July 25, 2011 Posted by: Nicole Hammett
Interacting on Facebook Business pages is a common question here at Little Miss Useful, so I wanted to share with you my top 5 questions clients ask me.
1. Can a page see my personal information if i LIKE them?
Pages cannot see the profiles of people who like the page. The only information they can see is your profile photo and name.
The administrators of a page will however, be able to see anything you’ve made available to public (should they visit your profile). So be sure that you have your privacy settings set up correctly.
Pages are able to communicate with you (once you like the page) by sending messages.
2. What is the difference between my personal profile and a business page?
Profiles represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Pages allow an organisation, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook.
In addition, Pages are managed by admins who have personal Facebook profiles. Pages are not separate Facebook accounts and do not have separate login information from your profile. They are simply different entities on your site, similar to how Groups and Events function.
Once you have set up a Page within your profile, you may add other admins to help you manage this Page. People who choose to connect to your Page won’t be able to see that you are the Page admin or have any access to your personal account.
3. I want a Facebook username for my business page. How can I do this?
You are able to claim your custom URL (or username) once you have 25 fans. For example the Little Miss Useful URL is www.facebook.com/littlemissuseful. To claim your URL you go to http://www.facebook.com/username
You simply choose the username you would like for your page and Facebook will let you know if available. Make sure you choose wisely as once you set your username you are unable to change this.
4. How often should I post on my page.
This is a tricky one and no amount of posting will work the same for every business. As a guide I usually recommend at least once a day and maybe twice per day if you have really great content. Our view is that any more than twice per day is overkill and you may end up having a higher ‘unlike’ rate.
5. I would like to schedule my Facebook posts, do you recommend any tools to do this?
There are a few different tools out there that allow you to schedule your posts on Facebook. My favourite would be HootSuite which allows you to schedule your Facebook posts and also allows you to post to multiple social networks (like Twitter and Linked In). HootSuite is free for the basic account and is so easy to use.
If you do use HootSuite to schedule your posts, make sure you get onto Facebook and post in real time – nothing beats the real you.
Need Help?
If you need any help regarding Facebook, Little Miss Useful can help. We have several options available to help support your use of Facebook.
Simply email nicole@littlemissuseful.com and we can talk about your requirements and how we can help.
April 6, 2010 Posted by: Nicole Hammett
I was chatting to a colleague about Facebook the other day about ettiquete for using Facebook and in particular when using Facebook for business.
Facebook is an extremely powerful tool for businesses but you need to use Facebook correctly. This is a list of things that should help you when using Facebook for business.
1. Disable all game application notifications
This is very important when you use your profile for business and personal use. Do you really want to bombard business associates everytime you win a game of Mafia Wars or fed your animals on Farmville. It is unprofessional and clogs up people’s live feeds. So the best way to avoid this is to disable notifications in the applications. Even your personal friends will thank you for this one.
2. Don’t send too many page requests
This is becoming a problem on my Facebook profile. It is really important that if you are going to suggest fan pages to people that they be relevant and not very frequent.
There are a couple of people who are constantly sending me facebook fan page requests. The majority of them are not even for their own business but for others. To be honest it really gets frustrating having to go through so many requests and declining them. It has gotten to the point where I am even considering removing these people as friends so I am no longer harrassed by fan page requests.
3. Regular updates… but don’t go overboard
You need to keep in regular contact with your customers and clients so utilising the facebook page can be very effective. You should be consistent with your updates and try to update everyone on a regular basis. That said do not go overboard and update your page 10 times a day. For the same reason as the applications it can become very frustrating when your live feed is constantly full of updates.
4. Make it personal
When adding new friends on Facebook why not personalise it. Tell the person who you are and why you want to add them. I never add someone (unless I know who they are) to my facebook profile unless they give me a reason to. If you don’t add a personal message be prepared for people to ignore your request.
5. Do not sync your Twitter to Facebook
Generally people tweet a lot more than they update their facebook page. It is accepted that on Twitter you will update your status a lot, but as already mentioned it is not on Facebook. I would advise against syncing your Twitter account to Facebook or you will clog up live feeds. A good tool that allows you to pick and choose which updates go to both Facebook and Twitter is Hoot Suite and I highly recommend it.
March 15, 2010 Posted by: Nicole Hammett
I am sure most business owners (at one stage or another) struggle with the work/life balance. Generally you have your own business so you have the freedom to work your own hours, but in reality you work more hours than you would like.
This is one area I really struggle with. Particularly as I work from home my business is always ‘there’ and I don’t really switch off. This has very much been the case over the past 6 months as my business has grown the whole “switching off” idea just doesn’t work. continue reading »