creating a personal profile, but doing so limits the customization options available. If the Facebook rules don’t convince you to do this properly, there’s another good reason. A personal profile can only accept 5,000 people as friends. At 5,001, new friends will start receiving a message from Facebook stating that you are over your friend limit and cannot accept any new friends. Trust me and set up your personal profile first.

Facebook Fan Page

Fan Pages are best option that Facebook provides for creating a branded social media presence for you the writer.

This is best option that Facebook provides for creating a branded social media presence for you the writer, for your book, and for your career. People who connect to a Facebook Fan Page must click the “Like” button in order to receive updates from the Page. Once they “Like” a page, they are still referred to by most people as Fans. Because you followed my advice and set up a personal profile first, you can now create custom tabs for your Facebook Fan Page such as “About the Book,” “More about the Author,” “Tour Schedule,” or whatever custom information you’d like to make available to fans. Facebook allows a Fan Page to have an unlimited number of Fans. This is good news for an author or speaker who is working to amass the largest possible list of followers and spread the word about a new book, appearance or project far and wide. Authors can even create an opt-in box and invite fans to subscribe to an e-newsletter, all from a Facebook Fan Page. Facebook Fan Pages are indexed by Google and therefore, they increase an author’s search engine ranking by putting out new, original content regularly.

Facebook Groups
People who join a Facebook Group are called Members. One advantage of Facebook Groups is that they can be made public or kept private. At this writing Facebook Groups are not indexed by Google and that is the single biggest reason for author’s to create a Fan Page over a Group. Unlike pages, groups allow to send out “bulk invites” so you can invite all your friends to join the group. With Pages, you’ll have to invite people individually. Groups are good for spreading a message or brand name through viral marketing, because any group member can also send bulk invites to his or her complete list of friends. But, and this is a big but, Groups are not indexed by search engines yet and that is my number one reason for recommending Pages over Groups to promote an author and his or her work.

I hope this look at Facebook options helps authors, speakers and entrepreneurs start right and maximize their promotional efforts on Facebook. I strongly recommend that all authors create profiles and pages for their work and look forward to answering any questions about the use of Facebook to promote books.

How to add a “Follow Me on Twitter” Button to your Facebook Profile and Fan Page

By Cindy Ratzlaff June 25, 2009

Note: Since the publication of this article in January of 2009, Facebook has discontinued their support of FBML. Facebook no longer allows you to add an FBML box to the left hand side of your Fan Page.

Take your Social Media Image Seriously

Your Facebook® profile and your Facebook® Fan Page are two key social media touch-points for connecting with potential clients. Creating your on-line funnels in a variety of social mediums helps people find you and clearly understand the service you provide. Now, the yellow pages will do the same thing but social mediums let customers engage with you first and then decide, based on your attitude, the comments they read from your friends and followers and the value you provide in your various postings, whether or not they want to take the next step and become your customer. They can literally shadow you while deciding. That’s why it’s so critical for you to take your social media image seriously.

The Key Ingredients to your Social Media Strategy

Because your potential customer might be exploring numerous social media sites, you’ll want to be on at least Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and I highly recommend that you have a blog. If you already have your own website that becomes your home base. If you don’t, you’re blog can serve that purpose.

Now the number one rule of any great marketing campaign is to make sure that every consumer touch-point is integrated with every other one. All of your social media sites should link to each other, carry a similar look and message all while speaking to the consumer in the voice most appropriate for that medium. For example, you’ll communicate in short 120 character* bits on Twitter, longer more detailed thoughts will be incorporated into your blog and your Facebook profile and fan pages might be more personal and intimate. Yet an integrated marketing strategy means that the core values and the key message points will be the same, albeit communicated differently.

Helping Customers Find, Follow and Friend You

If you were the owner of a Deli, you wouldn’t hide the checkout counter. You’d make it very easy to find. Shoppers would never have to guess where to find you, talk with you and pay you. It’s the same with social media sites. Be user friendly. Make it easy for someone who finds and follows you on one site to find and friend you on another.

I recently installed a “Follow me on Twitter” button on my Facebook Profile and my Facebook Fan Pages. This is a nice visual addition to your profile or page and there are a lot of designers and programmers out there offering free buttons. I happen to love http://twitbuttons.com for it’s user-friendly interface. You simply enter your Twitter name in the URL box at the top of the page and all the HTML code in every Twitter Button box is changed, automatically, to customize the button for your twitter page.

So here are the instructions for adding a “Follow me on Twitter” button to your Facebook Page.

Log onto your Facebook Page and go to the applications link on the bottom left hand side of your screen.
Click “Browse applications and the find ” “Extended info” application. Add that to your profile. Then click the edit settings link to the right of the app in the list of apps you’ve downloaded. Where it says “Tab” click “add.”
Then go to http://twitbuttons.com and pick out your favorite button. Be sure to enter your twitter name in the black space above the buttons. This will automatically enter your correct twitter name link to the code under each twitter button image.
Copy the code of the button you like and go back to Facebook to the Applications list (link on bottom left of page).
Open the Extended info application by clicking directly on that link. A window will pop up for you to paste your code.
Paste the code and click the “Add to Profile” button on the upper right of that page.
Then click the Save changes button below the code and return to your page. You can change the look of your button at anytime by returning to these instructions and choosing a new button from the website I mentioned or another you may find. You can design your own if you’re skilled with HTML too.

Transparency is Currency in Social Media

I recommend adding your “Follow Me” button or link to all of your social media sites and using the custom options on your Twitter background to provide the URL’s for your Facebook, Linked In and Blog to your Twitter followers. You get the picture. The name of the game is to be visible. For some inspiring examples of people who are doing this well, check out these social media pros. Each one of these people are helping potential clients find them and utilizing a slightly different style. Take a look and make a plan to help yourself stand out in the crowd.

Mari Smith: http://www.facebook.com/marismith?ref=ts#/marismith?v=app_11007063052&viewas=1048779085
Dr. Mehmet Oz: http://www.facebook.com/droz?ref=ts#/droz?v=app_4949752878&viewas=1048779085
Gary Vaynerchuk http://www.facebook.com/gary?ref=ts#/gary?v=wall&viewas=1048779085 (Check out his “Friend Me Up” Tab!)
Karmen Reed at KickOff Topic: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kickoff-Topic-Marketing-Solutions-Through-Online-Visibility/56494299508#/pages/Kickoff-Topic-Marketing-Solutions-Through-Online-Visibility/56494299508?v=wall&viewas=1048779085
The Social Latte: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tempe-AZ/The-Social-Latte-Specializing-In-Social-Media-For-Small-Businesses/80841554499?ref=ts#/pages/Tempe-AZ/The-Social-Latte-Specializing-In-Social-Media-For-Small-Businesses/80841554499?v=app_7146470109&viewas=1048779085
Angela Albright: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Angela-Albright-Social-Media-Entrepreneur/87674098294?ref=ts#/pages/Angela-Albright-Social-Media-Entrepreneur/87674098294?v=wall&viewas=1048779085

If You Liked What You Read Here, Please Join Me

Friend me on Facebook: http://Facebook.com/CindyRatzlaff
Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/CindyRatzlaff
Follow Me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/BrandYou
Subscribe to my Blog: http://CindyRatzlaff.wordpress.com

*Always try to keep your tweets to 120 characters so that people can Re-tweet your post. When they re-tweet, some of the character spaces are taken up with their Twitter name. At 120 characters you’ll be re-tweet-friendly.