Facebook Questions

• Do you have to have an individual Facebook account to make Facebook business page?
  • Not any more! You can build a business page that is not associated with any other account. To start the page this way, visit here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
  • Please note that if you do not associate a Business Page with a personal account, you will not have access to many of the great applications that make using Facebook for business great. Weigh your options, if you’d like some help, feel free to send us a note.

• How do you become a Facebook admin? Can more than one person be a Facebook admin?
  • When you set up a Business Fan Page you automatically become an admin of that page. You can add additional admins for a page by going to the ‘Edit Page’ screen. In the right navigation there is an ‘Admins’ section (usually 4^th section down). Just click on ‘Add’ and either invite people to become Facebook admins by finding friends or by just entering their email address in the 2^nd box.

• What is the difference between a Facebook fan and a Facebook friend?
  • Friends are people who are connected to each other through personal pages.
  • Fans are personal pages who are connected to a Business page.

• What is the difference between a News Feed and a Facebook Wall?
  • The News Feed is the page on a personal account where all the updates from that person’s friends and businesses that person is following are pulled in to.
  • The Facebook Wall is the page on a personal account where the activity of that person is recorded (who they become friend’s with, what business they like, what posts they comment on, etc.). Businesses also have wall pages where status updates are posted and people can comment on these, if you have a Facebook account.

• Are there statistics on Facebook fan activity?
  • Yes! Every admin to a Business Page has access to Insights, which is Facebook’s stats package. When logged in, you will see a recap and link to Insights in the left nav of the page.

• Can you unattach yourself from a Facebook account?
  • Not if you are the creator of the business page. If you are an invited admin, you can.

• Does a Facebook fan know when a new admin is added?
  • No. All admins remain anonymous to fans.

• How is a Facebook vanity url different from domain name?
  • The vanity url feature allows you to develop a url that is easy to remember (i.e., http://www.facebook.com/MannixMarketing). The domain name of the url will always be Facebook.com. (the domain name is what comes before the .com, and the url is the entire path to a page)

• What types of businesses fare better on Facebook?
  • We feel that all businesses benefit from having a Facebook account. The ones that find it most beneficial are the ones who are able to connect with their fans/customers, and provide something of value to them on a regular basis (information, specials, articles).

• What is a Facebook wall?
  • A personal Wall showcases recent activity of an individual (direct messages, what they’ve become a fan of, what they have commented on). A business page Wall is where the business posts and fan posts show up.

• What to do about negative comments on a Facebook wall?
  • It’s a case by case basis, but for the most part you should not delete any posts. That may make things worse. If your fans are behind you, many times they will defend you. Other times you may need to respond to a negative post, but do so in a positive manner. If it seems to make sense, you may offer to have that person contact your business office to speak about their situation and clarify any misunderstandings.

• Can you have multiple pages linked from one personal Facebook account?
  • Yes. An individual can have admin rights to more than one business page.

• What type of video should you use for Facebook page?
  • All of the formats they currently allow are listed: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=833#!/help/?faq=12406
  • It should be no larger than 1024 MB and no longer than 20 minutes.

• Will the Facebook page admin know how many times a user looks at your business page?
  • No. The stats program (Insights) will show the aggregate number of page views for all fans, but not for any individual.

• Should you promote Facebook on your website?
  • Absolutely! Promote Facebook and Twitter accounts on your website, marketing materials, business cards, email signatures, and anywhere else it makes sense.

• How quickly do you need to respond to a Facebook wall post?
  • Depends on timeliness of the post (i.e., if you are posting about a special at tonight’s dinner service, anybody that comments on that post will probably be looking for an answer before they decide to come that night).
  • Typically, you would want to respond as soon as possible, and no longer than the next day.

• How do you change the Facebook Landing Page for your Business fan page?
  • Under ‘Edit Page’ > ‘Wall Settings’
  • ‘View Settings’
  • Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else:
  • Choose any available tab

• Does a Facebook link redirect once you get a page name?
  • Yes. Once you claim a vanity url, any links to your original page url will be redirected.

• Do you optimize a Facebook page the same way you optimize a website?
  • You should optimize content when you add it to your Facebook page, but there are limitations to what you can optimize (can’t change titles or meta descriptions). As the search engines pull social media pages into their search results more frequently, this will become more important.

• Can you run a sweepstakes or promotion on Facebook?
  • Yes, but be careful. Like running a contest anywhere, there are many legal aspects to running any promotion. To help protect themselves, Facebook has posted their guidelines:  http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

• How to add Facebook icon to email signature/email newsletter?
  • This can be a valuable way to communicate your presence on social media sites. The exact steps to create a signature will depend on which email service you use. Typically, you would look under ‘Options’ or ‘Settings’ and look for the ‘Signature’ section. You’ll need to make sure you have the Facebook image (or whichever image you want to use) on your computer, and the link to your Facebook account.
    • For Outlook 2007 – http://www.snoitulosten.com/using-twitter-and-facebook-icons-in-my-email-signature/

Twitter Questions

• How much time should you devote to Twitter?
  • Depends on business, industry, and/or marketing strategy. You should at least try and tweet a few times a week.

• Can you update Facebook and Twitter at the same time?
  • Yes! There are a number of great resources to update social media accounts all at once, including:
    • HootSuite – http://HootSuite.com
    • Atomkeep – http://atomkeep.com
    • Ping.fm – http://ping.fm/
    • Twitterfeed – http://twitterfeed.com/

• Will your messages get buried in Twitter?
  • Just like any other marketing online, they have the potential to. The key is to keep providing information and communication that is of use and of interest to your followers so that they look for the tweets.

• Are there studies showing what type of impact Twitter can have on a business?
  • We haven’t found any general studies quantifying the impact of Twitter on businesses. There are plenty of articles out there that tell of successes that businesses have had with Twitter, including Dell and Umi.

• Can you delete Twitter followers?
  • Yes. You can block followers from seeing your tweets. At this time, you would go to your list of followers, and the third icon next to the follower you wish to block has a drop down. The 4^th option is to block them.

• How do you shorten website name?
  • Through a url shortener services. Some are:
    • http://bit.ly/
    • http://tinyurl.com/
    • http://ow.ly/
    • More can be found http://code.google.com/p/shortenurl/wiki/URLShorteningServices

• Are alerts just for followers in tweetbeep.com?
  • Alerts from TweetBeep cover all of Twitter, whether or not someone is following you.

• Do you have to follows those that follow you?
  • No. You are under no obligation to follow anyone.

We hope this Q & A session helps! If you have any other questions, please feel free to give us a call. Thank you to those who attended our seminar and we look forward to offering more training sessions/seminars in the future!

Well, if this is a problem of yours, then your life is about to get a little easier! I recommend HootSuite for those managing multiple twitter accounts. It’s what I, personally, use now for managing my own personal Twitter account as well as all of our Mannix Marketing Twitter accounts for Saratoga, Lake George, Albany, the Adirondacks, etc. (I switched from Tweetlater after just one day of using Hootsuite!)

HootSuite has been more than a timesaver; it has been a lifesaver for me! It’s a fun, cute design, and it makes things incredibly easy….

- Hootsuite Screenshot -

The above is called your 'Hootsuite Dashboard'

Simply set yourself up with one username in Hootsuite, and you can add in all your Twitter profiles, and then update them all right from one place – without having to sign in and out, etc. You simply click on the profile icon (upper right) that you want to update, and then type your status in the box at the top. It is SO easy!

You can even schedule tweets in advance. You just click Send Later instead of Send Now and then choose the exact date and time you would like to send.

Hootsuite also lets you shrink links down into a special format, which allows for link tracking (as well as more room in your tweet). It will keep track of how many people clicked on that link so you can test the effectiveness of different messages. It will also tell you where those clicks are coming from. So, for example, if you have your twitter feed feeding into your Facebook page, you can easily tell if you generated more clicks from your Tweet or your Facebook post. It’s really helpful.

What I really love is that it lets you pull in your friends feed for all the people you follow. This is what makes Hootsuite unlike many other platforms where you are just a one-sided broadcast for yourself and not connected to the rest of the Twitterverse. With Hootsuite, you stay connected!

You can even customize your columns to show exactly what you would like, where you would like it. So if you don’t care about having your pending messages there, but maybe you would rather have a private messages column, you can do that. Or if you would like to have your Sent Tweets column first and your Home Feed second, you can do that too. It’s completely customizable.

Best of all, Hootsuite is free to use! You can do all this and not pay a dime. It’s really great, and I recommend you give it a try!

Find more information about Social Media Do’s and Don’ts…

Not sure how to get started on Twitter? Give us a call! We’d be happy to help you out! Mannix Marketing 518-743-9424

And maybe you have put off signing up for an account, or building a fan base, because you were ‘waiting to see what happens.’ Well, it just happened.

Both Google and Microsoft have recently come to agreements with Twitter, while Microsoft has signed a deal with Facebook as well (you know Google can’t be too far behind there). These agreements will allow the search engines to integrate updates on the social media sites right onto the SERPs.

You can read more about these deals here.

So what does this mean for you? If you have been at the forefront of social media, and have accounts on Twitter and Facebook with lots of fans and followers, then you are in a good position to gain more exposure (and hopefully traffic) from these deals.

If you have accounts but have not kept them up to date, or if you don’t have any accounts at all, there’s still time but you have some work ahead of you. These deals are about real-time search, so it’s not necessarily what you have done in the past that will count (although having more fans and followers will probably be a plus, so you’ll want to increase those numbers). You can position yourself for real-time search by:

• Opening or updating your account
• Building up more fans or followers
• Starting conversations on current topics
• Respond to comments and other posts on topics you are an expert in

So what type of situation are you in? Are you ready to take advantage of real-time search?

So, what can I do with this search engine? See real time tweets in the left hand console – see who’s talking about you and reply, retweet or view tweets instantly. If you type in search.twitter.com into your browser, than search on your name you can also monitor what’s being said here. Twazzup offers a cool console with everything all in one place. On the right hand side, view popular tweets, trend makers, and most popular links. Geez! So much to look at, so little time…

Also check out  OneRiot Twitter search engine:

Do you see this becoming the next best thing in real time search?

What is TweetLater?
TweetLater is a 3rd-party social media tool for Twitter that allows you to schedule your tweets in advance. Here’s a look at how it works… For example, right now you want to say, “Good morning everyone!” but an hour from now, you would like to say, “Check out my new blog post! (LINK)” and tomorrow night at exactly 9:23 pm, you would like to add a tweet that says, “Don’t go to bed before reading this (LINK)” …and just for fun, let’s throw in that you would like to say “RED SOX RULE!” once every 3 weeks. You can actually schedule these all at the same time using TweetLater. That means that – in a matter of minutes – you could have your Twitter account up to date for the next 2 days, 2 weeks or more! It’s that easy, and it gets better.

It’s Not Just Twitter…
Have you ever used Ping.fm to manage your social media accounts? If so, you’ll be delighted to hear that you can import your Ping.fm information directly into TweetLater, essentially using the service to update not only your Twitter account, but also your Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Yammer, etc. This option is currently only available with the TweetLater Professional version, but highly recommended.

It’s Not Just One Account…
Have a personal Twitter account and a business Twitter account? Own a restaurant in Albany and a restaurant in Saratoga? Have 10 other Twitter accounts? No problem. TweetLater allows you to store multiple accounts and make updates to them separately or as a group. Let’s take the restaurant scenario, for example. You have some news that applies to both establishments to announce on Twitter (such as, “Chicken ala Vodka special $17.95 this week only!” or… “Mention our Twitter name for a free dessert when you dine with us!” or… “Got a birthday party or event coming up? Host it in our private dining room!”) and then you have other news that is specific to the location (such as, “Don’t miss local favorite The Proof performing live tonight at 7pm!” etc.) It is helpful to have the option to pick and choose which accounts get which updates and schedule them accordingly.

Okay, So How Much Does it Cost?
There is a FREE version with many options and unlimited Twitter accounts allowed. The Professional version is currently less than $30 at the time of this post and offers many more options, including Ping.fm integration, recurring tweets, advanced filtering and more. Compare the price to how many hours you can save using this tool each week to determine if it’s worth it for you.

Never Hurts To Try It!
I could go on and on, but the only way you can get a true feel for whether or not TweetLater is a useful tool for your business is to try it out yourself! You can sign up for a free account, and even get a free trial of the Professional version to see if you like it.

So a summary of our take on TweetLater?
It’s a HUGE time saver, easy to use and 100% worth it to pay for the Professional Account, especially if you have multiple SMO accounts and not just Twitter.

Branding: Whether you know it or not, you are marketing yourself (a.k.a. your “brand”) through your obsessive need to tweet. 140 characters may not seem like a lot… but,  the effectiveness! If you think about it, what a cool concept. It’s no secret, we are all busy people. We don’t have time to sift through ‘buy me’ newsletters, or sell-sell-sell promotional materials anymore. The competition has ramped up, the economy is in the dumps right now, and our job as marketers to find innovative and ‘sticky’ ways to convince people that our services are the best has changed. 140 characters can be pretty powerful stuff…if you know how to use it.

As I was driving into work today, I overheard on the FLY 92.3 (Albany, NY) the crew talking (debating) about Twitter.  I couldn’t sit still. I wanted to call in, but knew (with my luck) that I’d get flagged by the boys in blue. So, I tore into the parking lot, ran upstairs with a Dunkin in hand, turned on my computer and quickly put together an email and sent it to the the Fly Morning Crew, via Twitter.  Some of my points:

• Twitter encourages constant linking out: to other sites, your site, etc.
• Builds brand awareness and allows the ability to monitor your brand. The service makes it easy for you to monitor what others are saying about you. Either use the direct search site, or type it right into the search box on your profile
• Stream of consciousness – Facebook has now morphed into the same look and feel as Twitter (regarding status updates).
• You can now see real time tweets in Google search results (if you have the scripted installed).

I didn’t expect much, if anything, from this email. I just wanted to put my two cents in as to why Twitter can help you, a business, or the average Joe. To my surprise, I got a phone call from Brian Cody, from the Fly Morning Crew, thanking me for taking the time to write an email and for connecting. In our conversation, I got to say a little bit about what our Internet Marketing firm does, what I do as a Search Marketer, and of course a little more about Twitter and all the hype.

10 minutes. That’s all it took for me to be able to educate someone on how to use Twitter, promote my industry, promote my place of work AND make a connection.

If you have 10 minutes, then why again aren’t you utilizing Twitter?

Twitter…what? Just when you think you’ve found the ultimate internet marketing tool, a viral media wizard…a social networking authority – the dishing begins! It’s undeniable that Twitter has ushered in a completely new era in microblogging and social media development.  Yet while ‘twittering’ and ‘tweeting’ has fast becoming a mainstream mode of sharing information, there is suddenly a rising media backlash aimed at disproving the idea that Twitter is – to be modest – the next best thing! 

Do the naysayers know something we don’t?  Or are they just feeling left out? Jon Stewart of The Daily Show recently gave Twitter a good fist shake.

What comes through loud and clear is that those who don’t use it – haven’t! To the uninitiated (or unmotivated) user, Twitter can seem confusing and puzzling. But honestly – with all the twittering and tweeting going on in the halls of Congress – how hard can it be?

Twitter has taken the world of social networking and social media optimization to a new level. Twitterers (Tweeters? Twits? Twerps?) joyfully share everything from what they’re doing at any given moment to the branding of goods and services that is cheap and effective 140 characters at a time!  The truth is that building an online network has never been easier or more fun, with millions signing up to take part in the real-time phenom and no end of the growth in sight. And the real key: Twitter is being found in Google search  more and more frequently.

Yes, real time inclusion can lead to frivolous or mundane messaging. But the real gem that twinkles through all the perceived ‘warts’ on the Twitter bandwagon is the fact that Twitter is definitely here to stay! It’s easy to use, highly relevant and it offers an opportunity for small businesses and large to take advantage of an incredible internet marketing environment.

If you’re using it, you already know. If not, companies like Mannix Marketing, Inc. offer social media optimization development plans that include a brand-building environment on Twitter as part of their basic social media optimization package. So, no matter what the tweet-phobes may say, it’s a good thing!

When you’re sitting there looking at the words on the screen, “What are you doing,” do you ever just sit there and ask yourself, “What am I doing tweeting like a silly little bird?” No… me neither. Well, for those of you who’ve wanted a couple of tips on how best to use Twitter, here are a few of the most interesting answers I’ve read:

• “you’re not as important as your # of followers, still… you do need followers”
• “funny, informative and catchy: choose two”
• “Twitter about stuff that has to do with your blog, but also Twitter stuff that has nothing to do with your blog”
• “Share links, share ideas, ask questions, answer questions — anything but ‘what are you doing?’…”
• “Join the conversation, there are too many blog promoters on twitter who just broadcast. Learn ‘@’ and start networking…”
• “Don’t kid around and write something foul only to realize you just accidentally hit ‘ENTER’, oops…”
• “Twitter is like Haiku, I don’t really get either but it sounds cool”
• “Write each word like it matters, because it does”
• “Share interesting resources, not just what you ate for lunch. Twitter often, and use it to test potential blog topics”
• “…make use of other Twitter tools to make the most of Twitter (and so it doesn’t suck up all your time)”
• “…get right to the point”
• “Don’t Twitter in secret, if you do, you probably have a problem.”
• “Respect the people you follow. Be interesting. Listen first, tweat second…”
• “Don’t follow more people than you can handle. If you’ve got too much going on, you miss a lot of the good stuff…”
• “Keep your Twitter updated and the followers will come. Stay up-to-date and you will reep the benefits. “
• “stop thinking that twitter is pointless and just try it. It’s all about community – reach out and be a part of it.”
• “interact and communicate with others – it’s a social media tool, so be social”
• “Advice: Think before you hit send. 140 characters have the power to help, heal or be miss-understood”
• “use a username as short as possible so you can twit more”