The Maine SEO Blog

A while back we wrote a blog about How to post to your Facebook Business Page as You. Ever since this post was created it’s been one of the most highly visited on the site. Now with the new Facebook changes I just wanted to make sure that you still knew how to post on a page as yourself.  So here are the new instructions of how to post on your Facebook business page as you with the new Timeline for Facebook Pages design.

Step 1. Go to the page that you admin.

Step 2. Click on the Manage Button and go to the edit page drop down.

Step 3. Go to “Your Settings”

Step 4. Make sure the check box next to “Always comment and post on your page as “Your Page Name“, even when using Facebook as “Yourself.” is UNCHECKED.

Step 5. Now you have the ability to switch back and forth on when posting on your page as yourself and the page.

Note: Now when you are signed into Facebook the default is for you to post as yourself. So, when you want to post an update on your page as your page you need to make sure that you switch users. See the steps below.

Step 6. Go to your page to make the update.

Step 7. From the admin panel go to the Manage Drop Down and Click on “Use page as ‘Your Page’”.

And, it’s as easy as that! To switch back to yourself all you have to do is follow step 5 through 7 and choose “Use Facebook as ‘Yourself’”.

Tip: To get conversation started on your page it’s always a good idea to post a question first as your page and then answer it as yourself. People are more likely to comment on an update/post that already has other responses.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker

So, yesterday Facebook announced that they are rolling out Timeline for Facebook pages. If you haven’t switched your page over already you’ll have until March 30th to do so, before Facebook automatically changes pages over. But, that’s not all they announced. Yesterday was the first ever FMC (Facebook Marketing Conference) which was an invite only event, however they did stream it live so I was able to listen in.

Mike Hoefflinger, the Director of Global Business Marketing at Facebook introduced us to a few new products, some of which Facebook rolled out yesterday and others that won’t be out til April.

Hoefflinger told the story of how we are “going back to the future”, relating new ways of doing business with mom and pop stores of the past. He stated, “People prefer narration. Ads come from anywhere, stories come from people that you are connected to and have a relationship with. We’ve been doing ads because we couldn’t build enough connections to tell stories and have relationships at the scale of business today.” Social is changing that.

He went on to talk about how Facebook is leading that change making is to you can build enough connections and here are some of the products that they are rolling out that will hopefully help to accelerate that change.

1. Timeline for Pages: Mission control for you business – launch pad for your stories

Not only do you get the new cleaner look and bigger cover image new pages offer a greater experience to know what your friends are doing and how they are interacting with a particular brand or page which in turn builds stronger connections for you.

You can now also include how you got started and many other milestones for your company that have happened in the past, creating a greater story for your company.

Now people can message you directly on your page. You can give a personal one on one reply that they deserve.

2. Brand new story type: Offers

These are simple offers that will show up in the news feed and all you have to do to collect on them is click the add. You will then immediately have the offer emailed to your email account that’s attached to your Facebook account.

Check out Mari Smith’s blog post “Facebook Launches ‘Facebook Offers’ for Businesses” for more info.

3. Reach Generator:
This is a new premium advertising solution for large clients seeking to reach a higher percentage of fans via sponsored activity. While this is probably not going to be used my small and mid sized businesses, it is a new product that Facebook is offering.

Currently pages reach 16% of fans/friends every month, what if you could reach 50 – 75%? With Reach Generator you can now double your engagement. This is a package you purchase from Facebook where every day they sponsor a post and guarantee a 75% reach to your fanbase over a month long period. Some numbers that Hoefflinger gave as an example:

Using Reach Generator the following companies accomplished…

-  Ben & Jerry’s reached 98% of all their fans and increased sales at a 3-1 ROI
-  Dr. Pepper had a 140% increase in people talking about this
-  Butterfinger had a 6 point increase in brand favorability

This is definitely a product worth using if you are a larger company with the money to afford it.

4. Premium on Facebook: the most impactful way for you to distribute your content on Facebook (you create, Facebook takes care of placement)

With Premium on Facebook your ads will no longer be the small ad to the right of the page but instead it will be seamlessly integrated throughout the site as if it were a regular update that had a lot of reach. As Hoefflinger says, “Marketing on Facebook will now feel like the rest of Facebook.”

Top placements for these ads? You the advertiser would start with a page post, then it would be placed on the right hand side of Facebook, then it would be put in the newsfeed.

There will also be a 4th placement option with Premium that will allow businesses to display ads on the log-out page of Facebook after users have logged out. This can include video, photos etc.

Not only will your ad now be in the newsfeed and possibly the logout, but it will also be on mobile, something Facebook has not done in the past.

According to Hoefflinger, using Premium on Facebook you should see 5 – 10x improvement in your ads success.
What are your thoughts on the new products Facebook is offering it’s advertisers?

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Check out Flyte’s New Timeline

If you’ve made the mistake of setting up your business on Facebook as a Facebook profile rather than a Facebook business page you are not alone.

Many of us have just jumped right off the social media cliff and are building our wings on the way down… which isn’t too too bad, because Facebook recognizes that we ALL do this. So, they have created a way to convert your Facebook profile into a Facebook page.

*Note: It is technically a violation of Facebook guidelines to set up a business as a personal profile so if you have created a personal profile as your business page, you will want to convert it.

However, this isn’t the only reason you’d want to convert it. Facebook Business pages offer better features that are created to help market your brand and connect with your audience on Facebook.

So, here is how you convert your Facebook business profile into a Facebook Business page:

1.  Sign into the profile that you want to convert to a page.
2.  Then go to this link https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate
3.  At the top of the page you will see your profile image and a note that says “Profile To Business Page Migration”, below you will notice a selection of page types.
4.  Select what type of page that you are going to create. For example, you can choose Local Business or Place, Company, Brand or product, Artist, Band or Public Figure, Entertainment or Cause or Community.
5.  Once you’ve selected the page you would like to create you will go ahead through the steps and set the page up as normal.
6.  Your profile photo and your friends will be moved to your new page. All of your friends will be converted to fans of the page.
7.  You will still be able to login from your original email address and password.
8.  No other content from the profile will be transferred, so if you have certain important updates, or other photos you’ll have to update the page with those items on your own.
9. Your Facebook username if you had already selected one will be transferred and used as your page url.

*Note: If you are an admin of any other Facebook Groups you will want to appoint another admin before you start the conversion process as you will lose your admin rights during conversion. This does NOT apply to Admin for Facebook pages, you will still remain admin of pages you manage.

To learn more about converting your Facebook profile into a Facebook Business page visit Facebook Help.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Facebook Fan Page Fan

photo credit: By Krismartis

The number one thing I have missed since I switched from my Blackberry to my Droid HTC Thunderbolt, is by far Blackberry Messenger. It was a way for me to have a conversation with a group of people all at the same time, it was easier than texting and more importantly it was free. Now, Facebook has come out with a mobile app called “Facebook Messenger” that essentially does the same thing plus more… See the video from Facebook Live talking about it’s release.

1.  It’s Connected To Facebook: I can easily pop in a contact name of one of my friends and talk to them while they are at their computer.

2.  It’s not just for Facebook Users: Don’t think of Facebook Messenger as just another extension of Facebook, you should think of it as its own stand alone mobile app that allows you to message not only your Facebook friends, but those friends and people you know that aren’t on Facebook at all. If you message someone that isn’t on Facebook (or is currently offline) it sends the message as a text to their mobile device.

3.  Seamless Communication: Have you ever been chatting via a text message and the conversation isn’t over, but now you are sitting in front of your computer with a big keyboard in front of you and you are thinking how much easier it would be to just finish the conversation online? Well, now you can and it’s seamless, all your old messages will show up on the app on your phone and ones started on your phone will be right there in your Facebook messages.

4.  Geolocations and Photo Sharing: You can attach photos and include geographic locations to your messages. An example given is now when you tell someone you’ll be there in 10 minutes they can look at the map and get a pinpoint of your location to check. (So don’t lie!)

5.  Group Chat: You can have a conversation with multiple people without texting it to many and then having to individually answer and repeat things.  This came in handy when my grandmother was in the intensive care unit and the whole family needed to keep in touch (when I had Blackberry Messenger), now I can use Facebook messenger for group chat.

6.  Available on both Droid and iPhone: Available for iPhone and Android, you can download Facebook Messenger free via the Market or iTunes. Currently it’s only available in the U.S. and Canada but they are working on building out the app for all smartphones and countries.

7.  It’s FREE!: Both the app itself and then the messaging are free. Why sit there and rack up text message charges when you can use this free service? Brilliant.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Facebook Messenger Fan

In a recent article by the WSJ, they stated that Facebook is thinking of integrating ads into your news feed.

As of right now, it’s very difficult for advertisers to get in your news feed as that’s decided by the EdgeRank algorithm.  Sticking with the traditions of social media, if you can call them traditions in such a short period of time, would be preferred.  New media is supposed to be about the customer coming to you, not you sticking your ads in their face constantly without their permission.

Not only would these ads show up in your news feed, but you wouldn’t be able to hide them.  You know, like you do now when you get posts in your news feed from people that either post too much, you don’t really know or you just don’t want to hear what they’re saying/doing.

While obviously opening the feeds up so that advertisers would be more happy about their reach and the bang for their buck, it would come at a price.

I don’t know if Facebook wants to go there now that we have other options, ie. Google+.

Learn more over at the Atlantic Wire.

Joan Crocker Woodbrey
Just sayin’ “Don’t Mess With My News Feed”

Do you use your Facebook lists? Do you even know what they are? Not to worry, let’s review.

Background and Setup

Facebook Lists are a great way to organize your friends – you could create a client, coworker, and friend List. You can have up to 100 Lists at one time.

How do you get to Lists?

While making some things easier to get to with the redesign, I feel Facebook has made other things more difficult to navigate to. Regardless, to get to your Lists, navigate from your homepage to “Friends”.

From here, you have the ability to view, add, or edit all of your Lists.

How to add a Facebook List

Recently, Facebook’s changed its design, which also changes the way you add lists. First, go here. Then click “Create a List”, give your list a name (“Clients”, for example), then choose all of your friends you want to be apart of the list. That’s all there is to it!

Automatically add friends to a list

The initial setup – as with many things – is pretty time consuming for Lists at first. However, once you have all your Lists in order, you can add friends automatically when you friend them:

At first, Lists may not seem all that exciting, but there are actually quite a few ways you can effectively use them.

1. Privacy Settings

Want to block certain lists from seeing some things on your profile? No problem. Use your lists to more quickly manage your privacy settings.

2. See only your List’s statuses

Want to have the ability to only see certain statuses? Now you can. Personally, I use my Lists a lot like I would use TweetDeck columns – so I can specifically see certain people’s statuses, like the flyte crew:

3. Chat quicker

If you use Facebook chat, your Lists are a great way to distinguish which folks you’re trying to talk with.

4. Target easily

Have a page you want to suggest friends “like”? You don’t have to check them off, one-by-one anymore…just use your Lists! Simply click “Suggest to Friends”, click Filter Friends and the List you’d like to target, and finally “Select All”.

How to delete a List

Should you need to delete a list, Facebook has again hidden the option. Unfortunately what Facebook tells you has also changed:

How do I delete a Friend List?
To delete a Friend List, first select the list from the Friends page. After making your selection, the “Delete List” option will appear at the top of the page.

With the redesign, now you’ll need to click into the List you want to delete, scroll to the bottom and click “Delete List”:

Nicki Hicks
Facebook Lister

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

Facebook Organic SEO & Naughty Ranking Tips

It’s hard to get in the SERPs for Facebook

aimClear tested 5 account (4 mature accounts, 1 totally new)

Personalization effects

These elements affect personalization and the way results appear when you’re logged in:

• You like it
• Your friend likes it
• You’ve got 2^nd degree friends
• You’ve been invited
• You’ve visited it before
• You’ve listed it as an interest on profile

Inside the autocomplete box

• 2-8 results
• “I’m feeling lucky”
• Masking crappy SERPs
• Most important to rank

How to rank in autocomplete box

• Your name
• Evens you are invited to
• Friend with keyword in name
• 2^nd degree friend with keyword in name
• Questions with keyword in it and number of answers
• App you’ve used
• Internal/external page and interest you have on profile
• Page friend likes (in tandem w/ number of friends and total likes)
• Group you have joined

Facebook SERP Anatomy

About All results

• Previous de facto search hub
• Requires additional click to see results
• All FB content types battle it out!

How to rank in All Results

• People – Friends or 2^nd degree friends with keyword in name
• Page – with enough like can beat friends…sometimes
• Keyword in posts by friends
• Web results (fueled by Bing)

About People results

• Purely human search
• Pay attention to filters!

How to rank for People results

• Keyword in friend or 2^nd degree friends (Name)
• Keyword in friend or 2^nd degree friends (workplace, school aka network)
• Keyword in anyone’s name/city/workplace/school/network

About Pages results

• Confusing
• Lumped together – admistered pages, community pages, non FB pages
• Heavily affected by personalization

How to rank for Pages results

• Too messed up to rank logically
• General guidelines – keywords play a large role, keyword density
• Put keywords – name, description

About Group results

• Being a member
• Friends are a member
• Keywords in title
• Number of members

About Event results

• Not based on geo
• Not based on friends attending
• Not based on invited
• Not really keyword relevant
• (basically, it sucks)

How to rank for Event results

• Get people to RSVP as attending (not maybe)
• Get people to visit page at least once
• Put your high value keyword  first
• Don’t make event names too long

About Apps results

• You are already a fan/user
• Your friend is a fan/user

How to rank for Apps results

• Keyword in title, body
• Buy fans/users

Facebook questions

• Often outrank more valuable/verteran content

How to rank for Questions

• Keyword in title, answer, in URL
• Multi-user engagement
• Generate something of value to community

Naughty to the Naughtiest ranking trick (Don’t do this at home)

• Facebook PPC and personalization
• Create ads to FB properties (those can’t help but click ads)
• Internal page destination has keyword rich title
• Shows up in search box
• Keyword rich profiles
• Gain friends somehow
• Wait a bit to get FB indexed
• Promote on your wall
• Create an even with keyword in title and body
• Invite non-friends (with just email address)
• Invitee types keyword  – they don’t even have to RSVP!
• Dominate search box for any keyword

Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear

Facebook SEO

Facebook search is punctuation sensitive

Methods for ranking pages

• Use a relevant page name
• Build the number of fans (and number of fan friends)
• Engage in relevant current all searches
• Search results

Facebook Questions – Shows heavily in suggest box – not necessarily all search results

Facebook Events – Be aware of spam (because of messaging from events)

The Future? Page browser – see pages you’re a fan of and suggested pages

How to prepare for Facebook Page Browser? Ads – make sure you include likes and interests to drive traffic to page

Free Tricks to Boost Your Fans

• Charity – donate money to a charity to acquire fans
• Must be a fan to comment (or even see) wall; for every comment, we’ll give money
• Create exclusive content – “visible to connection” tag (If you want to see (coupons, % off, deal), then become a fan) Use it for: coupons, sales, etc.
• Typical method – “Find us on Facebook” = NOT GOOD; fix = use QR code instead, use for FB places too

Greg Finn, Cypress North

Facebook SEO

Optimizing your status updates in Facebook

• Status update doesn’t appear on public page, unless you plan ahead and do some research to have them show up
• Appears to be private/controlled page, search for the “open” page
• Include popular keywords
• Tag referenced pages to increase presence

Optimizing page code for Facebook

Use open graph code: opengraphprotocol.org (Yelp does a good job of this.)

Chris Silver Smith, KeyRelevance

Can you answer “Yes” to any one of these questions?

• Do you have a presence on Facebook already, but want more “likes” on your page?
• Do you have a presence on Facebook already, but want to drive more traffic to your website?
• Do you have a new fan page that needs to build up fans (or “likes”)?

Then Facebook ads are right for you. Facebook ads are inexpensive, intuitive, and, when done the right way, have the ability to drive a ton of traffic.

In the past week, I’ve gone step-by-step through creating Facebook ads. They’re all linked here…so get ‘em while they’re hot.

1. Create ad: Create and Target
2. Create ad: Bidding and Review
3. Measuring and Reporting
4. Measuring Conversions
5. Making sense of the data

Nicki Hicks
Like flyte on Facebook

In Facebook, the line blurs between fan pages and personal pages. Creating events is just another time that line blurs.

If you’re trying to create a personal event, you’ll find the quick setup at the right hand side of your homepage.

If you’re trying to create a fan page event, start by going to your fan page. Then follow these steps:

1. Click “edit page”.



2. Scroll down to the “Events” section. Click edit.
   



3. Create your event, edit the details, then invite any of your (personal) friends.
4. You can’t send fans an email like you can with group members, but you can send them an update. Go to your event page, and click “Update fans of [your fan page]“.
   



5. Craft a message to go along with your event invite and send!

That’s all there is to it. Now get out there and start creating some events!

Nicki Hicks
Invite your fans, not your friends

Some people just don’t want to be on Facebook – and that’s ok – because they still understand the importance of having a business presence there.

Not to worry, you can still create a fan page for your business without having a personal account. But, you need to understand that:

• Facebook will push you every step of the way to create a personal account.
• You will be limited in what you can do with only a Page (or business account), and no personal account.

Here’s all the information that Facebook provides on the matter:

What is the difference between a business account and a user profile?
Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts. Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests.

Your limitations, as (only) a Facebook business account

• 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.

Note: This list may be a partial one, but it’s what I’ve noticed so far. (What limitations have you noticed?)

Unless you have an incredibly important reason for not tying your Facebook account to your personal account, I would suggest doing so. Look at all the cool things you can do!

Nicki Hicks
Being a person FTW