posted in Resourceson Monday, January 3rd, 2011

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Facebook continues to confuse us all with its numerous business options, including Pages, Groups and most recently Community Pages. Let’s dissect them to see which one your business should be using.

If you don’t want to go through all the hoopla and just want the results straight up, here’s the verdict in a nutshell: Pages for businesses, groups for short-term intimate interaction, and community pages for user-generated interaction (versus company managed interaction).

Right, so now the meat.

Here are the crucial features and differentiating factors presented in an easy to scan table:

Now let’s see what these actually mean for your business.

If I wanted to share photos of my toddler with my family, I’d form a Facebook group, mark it private and visible to selected people and upload images there for the whole family to see and coo over. And I have.

But if I wanted to share business information and get people to know about my company, host discussions around my topic and possibly hire me for work, I’d form a Facebook Page because of its public nature, searchability factor and promotion options.

A Facebook Page:

• Provides you a custom URL with your business name (e.g. Facebook.com/yourbiz)
• Is indexed by Google and other major search engines
• Helps to build a brand
• Allows people to “Like” and virally share it’s content
• Is public and visible
• Publishes status updates in the news feed of members
• Allows members to easily share updates and links
• Allows creation and syncing of Facebook Events
• Allows import of your blog feed (or any RSS feed) as a status update
• Provides detailed user and interaction analysis and insights
• Can be promoted with Facebook Ads
• Allows posts to be visible to members of a certain geographic location
• Allows the addition of Facebook apps to the page
• Can have custom tabs for visitors to land on
• Can have custom info targeted to specific visitors (e.g. fan-only content vs. public content)

While it’s true that a Facebook Group enables you to send mass messages to your members, you can only do that for up to 5000 members. Also Facebook Events can do the same (and better) job with regard to event updates and invites.

So if you’re looking to use Facebook for business, don’t hesitate: you need a Facebook Page, not a Group.

posted in Newson Monday, February 14th, 2011

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feedfor updates on this topic.

The Facebook fan page layout has changed along with addition of some new features.

How to switch to the new layout

A simple three click process

• Click Account
• Click Use Facebook as Page
• Select which of your pages you want to use

Insert Screen  Shot

You will be able to see the new layout and utilize the new features. You can easily undo this by clicking Account again and switching back to your personal profile.

New Facebook Fan Page Features and Layout Changes

1. For all intents and purposes you are now signed in as your Facebook fan page instead of your personal profile. Any updates or likes will be attributed to your page.
2. The much awaited notifications feature is finally active. Once signed in as your page, you will be able to see page notifications instead of personal ones. You will also receive notifications via email. Select account settings, then scroll down to pages and click on ‘Change email settings for individual Pages’. Select the pages you want to receive email notifications for. I would personally keep this on for important business pages as you do not want to miss out on customer communiqués.
3. Tabs (info, wall, photos, etc) have gone in the left hand margin.
4. Photo strip similar to the one on your personal profile has been added. Makes one wish there was an option to remove this as the photo strip may end up having random photos shown out of context.
5. People who like the page have been moved to the top bar, right before the notifications icon.
6. Notifications icon displays page notifications for your pages. These are shown even when you switch to your personal profile.
7. Your favorite pages have moved under Likes in the left margin.
8. There is a recommended pages section in the right hand margin which tells you how many of your Facebook fans like those pages.

These are some of the main changes. While some are welcome like the much awaited notifications feature, others will take some time getting used to.

What are your thoughts on the new page features and layout?