Below are the Top 10 Recurring Questions I’ve been asked about Facebook For Business and Fan Pages.   You’ll notice that almost all of the answers below contain a link to a blog post I wrote previously where the question was answered.  I wrote this particular blog to make it easier for you to get all the answers to the Top 10 Questions in one place.

Q:  Can I unlink a Facebook Fan Page from my personal account?
A:  No.  See my blog post Unlink A Fan Page From Personal Account for what you can do.

Q:  Can I delete my personal account without deleting my Fan Page?
A:  One of our blog readers, David, tested this.  See the comments for Unlink A Fan Page From Personal Account to read what David discovered.

Q:  How do I automatically post my Fan Page activity to my Twitter account?
A:  Read Post Fan Page Status Updates To Twitter With Facebook Application and then go to www.facebook.com/twitter to set this up.

Q:  How do I obtain a Facebook vanity URL or username for my Facebook Fan Page?
A:  Currently you need 25 Fans before you can obtain a vanity url for your Fan Page.  Go to www.facebook.com/username to claim your username/vanity url once your Fan Page has met the minimum.  Choose your Fan Page username carefully because you cannot change it once it’s set.

Q:  How do I delete a Fan Page?
A:  Login to Facebook, then go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/.  If you are an administrator for more than one Fan Page, find the name of the Fan Page that you want to delete from the list on your screen.  Click the “delete page” link  which appears directly underneath the name of your Fan Page.

If you only administer one Fan Page, the “delete page” link will be toward the top of your screen under the name of your Fan Page.

Q:  How do I set up a Fan Box Widget?
A:  Go to the Fan Page that you want to create a Fan Box Widget for.  Click “edit page”.  You should see a section called Promote Your Page just above the photos of the Fan Page Admins.  In this section, click on Promote With a Fan Box.  Create your Fan Box and then copy and paste the generated html into your website or blog.  (If this is not something you can do on your own, email the html to your web/blog designer and ask them to do it.)   See Facebook Fan Box Widget: You Will Love It! for additional info but follow the instructions above because Facebook has changed since I wrote my original post.

Q:  How do I deactivate or delete my Facebook account?
A:  See Deactivate, Reactivate or Delete Facebook Account for instructions on how to do these things and why you might want to.

Q:  Can I migrate or move my fans from one Fan Page to another?
A:  No.  But read How To Migrate Fans From Old Facebook Fan Page To New Fan Page for what you can do to get many of your Fans to become a Fan of your new Fan Page.

Q:  Can I run a contest on my Fan Page?
A:  No.  If you do, you run the risk of having your Facebook account or your Facebook Fan Page disabled without warning.  See Warning: New Facebook Promotions Guidelines for an explanation on how you can publicize a contest on your Fan Page as long as you administer it off of Facebook!

Q:  How do I promote my Fan Page outside of Facebook?
A:  Here is a blog post that covers Facebook’s Guidelines For Promoting Your Fan Page and here is one that covers 5 Ways to Build Your Online Network Offline & Increase Your Conversion Rate.

I hope you have found this Top 10 recap useful.  Feel free to share it with your Facebook friends that administer a Fan Page or are interested in setting up a Fan Page.

If you have questions that weren’t covered above, please post them in the comments below.

Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow

Facebook updated their Privacy Policy on December 9.  I’ve now started seeing this type of post making its rounds on Facebook and it is NOT completely true and it misleads people:

As of today, Facebook will automatically index all your info on Google, which allows everyone to view it.  To change this option, go to Settings –> Privacy Settings –> Search –> then UN-CLICK the box that says ‘Allow indexing’.

Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines “index” content on the web (kind of like taking a copy of it) and then place it in their search engine results when someone searches on applicable keywords.  There are a couple of things you can do in Facebook to control this:

1.  If you do not want any of your Facebook content indexed and placed in web search results, then yes, by all means change your Privacy Search Settings and unclick the Allow box.  (This means friends and others will not be able to search on your name, using a search engine, and find a link in the search results for your Facebook profile, etc…  It also means your Business Fan Page will not be indexed and available in search engine results so give your decision careful consideration if you are promoting your business on Facebook!)

2.  If you want SOME of your Facebook content to be indexed and placed in search engine results so it’s easier for friends, potential employers or clients to find you or your fan page…then make sure you ALLOW indexing in the Privacy Search Settings…and then adjust your Privacy Settings for each type of content you have control over.

After you click on each of the above privacy categories in Facebook, you will have choices for how you share different types of content.

Your privacy setting choices are:

• Everyone (this will be indexed by search engines if you Allow indexing)
• Friends of Friends (means friends and their friends)
• Only Friends
• Customize

If you click Customize, you have the following choices:

• Friends of Friends
• Only Friends
• Specific People (or an entire Friend List)
• Only Me
• You can also exclude people (or an entire Friend List) from viewing your content.

As you can see, there is a lot you can do to control the information you share by adjusting your Facebook Privacy Settings.

A Note On What’s Changed: If you previously had your privacy settings set to Allow Indexing, the indexing has been going on for a long time.  What changed is that now if you Allow Indexing, any content that you SHARE WITH EVERYONE, according to your privacy settings or your publisher control settings, will be indexed.  Sharing with Everyone means everyone on Facebook AND everyone on the internet.  If you do not want to share with everyone, simply change your privacy settings for each type of content.

If you would like help understanding and adjusting your Facebook Privacy Settings, please contact me about my virtual consulting/training services.

Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow

Become a Fan of my Fan Page:  Social Networking 4 Biz

Do you run contests, competitions or sweepstakes from your Facebook profile or fan page?  If you do, you’d better read this!  If you violate Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines, you run the risk of having your Facebook account or Fan Pages disabled.

I’ve gone over Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines (revised November 4, 2009) several times trying to decipher them.  The good news is, I think I made some sense of them finally.  And I want to share my opinion with you!

Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines cover what you CAN and CANNOT do in regard to Administering and Publicizing;  Sweepstakes, Contests and Competitions.  It also provides their definitions of the previous terms.  You need to understand their definitions in order to decipher the rest of their document.

According to Facebook:

Sweepstakes = a promotion that includes a Prize and a Winner selected on the basis of chance.

Contest or Competition = a promotion that includes a Prize and a Winner determined on the basis of skill.

Publicize on Facebook = promoting, advertising or referencing a promotion in any way on Facebook or using any part of the Facebook Platform.

Administer on Facebook = operating any element of the promotion on Facebook or using any part of the Facebook Platform.

The bottom line is that you:

• CANNOT administer (run) any promotion on Facebook without prior written approval.  (If you are not a very large company I seriously doubt that Facebook will respond to your request for approval but they do provide a link to a contact form in Section 3 of their guidelines.)

• CAN “publicize” a promotion that is “administered” completely off of Facebook (see Section 4 of their guidelines for restrictions).

• CANNOT state in the rules of the promotion, or elsewhere, that a person must take any type of action on Facebook in order to enter your promotion.  This means you CANNOT require anyone to update their status, post on a profile, post on a fan page, respond to one of your posts on Facebook, upload a photo, become a fan of your page, etc…

• CANNOT use Facebook’s name, trademarks, trade names, copyrights or any other intellectual property belonging to Facebook…in the rules or any other materials relating to your promotion without express written consent.  (See Section 1.3 of their guidelines.)

But wait, don’t give up yet! You can ADMINISTER a promotion on your blog or website and then PUBLICIZE it on Facebook.  One way you could do this is:

• write a blog post about your promotion
• in the blog post ask readers to respond in the comments of your blog or submit their response/photo/etc…to you via email or some other method outside of Facebook
• import your blog post onto your fan page via RSS Feed or simply write a short status update to “publicize” your promotion and then attach a link to your blog

If you’ve run promotions before or can think of other ways to administer your promotions outside of Facebook, PLEASE post a comment below and share your insight will all of our readers.  Thanks!

Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow

Become a Fan of my Fan Page:  Social Networking 4 Biz

I can’t even explain how happy I am about this!  Just this morning Hootsuite announced that they added Facebook Fan Page integration.

I have been using Hootsuite, a web-based tool, for managing my Twitter activity.  In the last week or so, Hootsuite added integration with LinkedIn and Facebook Personal Profiles.  This made it possible for you to update your Twitter accounts, LinkedIn status update and Facebook profile status all from the Hootsuite dashboard!  (You can pick and choose which social networking sites you want a status update to be posted to.)

As of this morning, Hootsuite has added integration with Facebook Fan Pages meaning you can now update your Fan Page status from the Hootsuite dashboard.  But, the most exciting part of all this is that Hootsuite allows you to “schedule” your status updates.

Scheduling updates to social networking sites does not in anyway replace the need for real-time interaction however I do believe there are times when scheduled updates can be very useful. One of these times is when you come across something on the internet that you want to share with your fans/followers/connections…however you have come across it during the middle of the night or on a major holiday…times when your target market is probably not on social networking sites making it less likely that they will see what you share.

Hootsuite to the rescue!  Now you can craft an update about the web page you found, add the URL link to the update AND then schedule it to post whenever you want.  This is personally the reason I am so excited about Hootsuite’s integration with Fan Pages as I tend to surf the net at odd hours of the night and often find web pages that I would like to share.  I typically either just forget about the idea or I send myself the web page link via email and then try to remember to share it on my Fan Page the next day.

To add a Fan Page, LinkedIn account or Facebook Personal Profile to your Hootsuite account, click “Settings” at the bottom of your screen and then click the “Social Networks” tab.  You will then be able to select which social network you want to add, etc…

In the screen shot shown above, you’ll see that I’ve added my Facebook personal profile (Kimberly Yow) as well as three Fan Pages and my LinkedIn account.

What do you think about Hootsuite’s integration with Facebook and LinkedIn?  Will it change how often you post status updates or the type of information you share?

Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow

Become a Fan of our Fan Page:  Social Networking 4 Biz

Today Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook now has 350 million users!  Just 2 short months ago, Facebook had 300 million users and just a few months before that they were at 250 million users.  Facebook is experiencing tremendous growth and is constantly making changes and improvements to their social network to keep up with the growth.

Upcoming changes will involve regional networks and increased user control regarding privacy settings.  Read Mark Zuckerberg’s blog post for more info on the changes.

Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow

Become a Fan of our Fan Page:  Social Networking 4 Biz

Have you ever started a new Facebook Fan Page and wanted to migrate Fans from your old fan page to your new fan page?  Unfortunately there is no automatic way to do this.  BUT, here are my recommendations for what you can do to get some of your old fans to become a fan of your new fan page.

Do these steps BEFORE you delete your old fan page:

1. Send an “update” to all fans letting them know that you have set up a new fan page.  Provide them with the URL of your new fan page and invite them to become a fan.
2. Post a status update on your old fan page that announces your new fan page.  Attach a link to your new fan page.
3. Add an FBML Tab/Box to your old fan page and post a notice on it that invites people to your new fan page.  Make the FBML Tab the default landing tab for non-fans.
4. Use the “suggest to friends” feature and the “Share+” feature to invite your friends to become a fan of your new fan page.

You can repeat Step 2 more than once but don’t overdue it or your Fans will feel like you are spamming them and then they’ll never migrate to your new fan page.

You will probably never get all of your fans to move to your new fan page, but by doing the above you will get quite a few of them.  If this isn’t what you wanted to hear, then perhaps you should reconsider whether or not creating a new fan page (and deleting the old one) is the best thing for you to do.

If you’ve been in this situation before, please post a comment and let us know how you handled it.

Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow

Become a Fan of our Fan Page:  SocialNetworking4Biz