Andrea Vahl writes – just finished writing Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies with two fabulous co-authors (Amy Porterfield and Phyllis Khare ) and we’ve been neck-deep in Facebook for the last 9 months.
Even Copyblogger is on Facebook now. Do you have your Facebook Page yet?
For a platform that’s used by hundreds of millions of people, Facebook can be kind of … complicated. Particularly if you use it for business. So let’s get you some specific how-to advice so you can get rolling without getting frustrated
So how do you get your Page started? And how do you get more people to Like your Page?What are the best ways to use Facebook and how can you measure your progress?
The questions go on and on, and I’m about to answer A LOT of them, with a little help from some friends.
It’s all here, eat up …
Gimme the big picture …
Facebook 101: A Simple Guide to Understanding When & How to Use Basic Features
On Search Engine Land, Greg Finn breaks down the different aspects of Facebook such as Profiles, Groups, Pages, Places, and Events.
Setting up your Facebook Account
Facebook Tutorial: How to Create a Facebook Profile
All Facebook walks you through the basic steps to create your Facebook Account. Some of the screen shots are out of date, but that’s to be expected … you will have to get used to Facebook changing its screens every couple of weeks.
Facebook 101 for Business: Your Complete Guide
Mari Smith gets you started with reviewing your profile, making a friends list, and adjusting your privacy settings. Then she dives into looking at Facebook Pages. This is a great overview post on Social Media Examiner.
Facebook Privacy and Security
How to Protect Your Privacy with Facebook’s New Privacy Settings in 17 Easy Steps
Sara Ines Calderon provides a great overview of some of the latest Privacy settings on Inside Facebook. Make sure you control who can see your personal information.
Set up “Login Approvals” 2-step account security on Facebook?
Concerned about someone swiping your password while you are surfing Facebook at Starbucks? Ask Dave Taylor outlines how to use Facebook’s login approvals, which require an additional numeric code only when you try to log in to your account from a computer that Facebook’s never seen you use before.
Why Use Facebook for Business?
11 Mind-Blowing Reasons Your Company Needs Facebook
Jay Baer of Convince and Convert will blow your mind … in general and in this post. Some of the numbers are a little out-of-date, but that just means the reasons have become more mind-blowing.
Top 10 Reasons You Should Have a Fan Page
Kim Garst provides some compelling numbers and reasons why your business should have a Fan Page.
R.I.P. 3 Ways Facebook is Killing Your Website
Another great post by Jay Baer where he drives home the need for Facebook. But be careful, as he says, and don’t become what Copyblogger calls a “digital sharecropper” — don’t build your future on rented land.
Setting up your Facebook Page
20 Examples of Great Facebook Pages
If you are looking for inspiration, Hubspot provides plenty with these Facebook Pages. These are big brands with big budgets, but it doesn’t hurt to take a look.
How to Set Up a Facebook Page
Laura Drell takes you by the hand and leads you through the Page set up process on theAmerican Express Open Forum. You will find lots of good screenshots so that you know you are on the right track.
How to Build the Perfect Facebook Fan Page, 2011 Edition
Tim Ware does an excellent job of showing all the new features you can use with Facebook Pages in his guest post on techipedia.
How To Set Up The Vanity Url For Your Facebook Fan Page
Once you get 25 “Likes” on your Facebook Page, you need to go out and grab a custom URL for your Facebook Page. Your URL will be easier to remember, branded to your company, and much shorter! Nicole Simone of Cruel to Be Kind shows you how.
Getting People to Like Your Page
21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase
Mari Smith gives some smart ways to increase your Likes on Social Media Examiner.
Business 101: How to Get People to LIKE You – Tips on Building Your Facebook Fan Base
In this post on MOMeo Magazine, I give you seven tips on how to increase your Likers (or Fans … just what is a Liker anyway?).
How to Get More Likes For Your Facebook Page (The Easy Way!)
Dave Charest shares a quick thing you can do to make it easier for your Facebook Friends to like your page.
10 simple ways to grow your Facebook Page
Rob Dickens covers some organic ways to grow your page so you aren’t your only Liker.
Disturbing trend: big brands pimping Facebook “Likes”
B.L. Ochman gives us an alternate view of forcing the “Like” by offering an incentive. Great food for thought.
Why I Don’t Like Your Brand on Facebook
My favorite quote from this guest post by Andrew Blakeley on Brian Solis’ blog is: “This morning my yoghurt told me to find it on Facebook. It didn’t tell me why, it just told me to find it. Why on Earth would I want to find a yoghurt on Facebook? It’s a yoghurt!” Give people a reason to Like you.
Setting up a Welcome Page
How To Build A Facebook Landing Page With iFrames
Francisco Rosales from Social Mouths takes you by the hand to help you create your very own Facebook iFrame application. This is not for the faint of heart, since you will have to become a verified Facebook Developer and design your own web page. Don’t worry, though … Francisco makes it easy.
Tutorial: Add an iFrame Application to your Facebook Fan Page – 2011 Edition
Tim Ware at HyperArts is a great resource if you are going to build your own iFrame Application. Not only that, he has a very nice easy iFrame application called TabPress if you don’t want to build your own.
How to Make a Custom Facebook Page Tab With Iframes
If you need more reference material on how to create your own Facebook iFrame Application, Kim Woodbridge of (Anti) Social Development also takes you through the steps.
How to Add the Wildfire iFrame Application to Your Facebook Page
If you don’t want to create a custom application yourself for your Welcome Page, there are lots of third-party applications that make adding a Welcome Page easy. All you need is some graphics and you can have a custom page installed in minutes. I show you how in this post.
3 Tools to Create New Facebook iFrame Pages
Paul Chaney of Practical eCommerce covers three of my favorite third-party iFrame applications: Wildfire, Involver and Static HTML: iframe tabs. All very easy to use and allow either a graphic or HTML code to create your Welcome Page.
Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups vs. Facebook Pages – Which Is Best?
Great post by Mari Smith on the differences between using a Facebook Group for your business or a Facebook Page. She suggests using both, but I believe the Facebook Page is the better choice if you are going to pick one. Facebook Groups are nice for some things but the Page has more advantages.
New Facebook Groups Could Be Big for Business
How can you use Groups for business? John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing gives you some ideas.
Facebook Events
HOW TO: Organize an Event on Facebook
Creating a Facebook Event can be a great way to get the word out about your open house, sale, book signing or other business event. Josh Catone takes you through the steps. Note that the Message guests feature is not available now when you create your event on your Facebook Page.
Creating the Perfect Facebook Event — Part One
When, What and Where are some of the basics that Alex Smith covers in this post.
Creating the perfect Facebook event — Part Two
More info and how to use the invitations are covered in part two of Alex Smith’s post.
Six Ways To Effectively Promote Events on Facebook — Case Study
Don’t stop at just creating a Facebook Event. Mari Smith gives other ways to use Facebook to promote it, such as share buttons, comment plugins, and more.
Facebook Lets Users Check In to Events via the Touch Site, Soon the iPhone
Combine the Facebook Place “check-in” concept with your event to draw more attention to your event. Josh Constine gives you the low-down on Inside Facebook.
10 Facebook Events Gone Wrong
Just be careful when you create your event that you are prepared for the viral nature of Facebook. Julius Solaris outlines 10 Facebook disasters. Most of them involved free booze.
Facebook Mobile with Places and Deals
New Data: 33% of Facebook Posting is Mobile
Dan Zarrella is a social media scientist. I don’t know if he’s mad, but he sure has good data.Facebook Mobile usage is increasing, which is a good reason to use Places and Deals to your advantage.
A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places
If you have an actual physical storefront, you may want to consider setting up a Facebook Place where people can check in. Mashable gives you the big picture.
Facebook Deals Review
Facebook Deals were touted as the “Groupon-killer” by many blogs and news outlets when Facebook officially launched the Deals service in April. So far, so good … for Groupon. But don’t count Deals out; Ignite Social Media shows what Deals look like and where they live on Facebook.
Introducing Deals
Facebook’s own blog gives a very good overview of how to use the new Deals features.
Adding Facebook Applications
Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page
In this post on Social Media Examiner, Mari Smith gives you the top 75 Facebook Apps.Which is plenty. You don’t have to use them all.
Add YouTube to Your Facebook Page
Laura Roeder shows you how easy it is to add your YouTube channel to your Facebook Page. There are several YouTube applications out there, but she demonstrates the best one in her video: the Involver application.
NetworkedBlogs is the App of Choice for Bloggers
Denise Wakeman of Build a Better Blog did an informal poll and found that most bloggers use NetworkedBlogs to automatically import their blogs posts. I do like it for automation, but Facebook hides some of the automated posts that come in from NetworkedBlogs in the News Feed. So manually posting your blog post is better in the long run.
Appbistro
It can be challenging to find the right app to use since Facebook’s own search function is not that hot. Appbistro is a good place to find apps that can help.
Big Companies on Facebook
The 15 Most Popular Brands On Facebook
Number of fans is not the only thing that matters — it’s also how engaged they are. Business Insider takes a look at the numbers for the top 15 brands.
8 Brands That Have Found Success on Facebook & What We Can Learn
Dave Kerpen of Likeable gives us a concrete lesson from 8 big brands that we can implement right away in this Mashable post.
26 Facebook Fan Page Examples in Detail
Over on the Ignite Social Media Blog, Lisa Braziel is dissecting 26 big brands on Facebook to show you exactly what they are doing. Follow this series of posts for some great ideas.
25 brilliant examples of Facebook brand pages
Jake Hird covers 25 brands that are doing a good job on Facebook on Econsultancy.
Small Companies on Facebook
Two thirds of small business owners use Facebook for marketing
Baaaa. Should we be sheep? ZDNet dissects some recent stats from a survey of 1,132 small businesses on Facebook.
Top 5 Facebook Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make
I think everyone needs to read this post by Leyl Master Black. I see these mistakes in small, medium, and large businesses.
B-to-B Companies on Facebook
10 Examples of B2B Facebook Fan Pages
Business-to-business can be a little trickier on Facebook. You are searching for a more specific niche audience. In Social Media B2B, Jeffery Cohen gives examples of companies that are doing well (kudos to the updated numbers).
7 Awesome B2B Facebook Pages
Yet another great post by HubSpot. This time they cover what makes these B2B Pages special.
Non-profits on Facebook
Facebook Business Tips for Nonprofits
Rebecca Leaman helps answer questions for non-profits such as whether to use a Group or a Page, and how to set a social media policy.
Facebook Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations
Diosa Communications gives 32 tips for nonprofits. (Psst, lots of them work for anyone!)
How to Comment on and Tag other Pages as your Page
Everything You Need To Know About Facebook’s Epic Upgrade To Pages
The ability to comment on other Facebook Pages as your Page came about in February 2011. John Haydon covers these changes and shows you how to comment as your Page on another Page which can increase your visibility.
Tagging Other Pages On Your Facebook Business Page Wall: How-To & Ettiquette
Mesh Marketing provides a very nice step-by-step post on how to tag Pages and how not to be a self-promotional jerk about it.
Best Practices
Top 5 Things for Facebook Page Success
Good tips from Adele Cooper, the director of global customer marketing & communications for Facebook, posted on the American Express Open Forum.
Altimeter Report: The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing
Download this 27 page report from Jeremiah Owyang and devour it. The report is filled with concrete examples on how brands can market, graphs and charts on how brands are performing, and great tips for any sized business on how to be successful on Facebook.
The Difference Between Engaged and Engaging
Even if you are posting often, you may still be doing it wrong. Danny Brown shows a concrete example of the best way to be engaging on Facebook.
Are You Asking The Wrong Questions On Facebook?
Amy Porterfield shares that the best way to create engagement on Facebook is to ask interesting, thought-provoking questions. She tells us how to make sure we are not asking the wrong questions.
Make Your Facebook Page Posts Count
How do you attract people to interact with your posts? John Porcaro not only gives a great list of best practices such as keeping it short, adding a link and delivering value but he also shows some concrete examples of posts that catch his eye.
5 Tips To Drive Engagement With Your Fans On Facebook
Jeff Bullas tells us not to beg for Likes, but get them naturally through engagement with these five tips.
Advertising on Facebook
Facebook Ads 101 – How to Set up and Track Facebook Ads
Facebook ads can be targeted to a very specific demographic which make them a very powerful tool. Subliminal Pixels has a great overview on getting started with Facebook Advertising.
The How-To Guide For Facebook Advertising
If you use Facebook ads, make sure you are identifying your goals, understanding the cost structure and measuring your results. Anthony Piwarun gives the low-down on these steps in a guest post on Social Media Explorer.
Facebook advertising tricks for b2b marketers
Paul Dunay is the co-author of Facebook Advertising for Dummies, so he knows what he’s talking about. He doesn’t disappoint with these great targeting tips in this article.
Guide to Facebook Ads
Facebook would like to encourage you to spend money with them in this comprehensive overview of how Facebook Ads works. Tongue-in-cheek aside, it’s a good guide to all the pieces of the ad campaign.
Running a Contest on Facebook
Is a Facebook Contest or Sweepstakes Right for your Business?
Debbie Hemly talks with small businesses about their experience running contests on Facebook in this Gigcoin post.
The unofficial guide to Facebook’s terms and conditions
There is a lot of confusion around running a contest on Facebook. Mostly because many people are doing it wrong. Lauren Fisher of Simply Zesty gives us the guide to Facebook’s Contest rules in this post.
Facebook Promotions: What You Need to Know
Another gem by Mari Smith, although she doesn’t mention Woobox in her list of contest applications, which I have used and liked.
Selling on Facebook
16 Facebook Marketing Strategies
A good rundown of different apps you can use to market your business on Facebook by Top One SEO blog.
Facebook Posts Are 3 Times More Powerful Than Tweets
Wondering if you should use Twitter instead of Facebook? A recent study covered in All Facebook calculated the conversion rate of Facebook to be three times higher than Twitter for social shopping.
Why it’s important to set up a Facebook store
Have stuff to sell? Set up a storefront on Facebook. The Next Web tells you why.
4 Ways to Set Up a Storefront on Facebook
Four great apps to use to sell your wares on Facebook are covered on Mashable. I use Payvment myself.
Facebook ROI
Facebook Marketing ROI: 3 Case Studies
Brian Carter shows us in his Search Engine Journal post three small business examples of how Facebook Ads generated at least 300% ROI and higher for these cases.
How to use Google Analytics to measure Facebook ROI
In this video, John Haydon takes you through Google Analytics to determine your ROI. I like the tip at the end where he tells you to have a unique page on your website that only serves Facebook. That will make your tracking much easier!
Your Brand Has Thousands of Facebook Fans–What Is the ROI?
Steve Kerho on Fast Company answers the question everyone is asking: What is the ROI?
10 Measures of Social Media ROI for Your Brand
Neil Glassman on the Social Times site urges us not to declare our success based on readily available metrics (such as Likes), but to focus on the metrics that are truly relevant to our business. Good advice.
Don’t Stop There
5 things you can do to spice up your Facebook Page
Make it spicy! Ayelet Noff tells us how on Socialmedia.biz.
EdgeRank and Facebook News Feed Optimization
WebProNews talks about how to get into the Top News and what EdgeRank has to do with it.
EdgeRank Checker
An unofficial tool to check your EdgeRank and see how likely it is that you are appearing in the Top News. My favorite part of the tool is how it tells you what days are best for you — make sure you save your best announcements for those days.
How to Use Hootsuite with Facebook Pages (tutorial)
Cheryl at Beautiful Blog Designs has a great tutorial on how to use Hootsuite to manage your Facebook Page and schedule updates for later.
How to use Facebook insights to identify core supporters
John Haydon goes through the steps to using Facebook insights in a meaningful way in this YouTube video. He mentions in the video that the insights he is covering aren’t available for Pages with less than 10,000 fans, but that has changed and the stats he covers are now available.
Are You Full yet?
Yes, there are endless things to know about Facebook. So if you really want to know almost everything, you may have to buy my book — it’s 720 pages long. And even that doesn’t cover it all.
Got your own favorite Facebook resources? Link them up for us all in the comments!
About the Author: Andrea Vahl is the co-author of the upcoming Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies available now for pre-order on Amazon at a really sweet price. If nothing else it will make a great doorstop. You can also find her at www.AndreaVahl.com along with her alter ego, Grandma Mary.
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