One of the biggest complaints I hear from clients is that they do not get notified if someone comments on a Fan page post.

The easy way around that is to “Like” the post. Once you Like it, you will be emailed when another fan comments on it.

Facebook has made a major change in Fan page administration.  The site now allows other admins to remove the “owner” admin from a Fan Page.

Remove Admin Link

The advantage of this move is, if you are an employer who has a company fan page created by an employee, you can now remove that person as the owner.  I’ve had many questions from business owners over the years on that topic alone.

The DISadvantage is, if you created your own company page and invited in other admins, you can get the boot as well.

Now, more then ever, it is imperative that you allow trusted people to administer your fan page with you.  Partnering with honorable vendors and employees will ensure that your fan page remains under your control.

To remove an admin:

• Click on Edit Page (under the avatar)
• In the right side column you will see a list of admins for the page.
• Click on remove admin of the person you no longer want administering your page.

Best practice:  Despite the change, I still recommend that you create your own fan page and invite your vendor or employee as an admin to customize it or help maintain it.   You never know what future changes will be coming down the line.

Did you create your Facebook fan page?

More and more businesses are using social media to get in front of their target audience.  It makes sense, if you are “out there” more, more people can find you.  But Social Media goes beyond that.

Being present in Social Media gives you more time to listen.  You can keep an ear (or eye) on what other people are saying about your brand.    It is commonly referred to as Brand Monitoring.

Third party sites (or in some cases other people) may create a profile for your business.  By entering into Social Media you can own your brand’s profile.   For example, I have a client who is an attorney.   When we googled his name, we found profiles for him on lawyers.com and lawyercentral.com.  He has to create a log in on those sites to “own” those profiles and be notified of reviews and other interactions with his profile.  Ditto for Yelp.  Restaurant clients have found listings on Yelp that they were not even aware of.  They must join the site to be able to respond to any reviews.

According to the Social Media Marketing Report for 2010, marketers are seeing a significant increase in web traffic with only a few hours of time invested per week.   They also have a noticeable increase in their search engine rankings and are able to track deals that were closed due to their participation in the Social Media space.   B2C’s tend to participate more on Facebook and B2B’s focus more time on LinkedIn.

The most common combination of efforts take place on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs.  More companies are looking to forums to create smaller consumer driven social networks that are specific to their industry.

So, Social Media can be used to monitor, own and increase brand recognition.  All with the end goal of obtaining more qualified buyers for your product or service.   What’s stopping you from entering into the Social Media realm?

Edit:  Facebook has restored custom landing tabs

Facebook changed the rules again… Fan pages with less then 10,000 fans (likes) can no longer set up a custom landing page for people who are not yet fans.   There are only two choices the Wall tab or the Info Tab.  Tough call – but I vote for the Info tab….Why?  You can still put custom content and hyperlinks into the fields and somewhat direct people on where to go.  While you can not insert graphics, you can control the flow of traffic to an extent.

Adding a link to what WAS your landing page may encourage not yet fans to check out the additional information you are offering.  Let’s keep in mind that we can still have custom tabs and boxes, it’s just no longer the first thing people see when they come to the page.

A second alternative is to set up a custom box on the wall tab that sits right under your fan list so that it is above the fold and obvious to anyone who visits your Page’s wall.

You can still reference your custom tabs in various ways, it will just require some additional strategic thinking.  For example in posts around the web, in your blog, etc you can say Click Here to see our Facebook only specials and send traffic to your fan page to encourage not yet fans to join.

The change does should give you some food for thought… where is your HOME BASE?  Let’s keep in mind that at the end of the day the goal is to funnel all traffic into a particular location (typically your web site) depending on what you are marketing and to whom.  If your goal is to capture Facebook traffic for a particular product or service, then you’ll need to put the extra effort into your Facebook Page to make it work for you (or create a Facebook landing page on your web site).   All in all, not a bad thing, just requires some thinking.

Need more Fan Page help? Comment below or drop us a note.

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• Facebook Limits Landing Tabs To “Authenticated Pages” (allfacebook.com)
• Does Facebook Traffic Data Show Any Fallout from Privacy Issues? (insidefacebook.com)
• Facebook Privacy – The Magic is in the List (newward.com)
• Add a “Like” Button to your Web Site (newward.com)

The sky is falling, the sky is falling….  and so went Chicken little running through town,  do you remember how he ended up?

Lets get a hold of ourselves and see what’s what before we all start panicking and running like a chicken without a head on.

First: Concerning Facebook Social Plug ins:  They carry with them the privacy settings that you have set in Facebook.  If you “like” a page, mention something on your wall, etc… web sites that have the Social plug in installed will be able to pull that information from Facebook and show it on their site.  Let’s say Mary shares a link on her wall to a cool web site.  That web site has the activity plug in installed – when Mary goes back to that web page, she sees her face in the plug in box.  What Mary doesn’t realize is that the people she allows to see her activity with in Facebook are the ONLY people who can also see her face.

Does that make sense?

Do you see the Fan Page box on the right of this page?  It shows the number of fans the NewWard fan page has – but depending on people’s privacy settings, you do not see all of their faces.  Compredne?

Ok – let’s talk bigger stuff…

Mashable has a great post on the essential Facebook Privacy Settings

The magic word here is LISTS – the most powerful and yet under utilized tool in Facebook.  Take all of your friends and divvy them into lists.

Here is a snap shot of my profile privacy – NOTE:  Mine is probably more open then most and the only network I belong to is my business’ network (NewWard Development).

This is where you type in the name of the list you want to block this item for

Still concerned?  Leave a comment below or contact me directly.

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• Facebook Privacy? Who Cares? (wallstreetpit.com)
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• Facebook Employees Debate Privacy Changes, “Simplified” Tools Coming (insidefacebook.com)

By adding a like button to your web site, you allow Facebook users to share your content on their Facebook Wall.

Like buttons outside of Facebook work the same as they do within Facebook.  When a user clicks the like button, the link to the “liked” page appears on their wall.   The idea, of course, is to encourage Facebook users to share more outside content with the Facebook Community.

It works for you, as it gives you the opportunity to get more viral hits from the Facebook community.

Goto Facebook’s Social Plug in’s page and select “Like Button”:  http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

Enter in the URL of the page you want the button to appear on:  I used http://www.newward.com/articles/ to put a Like button on this blog.

You can customize the appearance settings,  I made the button narrower at 300 px.

You can also change the word “Like” to “Recommend”

Click on get code

I used the iFrame Code and plugged it into the sidebar of the blog (see upper right)

You can have your web developer add the button to static web pages, or any where on your web site.

And Boom!  Instant Like Button

Give it a try.  Let me know how you make out…. any place else you’d put a “Like” button?

This post is for me as much as for all of you… I constantly forget the Facebook Username link…

Go to The Facebook User Name Page:  http://www.facebook.com/username/ (easy enough to remember… right?)

If you already set your PERSONAL user name you will see this:

Click on Set a Username for your Pages and select the page you want to name from the drop down list:

Type in the name and click on Check Availability… NOTE: Once you have selected a user name it CAN NOT BE CHANGED so chose wisely!

* Where UserName you entered is the user name you just typed in and Your Page Name is the page you are creating a user name for.

Click Confirm and wa-la, you are done!

Also note that you need to have at least 50 fans to create a user name, otherwise Facebook will tell you your page does not qualify.

Now  - go play!

Let’s face it taxes are a necessary evil.  No one wants to do them, think about them or pay them.  So how do income tax prep services get us engaged in their brand without reminding us how crappy taxes are?

A while back I read Jason Fall’s case study on H&R Block.  I found it interesting, but in following H&R Block around for a while, I am still looking for the “whooo hooo” factor.   They have a presence in several spaces, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life (which is cool) and YouTube, although none of those links are on the web site.

I decided it would be fun to look at what the competition is up to and how they are engaging their prospective customers.

Liberty Tax

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Online Community (P.S.  Kudos for addressing a complaint on your forum and in public! Well done!)

Campaign:  Liberty Tax is hunting for the next Lady Liberty.  Applicants have to fill out a form and post a video to YouTube on why they should be the next Lady Liberty.  The new lady liberty will take office June 1st and be employed by Liberty Tax for one year.

• The ups:  People are posting video’s on YouTube by the droves to get in on the $50,000 salary.   The Lady Liberty YouTube Channel is fun to watch.
• The Down’s:  We can’t vote, the “general population” can do little more then comment.
• The Lesson:  Let go guys – “we the people” love thinking our opinion counts.  It may be your image – but we count more:)~

Jackson Hewitt

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Blog

Jackson Hewitt has battled its share of issues this season.  Top that off with a boring YouTube Channel (although finding out more about the American Opportunity credit was good for me) and you have nothing magical happening in the Social Media Marketing arena… until now.   The Big Check Campaign invites fans to share their “What would you do with a tax refund check?” story.   Fans get to read all the stories and get to vote on who wins starting 4/1.    The winner gets $3,000. (Currently the Big Check’s Fan Page has twice as many fans as Jackson Hewitt’s fan page).

• The Ups: Voyeurism at it’s best!   We love believing we are helping out someone who deserves it.  Let’s face it, it is too yummy to pass up.
• The Downs: The JH web site could do more to get this noticed…. this could be huge with some good PR
• The BIG Thumbs up: for Tweeting me after I became a fan of the page.  HOLY COW… someone is listening!  Flipping through the twitter stream shows they are listen for income tax refund tweets as well.
• The Lesson: Great listening – got me interested in what the company is doing, but don’t under estimate the power of you own web site.

Have any exciting tax time Social Networking stories to share?

Additional reading:  Tax Friending

Facebook has updated their privacy policy and statement of rights and responsibilities once again.  Nothing really struck me as “big” when I read through them.  As a matter of fact, they were quite clean and more transparent then I’ve seen in the past.  Here are a few highlights:

” Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users”

Translation:  It’s important to note that if you post something then remove it, or even delete your account – that post may still exist.  Lesson:  Don’t post anything that can bite you later or that potentially compromises your own copyrights.

“we do not own or operate the applications or websites that use Facebook Platform. That means that when you use those applications and websites you are making your Facebook information available to someone other than Facebook.”

“When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting.”

“If your friend connects with an application or website, it will be able to access your name, profile picture, gender, user ID, and information you have shared with “everyone.” It will also be able to access your connections, except it will not be able to access your friend list”

Translation:  When you play a game, take a quiz, use an application – it collects demographic information about you AND your friends.  If you have specifically blocked an application from your privacy settings then your information is safe.  My question is: How do I block an application if I don’t know it exists?

“Facebook is about sharing information with others — friends and people in your communities — while providing you with privacy settings that you can use to restrict other users from accessing some of your information. We share your information with third parties when we believe the sharing is permitted by you, reasonably necessary to offer our services, or when legally required to do so”

Translation:  Facebook shares when it thinks it can, regardless as to whether or not you’ve specifically given it permission to do so.  You can opt-out, but you are opted-in by default.  Lesson:  If you are here to hide, you are in the wrong place.

“Limitations on removal. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others

Additionally, we may retain certain information to prevent identity theft and other misconduct even if deletion has been requested. If you have given third party applications or websites access to your information, they may retain your information to the extent permitted under their terms of service or privacy policies. But they will no longer be able to access the information through our Platform after you disconnect from them.”

This is a biggie:

“Risks inherent in sharing information. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your information, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other users with whom you share your information. We cannot guarantee that only authorized persons will view your information. We cannot ensure that information you share on Facebook will not become publicly available. We are not responsible for third party circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures on Facebook. You can reduce these risks by using common sense security practices such as choosing a strong password, using different passwords for different services, and using up to date antivirus software.”

Translation:  We try to keep you and your information safe, but we are not making any promises, so use your head.

“Consent to Collection and Processing in the United States. By using Facebook, you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.”

Translation:  You use Facebook, we can share your information.

The major theme here is that Facebook shares your information by virtue of the fact that you are a member of Facebook.  Unless you specifically opt-out of something or alter your privacy settings to remove or block your information, you are “in the open” so to speak. Depending upon the reasons you are on Facebook, this may or may not be much of an issue.  For those of us who primarily use Facebook to talk about our business, help promote friends and clients,  and share some aspects of our personal life, the level of sharing is to our advantage.

If you are on Facebook in the hopes of keeping secrets, you are on the wrong platform.  Facebook brings home the reality that privacy is a myth. Every activity you participate in on Facebook leaves a hole somewhere for someone to peek through and see “something”.  Sometimes those holes are big enough for that someone to see a lot more then you thought.   I’ve seen Facebook break up a few relationships, get people fired or cause people not to be hired… among other things.

Most importantly (to me), I’ve seen Facebook bring brand awareness and success to many of my clients… so, it’s all in how you use it!

What are your thoughts on the updates?

Stay tuned for more.

I decided to let my blog speak for itself and see what it came up with… you can do the same at http://www.wordle.net/