Facebook is launching a new feature today that will allow you to reply to Facebook comments via your email. Basically when you get an email notification that someone has commented on your status, you will be able to reply to that comment without having to login to Facebook. Below are the screen shots Facebook used in their blog post about the new feature and you can read their blog post at Replying To Comments Through Email.
You may not have access to this new feature yet. If you see something like this, “noreply@facebookmail.com” in the TO field after you click reply…you do NOT have access yet. If you send your reply it will go into a black hole and never be delivered or posted on Facebook. See Billions of Outgoing Emails Lost In A Black Hole for more info on why this happens.
I hope you have found this post useful!
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
Become a Fan of my Fan Page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SocialNetworking4Biz
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
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
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
Did you know that you can use basic html in the Facebook Notes application? I accidentally stumbled onto this info in Facebook a while ago and saved it. I have absolutely no idea where I found it…LOL!
Try using some of the following html commands to format your Notes text for greater interest and impact!
Your Facebook Informant,
Kimberly Yow
Become a Fan at http://www.facebook.com/SocialNetworking4Biz
I can’t even begin to count how many Facebook friend invites I’ve gotten that are from people I don’t know. What bothers me about these invites is that 99.9% of them are not personalized! And guess what happens when I get this type of invite from a stranger? I ignore it. I actually have a “Friends Policy” posted on the info tab of my profile and it reads:
RE: FACEBOOK FRIEND REQUESTS…
Effective social networking is all about building relationships. Therefore, I only accept friend requests from people I already know or people who take the first step in developing a relationship by adding a personal message to their friend invite. It only takes a few seconds to write how you found my profile or why you want to be FB friends or how you think we could help each other.
If you are primarily interested in reading the tips I post on using social networking sites for business, you have the option of “Becoming a Fan” of my Business Fan Page at: http://facebook.com/SocialNetworking4Biz. Fans receive blog posts & status updates in their News Feed as well as “Fans Only” specials.
I checked with a few of my Facebook friends to see how they handle “non-personalized” friend invites from people they don’t know:
- One friend said she will only accept a friend invite from a stranger if they are already connected on Facebook to one of her family members.
- Another said she “ignores” this type of invite.
- Another said she “ignores” this type of invite AND that she posted a Friends Policy similar to mine after reading my Facebook For Business e-book.
The bottom-line is if you truly want to connect with someone on Facebook, you stand a much better chance of having your friend invite accepted IF you send the other person a personalized message AND have a legitimate reason for wanting to be Facebook friends.
Do you have a Friends Policy? How do you handle non-personalized invites from strangers?
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!
Did you know that Facebook has a new Twitter application which allows Fan Page Administrators to update Twitter directly from their Facebook Fan Pages? The application allows you to determine which type of updates you want to “automatically” post to Twitter: status updates, links, photos, notes and events or all of the them. See example set-up screen shown below:
Linking Facebook to Twitter
You’ll see from the screen shot that it shows which Twitter account your Fan Page is linked to and gives you options that say Edit Settings and Unlink From Twitter. If you have multiple Fan Pages, you can link them to the same Twitter account or link them to separate Twitter accounts.
I already have this application set-up for my Fan Pages and it makes it very easy to post additional tweets without logging into Twitter. If you are importing a blog into Facebook through the Notes application, you will NOT want to post Notes to Twitter if you are also importing your blog into Twitter. This would result in duplicate tweets.
This Facebook application can be accessed at http://www.facebook.com/twitter.
Another time saver…thank you Facebook!
Kimberly Yow
Facebook Fan Page
Marketing That’s Easy.com
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!
On Friday, Facebook officially announced its web page dedicated to Facebook Widgets.
The Facebook Widget Page showcases two Badge widgets that are linked to your Personal Profile and can be placed anywhere you can use html. They are the Profile Badge and Photo Badge.
The Widget Page also has links to a Fan Page Badge, Fan Box and Live Stream Box.
- The Fan Page Badge works similar to a Profile Badge.
- The Fan Box widget allows you to place a box on your website that contains a stream of your Fan Page status updates and/or random photos of your Fans and the number of Fans your page has. It includes links to your Fan Page as well as a button that says Become A Fan.
- The Live Stream Box allows Facebook users visiting your site to view and post status updates to their Personal Profile in real-time.
All of the above are great ways to drive traffic to your Facebook Fan Page or Personal Profile. Check out the Facebook Widgets and start using a couple of your favorites!
Get widgetized!
Kimberly Yow
Marketing That’s Easy.com
