7 New Facebook Changes Impacting Businesses

 

Article by: By Andrea Vahl

Facebook pages are changing. And that means your business strategy will need to change.

In fact, Facebook has made many new changes that will impact anyone with a Facebook page.

These changes emerged from Facebook’s fMC 2012 Conference.

The overall message was that Facebook is looking at pages as a “mission control” point (which is where the MC comes from in the conference title).

Here is an overview of the changes and how brands can take advantage of some of the new features. 

#1: Cover Photo and Profile Image

Obviously one of the biggest changes that we all knew was coming was the cover photo. No more photo strip across the top. You now have one large image to showcase your page. This image must be a minimum of 399 pixels across to be used as the cover photo. But you can have a photo cover designed to take advantage of the extra space you get. The cover photo maximum dimensions are 850 pixels by 315 pixels.

The new Timeline cover photo.

One of the biggest restrictions is the fact that you can’t have any calls to action in your cover photo. You can’t tell people to like or share your page or have any contact information at all, including your web address, phone number or mailing address. Get the full details about cover photos here. These restrictions will require some creativity in drawing attention to your business without some of the methods that have been used in the profile pictures recently.

The profile picture size has been changed to 180 pixels by 180 pixels. It appears next to every post in the news feed as a 30 pixel by 30 pixel picture. The profile picture is best used for your logo or other eye-catching picture without a lot of words.

#2: Larger, Highlighted and Pinned Posts

One of Facebook’s mantras during the conference was the way we tell stories with Facebook. To help you tell your stories, the pictures and videos are now larger and more eye-catching.

You can also highlight a story (by clicking the star icon in the upper right of a post) so that it spans all the way across the Timeline as shown in this Lexus post with a video.

Use Highlight to emphasize a particular post.

You can also pin the story to the top of your Timeline for up to a week. To do this, click the pencil icon in the upper right of the post and select Pin to Top.

Pin a story to the top of your Timeline for greater emphasis.

#3: Setting Company Milestones

Another thing you can add to make your Timeline more interesting is Milestones. You can tell people about big events in the life of your brand or company.

All you need to do is click on the line that runs down the middle of your Timeline and select Milestone. Then you can fill out the information as shown.

Add Milestones to tell your company's story.

Because the posts from your fans are in a separate area, your Timeline is now more focused on your story.

People may be spending more time reading your Timeline rather than just coming to your page to ask a question. The more visually engaging you can make your Timeline, the better.

#4: New Applications

One of the biggest changes is the removal of the default landing tab.

Applications are still available and if you have created a custom welcome tab or added any other special application, it hasn’t disappeared.

You now have 12 applications you can showcase and only the four applications that you move to the top row will appear prominently. You cannot change the position of the photos, so technically you only have three applications that you have control over in that top row .

Choose which apps you want displayed by placing them in the first three rows.

To move your apps around, first click the down arrow next to your top row of apps to display all of your apps. Next, click the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the app. Then select the app that you would like to swap positions with. As mentioned, you cannot change the position of the Photos app.

Change your app position.

Many people are lamenting the disappearance of the default landing tab, but the new app buttons give us an opportunity to be creative. You can change the photo that appears for the app and you can rename the app to give a call to action as shown on Holdren Design’s page.

Use an eye-catching image and rename the app to have a call to action.

Another good use of custom images and tab names.

To change your app photo, again display all of your apps with the down arrow button next to the top row of apps and click on the pencil icon. Scroll down to the Edit Setting selection and from there you can add a custom tab image.

Select Edit Settings to change the name of the tab and use a custom tab image.

Select Change to upload a custom tab image.

The custom tab image is 111 pixels by 74 pixels.

You can have an enticing call to action in your custom tab image.

#5: Facebook Offers

Only a few companies have access to Facebook Offers currently, but it will be rolled out soon. According to Facebook’s Offer Help section, they “expect to make Offers available more broadly soon.” Facebook Offers are like Facebook Deals on steroids.

The post is sent through the news feeds of your fans, which is much more visible. There are easy ways to share the Offer, both through the post itself and then when the Offer is claimed. Fans get the Offer by clicking the Get Offer link, see the terms and then click the blue Claim Offer button as shown.

Click Claim Offer to get the coupon sent to your email.

Because Facebook has everyone’s email address, they are able to individually email your Offer to the person who claimed it. Unfortunately, the page does not have access to those emails through which the Offer was claimed, but at least the word is spread about your Offer.

The person who claims the Offer receives an email showing how to redeem the Offer and the terms.

Facebook Offers could be a huge win for small businesses offering things like a “free webinar” or consultants offering a “free 15-minute consultation.”

The danger is making sure you have the bandwidth to deliver the Offer. There didn’t seem to be any way to cap the number of Offers that were claimed. Einstein’s Bagels had close to 30,000 people who claimed the BYGO sandwich offer. Not too difficult to fulfill if you have 500+ locations and you anticipate that some won’t redeem the Offer at all—but still, you don’t want to get into a bad situation with fulfillment problems.

Facebook gives some good tips on ways to make your Offer successful by telling us to “make discounts substantial”—20% off or even free—as well as setting a reasonable expiry date to “let people have a few days to see and claim the Offer.”

The other question is when Facebook Offers will be widely available. Facebook stated, “Offers are only available to managed advertising clients.” Once this is rolled out to more pages, it would seem that every page would want to create one if it was free. Plus it appears that Facebook may not be vetting the Offers before they go live. Offers may become too much of a good thing, but that remains to be seen.

#6: Facebook Insights, Admin Panel and Messaging

Another change with the Timeline is the location of the Insights. You can now access them by clicking on the Admin Panel in the upper right corner.

The Admin Panel tells you about new notifications and gives you access to the "back-end" of your Facebook page.

The Admin Panel has much different navigation than before, but everything appears to be there.

Access your Insights through the Admin Panel.

You will still be able to see the old-style Page Dashboard if you click the Manage drop-down menu and then Edit Page.

Click Edit Page to see the old-style Page Dashboard.

From the Admin Page, you can also invite your email contacts, invite friends, share your page and create an ad from the Build Audience drop-down menu.

Use the Build Audience drop-down menu to access several options on getting the word out about your page.

Facebook has done a nice job of giving us lots of options to learn more about the new page design from the Help drop-down menu. During the Preview, the Help drop-down menu links to tutorials, but once you publish your Timeline you will have access to some different options.

One of the capabilities will be to easily request a name change for your page. This name change is the title of your page, not the custom URL you may have set for your page. You can still access this form here. Great news for people who have changed their company branding, have had a misspelling in the name or have other tweaks they have wanted to make.

Request a name change for your page

One of the most interesting developments of the new page Timelines is that we can now get more information on other pages that have changed to the new Timeline. When you click on the Likes box, just underneath their Timeline cover photo you cansee the most popular age group, a People Talking About This Trend graph and their most popular week.

You can now see more Insight information about any page that has the new Timeline.

Companies could possibly hide the Likes box by swapping it to a lower position than the top 12 apps that are accessible to the public. But that would also hide the social proof of how many people like your page.

Pages will also have the ability to receive messages from fans. The Message feature can be turned on or off from the Manage Permissions area of the Admin Dashboard.

Enable the Message button from the Manage Permissions area.

The Message button is enabled by default so if you want to disable it, you will have to uncheck the box. Messages can only be initiated by a fan—they cannot be initiated by the page to a fan. The page can reply to the message sent.

#7: Facebook Advertising

Another new announcement that was covered in the fMC Conference was some changes to advertising. The ads will be larger and the product names are the Reach Generator and Premium on Facebook. The Reach Generator is designed to reach more of your existing fans than you currently are reaching through the news feed.

Mike Hoefflinger, Facebook’s director of global business marketing, said thatcurrently pages only reach about 16% of their audience each week with posts. With the Reach Generator ads, pages can reach 50% of their fans each week and 75% each month. Beta testing done by brands such as Ben and Jerry’s was able to reach 98% of fans and double engagement.

The Reach Generator ads are designed to connect to your existing audience and will include the Page Post stories. The ads will not be based on CPC or CPM models, but will be an “always on” ad. These ads will be shown on the right side of the page and they will also go into the news feed and mobile streams. Learn more about this product in Facebook’s Reach Generator Guide.

Premium on Facebook is designed to distribute your stories to new connectionsand will be shown on the right side of the home page, in the news feed, in mobile streams and when someone logs out of Facebook. Find out more in the Premium on Facebook Guide.

Again, there were lots of big changes to pages that came out of the fMC Conference. Read more about their guides here. Ultimately, the Timeline look needed to come to pages and there are a lot of ways we can use it to our advantage.

What do you think? Now it’s time to weigh in with your thoughts about all the changes. Leave your questions and comments in the box below!

 

The 8 Best Types of Video Promotion for Small Business

Video marketing strategies

There are countless ways to use video for business, varying from sophisticated, high-priced ad campaign commercials to complex landing page productions devised to pull someone into a purchase. What are the greatest types of video for Small Business owners that can be produced cost-effectively and published rapidly and create leads? Here are the Elite Eight.

Intro Advert

Well-known and regularly underused, the video Intro to the Business is a short, 5 minute or less (2-3 works well) homepage introduction that tells who you are, what you do and why customers should care. This can be done using a description in a commercial replete with lots of movement shots of the shop floor, the office, and merchandise; a talking head of the CEO to a blank camera; or use the 3rd party opinion of a genuine Video interview (see below) Business FAQ.

Production fees can vary from FREE (CEO talking into a webcam) through a few hundred bucks to thousands for a videographer shot commercial. Google doesn’t care; either will index well given the suitable keyword tags. The question you have to answer is, what is going to be instantly informational, entertaining, and referable (as in Re-tweeted).

Product Description

Specific to demonstrable merchandise, especially ones that move, like machines, toys, electronic devices, and, considering the medium, software. These again shouldn’t go on too long but can be longer than an introductory commercial. A software-based demo may take up to 8 minutes, but you should be able to say it in less time than that. When it comes to demos, in some cases less is more. Most often either a narrative led demo showing strictly merchandise or a spokesperson paced demo (think QVC or Home Shopping Channel) works the best. Just make sure to show the greatest features of your product and lay out consistently (3x) how this addresses an issue for your customers.

Professional Abilities

This is very similar to a product demo and works best for suppliers, especially those in developed countries, trying to demonstrate their remarkable technology will actually cost less money or provide better quality merchandise for a customer engaging them with an arrangement for recurring services. Machine shops and laser houses prefer this stuff, showing programmed machinery cutting steel while a guy with a hardhat and safety goggles oversees the process. This can run 5-10 minutes max. The key here is, make sure that your ability really is something memorable and that your video captures its uniqueness.

Company Spotlights

This is more of a tug on the heartstrings video that features either what your company has achieved that is significant or what your staff members have done for your company. If it’s about the company, it MUST be validated by 3rd party reference, as in an award won from a prestigious registrar (Best in Class, Malcolm Baldridge quality), a status acquired (ISO 9001 certification, etc.) or a cat saved from a tree on the news.

When discussing employees, the old Employee of the Month style headline adds a nice human element and speaks to what your company values in its people, and that can make a big difference to prospects with the same value system. For these kinds of videos, keep them short (2-4 minutes) and keep them current, especially for the employee notoriety videos. An Employee of the Month surmises that next month, we’ll see another.

Video Landing Page Combo

I could write pages on this one and frankly, I’m not a professional at it, but I am sure you’ve experienced pages that have these videos. These are designed to be hands-free on the part of the seller of a product or service, meaning, don’t call me, take the steps explained on the video. That means enter your email address to get something for FREE for agreement to advertise to you, or register for the thing (whatever it is) right now!

Just like text-only sales landing pages, these are long-form videos, with Squeeze Pages (get the email address) videos stretching from 3-7 minutes, and Sales Pages running all the way up to 30 minutes (that is too long in my opinion, with 10-12 being sufficient). The crucial stuff here: limit options to only this with no other on-page interruptions and make multiple calls to action to the prospect.

Vlogs

All about providing information this one is. It comes in the form of an instruction video, which is conveniently done for things like software applications using screen capture software, or talking head telling something she knows, and typically is the Expert Interview (I’ve done a ton of these in my blog, see sample). The goal is expert placement for your company while providing real value for the view. These videos can run from 5-30 minutes or longer (think of a book author interview), but I like to keep them between 7 and 15 minutes (YouTube has a 15 minute max until you are a recurring video poster). Tickets to success are to limit the subject matter to avoid rambling, don’t provide fluff with a sales pitch to get more, and add some written text fore and aft of the video to set it up and recap.

Testimonies and Personal Examples

Very self-explanatory here, this is 3rd party Reliability Building 101. Take the same things that marketers value about written examples and reviews and put them on steroids. This positively MUST be a person outside the company outlining what the company did for him or her, and it can NOT be anonymous (just like those outrageous made up references you see, “JL from Tampa says …”). Use foresight if the person doing the talking is not good on camera. It shouldn’t matter but it does. He doesn’t need to be Ben Affleck, but he can’t be a stiff either. These run no more than 3 minutes in length and follow my rules for great reviews.

Quality can’t be weak, but a webcam with acceptable quality can be used effectively, as the content of the person’s reference is the crucial piece.

Interviews

Video interviews work well for any business that wants to put a human face on its product, so take into account if that is you. They work exceptionally well when your business has these three qualities:

1. No physical merchandise– That’s right consultants, lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, IT people and anyone else offering professional services, I’m looking at you. You sell intellectual property and that is difficult to show by showing a video shot of your report (although you can show results charts, but the people who can use this tactic the most, financial advisors, usually have rules preventing it).
2. Trust is the key to business– Same group, right? If you’re an attorney, how can you start to break the trust hurdle down without ever getting to know someone? Show some face time with the 3rd party legitimacy that comes from being interviewed.
3. Sameness in Brand– If you look at your rivals’ websites and they look like yours does– competent yet non-distinguishable– you’re a good candidate for a video interview to set yourself apart. Again, this is why professional service companies fall so perfectly into video interview prospects.

For advertising purposes the longest video interview should run about 12 minutes. That’s pretty in-depth. The shortest you can reasonably do with any bona fide dialog is about 2-3 minutes.

The vital success factors here are that the interviewer is good and that the framework of the content is planned beforehand. A faltering interviewer will lead to an unpersuasive interview and fragile video. A sound interviewer with planned content will lead to genuine questions that represent you in the very best light.

Optimizing local search results for your business

Optimizing local search results for your 

business 

By Bradley Simonis, Special to the U-T  

 

Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 9:28 p.m. 

 

Social Media Monday is a weekly feature that helps businesses and consumers understand how 

to use social media tools to their best advantage. This week’s feature is from Bradley Simonis, 

founder of E-Marketing Solutions Network (e-marketingsolutionsnetwork.com or on Twitter 

@emktgsolutions), specializing in local search, social media and mobile apps for restaurants 

and the service industry. 

 

Lately, local search has been at the top of everyone’s radar, from search engines to social media 

sites to local advertising such as Groupon or, more locally, TipCity. As a small-business owner, 

you are missing a huge opportunity if it’s not on your radar. 

 

So as a small-business owner, what can you do to increase your website’s local ranking without 

being a website programmer or search engine optimization guru? Put on your Google goggles 

and look at your website the way Google does. 

 

Factors that determine your local rankings 

 

There are two big factors you can control that help determine your local ranking results. One is 

your main identifier, known as NAP (Name, Address & Phone), and the other is your social 

media presence. 

 

Imagine for a moment that somehow you have ended up with a listing under Juan’s Mexican 

Restaurant on one site, and a listing under Juan’s Mexican Café on another. When a search 

engine is looking at your Internet profile to determine how “important” your restaurant is, it 

cannot make a connection between the two locations so it assumes they are two different 

businesses. Sure, the address and phone are the same, but that is not enough to give the search 

engine the confidence that you are in fact one location. Such discrepancies are very detrimental 

to local search results. 

 

Here are four steps to take control of your local business listing 

 

1. Do a search under your business name, under your business category, under anything that 

might pull you up. Look at local business directories like Merchant Circle, look under 

review sites like Yelp, and determine if your NAP is consistent. 

 

 2. While you are on each of these sites, claim your listing if that option is available. 

 

3. Most sites have a place for additional information: products offered, coupons, hours of 

operation, credit cards taken, etc. It is critical that you complete all of the fields on every 

site. 

 

4. Now go to the two main sources of all business listings. That will be Localeze.com 

(sdut.us/localezelisting) and InfoUSA.com (expressupdateusa.com). Register your site, 

again with the exact NAP and all additional information they are seeking. The results will 

take time to permeate the Web, and you may have to go back and remake corrections you 

have already made, especially on the individual sites. 

 

The role of social media in local search 

 

By looking closely at a search query results page, in Google’s Places section for example, you 

will see that after a brief description, Google shows an address and phone (culled from your 

NAP). A recent review and its source are shown below that. Then the total number of reviews 

are shown to the right, as well a breakdown of review counts by source at the bottom of the 

listing. 

 

So we can see that reviews are extremely important. And it makes sense. The more people are 

talking about you, the more Google assumes your location is a popular choice. (Assuming your 

reviews are all or mostly positive.) As such, you need to be proactive in gathering and 

monitoring reviews. Encourage your good customers to write about you and have them do it on a 

variety of review sites. 

 

Finally, your social media presence plays another big role, and for the same reason. If two 

websites are created equal, doesn’t it make sense that the one with a higher social media profile 

must be a more popular place? Maybe that will help motivate you the next time you dread 

posting on your Facebook site. 

 

Don’t just look at social media as something you know you should do because everyone is doing 

it (even though you don’t see results from it). It’s critical for getting your business found. 

 

Join the conversation: Are you a social media professional in San Diego County? We’re looking 

for your tips. Contact Money Editor Diana McCabe on Twitter @mcdiana.