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
P.S. - I am a Facebook consultant & trainer and I help businesses get found on the internet. Subscribe to this blog via RSS Feed or Email so you don't miss any free Facebook For Business Tips! @KimberlyYow
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
If you are going to use Facebook for Business, you need to establish some guidelines to maximize your efficiency. Answering questions like the ones below will help you establish a plan for using Facebook for business:
- What do you want to accomplish with your Facebook Fan Page?
- Will you maintain your Fan Page & Facebook Profile or will you have an assistant or freelancer handle it for you?
- How much time per day or week are you willing to devote to managing your Fan Page and building relationships through your Profile?
- What kind of things will your target market be interested in reading on your Fan Page?
What I have learned is that if you stick to the basics of building relationships and promoting your business, you can experience results on Facebook in 10-20 minutes per day.
Below is the suggested Daily Plan I give to my clients:
- Scan the Live Feed on your home page.
- Update your Status at least once a day.
- Interact with friends.
- Interact with Fans and/or post something new on your Fan Page.
- Check your Inbox, Notifications and Fan Page Updates.
- Respond to friend invites. Respond to other types of requests and ignore or block those that are not business appropriate.
- Send friend invites to any new business contacts (as appropriate).
- Invite new business contacts to become a Fan of your Fan Page.
- Check the Events section for upcoming birthdays and post birthday wishes on your friend’s profile wall.
Never fear, there will be many days that there will be nothing for you to do regarding items 5-9. If you are unable to devote time to interacting on Facebook and maintaining a Fan Page, consider outsourcing some of the tasks to a social networking freelancer or to an employee.
If you enjoy playing games on Facebook and answering quizzes, consider setting aside a separate time to do that. This will allow you to concentrate on building relationships and promoting your business during your “Facebook for Business” time slot and you will be a lot more efficient.
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
Facebook Fan Page: Social Networking 4 Biz
News Feed
When you log into Facebook, you’ll see the most interesting things that happened in the last day in the “News Feed” view. News Feed picks stories that we think you’ll enjoy based on a variety of factors including how many friends have liked and commented on it and how likely you are to interact with that story.
Live Feed
Once you’ve caught up on what you missed, you can click through to “Live Feed” to see what’s happening right now. As long as you remain logged into Facebook, you’ll continue to see posts and activity from your friends in real-time. You can edit what appears in this view by clicking “Edit Options” at the bottom of the home page.
Facebook decided to make changes to the home page after getting feedback on the home page changes they made in March. With this latest change, Facebook is moving what you used to see in the Highlights section on the right hand side of your screen back into the News Feed. The following will also, once again, be noted in the News Feed:
- when your friends are tagged in photos
- when your friends become a Fan of a Page
- when they RSVP for an event
- when they join groups
- when they make new friends
Facebook has also made birthdays and events easier to spot in the right column of the home page.
Facebook says the following about these changes:
We put a lot of thought into all the changes we make to the site and do a lot of testing before releasing anything. As we design new products, we gather feedback by reading emails from users like you and testing ideas with small groups of users. After every change we make, we continue to gather feedback and iterate. Please take some time to play around with this new design, and check out our Help Center if you have any questions.
When someone sees that their friend became a Fan of a Page, RSVP’d for an event or joined a group, they are more likely to click on the page/event/group link to check it out. This should increase the viral growth of these items AND be good for businesses with Fan Pages or Groups! But remember, if you want your content classified as ‘most interesting’ and placed in the News Feed…it will be very important to provide great content that engages your readers and makes them click the comment or like buttons.
Here’s to change…again!
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
How To Use Facebook Search
Below is a screen shot showing “posts by friends” for the search term Facebook Fan Box Widget. Notice that the search result shown is actually from a Fan Page (my own) that I am a Fan of. If any of my friends, or pages I am a fan of, had used this very specific term in a status update, it would’ve been shown in the results.
Facebook Search: Posts by Friends
Not sure what the big deal is about Facebook search?
Try these “8 Ways to Use Facebook Search for Business” and see if you change your opinion:
- Inspiration: Search on terms that are specific to your business or industry. Look at “posts by friends” and “posts by everyone” to see who is commenting on or asking questions about your search term. Their questions or comments may inspire you to write a blog post or a Facebook note for your Fan Page.
- Prospecting: If a Facebook user has asked a question about your search term, or expressed a need, send them an answer or a link to resource info. This “helpful” gesture could result in an inquiry or a new customer for you.
- Information Gathering & Education: Search on a term that you would like to know more about. Then look at the Pages and Groups that come up in the search results. Become a Fan of the Fan Pages that interest you or join active Groups that relate to your search term.
- Connecting & Building Your Network: Send a message or invite to Facebook users that are posting about your search term. Depending on the situation you could send them a friend invite or ask if they have a Fan Page you can become a Fan of.
- Collaboration: Search on words that pertain to your industry or an industry that complements it. Pursue possible collaboration with people posting about your search term.
- Finding Guest Bloggers: Do you have a blog? Are there topics you would like to provide info on but don’t feel qualified? Look for people on Facebook who might be interested in writing a guest post for your blog.
- Keeping An Eye On Your Competition: Search on the business name or product names of your competitors to see what they are posting or what is being said about them by others.
- Listening To What People Are Saying About You or Your Company: Search on your name and the name of your business and products to see what is being said about you. Respond to questions, comments and even complaints to build trust and goodwill.
At first glance you may think that Facebook Search isn’t a big deal. But, after reading this post I hope you will try out some of the ideas above and experience for yourself how they can help your business.
If you’ve used Facebook Search for business, feel free to share your story in the comments below.
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
Facebook Fan Page: Social Networking 4 Biz
Based on what I’ve heard and seen in forums and Facebook help sections, many people want to know how to remove themselves as a Fan Page Administrator so that the Fan Page is unlinked from their personal profile.
There are several reasons that someone might want to do this:
- they no longer have the same job role within the company and someone else will be administering the Fan Page
- they no longer work for the company whose Fan Page their profile is linked to
- they set up a Fan Page for a client assuming they could turn the Fan Page over to their client once it was set up
- other…
The bottom line is that it makes sense that people might want to unlink their personal profile from a Fan Page that they created. Unfortunately, Facebook does NOT allow this at this time! I have personally tried to find a way to do this so I could provide you with instructions via this blog. All I found was the following on the Facebook website:
How can I transfer Page admin rights?
There is currently no way to take away admin status from the creator of a Page. However, Page admins can add or remove other admins by following these steps:1. Click the “Edit Page” link below the Page’s photo. .
2. On the right hand side, click the “Add” link in the Admin section.
3. Select the friend you would like to add as an admin.
In my mind, these are the alternatives you have if you already set up a Fan Page that you will no longer administer.
If you are still with the company or are on good terms with them:
- Add one or more admins to the Fan Page so they can take over the day-to-day upkeep of the page.
- Have the person now responsible for the company marketing set up a new Facebook account (using a generic email address like marketing@yourcompany.com) and then set up a new Fan Page. Invite the current Fans to become a fan of the new page. Once most of the Fans have migrated to the new Fan Page…you can delete the original Fan Page.
If you are no longer with the company and are not on good terms with them:
- Delete the Fan Page.
If you set up a Fan Page for a client using your own personal account:
- Start over. You will need to set up an account for your client using a generic login such as marketing@theircompany.com. (Using a generic login will enable anyone authorized to administer the Fan Page to log in in the future.) Set up a new Fan Page. Once the page is set up, your client can log in and maintain their own Fan Page.
Hopefully in the future Facebook will see that there is a need to unlink Fan Pages from personal profiles and they will make it easy to do. Until then, you will need to use one of the above suggested alternatives or come up with your own creative solution.
If you have dealt with this issue, please leave a comment below and let us all know how you handled it.
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
Facebook Fan Page: Social Networking 4 Biz, become a fan today!
There are numerous Facebook Privacy Settings that you can adjust to customize who you interact with and who sees your profile & wall posts on Facebook. Before jumping to the settings, determine how you want to use Facebook:
- Do you want to use Facebook for business or just for personal use?
- Do you want to have a Fan Page for your business?
- Do you want to connect with people you know if they send you a “friend” invite?
- Do you want to post things on your personal wall & profile?
- Do you want to interact with only family and real-life friends?
How private do you want your Facebook profile and communications to be?:
- Do you want Facebook users to be able to send you a message through Facebook?
- Do you want people to invite you to be a Facebook friend?
- Do you want Facebook friends to post on your wall?
- Do you want clients/prospects to see what your friends post on your wall?
- Do you want clients/prospects to see what YOU post on your personal wall/profile?
- Do you want only certain categories of Facebook friends (college buddies, family, work friends, etc…) to see your wall?
Once you are clear about how you want to use Facebook and how private you want to be, you can adjust your Facebook Privacy Settings so they are inline with your level of comfort. Click on Settings/Privacy Settings in the upper right hand corner of your Facebook screen and you’ll see a screen that looks like this:
Facebook Privacy Settings
Take time to look at each setting and determine what you want to adjust. You can always go back and tweak a setting if you change your mind.
Before reading this post, did you know that you could adjust your Privacy Settings? Have you had problems on Facebook trying to juggle clients, Facebook friends and real-life friends? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
Facebook Fan Page: Social Networking 4 Biz
I was recently asked if I knew of an “automated” tool for getting a lot of Fans for a Facebook Fan Page quickly and easily. The answer is “no, I don’t”. And if there was one I’m not sure that I would even use it.
I truly believe that for a Fan Page to be effective, the page administrator needs to provide content that has value. Depending on the administrator’s business and their target market, valuable content could be how-to tips, before & after photos, event postings, links to resources and articles about industry trends, etc… Valuable content could also be things that are funny or inspiring. It really all depends on what your target market wants. If you give people what they want, the number of Fans on your Fan Page will organically increase as will the level of Fan interaction.
What is your target market looking for on a Fan Page? Think about how you can give it to them before your competition does.
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
Facebook Fan Page Feedback
Facebook Fan Page Set Up
The new tagging feature recently announced by Facebook looks pretty awesome! Here are a few things I learned by using it.
Does the new Facebook tagging feature work from a Fan Page or a Group?
It works from personal profiles AND fan pages. It does not appear to work from a group at this time.
How does it work?
You simply type the @ symbol in your status update and then select the item you want to tag from a drop-down menu that will appear. It’s fast & easy! You can tag friends, events, groups, fan pages, etc…
What happens if someone tags my Fan Page?:
If someone tags your fan page from their personal profile, a post will be created on your fan page wall that’s identical to what the person posted. You’ll also see a link that says “view post”. Clicking the link will take you to that person’s original post and you’ll be able to see any additional comments that were attached by other Facebook users. (The same scenario happens if someone tags your personal profile.)
How can I use this new tagging feature from a business stand-point?
A couple of ideas: 1) If you practice the “givers gain” attitude of helping others, use the tagging feature to tag your friend’s fan pages, groups or events. 2) A couple of times a month, post an invitation from your personal profile for readers to join your fan page (or group) and be sure to “tag” your fan page/group so they have easy access to it. 3) Tag your own events.
So what do you think of the new Facebook tagging feature? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks!
Kimberly Yow
E-book: How To Promote Your Business On Facebook…Without Alienating Your Friends!
Facebook just announced that they are adding a new way for you to tag friends, groups, events, applications and fan pages directly in your Status Updates. This is another way you can let the Facebook community know who you are talking about and what you are saying about them.
So how does this affect a business that has a Facebook group, fan page or event postings? I’m assuming that items tagged via a status update will appear in the home page highlights section thus giving the tagged items more exposure on Facebook. If this is true, you could potentially tag your own groups, fan pages and events AND your endearing friends could also tag your items as a way of promoting you and your business.
Here is info directly from the Facebook blog:
Now, when you are writing a status update and want to add a friend’s name to something you are posting, just include the “@” symbol beforehand. As you type the name of what you would like to reference, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications and Pages. Soon, you’ll be able to tag friends from applications as well. The “@” symbol will not be displayed in the published status update or post after you’ve added your tags.
Friends you tag in your status updates will receive a notification and a Wall post linking them to your post. They also will have the option to remove tags of themselves from your posts.
Exactly how this feature will work and the benefits that it will produce remain to be seen. Facebook will be rolling this feature out over the next few weeks…you may not have access to it yet. One way to check is to start typing a status update and use the @ symbol. If a drop-down menu appears, your account has the new feature. If it doesn’t appear, try again in a few days…
I will post additional information on this blog or my Social Networking Facebook Fan Page as it becomes available.
Tag…you’re it! How do you think this new feature will benefit your business?
Kimberly Yow
Marketing That’s Easy.com
