REPOST: 8 Ways to be a Better Facebook Page Administrator

Be a better Facebook page administrator by reading this article from SocialMediaToday.com.

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The success of a Facebook Page lies in the hands of its admins. Facebook Page admins are the people who are in direct contact with a Page’s fans and are in charge of promoting the brand to the online world. Whether your Page has one or many admins there are a few best practices you need to know about in order to ensure that your Page is as engaging and successful as it can be.

Here are 8 things you need to know in order to be a super effective admin:

1. The benefits of a business Page versus a personal profile

Although it’s been possible since March of 2012, many Facebook users still don’t know that a Facebook profile can easily be converted into a Page. Facebook calls the process a “Profile to Business Page Migration” and you can learn more about it here.  Facebook Pages offer unique tools and features for organizations, businesses, brands and “public figures.” Facebook defines a public figure as an individual who may be a celebrity, writer, musician or may be just a self-employed business consultant or other “personal” brand. If you are using Facebook as a business tool, you want to set up a Page because it gives you access to many powerful marketing tools, including ads and apps. It is also a violation of Facebook’s terms to use a personal account to represent something other than yourself (for example, to use a profile to represent your business).  

2.  What’s what in the Admin Panel

The admin panel appears above the Timeline when you navigate to a business Page as  an admin. Below is a quick breakdown of what’s available in the admin panel.

1. Manage Page info, Edit Page settings and Admin rolls, View Activity Log and Banned users, toggle account use

2. Invite Friends, Share Page, Promote Page

3. Quick glance at post reach

4. Respond and engage with followers via messages

5. Quick glance at Like count/new fans

6. View detailed analytics on Page by date, posts, etc.

7. Create Ads

8. Cover photo

9. Profile Picture

10. Give basic details and links for your company

11. Custom app thumbnail

12. Click to expand custom apps menu

3. Why it’s important to choose a Page name that represents your brand

Pages have the option to change their Page name as many times as they’d like if they have fewer than 200 likes. If your Page has more than 200 likes, you can only change your Page name once so you want to make sure to choose a name you want to keep.  If your business has a long name you may want to consider a shortened version for your Facebook Page. If you have multiple locations, you may choose to put your location in your Page name so fans can differentiate between locations. Only admins who are Manager or Content Creators can change the name of a Page.

4. Why it’s a good idea to assign admin roles and establish rules

Facebook allows five different administrator roles: Manager, Content Creator, Moderator, Advertiser and Insights Analyst. Each role has different capabilities – only Managers are allowed to change each admin’s role. Facebook makes all admins managers by default. To prevent conflict amongst your employees, and before you assign your Facebook Page’s admin roles, establish some company-wide guidelines. Some best practices:

- Have a Facebook training session once a quarter

- Define the voice of your Page

- Keep a shareable document (e.g., a Google doc) that outlines company social media policies

- Keep admins to a minimum

- Keep communications between admins open

5. How to customize Your Status Updates

Facebook provides many features that allow Page admins to customize status updates so Pages can draw more attention to their Timeline content. Below are nine functions of a status update that businesses can use when posting.

- Pin a post

- Highlight a post

- Target a post

- Add location to your post

- Schedule a post

- Boost a post

- Create an offer

- Create an event or milestone for your Page

- Host a Timeline promotion

6. What makes a great status update

When it comes to posting a Status Update on Facebook, wording is everything. You might be sharing something valuable, but if your Status Update isn’t worded the right way, it won’t get the views, Likes and shares it deserves. Here are seven things to consider when crafting that perfect status update:

- Share a tip

- Post the most interesting fact related to your content (and link to the rest)

- Engage

- Stay positive

- Host a Timeline contest or promotion

- Include images

- Make images mobile friendly

7. How to use third-party app providers

Installing apps on your Facebook Page can make the Page powerful and engaging. You can use apps to host contests, feature forms, newsletter signups, menus and much more. But unless you know computer coding and can build your own apps, you’ll need to work with a third-party app provider. There are lots of third-party app providers to choose from but here’s what to keep in mind when you’re looking for one:

- The apps should be flexible

- The price should be right

- The apps should be embeddable or have “anywhere” capabilities

- The apps must have mobile capabilities

- The apps should use “fan-gating” to earn new fans

8. How to make the most of your cover photo

The cover photo is the focal point of a business’s Timeline profile. It sets the tone of a Page and stands as a visual message alert for whatever it is you want Timeline visitors to know about your brand, or your client’s brand, first.

Among the many ways to make the most of the cover photo real estate: get into the holiday spirit (whether it’s Christmas or the 4th of July), direct fans to a specific app, showcase new products, promote a Facebook exclusive or fan-only incentive, create a sense of urgency, establish authority and promote your other social networks.

These are just a few of the many ways Page administrators can ensure they’re doing the best job possible when it comes to managing a Facebook Page. Facebook admins can also check out thisFacebook Maintenance Manual for detailed descriptions of these tips and some additional best practices for maintaining a successful Facebook presence.

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This John Bohan blog site offers various articles about social media.

REPOST: 29% of Americans Use Facebook at Work Every Day

This Mashable article shares the latest survey result on Facebook usage at work among Americans. 

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How focused are you during the workday? Be honest.

Almost one-third of Americans — 29%, to be exact — visit Facebook each day while they're at work. Gmail, Yahoo Mail and YouTube are also popular destinations during the workday.

Statista's chart, below, is based on its own workplace survey that shows the percentage of American workers who visit different websites on a daily basis while on the job.

However, the chart does not convey how many workers use these sites for work-related purposes.

Image Source: Mashable.com

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Be in the know on the latest news about social media by following this John Bohan Facebook page.

REPOST: Facebook Finally Lets You Place Photos Directly In Comments, But Still No GIFs

Facebook made a new tool that allows users to insert photos directly to comments. Read this article by Alexis Kleinman of The Huffington Post.

Image Source:  huffingtonpost.com

Finally, Facebook is making a change that everyone can agree is an improvement. On Wednesday, the social network added a little camera button on its comment boxes, allowing users to insert photos directly into comments. Before, users were forced to copy and paste links to photos into comments.

Facebook provided The Huffington Post with the following screenshot that demonstrates how the new photo sharing system works.

Image Source:  huffingtonpost.com

The feature is being gradually and globally rolled out starting today, Facebook told The Huffington Post, so if you don't have it yet, don't panic. The new tool was built at one of Facebook's many hackathons.

As far as we can tell, the new photo tool doesn't support the use of GIFs, some Facebook users' favorite mode of communication. GIFs take up much more bandwidth than photos, and supporting GIFs could slow the site down considerably. We both dream of, and dread, the day when GIFs are embeddable into Facebook comments.

John Bohan has  over 12 years of experience in crafting smart media campaigns, managing online communities, and building engaging applications. Visit this Facebook page for more information on how to make social media work for online marketing campaigns.

Bringing Facebook's structured status updates to the mobile experience

Image Source: digitaltrends.com

Updating a Facebook status used to be simple: One would just type something in the status update box—a myriad of stringed words ranging from “Today is a very nice day” to “I feel very cranky today, please don’t hang around me”—whatever reflects the user’s current emotions, activities, and whatnot. But with Facebook’s extremely dynamic nature, this simplicity was bound to change. True enough, by the start of 2013, the world’s largest social network introduced structured status updates, a more visual and organized way of letting other people know whatever users are up to.

Image Source: allfacebook.com

With structured status updates, users find a drop down menu that presents them several options such as “eating,” “feeling,” and “watching” which will then be appended to the status update. This new feature is considered to be a clever strategy which can be indexed in the graph search and later on leveraged to gather data for ad targeting. Unfortunately, this feature is exclusive to web and smartphone app users, thus leaving behind a sizeable number of mobile users which make up a great number of the Facebook user population.

Image Source: allfacebook.com

Facebook, greatly aware of the significance of the mobile demographic, tweaked its system to make sure mobile users don’t lag behind. Now everyone can get to enjoy the convenience of “structured updates” regardless of the device being used.

This move shows Facebook’s sensitivity to the growing mobile market, portending the social network’s future concentration with their constant system updates.

Social media marketers, such as John Bohan, keep abreast with whatever changes Facebook rolls out to ensure that they leverage these features toward greater customer satisfaction. More information about Mr. Bohan may be found at this Facebook page.

Facebook Home: Is user privacy a concern?

With the announcement of Facebook Home for Android and the HTC First, HTC’s Facebook phone, people now have a chance to use the widely popular social networking site in a whole new way. They will be able to send messages to their friends and check their News Feed directly from their phone’s home screen without even opening the Facebook app.

Image Source: mashable.com

While the new Android launcher’s features may eventually win over avid Facebook users, tech experts, especially those who attended Facebook’s April 4 event in Menlo Park, California, think that Facebook Home is only a gimmick and that, knowing Facebook, there might be privacy problems that can crop up in the future, such as GPS location tracking services that passively and continuously run on the phone in order to send location-based advertising to users.

Image Source: hypebeast.com

However, that fear may be unfounded, as Mashable.com reports that Facebook has confirmed that Home will not be actively tracking users’ GPS location, even on the HTC First, where the launcher is built right into the phone’s operating system. Furthermore, data on the activities of other applications, such as Foursquare check-ins, will not be seen by Facebook. Still, location-based ads can and will be offered to users if they use Facebook to check-in to a location.

Image Source: androidanalyse.com

Despite some privacy concerns, there are people who believe that Facebook Home is a powerful software that can potentially disrupt the telecom industry.

Socialtyze is John Bohan’s answer to branding and social media marketing issues. Visit its website for more information about its services.

Facebook's latest redesign: Will it be better for brands?

True to Mark Zuckerberg’s entry in 2006 about how Facebook listened to feedback from its users and contributors, the company’s decision to revamp its news feed seems to be fueled by user complaints of boredom on the site and by pressure from advertisers that want more value for their money.

Image source: score.org

The social networking site has gone far from being “brand new and still evolving” to something that is almost ubiquitous to people in the modern age. As the site attempts to change the way people find information on the Internet, it seems inevitable for its users to ask for more.

Previously, it launched its Graph Search feature, which allows people to “find more of what they’re looking for through their friends and connections.” The news feed redesign move, meanwhile, is aimed at making the site akin to “the best personalized newspaper in the world.”

Image source: postfever.com

The customizable feed now allows users to see only the types of content that they want to see. They can focus on video feeds, music feeds, or photo feeds and expect to get the type of content that they favor from their friends. Meanwhile, advertisers can be happier with the following feed, which is dedicated to the posts of brands and people users are following, arranged chronologically. Facebook maintains that through this feed, people won’t be missing any posts now.

Image source: higheredlive.com

With these changes, the social networking site has effectively responded to advertiser complaints that people aren’t seeing their important posts enough. In time when competitors are at the heels of Facebook, perhaps the change is enough to prevent advertisers from seeking another platform.

John Bohan is an Internet advertising expert who specializes in social marketing solutions. Find more material on effective social media use on Socialtyze.com.