5 Things you  must do now to get ready for March 30th

If you have a Facebook Page (also known as Fan Pages) for your business, you need to know that Facebook is making changes once again. On March 30^th all Pages will be automatically converted to the new Timeline format.

Many businesses have voluntarily made the switch (check out The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur page). This is good news for you if you haven’t because you can see what others have done and use them as a model for your conversion.

Timeline is much more visual and while it takes some getting used to, I think it holds a number of advantages for businesses. If you get started before March 30^th you can preview your page in Timeline before you publish it. This gives you a chance to make changes and adjustments.

Create & Upload a Cover Photo

First thing you’ll notice is the Cover photo. It is much larger than what was allowed previously. It needs to be 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. And this should be a high resolution photo. This image is large and you want it to be as clear as possible.

One word of caution about the cover photo: you can’t include blatantly promotional copy, contact info or calls to action. For example, you can’t ask people to Like your page in your cover photo. See the official Facebook guidelines here.

Choose a Profile Photo

Your Profile photo, which becomes the thumbnail beside your posts, is 180 x 180. It can be a photo of your, your logo or something else.

Rearrange Your Apps

Under your cover photo at the right are images of four of the apps you’ve applied to your Facebook page. The first one is always Photos and you can’t change that one. You can rearrange which apps appear. Just hover over the app and a pencil icon appears. Click on it and you can swap places with another icon. What might these icons be? A page where you offer a free report, your YouTube videos, events, your blog etc. You can even change the image that shows for each app. Just make sure the image is 111 pixels x 74 pixels.

Edit the Past

Because Timeline allows people to go through your Facebook history much easier than before, you’ll want to edit what you’ve posted. Because this is your page and not your personal profile, I assume you’ve been professional in your posting. However, when you were first learning how to use Facebook for your business, you may have posted things that you’re not so happy about now. Delete them before you publish the Timeline.

Milestones

When you’re using Facebook as your Page, you’ll see a drop down menu appear at the top of the page. Click on the Milestones button to add major events in your business, even if they happened before you started on Facebook.

Include things you might want people to know about your business – your start date, the day you won an award, when you started selling a new product. These will add some interest to your history and act as promotional items for people who want to look through your history.

If you still have questions or want to know more, please join me for a free Webinar I’m hosting on March 27^that 2 p.m. eastern. I’ll walk you through some of these steps as well as showcase some additional features of the new Timeline. Just click here to register.

Here's why my Cover looks like today

The most noticeable change is the cover photo. This large image is eye-catching. You can change and update it at will.

Here's a great cover - created using an App

For best results, your cover photo should be 720 pixels wide but I’ve been seeing reports that tell us the ideal dimensions should be 850px wide by 315px high. Higher resolution photos are better so the image is clear. The nice thing about the cover photo is it’s easy to change so if you don’t like an image, choose another one.

In addition to the cover, how your posts and uploads appear on your profile page have changed. It looks more like a magazine with more emphasis on images.

If you want to edit your posts, there are a number of ways to do so.

Click on the globe icon just below your name to choose who sees this post – everyone or certain groups of people.

This is where having lists of your Facebook friends can be useful.

For example, when I’m promoting a local event or story, I often change the setting to include only my list of local friends.

By doing this people who can’t participate aren’t inundated with posts that have nothing to do with them.

You can also choose to have only specific people see certain posts. The control is in your hands.

Click on the “pencil” icon in the upper right of the post to edit the post – change dates, add locations or hide it from your timeline.

The “star” icon lets you change the size of a post. If you want to highlight something to visitors, you can make a post become the full width of the page.

The biggest change however is the “Timeline” feature.

Seen on the right-hand side of your profile, it gives clickable links to past posts – going all the way back to when you started Facebook.

Want to see what I did in 2008? Click on that date and you’ll be taken to my posts from that year.

This is what has many people worried.

Until now, it was tedious to search through someone’s Facebook archives to see what they’ve posted in the past. If you said or did something that doesn’t reflect you today, it didn’t matter so much because the odds of anyone bothering to look was slim. Now it’s dead easy for anyone to find your past.

This is why you need to convert to Timeline today. When you convert, you’ll have seven days to go through your past posts and decide what items you want hidden from view.

Other than looking pretty, is there any up-side to the new timeline? Yes! You can add important milestones from your life to your timeline, even if they occurred before you joined Facebook. Your wedding, university graduation, a prestigious award can quickly be added. You can choose to highlight the events that you want. Including a photo with the event will add to the impact.

What should you do now?

First, upgrade to the new Timeline. Add an interesting photo for the cover or choose one from your Facebook photo albums.

Second, start looking through you Facebook history and hide or delete anything that no longer reflects who you are.

Third, add live events you want people to see. Think the date you started your business, important anniversaries, awards you won. Don’t forget to include some personal life events too – things that you don’t mind sharing with the world but show who you are as a person. Include your wedding date, a memorable vacation – use your imagination.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Have you seen some interesting uses of the new Timeline features? Are there tips and tricks you’ve learned? Do you have a question? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

You don’t want to be sharing what you ate for lunch or when you went to the bathroom.

On the other hand, you don’t want to be too promotional either; that turns people off. You need to find a balance.

What’s your social media brand?

No, I don’t mean your logo or your photo – although that’s part of it.

It’s how do you want people to think of you. If you’re a micro business – providing a product or service where your expertise is what sets you apart – then you probably want to be seen as an expert. You want to be the “go-to” person in your field.

How do you do this?

Be a resource

Provide useful information that your customers – and potential customers – need and want. You don’t have to create all the content yourself. Provide links to articles and blog posts that provide useful information. Using Google Reader and RSS feeds can be a great way to quickly and easily find content to share.

Someone who does a great job of this is Infinity Network Solutions. They’re an Owen Sound-based IT company and they populate their Facebook page with lots of great information about computers and how to use them safely or better.

Don’t forget to be social

However don’t forget it’s called “social” media. Part of the power of tools like Facebook and Twitter is it gives people a chance to get to know, like and trust you. But in order to do that, you can’t just be posting links. You need to spend some time talking about yourself, giving people a chance to get to know you..

For example, I Tweeted about washing my cell phone received tons of retweets and @replies like the one here.

So why would I send out a comment like this when I’m using social media for business? Because anyone who has had a similar experience suddenly felt a personal connection to me. I was no longer an anonymous business online but someone they could relate to. I’d gone from “know” to “like” because they could see how I’m like them.

Don’t forget to promote

After all, you’re using Facebook, Twitter or whatever for your business. So don’t go so far over to being a resource or being social that you forget to toot your own horn. Post about specials or new products you have. Post photos of work you’ve done for clients (with permission). Share news about hiring new staff, expanding or anniversaries. Just make sure the informational and social posts are more frequent. Only 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 posts should be blatantly promotional.

Someone who does a good job of this is Jennifer Harris of Keylime Creative in the Village of Paisley. She has a nice chatty style, shares information and promotes herself.

One final piece of advice

Don’t forget to reply to anyone who visits your page and takes the time to comment. It’s a great way to deepen the relationship and shows the world that you’re paying attention.

So go out and start posting!

Andrea J. Stenberg

If you liked this article, please share it with your social networks by clicking one (or more) of the share links. And feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment here or at http://www.facebook.com/TheBabyBoomerEntrepreneur.

Let me explain. Previously, if you went to your Facebook page – your business page for example – any posts would appear as having come from the page. For most people that didn’t matter too much; it was fine posting to their page as the page.

However, sometimes it makes sense for you to post as yourself. For example, I’m one of the admins for the BNI Synergistics Facebook page. This is a page for the BNI group I belong to here in Owen Sound. When making announcements about meetings and speakers it makes sense for those to come from the page.

Other times I want to share my personal thoughts about a meeting or speaker – my personal thoughts should come from me because I’m not speaking on behalf of the group. Also, I want to show my friends that I’m a member of BNI. If I post to the BNI page as Andrea Stenberg, people see that I’m involved in BNI. If I post as the page, they don’t know it’s me.

Change your Facebook page settings

To do this, you need to change your settings. Go to “edit page” under your page’s photo then choose “your settings”. Then remove the check in the “Posting Preferences” box.  Conversely, if you want to ALWAYS post as the page and never as yourself, make sure this box is checked. You’ll need to make this change for every page you administer.

Switch between using Facebook as a page or as your profile

Next, go back to your page and choose the “Account” drop-down menu and select “Use Facebook as Page” in order to post as your page.

When you want to go back to posting as yourself, choose “Account” then choose “Switch back to [your name here]”.

**Warning: On several occasions when I’ve tried to switch back from posting as a page to posting as myself, Facebook has crashed on me. If that happens to you, just close the web browser tab you’re in then log back into Facebook. You should be posting as your profile once again.

When you log into Facebook, the first place you’re taken is your News Feed (or Home tab). This is where you see updates from your friends and the pages you have “liked”. But have you noticed that you’re only getting news from the same small number of people lately?

It doesn’t mean all your other Facebook friends have gone off line. Facebook has added a way to control your newsfeed. You can see the updates from all your friends, or you can set the feed to only show the friends and pages you interact most with.

For many people, if not most, their setting was defaulted to “Friends and pages you interact most with”.

If this had happened to you, scroll down to the bottom of your News Feed and click the “edit options button” on the bottom right of the page.

Next, click the button and choose “All your friends and pages”. You’ll start receiving updates from everyone again.

Getting back on your friends’ newsfeeds

But this is not the end. If you’re using Facebook for networking and marketing, many of your friends (or fans of your Facebook page) will no longer be seeing your updates because they haven’t changed their settings back.

In order to show up on your friends’ news feeds you’ll need to start actively interacting with them. You can’t just passively use Facebook to post links, comments or photos. Many of your followers won’t see them. You need to become one of the “Friends and pages you interact most with”.

How do you do this? By interacting with them. When you see a post or update in your newsfeed, go to their wall and reply. Check in with people and ask what’s new. Have conversations. Build relationships one-on-one.

Yes, this is more time consuming, but it’s what I’ve been telling you what to do all along. One-on-one interaction with people is the best way to build relationships. And by building a relationship with people you’re giving them time to get to know, like and trust you. And once they’ve reached the trust phase, when they’re ready to buy what you sell, you’ll move to the top of the list.

Happy networking.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Enjoy,

Andrea J. Stenberg

After you listen, please leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Andrea J. Stenberg

The photos under your name are any photos in Facebook where you are tagged, not just photos you have uploaded.

If you don’t like one of the photos, hover your mouse over that photo and an “x” will appear on the upper right corner. Click on the “x” and the photo will be removed from your profile page.

Note, however, that this doesn’t remove the photo from Facebook nor does it remove the tag. If you really don’t want that particular photo linked to you, remove the tag or ask the person who uploaded it to remove it.

This is one of the few changes Facebook has made that I really like. It doesn’t really change how I use Facebook (so no learning curve for me, but it does look a lot prettier.

When I first heard about the new profile I was disappointed when I logged into Facebook and saw the old profile. However, after checking out some of my friends I eventually got a message offering me the new profile.

If you haven’t received the new profile and would like to, go to http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/ to get the new look.

Andrea J. Stenberg

I would love to know what you think about the new look on Facebook. Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Table of contents for Social Media Marketing Means Talking To More People

1. How to Have Off-Line Conversations with Your Online Connections

Yesterday I wrote about why you need to take your online connections off-line. Today I’ll tell you how.

When you met somebody online and you’ve had some sort of an ongoing conversation, someone you think you might have a connection with, approach them about having an off-line conversation.

You can send them a private message on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, or send them an e-mail asking for a phone conversation.

Don’t make this a sales call! Really – I’m serious! Stress that this will be a “getting to know you” conversation. And mean it. Suggest a couple of dates and times and give them a time limit for the call – I suggest 30 minutes.

When the appointed time comes, ask a series of open ended questions that will allow you to get to know this person and their business. Of course you’ll want to give them the same information about yourself.

Types of questions to ask:

• Tell me about your business.
• What makes you different from the competition?
• Who is your ideal client? How would I recognize them?
• What are your goals for the next year?
• What resources do you need to accomplish them?

Be sure to take notes as are having this conversation. Then go through your connections and see if there’s someone you can introduce them to. It could be an ideal client, it could be a resource they need, it could be someone you think they would like to know.

Then over the coming weeks and months, keep this conversation in the back of your mind and try to send this person a resource, an interesting link, or a referral.

Not everyone you speak with will become a valued customer or colleague. The vast majority of people really don’t know how to network, and don’t know how to help others. But if you go out into the world with a genuine desire to be a helpful resource, eventually you’ll find people who help you achieve your goals to.

Andrea J Stenberg