Courtesy of lighthouseinsights.in

Why Milestones Matter

In life, a milestone is defined as a significant event or stage that happens in the overall development of a particular person, place or thing. On Facebook, your milestone area is exactly that – a space for you to share the special events and moments of your businesses life, with your fans.

To get it right, you have to be creative, honest and willing to dig deep into your past to pull out some priceless gems. These will matter most to your fans.

Using Milestones Like a Pro

The first step is scroll down to the very bottom of your Facebook page – where it all began. You’ll want to add in your founders date. Don’t forget to upload an image that communicates the emotion of the occasion to your fans. Some businesses have even gone in and created milestones before the founding date.

How did the name of their business come into being? How did the two main business partners meet? These extras really help personalize the process.

Once your founders date is set, grab a piece of paper and create a bit of a mindmap of the best events that have happened over the last few years. They can be personal, or strictly business orientated – like the day you bought your first office, or a photo of your first customer. Fans love to see the evolution of your brand this way.

Facts and Figures Enhance Your Identity

Fans want to know how your business grew and became what it is today. The easiest way to communicate this is to use facts and figures. These can be laid out in flashy graphs, charts and diagrams – or they can be stated as a quote, or a great image that relates to the stat in one way or another.

One milestone for example, would be your fan page reaching 1000 users. Striking images are important on milestone posts, as the update stretches across your entire Facebook page. The brighter and better your image, the more fans will like and share them.

Key Elements To Remember When Creating Milestones

• Milestones should follow a sequential storyline, so that they orientate your fans in the history and success of your brand and business.
• Don’t be afraid to get personal – if the birth of your first son affected the direction of your business, create a milestone for it.
• Milestones don’t necessarily have to be true. Many fun brands use them as an amusing tool to capture the attention of their fans. These milestones aren’t strictly true, but they’re a lot of fun to read.

So – get to it! Your Facebook page just isn’t complete without a few great milestones to let your fans really know who you are. Take advantage of this space, you’ll be surprised how popular these posts can become.

Do you have an interesting idea for a Facebook milestone? Leave it here!

Courtesy of caribguerra.com

The Positive Influence on Your Brand

The most immediate and long lasting positive influence for brands has been the additional cover space, that can be used as a promo area. In fact, one could argue that the entire design is geared towards exposure and control.

With features like ‘pin it,’ ‘highlight it’ and the ability to completely customize your app areas – timeline has made juggling large volumes of content easy. Facebook has also made it easier to gain new fans with their ‘reach generator’ advertising system and ‘build audience’ option in the analytics section.

The Negative Influence on Your Brand

If you’re a lover of automated posting, then Facebook timeline probably ruined it for you with all the timeline changes. A lot of bloggers for example, used the ‘networked blogs’ app to let other people know that they had just posted a blog. The posting was always automatic.

Facebook has decided that third party apps aren’t as important as direct communication – so you barely see these updates. Another massive ‘fail’ for timeline users, is that their default landing tab fell away. No more targeted, direct interaction from that app.

Something else I’ve heard a lot, is that Facebook timeline isn’t very user friendly. You can’t really work out how it works, unless you read some expert blogs, or Youtube the heck out of relevant apps and installations. It can be a time drain.

By far the largest negative influence has been timeline itself. Many people simply don’t like it, and as a result – they’ve stopped interacting on your pages. All you can do is give them time to come around.

3 Supersonic Suggestions For Timeline Dominance

Timeline has been built for brands out of a series of positives – more exposure, better interaction and more effective ways of reaching potential fans. The only things in the way really, are the negatives.

• Stop auto-posting, unless you’re using Facebook’s own brand new scheduling tool. It’s simple to use, and better for your edgerank score.
• Make your landing tab one of the three tabs you get to see on your timeline homepage. The first two are already taken, but the third can be a great place for your interactive app.
• Finally, do yourself a favor and test out the new ad platform. But only do it when you’re running some great specials on your page. It’s incredibly effective, and leads highly responsive fans straight to your business.

Fix these negatives, and soon Facebook timeline will be nothing but positive for your business! There isn’t much you can do about public attitude towards timeline – all you can do is make sure that your page is streamlined, optimized and ready for any users that come across it.

How do you use Facebook timeline to get fans? Tell me about it here.

Courtesy of socialnewsdaily.com

#1: A Facebook Forum

Just in case your fans love to chat so much that they need a forum, add the app to your Facebook page. It’s well worth it for market research, and an increase in fan interaction.

#2: Scribd For Portfolio Sites

If you need to impress your fans with images, slideshow presentations, PDF’s, documents and other portfolio items, use the Scribd app for Facebook. Your fans will love it.

#3: Google Maps

If you run a brick and mortar business, and rely on a lot of ‘walk-in’ traffic – make it easy for your fans to find your shop by including the ‘Google Maps’ app in your timeline.

#4: Involver RSS For Pages

Have you been looking for a good blog app? Use RSS for Pages, and your fans will be able to read your blog directly from your Facebook tab.

#5: The Pinterest App

If you’re a huge Pinterest fan, then add your Pinterest profile to your business page. Your fans will be able to see all of your great marketing-orientated images.

#6: The Contact Tab

The Contact Tab Demo Company provides a great contact form interface, which includes all of your contact info, maps, social icons, URLS and more – all in one place. It’s great!

#7: Youtube Video App

If you have a Youtube feed, then your feed needs to be on Facebook. The good news is that your video is much larger than it used to be, across the entire page.

#8: Twitter App

A Twitter app on your Facebook page is a must-have, to give your Facebook fans some quick and juicy info from your business. Just remember, don’t link your Twitter and FB accounts!

#9: FAQ App

If you’re a law firm, accountant or web designer – your business needs a FAQ section. Add this app to your Facebook timeline, so that fans can have easy access to your details.

#10: Customize

Get a Facebook app built that will compliment your business presence. For example, if your main goal is to sell your ‘ebooks’ then get an app built that does this for you.

Each of these 10 app suggestions will improve your social presence in the eyes of your fans. When you take the time to build a great timeline profile, it will pay off! Facebook has become more and more like a social ‘website’ for your business – so take advantage of it!

It’s a great idea to look into having your own custom apps created. Nearly all of the professionals and large brands do it, because it enhances their user-experience. When your users are happy, you’ll get more interaction out of your page, and that means more business!

Which apps on this list have you found the most useful and why? I’d like to hear how your business benefits from this list.

Courtesy of money.cnn.com

Where Facebook Stands

• Facebook Users: 800 million
• Facebook Active Users: 794 million
• User Time Spent Per Month: 7.5 hours

Where Google+ Stands

• Google+ Users: 100 million
• Google+ Active Users: 50 million (though this includes logged in during general search)
• User Time Spent Per Month: 3.3 minutes

The ‘War’ Defined

You can see from these telling numbers that Google+ hasn’t quite ‘eclipsed’ Facebook, like the Internet said it might. While Google+ sign-ups continue to grow, there is a distinct lack of interest from their users. It seems as though people are signing up, and losing interest – then popping in every now and then to see if Google+ has anything good to offer.

While Google analysts predict that Google+ will reach 400 million users by the end of this year, the question still remains – will Google+ be a REAL social network, or just a really popular network to sign up for and never use again?

To us – the war is OVER, if there ever was one. Google+ still offers many great SEO and search benefits, but as a social network 3.3 minutes per month doesn’t lie. It just doesn’t have the same addictive features as Facebook, and will always play second fiddle.

That is – after Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube and the other bigger, better social sites. Google will continue to adapt Google+, and who knows – maybe they’ll create something that fixes the problem. Until then, it looks like we can put those initial challenges to rest.

Google+ is absolutely NO threat to Facebook, its user base or popularity.

The Continued Rise of Facebook

Facebook is literally moments away from going public, selling shares on the open market to anyone that wants to invest. The news media is saying that by the end of Friday, Facebook will be worth 100 billion dollars. There are bound to be some changes, I’m sure we can all rest easy that it will still be the Facebook we know and love by the end of it.

Plus, Facebook is still on track to hit 1 billion users by the end of the year. That’s a large chunk of the population using one social site! At this rate, we’ll be surprised if we ever see headlines again proclaiming Google’s pending dominance of Facebook.

But, in social media – nothing is set in stone. With sites like Pinterest rising from obscurity in a matter of months, and the ever increasing speed of virality, Google+ may yet be redeemed. One thing is pretty certain, if they want to play in the same pool as Facebook, they need an ace in the hand. Google+ needs to change.

Why do you think Google+ has ‘lost’ the war against Facebook? I’d love to hear your opinion.

Courtesy of mobilitybeat.com

What is The Highlight Feature?

You’ll notice when you’re on your timeline business page, that there are two little button options on the top right corner of each new post that you publish. One is the ‘edit or remove’ button, the other is the highlight feature!

What Does it Do?

When you click on the highlight feature it spreads your page post across both areas of your timeline, instead of fixing it on the right or left of your page. This is great for important posts, announcements, promotions or a new photo album that you’ve uploaded.

How Can I Use The Highlights Feature?

• Use the highlights feature to draw attention to images that enhance your business. They could be product images, event images or personal profile images. Use these images to give away incentives, or run a competition.

• If your business has a lively Youtube page, your highlights section can come in handy to attract more views. Simply post your video, do your write-up and highlight.

• If your questions posts are longer than normal, and you haven’t been receiving many answers, use the highlights feature. More prominence means more answers.

• Done a great infographic recently? Draw attention to it with the highlights feature. Make sure that your intro line is attention grabbing, and let people know it’s something you’ve done for your business.

• If you have a product launch coming up, this is exactly what you need to trump up some hype for the launch. It’s also fantastic ad space for direct sales. If you have an online-store, you’ll want to use this space.

• Transform a highlights post into a mini Facebook forum. Use your questions post, or create a discussion topic of your own, and get your fans to chat there with you!

Expert Tip!

I’ve seen several timeline pages choose to highlight all of their posts, to make them easier to see, and to offer a simplified version of their timeline to their fans. Great idea!

What’s New With Highlights?

As I mentioned earlier, highlights is back in the news. Facebook is testing a ‘paid’ feature, that will allow timeline owners to pay for guaranteed views or placement. In other words, you pay a few dollars to have your highlights post seen by more of your fans, in their newsfeed.

This is great news for small businesses that need to attract more interactivity on their timeline pages. Simply pay the amount via Paypal, and your post will appear in your fan feeds automatically – something that would only happen after a few likes, comments and shares in the past.

I’m not putting too much stock in the rumors that Facebook will eventually become a paid site, all this is – is Mark Zuckerberg giving the little guy more opportunity to get their brand out there. More news when an official announcement is made.

Will you use the new $2.00 highlights feature?

Courtesy of fbcovers.com

Facebook Time: The Good

What is the absolute BEST part about the new Facebook timeline? The page revival that Facebook has built in, thanks to their new reach generator advertising offering. The problem with engagement on Facebook, is that once people like your business, they never again return to your page. Why should they? They have a newsfeed!

This doesn’t always align with your business goals, especially if you’re trying to stick to the 80/20 rule of content publication. People should be seeing your promos and deals all the time, but they can only do so on your new ‘sales’ Facebook timeline page.

Grab some of your most liked and chatted about promos and turn them into ads, with a link straight back to your Facebook page. Conversions can rise as much as 40%! Believe it!

Facebook Timeline: The Bad

Right now, the most pressing ‘bad’ thing about Facebook timeline is that no-one knows how to use it yet. Then there’s the fact that Facebook owns everything you publish on timeline. Publish a fantastic slogan on Facebook first, and it belongs to them. While you will probably never be sued for it (Facebook is not that interested in us), it’s still a concern for celebs.

Then, the elephant in the Facebook room. People really, really hated it when it first came out, and aside from marketers that are catching onto the brand potential – normal users STILL hate it. Whether this will affect engagement on brand pages in the future is anyone’s guess. I’m going to carry on hoping that people snap out of it, and realize timeline is great.

Facebook Timeline: The Ugly

What could possibly be worse than the general public hating timeline? Well, the reasons why people hate timeline, of course! Popular opinion states that it’s mainly because every last terrible, embarrassing or horrible post you’ve ever made on Facebook has suddenly reappeared on your page. And timeline was not optional, it was forced upon you!

For businesses, all you have to do is comb through the rubble and hide the posts you don’t want people to see. But it’s also a good idea to make your timeline page as fan friendly as possible. They already don’t like the new layout, so you have to give them a real reason to want to stay on your page. Apps, videos, images and great content will do that.

So, Facebook timeline is still the prince of the social media world. And sometimes, princes have to make tough decisions for the people, that people might not like. In the end – they’ll thank Facebook for it.

Do you have a good, bad and ugly comment on Facebook timeline? Tell me what you love, hate and are irritated by the most!

Courtesy of vionicapps.com

The Facebook Promo Do’s

#1: Do Use Your Facebook App Space

You can add a custom made app to your timeline, and drive traffic to it with Facebook ads and content marketing. These apps can be highly interactive, are great for collecting email sign-ups, running text marketing campaigns, or selling products directly from your page.

#2: Do Use Your Timeline Cover Image

Use your timeline cover image as additional promotion space, to plug your products, webinars, content or event. Its prime real estate, and you’ll get lots of responses.

#3: Do Use Your Timeline Pinning Function

Craft a great, engaging post and get lots of people to comment, share and like it. Then pin this promotional post to the top of your page, for 40% more interaction over time.

#4: Do Compliment Your Promo With Ads

Use Facebook’s new reach generator and ‘post as ads’ system to turn your posts into adverts, and to drive traffic straight to your optimized timeline profile.

#5: Do Create a Viral Group For a Competition

Create a group and add people to it. Get your friends and their friends to add more and more people to the group – and get them to enter the competition or giveaway.

The Facebook Promo Don’ts

#6: Don’t Request Long Comments Outside Apps

Get your fans to comment or reply to competitions by doing it through your Facebook app. Otherwise your brand timeline will be cluttered with random answers and banter.

#7: Don’t Use Check Ins or Likes as Entries

Facebook prohibits users from using the check-in or like function as a way to enter a competition, or take part in a sweepstake or giveaway.

#8: Don’t Post One Announcement

A promotion runs for a while, which means it needs to be hyped, planned and executed on the platform. One announcement, or random promo post won’t help your cause.

#9: Don’t Announce Winners on Facebook

Facebook still doesn’t allow winners to be announced on Facebook. Use Twitter to do this, and then publish a congratulatory post on Facebook to cover your tracks.

#10: Don’t Wait For Responses To Happen

Posting a promo on Facebook and waiting for responses can be like watching paint dry. Figure out how to get people involved. Comment on other groups, drive traffic to your promotion, tweet about it, offer incentives and get moving!

There you go, the do’s and don’ts of launching a promotion on Facebook. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t include ‘Facebook’ in your display, cover or ad art. Facebook doesn’t allow it. Other than that, get creative – use every avenue available to you, including your blog!

How do you promote products and services on Facebook? Share with your SMM community!

Courtesy of Creative Guerrilla Marketing

#1: Use Your Cover as a Promo Tool

Change your cover often to support your promotional goals, and enhance events, launches and announcements.

#2: Do Something Awesome With Your Profile Box

Incorporate the profile box into your cover art, for an awe-inspiring design experience for your fans to enjoy.

#3: Change Your Tab Image Covers

Change the cover images for your tabs, by clicking the option in your admin panel. Make them attractive with word prompts and clean graphics.

#4: Change The Order of Your Tabs

If you’re trying to promote one of your tabs, then change the order to make it prominent. This is great if you’ve just launched a new app, or have a deal running.

#5: Put Your Website Link Where it Counts

Place your website link at the beginning of your ‘about’ write up. More clicks! You can also use this space to promote webinars, sales pages, blog pages and videos.

#6: Pin a Popular or Important Post

You can choose an important promo post, or a popular one and pin it to the top of your profile. It increases interaction on that post by 40%!

#7: Use Pinned Posts For Social Proof

Use the pin area on your Timeline to showcase customer reviews, comments and compliments.

#8: Remove All Useless Posts

Sweep through your entire Timeline, and ‘hide’ all posts that aren’t excellent, interactive and awesome. It leaves more room for current posts that are more relevant.

#9: Take Advantage of Timeline Histories

People LOVE stories, so tell your brand story by taking advantage of Timeline history. Set milestones for special events, and use photos to make it an emotional experience for your fans.

#10: Change It Up, When You Can

Your cover, pinned post, tab order and images should change to suit your current Facebook marketing goals. That’s the magic of the new Timeline.

#11: Use The Shiny New App Space

Fans can now view your apps on ‘wide view’ so check that you’re not having sizing issues on your current apps, and make use of the new option.

#12: Timeline Posts To Fuel Ads and Pull Traffic Back In

Most fans like a page and NEVER go back there. To change this, use the new Facebook reach generator ‘posts as ads’ service, to get your fans back where they belong.

Use these killer tips to re-define your Facebook presence, grow your community and cash in on the Timeline changes. They’re so much better than the old brand pages! You just need to learn how they all work together for your Facebook success.

Do you have any questions about the new Facebook Timeline? I’ll answer them for you, just leave your question below.

Courtesy of mashable.com

New Fan Page Timelines

You’ve seen the timeline changes on your personal profiles – now say hello to the same format on your brand page! This changes your entire Facebook strategy and effectively eliminates a lot of functionality, that used to be part-and-parcel of the old format. But what does this mean?

It means we’re entering the age of extreme-social.

It’s been happening rapidly over the last several months, fueled by Google’s networking philosophy, Youtube changes and Twitter updates. Now Facebook has revealed their plan – no more junk sales nonsense. It’s all social, all the time. In other words, your new profiles are meant for real time interaction, not for contrived marketing messages, sales and stagnant promotion.

• Custom set tab features will become extinct, replaced by better apps
• This means no more landing pages, but it does mean great app potential
• Can’t use your cover photo for promotions of any kind
• No more contact details in your profile photos
• No more asking people nicely to like your page!
• No more calls to action

Basically Facebook is sucking the sales poison out of your fan page, and replacing it with you. Real time interaction, customer relations and brand identity, culture and management. That’s it.

Advertising Super Punch

Facebook giveth and it taketh away. In this instance, Facebook is aggressively ramping up their advertising potential. Lucky us! Facebook announced yesterday that there are a lot of new places and things they’re doing with ad space.

• News feed ads from brands you or your friends like
• Ads on the right hand side that aren’t so much ads, as updates and info
• When you log out of Facebook – guess what? More ads!
• Ads will show up in your Facebook mobile news feed

This new functionality is excellent for brands and page owners. It allows you to get free ad space in user’s news feeds if they interact with you often, or you can pay for a variety of different spaces to maximize your ad efficiency.

All in all, Facebook is making serious in-roads on this ‘extreme-social’ idea. It looks like you won’t be able to force people to buy, or trick them into buying, or misuse your Facebook page for blatant promotions. And that’s the way it should be. Facebook is about interaction. It’s ALWAYS been about that.

Enough with the shock and awe already! This is a good thing for brands that have done what we’ve always recommended – focused on their fans. For everyone else that has relied on sales tricks to get this far, time to make some changes.

In the meantime, set up your new business fan page timeline. Make it personal. According to Facebook, it will help propel your brand into another social dimension.

Do you like the new fan page timelines? Tell us why you love or hate them right here!

Courtesy of socialtechpop.com

Mandatory Personal Timelines for Everyone

Facebook has finally made the new personal timelines mandatory for all users. This means if you haven’t switched over yet, you only have a few more weeks to do so – or it will change on its own. Timelines allow you to create a profile of your life, that your friends can interact with.

It also documents everything you publish – like a running story that never ends! So far, it’s encouraged a lot of users to put more thought into what they publish on Facebook – which has elevated the content value of the site. Hide the stories you don’t want people to see, and create a multimedia portrait instead.

Applications Add a Fresh Dynamic To Facebook

The Facebook applications that were released a few weeks ago, will really start to change the way people use the social network. The applications are refreshingly personal, and encourage real sharing between friends. The foodspotting app for example, is geared towards finding unique dishes, using the recipes, trying the food and sharing your views on the outcome.

We can look forward to engaging with people on a more personal level – sharing experiences and hobbies. Right now, these apps are for personal timelines only, but we have a feeling that they’ll have a lot more relevance to businesses, once Facebook changes our business pages.

Look Out! Business Pages Will Change!

The big news is that Facebook is planning to launch timeline for business fan pages. Marketers and small business owners are hesitant about the kind of interaction they’ll get from this HUGE change. It will restructure everything. Exactly how Facebook plans to do this and succeed – is as yet unknown.

Hopefully, you’ll still be able to add special sections onto your page, to attract fans. But this radical change may mean that the functionality we’re used to is thrown out of the window. Whatever happens, we just have to trust that Facebook has our best interests at heart.

Right now, many small business owners are creating second Facebook accounts – for professional reasons. The new timeline functionality allows you to set up a professional profile that will document your progress as an industry leader. You should think about doing this if you want to harness the power of Facebook for ‘celebrity’ reasons. Niche experts are getting a lot of success from this move.

Hold off on the application development for Facebook, until it’s clear what their intentions are for the business pages. Once they’re released it will be easier to chart a way forward. Until then, explore the features of your personal timeline.

Timelines for business pages? What do you think of this bold move by Facebook, and will it work? We want to hear from you!