Archive for category Facebook
Facebook Fan Page Basics
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Fan engagement on February 17, 2012
I must say that I’m continually surprised when someone recommends a Facebook Fan page that still uses the long, cumbersome URL initially assigned by Facebook.
I guess I shouldn’t be. Surprised, that is. It’s super easy to set up a Facebook page and we’re all surrounded by the voices screaming that we should all be on Facebook… but for some, taking that next step to actually use the page to your advantage, can seem like leaping the grand canyon.
Yes, developing a sound Facebook engagement strategy requires some thought about your audience, your call to action, and some realistic soul searching about your ability to follow through consistently.
However, there are some really basic things you simply must do, and they’re simple.
1. Make your Facebook Page name easy to remember, not too long, and different from your actual real name.
There was a trend for awhile to create Facebook page names that included complex messaging, such as “Sugar, the real alternative to artificial sweeteners” or something like that. Yes, branding and messaging is important, but to me, this goes a bit too far in a medium that’s all about authenticity and engagement.
Short, sweet and to the point is best. But if your’e a singer songwriter who’s name is Sally Songster, you should differentiate between your personal profile which is undoubtedly called Sally Songster, and your music/fan page which you could call something like Sally Songster Music. More about that in my previous post 5 Things You Are Doing Wrong on Facebook.
2. Get your required 25 LIKEs quickly so you can e Establish a meaningful Facebook URL instead of the cumbersome placeholder URL that Facebook assigns to you. I’ve seen pages with more than 100 LIKEs that haven’t done this yet. It’s really easy… no excuses for putting it off.
March 20, 2012 update: Facebook seems to have lifted the 25 LIKE requirement, you can now claim your URL right away
When you’re logged in to Facebook, just go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ and you should see your page name displayed – or a drop down menu if you manage more than one page. Select the page, enter your desired username (no spaces or odd characters) and click Check Availability. You’ll get a warning page to make sure you know that…
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You can’t change the username once you set it.
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You can’t transfer the ownership of a username to another party.
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You can’t violate anyone elses trademark rights.
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If you are acquiring a username to sell it in the future (squatting), you will lose it.
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Usernames may be reclaimed for other unauthorized usages.
Assuming your’e not squatting or infringing, go ahead and click CONFIRM and you’re done.
3. Set your privacy and post settings to allow who can post what type of content, prohibit profanity and assign your default landing tab.
March 20, 2012 update: With Timeline for Pages now implemented, default landing tabs are a thing of the past… so disregard the information on that here… but DO continue on to the part about blocking profanity.
Click Edit Page, in the upper right hand corner of your Fan Page. On the menu on the left, click Manage Permissions.
Assuming your goal is encourage conversation, in the second section leave the “Wall Tab Shows” set to All Posts. If you’re just starting your page then leave your default landing page set to “Wall.”If you have an app installed such as Root Music or ReverbNation for musicians, set that as the default landing page… this means new visitors to your page will see this tab first. Once a fan LIKEs your page, they will always land on the wall, no way around it.
Check all the boxes under Posting ability – again, assuming you are going for engagement. You WANT fans to be able to post photos and videos to your wall, and to tag people in the photos you post.
Lastly, use the drop down menu under Profanity Blocklist to select “Strong.” Unless you like, want or don’t care either way about profanity on your wall. There are other settings to chose from.
These are the basics. I’m assuming you’ve already picked a profile photo… if not, use one that is 180X500 pixels, to maximize the space you have. And don’t be afraid to use Photoshop to add your name, or messaging to the photo. This is prime real estate you can take advantage of.
The disclaimer here is that very soon, Facebook will roll out Timeline to pages as well as profiles, so the whole graphics issue will change, giving you a ton more messaging real estate. But use it wisely. No one is going to want to hang out under your cluttered billboard. That’s why they left MySpace.
SWRFA goes social: KC Clifford and David Broyles on Social Media
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Fan engagement, Twitter, Uncategorized on October 1, 2011
At music conferences, my favorite panels are the ones that feature artists who are out there doing it, rather than vendors trying to sell the newest widgets for sharing your music on Facebook or creating the ultimate EPK. Don’t get me wrong, we need that technology and I love those companies. But when it comes to learning how to get the job done while booking, recording, managing a merch store, touring… while still leaving time to cook dinner, go to the gym and, oh yeah, write songs… let’s hear it straight from the artists, please.
At this weekend’s Southwest Regional Folk Alliance Conference (SWRFA), we heard some sound advice from KC Clifford and David Broyles of Dr. Pants on connecting with, and more importantly, ENGAGING with fans via social media channels.
KC and David focused on basic resources and troubleshooting some of the issues brought up by those in attendance, and I volunteered to recap the session in a blog post. Yes, sometimes I just can’t help myself. Plus, there were some interesting questions, some new resources I hadn’t heard about, and an enticing Facebook problem to solve from the Kerrville Folk Festival.
The Dilemma of the Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Presence
When the folks at Kerrville decided to create a Facebook presence, they started with a Profile rather than a Page. This is a common issue with organizations and artists because once you hit Facebook’s 5000-friend limit, you’ve got some decisions to make. Organizations like Kerrville (and artists developing a large fan base) are best served by a Facebook Page. Kerrville established a page, but has had difficulty getting people to switch over to fan the page. Right now, the Kerrville Festivals Facebook Profile has 4948 friends, while the Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Page only has 807 fans.
The obvious move is to try to encourage the Profile friend connections to transition over to the Page. Easier said than done. KC suggested increasing the posting frequency of the “please fan our new page” plea to the Profile page.
One more simple thing they could do would be to link to the new Page in the “work” section of the existing Profile. In the photo, you’ll see that Kerrville Festivals “works at” Kerrville Music Festivals. The problem is, if you click on that link, it takes you to a Facebook-generated Community Page that aggregates conversation about Kerrville Music Festivals. The steps to create a proper link from Profile to Page are here on my 5 Things You are Doing Wrong on Facebook post.
Here’s another idea for engaging fans to help with the transition. How about creating an image badge to say “I”m a Fan of the REAL Kerrville Folk Festival Facebook Page” and encourage fans to post it on their walls? When the photo is created within the Page, and people follow the link to comment, they’ll be right where they need to be to hit the LIKE button and become a fan. To make it more effective, the Page should be tagged in the caption of the photo as well. As for what you want, and make it obvious how to do it.
For now, I’ll do my part:
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE REAL KERRVILLE FOLK FESTIVAL FAN PAGE
Another option for Kerrville might be to take advantage of Facebook’s new(ish) option to change a Profile to a Page. Facebook offers information and instructions on the conversion here. This is irreversible, so it’s not to be taken lightly. In the case of Kerrville, though, it may be the best option. It will be easier to move the 800+ fans of the existing page to the “new page” than trying to get nearly 5,000 “friends” to take action.
Blogging
KC and David hit the points I always bring up about blogging. I’m reminded about a friend’s comment a few years ago: “does the world really need one more guitar player blogging about life on the road?” Maybe not, but what if that artist has a specific interest that can develop into a connection point with fans? In my musical life, Greg and I blog about ways people are actively changing the world by looking at each other with love rather than fear. This is a theme for us, so our Love Can Change The World blog ties in with our new CD by the same name.
KC shared that after a period of completely unplugging from engaging online, she was ready to blog again and chose to video blog her discovery of cooking and crafting with her fans. Cosy Sheridan, one of the artists I regularly work with, has started a blog called Persephone and the Pomegranate: The Musings of a Modern Day Persephone as the platform to begin her book of the same name. After writing blog posts for some amount of time, the book will be ready to be refined and taken to the next step.
Resources Mentioned
It never hurts to hash over the resources available for making social media and online marketing easier. Here’s a list of resources discussed at SWRFA:
Tweet Deck and HootSuite - aggregate your social media channels (Twitter feeds, Facebook page) in one place to make it easier to listen and effectively engage.
Nimbit and BandCamp- create your own merch store on your Web site and Facebook page. Nimbit is widget-based, which means you update it once at the source and all the sites where you’ve placed the widget will be updated. The main difference with Nimbit is that your fans stay on YOUR site. Clicking on the download or purchase links in a Bandcamp widget will take you to your separate BandCamp page.
ArtistData - update your calendar once and sync with your Web site, etc. ArtistData was bought by SonicBids a year or so ago. It’s a terrific free resource, but no one is sure how long it will stay that way.
CrowdBooster and Visibli - understand what’s working and what’s not. Re-tweets are a good way to judge the reach and effectiveness of your engagement on Twitter. Each of these resources offers a free version with basic analytics. The paid versions provide more in-depth information about who is engaging with your tweets.
Here’s an analysis of Austin-based Jean Synodinos‘ tweets for the past 14 days using Visibli. Jean mounted a social media campaign during September to offer a free download of her new album, “Girls, Good and Otherwise.”
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Like many of these analytics products, you can get information on anyone’s Twitter account or shared link. I chose Jean’s because I personally re-tweeted her link yesterday and I was curious about how many others did as well.
I think that covers everything. Whew. Back to SWRFA now. If you haven’t been and you’re interested in the folk and acoustic music community in the Southwest, put it on your calendar for 2012. Its a terrific conference of a manageable size, so you can come away really feeling like you’ve met and connected with a lot of people!
5 Things you are Doing Wrong on Facebook
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Fan engagement, Social Media on July 19, 2011
For independent musicians, Facebook is the new frontier for fan engagement. But the twists and turns can seem daunting, not to mention the near constant changes.
So “5 Things you are Doing Wrong on Facebook” may seem harsh, but don’t worry…. these are easy fixes. That’s not to say that the bigger issue of engaging fans is a quick fix, it is not. But let’s at least start with these easy steps in the right direction.
What are you doing wrong?
1. Sending fans to random Community pages rather than your Fan Page
When you filled out profile information, what did you put down for Employment? Did you use something clever like “employed by my guitar” or “self employed and loving it?” Click that link and see where it goes. Wouldn’t you rather be sending people curious about your business to your actual Facebook Fan Page? You can link directly to it there, and you should.
2. Inviting ALL your friends to your local events
Facebook events are quickly becoming “just so much noise” because the greater community is not policing itself to take the time to target invitations. If you want your events to have impact, use them judiciously, target them appropriately, make them interesting and engaging, and follow up.
3. Exposing your low attendee list
When you create your Facebook event, you have the option to hide your attendee list. Do that. Leave that little box clicked until your event has reached a critical mass of committed attendees.
4. Tagging your photos to your profile rather than your Music Page
Did you know you can now tag a Fan Page in photos? Do that, and encourage others to do it as well. The point of tagging is so you can follow the link back to the place to connect with the person who is tagged. You want to send people to your Fan Page.
5. Not differentiating between your Profile and your Fan Page
I can’t tell the difference between Suzy Songwriter the profile and Suzy Songwriter the Fan Page if Suzy has them identified with the same name (as opposed to Suzy Songwriter Music for her Fan Page) and if she uses the same profile picture for both. What’s more, if she posts exactly the same thing to both at the same time (as happens when you use a social media aggregator like HootSuite or Artist Data), I’m going to eliminate one of them – probably the Fan Page.
And what can you do about it?
Most of these are easy fixes. Truly engaging your fans, however, takes a bit more thought and ingenuity on your part. More on that next time… For now, here’s a quick tutorial on how to link to your Fan Page as your employer.
1. From your Facebook Profile page, click EDIT PROFILE
2. From the menu on the left, click EDUCATION AND WORK
3. Click the X at the far right of whatever you currently have listed as your employer.
4. Click inside the box for EMPLOYER and type in the name of your Facebook page, exactly as it appears.
5. Click the Blue Bar that appears below the box you are typing in, and you’ll see the photo icon of your page. If you see a blue suitcase icon, you have not entered the page name correctly, or you are not an admin for your page.
6. Click ADD JOB at the bottom of the employer section of your screen
Getting organized on Facebook and Twitter
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Fan engagement, Organization, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter on April 17, 2011
I’ve spent a lot of time lately in conversations about how to use certain functions of Facebook and Twitter. One thing keeps coming up – lists. Facebook and Twitter lists are a great way to categorize your contacts so you can make your connections really count for you.
Facebook Lists
Facebook’s help pages are pretty helpful, including how to create Facebook lists. The bigger question, though, is why create a Facebook list and how can you use it to your advantage?
If you’re like me, you have friends, family, acquaintances, business contacts – all kinds of connections on Facebook. My personal policy is that I don’t friend people I do not already have a relationship with. But between high school and college friends, fellow songwriters and musicians, presenters and DJs I’ve met through Folk Alliance, fans of our music and music business contacts not to mention 25 years worth of clients, reporters, analysts and other contacts from my business career, well, I have a lot of Facebook friends.
I use Facebook lists to categorize my contacts for two reasons. First, I can filter my news feed only on the category I’m interested in. I might want to look at just what my local friends are up to, for example. Second, I can target my Facebook posts to certain groups.
The danger to Facebook as a useful resource is the “blast to all” mentality. When you blast everything to everyone – even things that are only relevant to a subset of your friends, pretty soon people tune you out. I posted a while back asking if anyone had experience with shredding services in San Jose, California, for example. I targeted that post only to my local contacts, so as not to clutter the news feeds of my non local friends.
This is the feature that our kids love, by the way. I know I’m not seeing all the photos and wall posts from my daughter at UCLA – which I’m quite grateful for, thank you very much.
Twitter Lists
Likewise on Twitter, lists are a great way to categorize those you follow… and to see a news stream from just those in a certain category. And you don’t have to follow someone to put them on a list. Twitter’s support page has a good tutorial on how to create Twitter lists. Lists can be private, so only you can see who’s categorized in what way – or public so others can reference the list you’ve created. Public lists are a great way to discover new people to follow and connect with. I’m on several public lists of musicians, songwriters, PR consultants and friends.
Organizing your Feeds
Making sense out of all the friends and followers can be a challenge, even with lists. I’ve used various social media dashboards over the years, starting with NetVibes, then TweetDeck and now Hootsuite. I love the Hootsuite browser-based interface as well as the iPad app – which doesn’t crash like the TweetDeck app did. In addition to your own Twitter stream, mentions and DMs, with Hootsuite you can create news streams based on keyword searches or individual Twitter accounts. Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds can be customized into your view of your online world.
For the creatives that I typically talk to, this all seems overwhelming at first. But if you’re in the process of embracing social media as a way to engage your fans and potential fans, getting organized is essential.
New Facebook Page Layout: the good with the bad
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Fan engagement, Social Media on February 10, 2011
Finally, we can participate in the conversation as our Facebook Page identity, NOT just our profile.
This is HUGE.
Just in the past week, another musician friend told me she wanted to focus on her Facebook Fan Page identity, keeping her personal Facebook profile reserved for family and close friends. The changes announced today make that much more practical because you can now post and participate in conversations on other profiles and pages as your PAGE rather than just as your PROFILE.
This was the major obstacle preventing me from creating a Blender Brain Facebook Page – I thought “what’s the point if I still have to post elsewhere from my profile identity?”
But, as we’ve come to expect from Facebook, the improvements always seem to come with some bloopers.
YAY to being able to join the conversation based on our PAGE identities.
NAY to re-ordering wall posts hierarchically rather than chronologically
YAY to showing Page Likes
NAY to moving Tabs underneath the photo
YAY to easier navigation to Insights and Page editing
NAY to reducing custom tab real estate
That’s okay, we’ll get used to it. So let’s just be grateful for the Yays!
How Much Time Should I Spend on Social Media?
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Fan engagement, Music Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking on February 7, 2011
There are no short cuts in life.
Trouble is, most of us are very busy and as entrepreneurs we wear many hats. So its no wonder that when we see something that might make our lives easier we jump on it – and when we see something that looks like it’s just going to take more time, we wisely shy away.
I get asked these same questions over and over again:
- Do I really need a Facebook page in addition to my profile?
- Should I be on Twitter?
- How much time should I spend on social media?
Engaging in social media marketing is a time consuming endeavor, as is creating and diligently executing and effective marketing plan day in and day out. What I try to do through my workshops and consulting practice is first to educate clients and participants about what’s changed in the way we communicate online, and how social media might fit into their overall fan engagement and marketing plans. And yes, we talk about why you might want a Facebook page in addition to your profile, as well as the ins and outs of Twitter. Only by understanding the options can you make qualified decisions about what you want to take on, what you want to hire out, and how to manage your resources wisely.
Back to that question of “how much time.”
To really engage an audience via social media takes a lot of time. The Cloud Spark Agency surveyed social media practitioners about how much time is required for effective social media marketing. This was the bottom line result:
It takes at least 65 hours a week to maintain 4 social media channels for 1 brand.
Yes, WOW, that’s a lot. The Cloud Spark agency survey was focused on branding teams within marketing agencies, so that 65 hours amounts to one full time and one part time person to plan the campaign, create the presence, engage the community and measure the results.
No wonder it feels overwhelming.
As an artist entrepreneur, its obvious that you don’t have 65 hours a week to spend on social media, so what’s enough, and how can you best manage your time?
There are as many approaches to managing time on social media as there as unique individuals battling with the question. Only you can determine what works with your balance of office time/creative time, but remember that its not all about you. It’s about effectively engaging with your audience, so look at your choices from their perspective in addition to your own.
- Your followers can tell when you’re cramming all of your posts into the two hours you’ve carved out one day a week.
- If you’re not engaging in the conversation on a consistent basis, your promotional announcements will tend to fall on deaf ears.
- Try engaging one channel first, rather than trying to be everywhere at once.
Remember, its not Facebook or Twitter that will engage your audience, its you.
Email vs. Social Media
Posted by Bev Barnett in Email Marketing, Facebook, Fan engagement, Music Marketing, Social Media on February 3, 2011
That sounds so confrontational, doesn’t it? Like the image should be an email envelope icon duking it out with the infamous blue Facebook F.
On the Social Media Today Blog today, Pam More explores the question “Best Choice: Facebook LIKE or Qualified eMail Address?“ Like Pam, I’ll go for the qualified email address every time.
Greg and I with Cilette and Roman of Gypsy Soul
I hold up the international touring duo Gypsy Soul as the poster children of fan engagement quite a lot, and for good reason. They’ve build a strong fan base over the past twenty years by going out and engaging their fans, truly loving them, and giving them a reason to want to stay connected.
Gypsy Soul’s Cilette Swann told me years ago, if you’re standing at the CD table and you have a choice to sell a CD to one person, or lose that sale and get the email address of other, let the sale go. When you have an email address from someone who wants to give it to you, you’ve made a lasting and much more valuable connection.
Check Gypsy Souls’ Fan Photos for just a glimpse into the lasting connections they’ve made over the years.
But, no one pays attention to their email anymore!
I don’t believe that. What I do believe is that we are inundated with so much email that we do discard what we don’t need at that moment, or what we have come to believe is not relevant to us. That’s the real definition of SPAM, by the way, which I lamented at length in a post earlier this year. Successful marketers deliver valuable content to an audience that wants to receive it. That’s relationship-based marketing, and it beats the “shotgun to everyone I can think of” approach every time.
Moore goes on in her blog post (which is worth reading in its entirety btw) to give her point by point reasons for picking the qualified email address over the Facebook LIKE. The one that resonates most with me is this:
“Likes” are good but the real value comes in your ability to inspire them to action past the “like.”Just because someone “likes” your page doesn’t mean they have ever looked at anything you’ve posted since the first day they clicked “like”. The majority of Facebook “likers” will never visit the page they liked again. It’s up to you to inspire your Facebook fans to further engage and join your community.
So that’s the key. How will you inspire your fans to take action, whether via Facebook or email?
Just say no to free iPads
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Internet Security, Privacy, Social Networking, Technology on January 31, 2011
The Free iPad Phishing Scam is back. In the past 24 hours or so, several friends have fallen victim. In case you haven’t run across it yet, here’s what it looks like.
There are no free iPads, by the way.
Because Facebook is where we interact with friends, it’s fertile ground for social engineering – an automated online con game of sorts in which a victim is tricked into breaking normal security procedures because the suggestion appeared to come from a friend.
This isn’t new. Phishing has been prevalent in email since day one – and as social networking becomes part of our daily lives, it’s no wonder that the phishing would find its way here as well. In fact, social networking channels seem tailor made for socially engineered phishing scams. The team of security researchers I worked with at FaceTime Communications (now Actiance) ran across these every day on all social networking channels – and corporate IT managers have been concerned about social networking for years.
If the iPad phishing link shows up on your page, first hover your cursor over to the right of the post until you see [X Remove this Post] and click that X. Do not click anywhere on the link, do not Like, do not Share, do not Comment, do not See Friendship.
Hacking vs. Phishing
The banter around Facebook is “your page got hacked.” In reality, however, this is phishing rather than hacking. Hemanshu Nigam, founder of security consulting company SSP Blue, explained the difference in last weeks’ LA Times article about Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s own page being compromised:
“Hacking is when you’re actually breaking the code — you have to hack into Facebook’s system,” he said. “It’s easier to exploit in through phishing,” he said “It’s also easy as a user of Facebook to be on guard and not click on a link you don’t think your friend would send.”
How Can you Tell?
Well, start with the fact that if its too good to be true, it probably is. Follow that with this: if it didn’t come from Facebook, its a potential danger. This was the case with last year’s Dislike Button. A good place to get the straight scoop is on the Naked Security Blog, where researchers from security software maker Sophos report on the latest bouts of malware and phishing scams as well as changes and updates to Facebook’s privacy and security settings.
In fact, following the Sophos Naked Security blog is Tip #1 in Make Use Of’s 5 Tips and Tricks to avoid Facebook Scams published earlier this year this month.
What if you DID click?
Graham Cluley from the Naked Security Blog will walk you through the steps to clean up the spam and check your Facebook settings to remove the applications that you may have unwittingly given permission to post to your wall.
The reality is, social networks are a gold mine for scammers, spammers and criminals. Just use your common sense, be a little suspicious, don’t give away login information or financial details, and be sure of where your’e headed before you click.
How to Prevent a Facebook Profile Hack
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Privacy, Social Networking on January 25, 2011
You’ve seen it happen, you may have even done it yourself.
We’re trusting of our friends, so we’re more likely to “click before we think” when we’re on Facebook. That’s what hackers depend on, and its called social engineering. If a stranger sends an email using questionable grammar and suggesting you click on a link to find out if you’ve won a large cash prize, well, common sense will usually prevail and you’ll delete the email immediately.
But when you’re on Facebook and a smiling friend posts a link that suggests you click to read more about a funny girl who is “so busted” for what she did on Facebook… that’s where the trouble begins.
How can you tell what you’re clicking on?
Buddy Miller’s song You Wrecked up My Heart includes one of my favorite lyrics of all time… “I should have looked both ways before I pulled out on the highway of your love.” I love Buddy Miller. Let’s use that same advice when we’re working online, whether its Facebook, email or surfing the Web.
Whenever you hover your cursor over a live link, you can view the destination URL of that link in the lower left hand corner of your browser, or email client screen. It lets you look both ways, so to speak, before you pull out on the information highway.
In the example below, two links have been shared to this Facebook Wall. The top link is a blog post from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee about Keith Olbermann’s departure from MSNBC. If you were on this Facebook page and hovered your cursor over the link itself, you’d see the full URL of the blog post on the lower left, as shown.
The bottom post is a Facebook social engineering hack. Well okay, I don’t know for CERTAIN because I didn’t click on it. But I’m suspicious. It promises laughs about whatever this girl did on Facebook that got her “so busted.” If you hovered over this link, you’d see what is called a referral link.
There are many services available that will shorten a long URL, such as the kind generated by blog posts like this one, and refer to the original page when it is clicked. TinyURL was the original service that has been around for awhile. Largely prompted by Twitter’s 140 character requirement, there are many link shortening referral services available including http://bit.ly which allows you to track who clicks on your shortened links.
Shortened referral links can be extremely useful. The problem is, you can’t tell where you’re going until you get there.
This is where you have to use your judgment, and think twice about your confidence in the destination of a referral link. Consider whether or not your Facebook friend would really post the story about the girl who is so busted.
How to Prevent Facebook Hacks
There are steps you can take to prevent Facebook profile hacking, or at least be notified if and when someone other than you logs onto your profile. Facebook allows you to associate your profile specifically with the computers you typically use, and will notify you if and when your account is accessed by a computer that you have not registered.
Mashable, a popular source for news about social and digital media, published a great article in May 2010, How to get notified when someone hacks your Facebook, with step-by-step instructions for implementing Facebook’s preventative measure.
And if you hover your cursor over the highlighted words in the previous paragraph, you’ll see the actual destination URL of the Mashable blog post.
If only it were that easy to check before you pull out onto the highway of love, eh?
The new Facebook Profile: its not about YOU
Posted by Bev Barnett in Facebook, Fan engagement, Social Media on January 20, 2011
… it’s about how YOUR AUDIENCE SEES YOU.
This has been a point of confusion since the new Facebook profile was rolled out late last year. Let’s be honest, a significant percentage of Facebook users are resistant to change. Here’s the thing: even if you delayed switching over yourself, everyone else has been seeing your profile in the new format all along. Why does that matter?
If you’re not paying attention, you’re not in control of how people see you online.
And that probably doesn’t matter so much to my cousin in Texas who logs on once in awhile to see pics of our family.But it matters very much to the millions on Facebook who are engaging fans, developing business relationships, connecting and networking in their fields whether its music, or spirituality, health and wellness, retail business or any other sector.
My husband Greg Newlon has what I think is the perfect explanation of Facebook: you’re sitting on your porch, and people walk by once in awhile. Sometimes they stay to chat, sometimes they just wave, and sometimes they see you even if you didn’t’ see them. Its all about connections, which is at the core of fan and customer engagement.
I just gave a workshop at the emPower Music and Arts Conference in Orlando Florida, to a group of mostly musicians. There were many ah ha moments among the attendees, but this one resulted in a hug, collective, eye opening ah HAAAA.
Linking your Facebook Profile to your Facebook Music or Business Page
Facebook now automatically creates a business page for every single employer that anyone has ever indicated on their Info page. And it links to them. And it displays this link right up top on your profile page.
If you’ve indicated your employer is something generic, like Self Employed Musician, Facebook will create a Business Page called Self Employed Musician and the link to that page will be active on your profile. So what? This can send people away from you and to a page that is either blank, or if its a more general term like Musician, the page will aggregate posts from your connections regarding that term, as well as external content.
Above, you’ll see the Self Employed Musician page from Facebook. 372 people “Like” this page. And there is no content.
You can’t control how Facebook designs the site. There are myriad Facebook pages and groups where you can complain about the new Facebook profile if you’re into that.
On the other hand, you CAN learn to understand and make the most of it.
If you have a Facebook Page for your music or your business, edit your info section to make sure you are indicating your employer as that Facebook Page. For example, our Musician/Band page is Bev Barnett & Greg Newlon. If I type in Bev Barnett & Greg Newlon as my employer, Facebook links to our page. as you see here:
If you work for a company that has a Facebook Page and you want to link to it, just plug in the name and Facebook will recognize it as a page. If you work for a large company that doesn’t have a Facebook Page, go ahead and enter that name because the Facebook Business Page is probably active – it will aggregate content from around Facebook as well as external sites like Wikipedia.
If you don’t have a Facebook Music Page or Business Page and you don’t want one, I suggest leaving the employer field blank. There’s no sense offering up a link to nowhere when those who’ve stopped by may just want to hang out on your front porch for awhile.
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The Blender Brain
Welcome to Bev's Blender Brain, the Web home of singer, songwriter and technology communications consultant Bev Barnett. Left and right brain thinking blend as I explore changes in technology and how we communicate - as well as presenting ideas and tips for how creative individuals can break through the stigma and fear of marketing to embrace the practice of finding, nurturing and building an audience. The answers aren't always black or white.
