The Maine SEO Blog

Can I create a Facebook page without linking it to my profile? The quick answer is yes.

I get asked this question quite often by folks that are nervous about their online privacy and/or that want to keep their personal life separate from their work life. This is a valid concern and one I will address below.

So, you CAN create a business account, which is just a Facebook business page that is not linked with your Facebook profile. But, the real question is what is the difference, why should or shouldn’t you set it up so it’s not attached to your profile and what is best practices when it comes to setting up a business page?

Our very own Nicki Hicks wrote a blog post on this a while back with some great answers to what the difference between these page set ups are. Check it out here “Can I create a Facebook Business Account (or Fan Page) without a Personal Account?”  Nicki has highlighted some of the missing components of the Facebook business page when you don’t have it attached to a personal profile. Such as:

• You won’t be able to link to your Twitter account
• Your basic information will be limited to year founded, and not:
  • Address
  • Phone number
  • Hours of operation
• Your detailed information about your business will be limited to website, overview, mission, and products, and not:
  • Parking
  • Public transit
• You won’t have the ability to tag (your personal) friends in photos
• You won’t be able to invite your (personal) friends to become fans
• You won’t be able to add any admins. (You can only add friends as admins.)
• You won’t be able to get a vanity URL.

Aside from the above, Facebook will ask you when you go to set up a business account if you already have a personal profile.  If you do, you need to say yes. Some people are not on Facebook, they have no interest in being on Facebook and that’s okay. Business Accounts have become a way for folks to take advantage of having a page without having to create a personal account. However, if you DO have an personal profile/account already it’s against Facebook’s guidelines to create another account. This means that if Facebook finds out that your business account is you, regardless of if you use a different email etc, your page could get pulled permanently. Which means all that hard work you put into gaining fans and building a Facebook business presence is lost.

Lastly, if you have a business account rather than the page attached to your personal profile, it will not be searchable in Facebook. This is kind of a Biggie! What’s the point of having a page no one can stumble across on their own?

Now lets talk about keeping things separated, meaning your personal profile personal and not accessible from your business page. Here is what Facebook says on the matter:

In addition, Pages are managed by admins who have personal Facebook profiles (timelines). Pages are not separate Facebook accounts and do not have separate login information from your profile (timeline). They are merely different entities on our site, similar to how Groups and Events function. Once you have set up a Page within your profile (timeline), you may add other admins to help you manage this Page. People who choose to connect to your Page won’t be able to see that you are the Page admin or have any access to your personal account.

Therefore you don’t need to worry about your personal info getting mixed up with your business page or your privacy being breached.

And, here are some benefits of having it attached to your personal account:

- You don’t have to sign in and out of different accounts all day in order to check in on things or make an update.
- You can switch between using Facebook as your page and as yourself. This is great for commenting on other pages and even commenting on your page as you or your page.

So, my recommendation is that you create a business page through your personal account making it easier on yourself and making sure that you get a pages full functionality.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
“You Don’t gotta keep em separated” – Facebook does for you

Can search engines read PDF files and if so how well? This is a great question posed by one of our developers this morning at our staff meeting. So, guessing that others are asking the same question I thought I would create a post about it.

The quick answer is, Yes. All search engines can read PDF files. Therefore it’s important to optimize your PDF for the search engines.

How to Optimize your PDF for SEO -

1. First step is to make sure that you create your PDF in a text based program like Microsoft Word or Adobe Pagemaker. If you create your PDF in Photoshop, it is considered a large image and is not an actual readable PDF.
2. Optimize your title, header tags and descriptions. There are a few ways to do this.
   -  If you are working in Microsoft Word, use the H1, H2, H3 tags provided where necessary.
   -  Also, make sure that when you go into Adobe Acrobat you fill out the proper description fields. This means adding a title, subject and keywords into the appropriate content fields.
   -  Title your PDF with a keyword, for example it should be named keyword.pdf.
   -  And, lastly create alt text and captions for any images used in the document.
3. Don’t bury the PDF on your site. Make sure that you create a link to the PDF from a page on your site that is crawled often, like your homepage.

There has been a bit of discussion about how well a PDF will rank compared to html content. And, while we recommend html over a PDF, there have been cases where a PDF ranked for a certain search term quicker than the html version, however, eventually the HTML landed at the top.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
If only Google Bots were as Cute as that Dog!

A client asked me this recently and it’s a fantastic question! After we optimize a client’s website, I’ll always say that it’s important to keep up with SEO even after launch. Simply put, things change online so quickly that it’s imperative you – and your website, blog, social media presence, etc. – keep up.

So….how can you keep up with SEO without becoming overwhelmed?

Check your GA monthly.

Set up your Google Analytics so that you get monthly reports emailed to you directly. Pay specific attention to the keywords visitors use when they come to your website; are they the same ones you optimized for? Are you even seeing the keywords you optimized for in the list? If you’re still not seeing the keywords you optimized your website for 6 months after you did initial SEO, go back and rework things.

Do keyword research annually or even bi-annually.

Google and the search engines change, and so do what your visitors are searching for. By updating your keyword list at least once a year, you’ll be sure to optimize for all of the keywords your audience is using.

Blog and use social media regularly to drive traffic.

Pay close attention to “hot” keywords and phrases your audience will be searching for depending on the season or time of year and incorporate them in the content you create. Blogposts can be especially helpful, as you can create content quickly around a hot, new subject and almost instantly have a blogpost show up on Google.

How do you keep up with SEO?

Nicki Hicks
Keeping Up with SEO, a new reality series

A while back I wrote a post about some of my favorite free online graders.  And, as an update to that, I wanted to point out the recent change to Hubspot’s Website grader, being updated to Marketing Grader. In the blogpost announcing the launch of the new grader, Hubspot explained the reasoning behind the change. Saying “In 2012, marketing is about more than just your website. It’s about social, mobile, blogging, email marketing, lead nurturing, and analytics”, and I couldn’t agree more.

Like with any other grader, the marketing grader isn’t perfect. For instance it didn’t recognize the Twitter accounts associated with flyte, nor did it recognize the sharing buttons on our blog, as they are not a plugin but rather hard coded.

Overall I like Marketing Grader, it’s definitely more comprehensive than the original website grader, measuring over 30 aspects of your marketing and web efforts and creating a grade based on a scale from 1 – 100. The incorporation of social platforms, analytics and sales funnels will prove to be very useful.

Great Job Hubspot! A+!

I’ve started seeing all these new posts about how Facebook “Likes” are no longer important. It’s more important now to start measuring and tracking your engagement rather than number of Likes.

While I agree that it’s all about engagement and we need to learn how to engage people enough to share our content on Facebook, I believe there is still a need for gaining Facebook “Likes” otherwise the engagement just doesn’t come.

Mari Smith points out in her blogpost, “Ways to Craft Your Facebook Posts for Maximum Shares”, that anyone can share, comment,  and/or like your updates on your Facebook business page, they don’t HAVE to like it first. This is new to Facebook and it’s a good thing. Her post is amazing by the way, if you haven’t had a chance go check it out as there are excellent tips in there to get your content shared.

Engagement is gold. It is much easier to measure engagement and see the benefits, than to judge your success simply through your Facebook “Likes” going up in number. However, unless there is an audience there that is already fairly involved how are they going to see you in the first place to share those items?

So, I say while engagement is the new measurement, because it’s really all about getting seen and improving reach through shares of your content, you still have to get the “Likes” first, or at least a base of “Likers.”

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Facebook Business Pages

Keyword research Notes from Keyword Research & Copywriting SMX East 2011 – Christine Churchill, President KeyRelevance Follow her at @keyrelevance

Keywords are important because people still type in phrases and terms to find things online.

Everyone wants to be #1 on Google, and it takes a lot of know how, keywords, links, social, etc. You can increase conversions by speaking the customer’s language. By using the keywords they are using you are speaking like your customers, so they feel like you get them. Also, try to find overlooked or new keywords and take advantage of longer tail phrases.

Below you will find notes from SMX East’s Keyword Presentation, it will cover where marketers get their keywords, how the cycle of finding your keywords works, important tools and how to use these for ideas on content creation and copywriting.

Where marketers Get Keywords:

• Site log files for converting keywords – Google Analytics
• Google Analytics for frequent words
• Internal site search
• Competitor sites
• Competitive intelligence tools
• Exploring long search phrases
• Social semantic mining

Cycle of keyword research

1. Brainstorming and discovery
2. Keyword expansion
3. Keyword evaluation

Brainstorm and Discovery phase:

• Brainstorming – no judging words at this stage. Goal is to cast your net widely and generate broad list.
• Keyword lists from within company
• Review company website and print collateral
• Press releases
• Often too much insider jargon
• May or may not be customer’s lingo
• Customers’ words are disconnected from marketing department, change keywords and traffic rises, if you are using the words your audience is using.

Other good places to look at what language your target audience is using:

• Conduct customer interviews
• Customer surveys and focus groups
• Talk to support of sales personnel who talk directly to customers
• Search twitter and blogs and social media
• Review discussion forums, user generated talk
• Online magazines or print
• Company and product reviews
• Online thesaurus

Competitors:

• Review their website and collateral for keywords
• Look at words they are buying in PPC
• What terms are they targeting in SEO?
• Can give you competitive insights and ideas on overlooked terms

Analytics:

• Captures “exact phrase” that searcher entered
• Provide rich source of keyword data, but only show what’s currently working
• Could reveal “untapped” keyword gems

Site search box

• Reveals keywords and expressions that visitors are actually using/wanting
• Gives insight into relative popularity
• Can follow visitors path and see if site converts
• Make sure you collect all info
• Can tie your site search into your analytics to see what people are searching for
• Can get inside mind of consumer when they are coming to your website

Why Use Tools for Keyword Research?

• Save $ / time
• Provide insight outside of your site
• Identifies keyword opportunities you might miss
• Offers popularity #s you can’t get from your own analytics
• Moves you beyond keyword assumptions
• Allows you to compare phrases

Free Tools:

• Google keyword tool
• Webmaster tools
• Insights
• Trends
• Content targeting
• Adcenter labs tools
• Microsofrt ascenter add in for excel

Paid Tools:

• Wordtracker
• Trellian
• Hitwise
• Wordstream
• Nichbot
• Comscore
• spyFU

Why pay? It’s usually a suite and you get a lot more then just a list of keywords. Looking at Different Tools: Google Keyword Tool

• Free and easy
• Provides keyword volume data from Google
• Finds synonyms
• Can export to excel
• You can log in to your Google account for more keywords and options including local trends
• If you log in you are going to get more keyword choices, more columns, more options
• Select “exact match” or “phrase match” when doing SEO research, broad makes large jumps in lateral thinking, comes up with some terms that aren’t as great
• Advanced options, allows you to choose country, language, mobile research (just added back in Dec) you will get diff numbers for laptops vs mobile devices
• Recently added column is Google Search Network – added as option but have to be logged in to see it, it’s goole and it’s partner sites, not just Google, so pulls in more data, #’s tend to be higher
• Can use words, phrase, url (competitor, page, etc)

Google Trends

•  Monitors trends
• Allows you to compare popular phrases – ex. Myspace and Facebook, you could use plural and reg form of a keyword and see what’s more popular
• Also can plug in website and look at stats
• Also visited and also searched for sections tell you that searchers that went to this website, also went to these other sites
• Hot trends – good for helping you come up with blog posts, articles, find what’s hot that day

Google Insights

• Trends on steroids
• Allows you to see and monitor trends, but allows you to see keywords related to the one you are looking at
• Last few years lots of changes in keywords because economy affects what people are saying and searching for
• Key relevance – can find that in states terms are more popular than in another – can be better to check out for regional or local search stuff
• Rising searches – very valuable for up and coming phrases, break out means there has been like a 500% increase, so great terms to use, since new and growing – a lot of them aren’t quite as competitive
• Monitors seasonality – this is good for mapping out key phrases for over the month, so great for blog posts, articles etc.

Google Contextual targeting tool

• Free tool
• Builds themed keyword lists
• Great for keyword expansion and lateral thinking
• Provides ideas for organizing and structuring your keyword lists
• Basically it’s textual wonder wheel – (wonder wheel cancelled in July, don’t know if it’s coming back)
• If you were a wonder wheel fan it’s the tool for you

Keyword Discovery

• Multiple databases
• Global, historical global, international, news, shoping, eBay
• Provides seasonal data and trends
• Includes suite of tools – misspellings, keyword density tool (uses as a double check, to see where different phrases were used on the site)

Wordtracker

• Data pulled from meta search engines
• Eliminates most skewing issues caused by bots
• Differentiates between singular and plural
• Offer free tool for trial
• Questions tool so you can see what’s being asked – create blog posts or articles

Wordstream

• Keyword tool, PPC management., Pay Per Click checker gives you feedback on your campaigns

Google Instant

• Shows results as you type, great suggestions for phrases and titles for blog posts and content

Soovle.com

• Kind of like Google instant
• Pulls keywords suggestions from several different sites and puts them in one place
• Helpful to see if you missed things during brainstorm

Ubersuggest

• Start typing in phrase and it will go through the alphabet, lists them all for you, keyword ideas etc.

Twitter Search

• Trends – gives you pulse of what’s on web and what’s hot
• Look through and do searches to find good blog post and content ideas
• Great for knowing in real time what’s going on
• Great for monitoring what others are saying about your products/services, which helps you find customer language

YouTube

• YouTube search suggests keywords, pulls from YT searches and titles
• Your results will be different than Google, as people use different words and phrases to search video
• Also look at promoted videos to see keywords suggested and used

Google Sets

• Google will come up with a couple sets to help with your list, and comes up with longer lists

AdCenter Labs Tools

• Search Funnels – gives insight into mind of the user, shows searches before and after a term you put it

Yahoo

• Good for trending info, their trending is going to be different than Google, usually heavier on the entertainment side
• Suggestion box is pretty good as well, some of their suggestions are actually embedded in the phrase rather than just at the beginning

Quintura

• Allows you to navigate by clouds
• The larger, bold words are the most popular
• good for brainstorming and broadening keyword buckets

Ask

• They will show you related searches, but will also do related questions, invaluable for coming up with content ideas for what’s fresh new and on top of peoples minds

Microsofts’ ad intelligence

• Excel plugin
• Provides related keywords
• Fast for building out lists
• Extracts keywords for URL
• Gives insights on seasonal “spiky” keywords
• Shows geographic and demographic info on keywords

Keyword Expansion Phase:Target variations of your keywords

• Comparison – best, compare, reviews
• Price – cheap, discount
• product descriptor – green, plus size, ;unique
• intended use – gift for grandmother, baptism
• product
• location
• action
• season
• abbreviations
• brand/vendor/manufacturer

Keyword “buckets”

• Group related keywords into lists of related terms
• Do a series of keyword research projects on a site, not one (can do one search for every area of a website, that are more specific) do a different series of research for each site – break it into pieces
• Develop a keyword matrix – url, main phrases,

Keyword permutationsTools for permutations – aaron wall, excel, concatenate tool

• Relevancy to site (meaning choosing the kw that best describes what the site offers, traffic alone isn’t the goal, you want targeted traffic)
• Keyword popularity (number of searches done in a period of time, popular phrases less relevant, more competitive, cars or homes ex, in most cases less popular phrases are better)
• Users intent (research vs purchase, stage in buying process, kw indicate where consumer is in the buying process) you want to match your content to satisfy the user’s intent when using the keyword – for instance review in the beginning, fast or quick in terms they want to find buy button, those landing pages that you tie with those keywords are going to be very important (80% of all searches on the web are non commercial)
• competition (who is raking for your keyword terms? Who has PPC ads? Search term parity – if you are trying to win something in SEO you have to do as much as the person that is currently ranking, how much are their bids, how optimized is the site, linkage info, anchor text etc., what keywords are optimized and where are they on page) Competitive tols – Hitwise, Comscore, SEOMOZ keyword tool difficulty, SEM Rush, performance – test keyword performance look at analytics

Content optimization:

• Think phrase not just single keyword, use matrix,
• Title tages best to optimize
• Title appears in first line of listing on SERP
• Spend extra time to create compelling titles that grab attention
• Include keywords
• Meta important bc snippit that gets ppl to click on your page, keywords and strong mrkting message – good description will get ppl to click on you even if you are lower on the page
• h tags
• Visible portion of page
• Al attribute
• Links and anchor text
• File names
• url

Images as content

• Optimize images by using kw description in file name, alt ext, caption etc.
• On page
• Anchor text huge
• Home page strongest, most targeted
• Internal page SEO – look at slides
• Talk about benefits not features – makes people more interested

3 Types of searchers:

1. navigational – type in your website
2. informational – enter questions
3. transactional – buying ones/subscribing ones, download

*note: no tool is 100% accurate, but it’s a good ballpark estimate Using all in title helps to see who is optimized for that particular subset

How many terms should you target a page? It’s subjective and need to look at competitors, and look at linkage data and where you are ranking. Look at your Page Rank, and it depends on that as well, long tails better, and then each page should have laser focus on one term. But, usually two or three phases max.

Does it matter where keywords are in page content? Yes. You want it early, prominent bold, header tag, linked, title, bulleted, links, etc. Sends signal to search engines that’s what the page is about.

The above is a very thorough list of tools and ways of finding keywords. Of course this can all seem a bit overwhelming, so I would recommend finding the tools that work best for you and sticking to 2 – 3 different sources.  Also, within most of the tools talked about above there are tips on how to use those for coming up with blog titles and content ideas. If you are ever having a hard time coming up with content these are great quick fixes to get the juices flowing.

What tools do you currently use or would you recommend? Are there any methods you are currently using that you don’t see mentioned above?  Share them with us in the comments

Facebook releases new metrics for better measurement of how and where your Facebook content is being shared.

Facebook has released several new metrics, among those are Engaged Users, Virality, Reach and individual Post data.  While I think most of these will be very helpful and overall this is a fantastic addition to the Insights platform, the one I think is the most interesting is the new Facebook metric called “People Are Talking About This.”

This is the most comprehensive metric that Facebook has come out with yet.  This number represents an accounting of all user-initiated activity related to your company’s Page.

“The people talking about this” metric measures:

• Liking a page;
• Posting to a page’s wall;
• Liking, commenting, or sharing a page’s status update, photo, video, or other content;
• Answering a question posted by a page;
• RSVPing to an event hosted by the page;
• Mentioning the page (users must formally tag the page);
• Tagging a page in a photo;
• Liking or sharing a check-in deal, and
• Checking in at a place.

These metrics will help businesses measure the real reach and effectiveness of their Facebook Business Pages.  Until now, the information was really weak.  Now companies will be able to see how well items performed leading them to create more posts that people want to share and that have an affect on their audience.

In their press release, Facebook said “Research shows that word-of-mouth conversations among friends are the most influential for getting a brand’s message across,” this new metric is a perfect way to measure that.

The new insights tab will only be available to page administrators, according to Inside Facebook, but pages will display a counter of people talking about this just below their like counts.  Since the count is visible to everyone, this will allow for  competitive brands to take a peek at how their competition is doing in comparison.

Check out the new page insights by clicking on your Insights link on your Facebook Business Page or read the Page Insights Guide.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Measure Measure Measure

The following is a recap from a session at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East. Follow the conference on Twitter.

The current State of Personalized Search

Speakers:
Jack Menzel, Google (@jackm)
Stefan Weitz, Bing (@stefanweitz)

Personalized Search – Jack Menzel presentation

SMX?  We think it’s easy for search engines right? Not. A bunch of other things that comes up other than the conference.

What is personalization?
Personalization can help fill in the gaps  (ex. If you are searching for bars and you are in NYC, a list of NYC bars pops up, instead of the best bar in the world)

Context:

-       geography
-       language
-       context from previous queries

Personalization

-       topicality
-       preference
-       pattern
-       social

This must be done in a privacy-sensitive way

-       transparency
-       control

Example  -  “bus schedules” – needs to be regionally relevant to you

Recent searches ( if you were recently looking for a camera, and it pops up as a recent search)
Interests
Preferred Sites
Social Endorsements

Filter Bubble:
Personalization is working!

Perfect personalization + Totally passive Users + myopic focus on clicks = Very bad dystopia

But, reality is – Personalization is far from perfect, users have active information needs, quality/relevance is more than just clicks.

Google is not only looking at clicks as relevance.

The moral of the story:

- Users maintain control over their data.
- Be transparent about how the data is used.
- There is no canonical result set for a query.

Search Pour Vous – Stefan Weitz Director, Bing

-  Stop thinking about it as just reorganization of results and predicting where you want to go. “not just re ranking results”

-  Look a lot at how you return the highest value of personalization for the lowest cost

-  5 W’s still apply when it comes to personalization

Often really a proxy for intent

-  “Selective Personalization”  If you do too much you actually see clicks going down

Personalized search is the new normal. It’s part of the overall experience.

Who: Interests |  what is it you actually care about
What: Behaviors | look at past searches, clicks, behaviors
When: What time is it?   A search for a bar at 9 am might be different than 6pm
Where: Carmen Sandiego
Why: So Meta |  Why do these sort of end this way?

Personalized Search – Just search, it’s just the way it is.

Social – should be able to search the real way like they do every day, asking people for advice etc.

-       presentation – what can we do differently with the results on the page

-       Context – what you’ve done previously

-       Dynamics – what’s been changing across the web and from before

Lots of social available through partnership with Facebook – look up more, but he used examples, of it will show you if one of your friends lives in an area you are searching and then you can grab rest recommendations, you can see a site that they like that you wouldn’t have known about, etc.

Personalized NAV

If they see you going back to a singular link over and over, it will become #1 on the SERP

Introducing Adaptive Search: Adaptive search is a new personalized search being released today

Looks at previous history and reranks to promote more relevant links higher

Go to Bing blog to learn more about it – go watch the post, to find out more…

Dynamic – will actually show you new content on site since your last query etc.

Presentation – different tailoring’s

What about the serendipity?

From e-rays to silly putty via Uranus: Serendipity and its role in web search
examine the affects that personalized search can have on web results

Queries that are very interesting buy not particularly relevant are potentially serendipitous, those that are really interesting and really relevant are helpful

Personal score:
Study on web – says we do actually sometimes crave the serendipitous, not relevant but very interesting

Is SEO dead? Because everyone is getting personalized results? No, it’s actually probably making it easier, you don’t need to be the best bus schedule site in the world, you only have to be very best for that particular audience.  However, it may make it harder to measure, but you can still look at organic traffic and gather info from there.

Social is becoming more and more important as personalization of search is being placed in use, because they are using it for search results, and it’s going to be harder to just rank the highest for a keyword.

Logged in vs. logged out: Previous queries for like 90 to 180 days.  So, contextual and geographical still into play, regardless of whether you are logged in or not.

Bing if you sign out all social turns off. Geo and all that still there.

Bing re-established relationship with Twitter: Crowdsourcing,  look into news on this

Focus on Content, social, links

Thanks to Mashable’s instructions on how to enable Facebook’s Timeline Profile now, I am officially switched over to the new version of Facebook. I know there has been a lot of skepticism about this new design and people are always reticent to accept change, however I think most of you will find that it’s easy to use, looks great and is a lot of fun. As of right now you will not be able to see others timeline profiles unless you are a developer or have one yourself. The Mashable instructions show you how to get around waiting for it to be released to everyone by making yourself a developer.

Joan's New Profile

But, once you follow their steps and you get in, here is what to expect | The Facebook Timelines Tour

1. Cover

Your cover is the large image banner at the top of your profile. You can use any photo you want and you can change it as often as you like.  When you hover over the cover the ‘Change Cover’ editor button appears in the bottom right hand corner of the image.  From there you have the option to choose a photo from your already uploaded images, upload a photo, remove your cover photo, or you can reposition your cover image by simply dragging the image in the box to where it fits/looks best.  I think the new cover almost looks like a website banner and definitely is a way to share a larger photo that you like and expresses yourself with your Facebook friends.

2. View and View As

The views tab is where your name will appear, your ‘About’ info, an image box with the number of friends you have under it, photos, maps, and pages you like.  You can update your info from here very easily.  Also, you can ‘view activity’, meaning you can click on this button and see a log of sorts that is just a timeline of your most recent activity.  You can switch the date, month etc or just simply view your day’s activity.  You may also, click the down arrow next to the ‘view activity’ button, to view your profile as a particular friend would see your profile. See the View As photo below…

View

View As Option

3. Activity Log

Your activity log is essentially exactly like it’s name, it just shows you your recent activity.  You will be able to change any privacy settings on individuals stories, photos etc, right from this area as well.

4. Stories

This is essentially what your wall used to be, but now it’s called your timeline.  This is where people will see all the activity you’ve been up to, photos you’ve posted, updates, apps used, maps, check ins, pages you’ve liked, comments you’ve made etc.  However, what’s majorly different from the wall isn’t only the design, it’s the ability to see the past.  You can add more about yourself into the past section, like pictures from when you were born, and you can post major life events, and it will still have all the posts that you’ve done in the past.  This will create a thorough timeline of your whole life, rather than just the past few years you may have been of Facebook.

Timeline Dates

5. 5 Star or Hidden – Highlights

6. Getting Started

When you first finish the tour for the new Facebook Timeline profile it will give you a few tips of how to get started. But, the best way to really get to know how to use this new platform is by trial and error and exploring and poking around.  It might be a bit confusing at first, but some of the features are really cool. One of the best things to start out doing is to fill in your timeline and start hiding and highlighting stories to be sure your stories are showing how you would like them to.

To sum it all up:

Your Home page will still look fairly the same except for the new features Facebook released a couple weeks ago, like larger images.

Also, you will still be able to use your new Smart Lists that Facebook created by going to your homepage and grabbing the lists on the right hand column or by simply using the update feature and choosing which list to share with.

Also, business pages at this point still look the same, with a few additions like recommendations when you like something.

So, get on there and start trying it out and then share with us what you think.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Changing with the “Timelines”

Now when you like someone on Facebook, a box pops up asking you if you would like to recommend this page to your friends.  We recently put together a custom welcome tab for the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, see the screenshot below to see how the recommend option appears when you go to like the page.

All you have to do is enter in a recommendation like so…

And, make sure that you have the post set to public, so that anyone that is subscribed to your news feed can see it, as well as anyone who visits the page that you are liking.

After that if you go to the page wall, you will see that there is a recommendations section in the right column where your recommendation will show up.

This reminds me a bit of giving a recommendation on LinkedIn.  It’s a way to show your support for a business that you think is doing great or that you have had a superb experience with.  Also, by having it in the right hand column it allows for anyone to see it no matter when they go to the page, unlike a general comment, which after time gets pushed down the feed.

Also, it’s a great way to spread the word to your friends that they should like the page, because it will show up on your wall and your friends news feed that you just recommended a page.

For more info on the Recommendations Plugin visit Recommendations On Facebook.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
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