Last week Mannix Marketing held a seminar to help local businesses learn how to use Facebook and Twitter to help market online. It was a tremendous event with an outpouring of interest from both large and small businesses from the local area. We were pleased to see the amount of interest exemplified by the audience. The attendees asked a lot of great questions and we tried to capture them all here:
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: https://www.facebook.com/business/pages
- 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 4th 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 2nd 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., https://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: https://www.facebook.com/help/1041553655923544?page=833#%21/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: https://www.facebook.com/policies/pages_groups_events/#
- 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.
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 – https://hootsuite.com/
- Twitterfeed – https://twitterfeed.com/
- Yes! There are a number of great resources to update social media accounts all at once, including:
- 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 4th option is to block them.
- How do you shorten website name?
- Through a url shortener services. Some are:
- 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!
