1. Go to your Page. – In this case, I’ve gone to the Captico page.

2. Change User - On the far right side, Under “Edit Page” and “Admins” is a link called “Use Facebook as Captico” (or your company’s name). Clicking this brings up a dialog box (as shown on the right) which will allow me to navigate as use Facebook as my page (giving me the ability to comment on other pages as my page instead of as my personal profile). You can see that the link has now changed to “Use Facebook as Corrie” which I will click back to when I am done playing admin here. [If this is your first time with the new Layout, you may want to follow the Tour to see the new functions here].

3. Click the link.

Seriously. Facebook is now automatically prompting you on how to do this. It used to be a laborious and tricky process to link a Facebook PAGE to a Twitter account, but no more! make sure you are logged into the Twitter account you want your Page posts to go to, and click the “Click Here” text. You will be taken to http://www.facebook.com/twitter/ where you can select which of the Pages that you are an admin of that you wish to link to a twitter account.

4. Click “Link to Twitter” – Click the button to the right of your page and you will be taken to an authorization page like the one below. Click “Allow” and you will be redirected back to Facebook where you can customize what from your Facebook page will be automatically posted to your Twitter account.

5. Edit Settings – You can always go back and change these later, but here you can customize which of your posts to Facebook will automatically go out to your Twitter account.

If you need help with your social media accounts or campaign, contact us today. We will meet with you and co-create a custom strategy to best market you and your business.

Related Articles:

• Facebook’s New Pages Overhaul – More User Friendly
• Whats Quora? And Should I Care About Another Social Media Tool?
• How Does Twitter See Itself and What Are Its Plans and Priorities?
• Are our websites getting too crowded with social media apps?
• How Do I: Connect My Twitter and Facebook Accounts?
• Facebook’s New Spam Filter for Pages

Here is a quick trick on how to make Gifs! Since Christmas is around the corner I am doing a Christmas card gif as an example. My esteemed colleague Renee Alarid created a Christmas card and we wanted to add some sparkles to it so here is what I did:

First, bring the image into Photoshop.



You’ll also want to download some star brushes.

Deviantart.com has some good resources, but there are many free brush downloads out there.

Create some layers.

1. Create a layer called “stars 1”.
2. Add stars all over the image.
3. Create a second layer named “stars 2”.
4. Place another layer of stars all over the same image but in different areas.
5. Do the same again and add a 3^rd layer called “stars 3.”

On the bottom left hand corner of your screen you will see an area called animation frames, to create a new frame click on the layer looking icon.

Before you select the first frame, use the eye ball to select how you want the animation to look.

For example, in frame one, if you only want to see the stars from layer “stars 1” turn off the layers two and three and for frame 2 turn on only layer “stars 2” and create a new frame for that image.

Make sure to set the seconds at 0.2 on each frame (or the length you prefer) and “forever” so it is on a continuous loop.

Do a “save for Web and Devices” and save it as a Gif.

Finally, to test your Gif, drag the file into your Internet browser.

Check your animation. There you can copy and paste the image code if you plan to use the image in motion.

Enjoy & Happy Holidays Everyone!

You May Also Enjoy Reading:

• Color theory for a visual design: the meaning of color
• Creating Custom Icon Stencils in OmniGraffle – Tutorial
• Modules, widgets, boxes oh my! What do you call a box?
• CSS Sprites – Nettuts Tutorial
• Animation with RaphaëlJS

This guide will walk you through: Auto Posting your Twitter Updates to Facebook.

Why Do I Want To Automatically Post My Twitter Updates to Facebook?

In general, I am of the school of thought that this direction of linkage does not work as well as the reverse. The two social networks are used differently and people interact with them differently. If I follow a company or brand on Twitter and they post every day or a few times during the day – I enjoy that. If I follow a company or brand on Facebook and they are updating all the time (especially the limited content postable on Twitter) I get irritated very quickly and will either “hide” them or “unlike” them.

That said, if you don’t post often or have a different audience, and like the convenience and ease of posting just to Twitter (perhaps you’re on the go a lot), then this auto link may be a good way for you to keep your Facebook Profile or Page up to date without lots of log-ins. — Its also a good way for your Facebook friends to see (and then follow) that you have a Twitter account. –

How Do I Connect My Twitter Account to my Facebook Profile?

• Log into the Twitter account you want associated with your Facebook profile.
• Log into the Facebook account you want to link to.
• Go to the Applications page http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/ (shown below — you will notice confirmation of the Twitter account you want to link to, in this case @corrietweets)

• Click “Allow” — or click “Deny” if you’ve changed your mind (though you can always unlink later).
• Now you have some options: (show below)

• You can unlink or Disconnect your Twitter from your Facebook Profile.
• You can transfer your photo – meaning always use your Facebook photo on your Twitter account.
• You can select whether you will auto post updates to your Facebook Profile OR to a Page you manage.
• Share a link telling people that you’ve linked the accounts.

How Do I Connect My Twitter Account to a Facebook “Fan” Page?

Well, first you have to be an Admin of that page. Then follow the steps outlined above, but check the “Facebook Page” box and select the desired Page from the dropdown menu.

How Do I Make Changes or Edit this Application on My “Fan” Page?

• Go to your Fan Page.
• Click “Edit Page” under your picture.
• 
• Click “Applications” in the left hand navigation.

• Scroll down to the Twitter Application.
• Click “Go to Application”
• You will be taken to the main Permission Screen where you first chose your settings.

Thanks for reading and I hope this article helps! As always, if you have any questions or comments, we’d love to see them!

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• How Does Twitter See Itself and What Are Its Plans and Priorities?
• The Twitter “Firehose” is up for grabs – if you have the cash!
• How Do I Send Public and Private Messages on Twitter?
• How Do I Post Updates to Twitter?

• Anatomy of a Tweet – A Closer Look at Twitter
• How to Customize and Set Up Your Twitter Page
• How to Sign Up for a Twitter Account
• Side by Side Comparison of Old and New Twitter Interfaces
• The New Twitter – More than a Facelift?
• 12 Tools for Tracking Twitter Sentiment
• Twitter Apps and You – New Authorization Process
• Lance Armstrong, Twitter, and Google – Why Link Building and SEO Works
• Twitter launches new official TWEET button
• Twitter: Who To Follow Suggestions

Previously in this series we looked at How to Post Updates to Twitter, and discussed the 140 character limit. We dissected The Anatomy of a Tweet, back in March, focusing on language like hashtags, retweets, replies, and the @ sign. This blog will build upon that, taking into account the changes as a result of “New Twitter“.

Public vs Private Account

Before we get into individual tweet controls, lets first address the two types of accounts you can have on Twitter. When you set up your Twitter account, you could choose whether to make your account public or private. If you checked the “Protect My Tweets” box, then only people you manually approve can follow you or read your tweets. (You can always toggle this on and off under the Settings tab. Just know, if you turn it on now, your future tweets will not be available publicly, but tweets posted previously may still be publicly visible in some places.)

If you come across a user in a search or through a friend’s timeline feed with a little grey lock next to their name, it means that user has “Protected Their Tweets” – as seen by @kaufecake’s profile below.

If you were to click on her [@kaufecake] name, you would be taken to her profile page (part of which is shown below) which gives you a limited amount of information. To see more, I would need to send a follow request which she would then have to approve. I can, however, publicly “mention” her – which we will get into later.

Private Messages on Twitter

Unless you have a Protected Account, just assume everything you post on Twitter is public. There is a specific way to send a private/direct message to another user on Twitter which is good if you need to send an email address or ask a question – or thank them for following you – but not everyone has this function turned on.

Lets say that you see a tweet from someone you follow and would like more info, but don’t want to make your email address public… in this example lets use a tweet by @mlinson:

I click on her name in my timeline and a shortened version of her profile comes up in my right hand navigation. I see that she has a “Message” button which means that she accepts private/direct messages.

I click Message, and enter my question in the pop-up window that appears and hit Send. This message will not be publicly visible on my profile or timeline or her friends or my friends. It will only be visible to her and me.

If I want to view any Direct Messages that I have sent or that have been sent to me, I can click on the Messages tab in the top navigation bar at the top of your screen.

Public Messages on Twitter

As I said above, almost everything on Twitter is public in some way, but how and where your content surfaces differs depending on how you structure it. If YOU post a status update to Twitter, that tweet will be visible publicly on your timeline, on anyone who follows you’s timeline, and in the fire hose that is the Twitter feed (if people do searches). The same is true for other Twitter users (if their accounts are public too).

Let’s use @mlinson‘s tweet from above again as an example of how you can interact with other people’s content. We already know you can directly message her, but what if I wanted to publicly do it? When you hover over a tweet in your timeline with your mouse, three options (Favorite, Retweet, and Reply) show up under the tweet. Clicking Favorite will add a tweet to my list of Favorites. If I click Reply, a new window pops up with the user’s name already loaded up as well as a reminder of what they wrote for your reference:

If I enter anything into this box as prompted, then my message will be sent to @mlinson and will be visible on my profile timeline, but will NOT be sent out to my followers. We call this an “at reply” since it is a Reply leading with the username.

I have the option though to add text before the username. If I put anything before @mlinson then this “At Reply” will turn into a Mention. A “Mention” is considered anytime a @username is mentioned in a tweet. You can list multiple users in a tweet (however many will fit in 140 characters) and this is popular especially on fridays where the Twitterverse participates in “Follow Friday” recommending other users who their followers may be interested in following. You might also mention someone when giving them credit- if they posted a good link or something funny that you want to expound upon while giving them credit for orginating it. In this case, I have simply added “RT” which stands for “ReTweet” – meaning that I am re-posting what @mlinson posted, but it will post to my timeline from me/my account. I then copied and pasted the content I wanted and altered it to fit the 140 character limit.

Due to the popularity of “Retweeting” Twitter actually incorporated a formal “Retweet” button right onto each tweet (as referenced earlier). Clicking the Retweet button yields a different result. If I were to click Retweet on @mlinson’s post, this box would pop up:

Clicking Retweet here will send this out to my followers and make this visible on my profile timeline, but it will show up as if it is from @mlinson herself. The tweet will look like this in my timeline:

The green arrows in the left hand corner indicate (to me) that I have retweeted this. (Yellow would indicate that I had favorited it.)

Monitoring Mentions of Yourself on Twitter

Now that you know how people can interact with each other’s content on Twitter, lets look at how you can keep track of it all (without using 3rd party applications). Under your primary “What’s Happening” box are tabs that allow you to filter and access your content:

They are pretty self explanatory once you know how content on Twitter is organized…which is always chronologically (with the newest first)…

Timeline is a list of everything you and the people you follow are saying. This is different from your Profile Timeline which only shows your tweets (including public @replies and formal retweets).

@Mentions shows any tweet mentioning you, including @replies and regular mentions.

Retweets gives you the option to choose things people are retweeting, things you have retweeted, and most interestingly, things you have written that other people have retweeted.

Searches is a list of your saved searches.

Lists are the lists that you have created as well as a link to what lists you have been include on.

Did I miss something? Post your questions and comments below!!

Related Twitter Content:

• How Do I Connect My Twitter and Facebook Accounts?
• How Do I Post Updates to Twitter?
• Anatomy of a Tweet – A Closer Look at Twitter
• How to Customize and Set Up Your Twitter Page
• How to Sign Up for a Twitter Account
• Side by Side Comparison of Old and New Twitter Interfaces
• The New Twitter – More than a Facelift?
• 12 Tools for Tracking Twitter Sentiment
• Twitter Apps and You – New Authorization Process
• Lance Armstrong, Twitter, and Google – Why Link Building and SEO Works
• Twitter launches new official TWEET button
• Twitter: Who To Follow Suggestions

Updating Your Status Through Twitter.com

If you are logged in to Twitter.com, then the simplest way to post a status update is by clicking in the main “What’s Happening” box at the top of your page. (This is the same as it was on “old twitter”.) Clicking in the box expands it, adds or give you the ability to add your location, and shows you your character count. This character count is important because Twitter only allows you to post 140 characters (characters are letters, numbers, spaces, symbols, etc). You start with 140 and work your way down. If you hit negative numbers you will need to remove some of your content. Abbreviations are common, but try to keep your posts pithy and informative.

A 140 character count post looks just like this. This is precisely the amount of letters, spaces, numbers, symbols, and punctuation allowed.

With new twitter, you can now also post an update from wherever you are on Twitter. If you are deep into scrolling through your timeline or on another users page, you can click the icon in the top right of the navigation bar and a pop-up “What’s Happening” window will appear. No need now to scroll back to the top or return to your twitter homepage to post!

Updating Your Status via Your Cell Phone

There are many, many smart phone apps that enable you to manage your Twitter account on the go, but did you know that you can also text updates to twitter (and you don’t need a smart phone to do it)? Go to the Settings Tab and click Mobile. Select your country and enter your cell phone number. (Twitter doesn’t charge for this, but standard text messaging rates do apply.) Setting up your phone allows you to send tweets with text messaging on your phone and receive texts for DMs and the tweets from users you want to be notified about. (Clicking the phone icon on a users profile page or your followers page sets Tweet notifications for that user.) You can even manage your twitter account via text messaging with these commands:

• FOLLOW username = Start following a user
• UNFOLLOW username = Stop following a user
• ON/OFF = Turn all Tweet notifications on or off
• ON/OFF username = Set Tweet notifications for a user on or off (you’ll still be following them even if you set it to off)
• GET username = Shows you the latest tweet from any user
• RT username = Retweet a user’s latest tweet
• FAV username = Favorite a user’s latest tweet
• D username your-message = Send a direct message to a user

Updating Your Status via 3rd Parties

Like mobile apps, there are a lot of tools and other websites that allow you to automatically update your Twitter status based on your actions elsewhere. Sites like Facebook, Youtube, and LinkedIn can be set up to automatically post to your Twitter feed when you post or do things on their sites (and vice versa). Many blogs and news entities have Tweet buttons on their articles, enabling easy “click to share” dissemination of their stories. There are also desktop applications (and mobile) like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, and CoTweet that let you manage your Twitter account off of the official Twitter.com site – usually giving you more functionality. But these are topics for another day.

What are your preferred methods to post status updates???

Related Twitter Content:

• How Do I Connect My Twitter and Facebook Accounts?
• Anatomy of a Tweet – A Closer Look at Twitter
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• How to Sign Up for a Twitter Account
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• The New Twitter – More than a Facelift?
• 12 Tools for Tracking Twitter Sentiment
• Twitter Apps and You – New Authorization Process
• Lance Armstrong, Twitter, and Google – Why Link Building and SEO Works
• Twitter launches new official TWEET button
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Omnigraffle was specifically designed to handle a variety of tasks.  It is a user-friendly program that provides shape, lines, arrow, and text tools to click and drag right onto the screen. It provides you with a library of stencil downloads available at Graffletopia which gives you commonly used web elements and icons.

I recently was using Omnigraffle and realized that I wanted to use my own custom icons for a client that was specifically related to fishing. I had already created the custom icons for the client in Illustrator. So I had to figure out how to create my own stencil in OmniGraffle so I would have access to my icons. It was surprisingly easy. If you find yourself in a similar situation here is how to do it and hopefully this is of some help to you!

When you are in OmniGraffle and you have the stencils open click on the little gear icon and a dropdown appears and click new stencil.

A new Template page will appear. I had my Illustrator page open w/ my vector icons I selected one of the icons command c and then command v into the blank template and you just created your first stencil!

Once you have completed this with all of your separate icons or images then go to file, save as and a box will appear where you can name your stencil.

Now to test out your icons, open a new blank diagram, and drag and drop any of the icons onto the page. Have fun resizing and using them in a diagram, work flow info graphic or wire frame. Now you will have that template saved in OmniGraffle so you can use them whenever necessary. Hopefully this simple exercise will be of some use to you I found it helpful even though it is really easy to do.

Related Visual Design Articles:

• CSS Sprites – Nettuts Tutorial
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• Color theory for a visual design: the meaning of color
• How To Create an Animated GIF with Sparkle for the Holidays
• Are our websites getting too crowded with social media apps?
• Error Pages and 404 Redirects Can Be Fun!

I found a very cool tutorial on Nettuts that helped me understand and create better sprites. Basically you recreate the navigation for Dragon Interactive, which has a perfect example for the use of sprites.

This is the final product as you can see it is all one large image. There is also a demo so you can see how it interacts when you are finished.

The above image is how your result from the tutorial should look.

Recommended Reading:

What Are CSS Sprites?

CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them

The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

Hashtag

Definition: a word which is preceded by the “#” symbol (also known as the hash, pound, or number sign). A hashtag is used to make a term “clickable” and helps it appear in search results. You can easily find what people are saying about a hashtagged topic by clicking it and viewing the resulting real time list.

Example: In this tweet (as viewed on vampirepandas’ profile page)  #TED is the hashtag for the TED Conference. As you can see, the #TED hashtag is an aqua color which means it is a link (according to this customized color theme). If we click on #TED we are taken to real time search results of everyone who mentioned #TED in their tweets.

The @ Symbol

Use: When the @ symbol precedes a username (like @corrietweets or @captico), it makes that username clickable. This is a key component to Twitter since so much of its usefulness is communicating with others and sharing links. If you include someone’s username with the @ symbol in your tweet then it will show up in THEIR private feed (the one viewable by clicking @username in your right hand panel navigation) and be clickable. It will also show up in the regular home page feed of anyone who follows both you and that person you mentioned. (Direct Messages start with the @username as well but our handle in a different part of the site and so are private and only viewable to you and the person you message.)

Example: Here we see a tweet from vampirepandas as it would show up in both of the users’ mentioned home page feeds. Vampirepandas has sent a public tweet to @corrietweets about a company called Captico (whos twitter username is @captico) and included a link to their blog. All four blue items are clickable. If you click “vampirepandas” it will take you to that user’s profile page. If you click “@corrietweets” or “@captico” it will take you to their profile pages. And if you click the link it will take you to that link – in this case the Captico Blog. (You can also see the option to “Delete” or “Favorite” – indicated by the star- this tweet because I am logged in to the account that created this tweet. These options are revealed by mousing over the right hand side of the tweet.)

Because this particular tweet BEGINS with a @username, it does NOT go out to all of my followers – like a regular tweet. It IS viewable on my Profile page, but does not get sent to my follower’s home page feeds – only to the users mentioned. If we altered this tweet to begin with “Hey @corrietweets…” instead of “@corrietweets…” then this tweet WOULD go out to all of my followers’ feeds.

RT or ReTweet

Definition: RT or retweet mean that you are forwarding along or sharing information that someone else posted first. It is good twitter etiquette to give credit to whom links or information originated from and helps grow your network. Recently Twitter has implemented a handy “Retweet” button and symbol to facilitate this process. We will look at several ways to achieve the “spirit” of the RT.

Example 1: In this tweet from Suzie Oranen, we see that she has retweeted a tweet from @WWF (The World Wildlife Federation) concerning the Earth Hour event and sharing a link. We know this is a retweet by the “RT” that precedes the tweet followed by the @username who posted it originally. In this case Suzie retweeted manually by copying and pasting the tweet and adding the RT herself. In the bottom right of the tweet you can see “Reply” and “Retweet” links. Clicking “Reply” will return you to your Home Page and insert her @username in your tweet box so that you can send her a public tweet. Clicking “Retweet” will automatically post this to your feed for your followers to see as well. If she had done this it would appear on her Profile page like this:  Now before the WWF username we see a circular arrow symbol, or a “retweet” symbol. It looks like the tweet is coming from the original poster, but Suzie’s name is included as the retweeter. (We can also see that 12 other people retweeted this!) You can monitor ReTweets by clinking “ReTweets” in your right hand navigation panel. You have three tabs: “ReTweets by Others”, “ReTweets by You”, and “Your Tweets, ReTweeted”.

Helpful Hint: Every Friday Twitter users participate in “Follow Friday” where they utilize #FF (Follow Friday hashtag) to list names of people they follow on Twitter that they recommend to others. (Its like getting together with a group of people to pass out your friends business cards to everyone.) Its a great way to meet new people and show your appreciation to your followers.

If you have any Twitter questions or suggestions, please post them in our Comments section!! We’d love to hear from you!

For more Social Media 101 advice check out our video series with Emily Paterson covering Introduction to Web 2.0, Blogging 101, and Twitter 101

When you first reach your Twitter page after the sign up process you will see a pop up notification asking you to “Add a location to your tweets“. This function will include your geographical location from where you MAKE the tweet. You may or may not want to add this, we can address it in a later article, for now I will click “Not now” (you can always access this under the “Settings” tab).

At the top left of the page is the question “What’s Happening?” above an empty text box. This is where you will write your tweets (which are limited to 140 characters). The “140″ above the right hand corner of the box is a countdown indicating how many characters you have left before you reach the length limits. Below your “Tweet” box is a list of the most recent tweets by the users you “Follow” – this is only viewable to you. On your right hand side panel you will see your profile picture, username and counts on the number of tweets you have made, the number of people you are following, the number of people following you, and the number of “Lists” you are on. Underneath this you will find Text labels like “Home” (which is where you are now), @username (my demo account has the username “@vampirepandas” - if you click this you will see all the times you have been mentioned by other users), “Direct Messages” (these are short

private notes sent between you and other users), “Favorites” (these are Tweets by you or others that you have “starred” as a favorite for any reason–To “Favorite” a Tweet move your mouse over the top right hand corner of that tweet and a hollow star will appear. Click the star and it becomes yellow and will show up in your “Favorites”), and “Retweets” (which we will delve into later). Below this list is a blank white search box where you can enter text and search for that term as it occurs in real time all over Twitter. Next we have “Lists” and current “Trending Topics” all over the world. If you would like to see what the Trending Topics are for your specific location, click the word “Change” underneath “Trending: Worldwide” and choose which city you would like to monitor.

At the very top of your page on the right is another navigation bar with the words “Home” (where you are now), “Profile” (which would be how others would see your Twitter page), “Find People” (which is a search tool) “Settings” (which is where we change all preferences, account info, and design of your Twitter), “Help“, and “Sign Out“.

Settings

Let’s start customizing your Twitter page! Click the “Settings” tab in the top navigation bar. The first page we come to is for “Account” Settings. Here you can change things like your email address, language, timezone, location, and make your account private or public (if your account is marked as private, users will have to request permission -Twitter will send you an email- to view your account). The “Password” tab allows you to change your password. “Mobile” will walk you through the process of setting up your phone so that you can text message your tweets to your account. “Notices” gives you control over when Twitter emails you about new followers, new direct messages, and newsletters. “Profile” and “Design” is where we will customize your page.

Click “Profile” under the Settings tab and we are greeted with the options to change your profile picture, real name, and location, add a website, and enter your short bio information. If this is a company you may want to upload a picture of your logo, enter your company name, add your company website, and provide a tidbit about what you do (limited to 160 characters).

Next click “Design” and a collection of colorful squares come into view. Each of these are “Themes” or pre-set designs that you can choose from that will change your background image and colors. (You can also get third party themes in many other places, but for now we’ll just work with what Twitter gives us.) Clicking a square will immediately change your facade. When you find one you like, click “Save Changes” at the bottom. If you want to further customize your site, you can choose the background image by clicking “Change Background Image” and uploading a different picture. You can also manually change your color scheme to match your brand’s colors by clicking “Change Design Colors“. Just be sure to click “Save Changes” when you’re done!” Click “Profile” to view what your new site looks like to the public. Click “Home” to go back to your access page.

Now that you are all set up, start tweeting! Find your friends, follow people or companies that you like. It will take a little bit of time to build up followers and relationships, but stick with it, don’t spam or overpost and be yourself!

Helpful Hint: Following is one way – if someone follows you then you must follow them back if you want them to appear in the feed on your home page.

Next Step: Anatomy of a Tweet – Definitions of Common Terms and Symbols

For more Social Media 101 advice check out our video series with Emily Paterson covering Introduction to Web 2.0, Blogging 101, and Twitter 101

1. Protect Yourself

If you can, make another employee or family member an Admin. Facebook has automated internal systems that may shut down your account if it thinks you are engaging in sketchy behavior and having more than one admin makes you look more legit. Redundancy is always a good idea anyway. If your personal account were to go down for some reason, you can still access your fan page through your co-admin’s account. But make sure you give this access to someone you really trust because they WILL be able to post and publish and delete things from your page (they will NOT be able to remove you as admin however). To make another user an admin, first have them fan the page (they can unfan it later if they want to while still maintaining admin privileges). Then go to your left hand box where you see “Fans” with peoples pictures. Click “See All” in the upper right hand corner of the box and a new window pops up titled “View Fans”. You will see that next to all of their pictures is a “Make Admin” button and an “x”. (Clicking the “x” will give you the option of removing them from your fan page or permanently banning them.) Clicking “Make Admin” will grant administrative access to them. This process is the same if you ever want to take this access away. Simply click “Remove Admin”.

2. Naming Your Page URL

When you set up your page initially you had to choose a name – hopefully you chose well because you can’t change it! When you look at your URL you will see it is long and NOT the name of your page (like this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Severna-Park-MD/Captico/287542615935). This is bulky to share and not intuitive for people looking for you (though you will still show up in searches). To change this to “http://www.facebook.com/companyname” you will need to establish your site and get a following before Facebook will allow you to claim your branded URL. Once you have over 25 followers, go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ where you can set a personalized URL for both your site and any pages you administrate. Click “Set a Username for Your Pages” and then choose the page you want to assign a name to. You will either be able to set your url (be careful, you CANNOT change it!) or you will receive a notice “________is not eligible for a username at this time. In the future, ________ will be able to set a username.” This just means try again later! You may not have enough traffic or fans yet- Facebook seems to be a bit fickle on the requirements here. Usernames can only contain alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) or a period (“.”) Be sure to claim yours as soon as possible so no one else gets it! Be specific though – generic words are not allowed as usernames.

3. Customizing Your Posts to a Country/Language

If you are a national brand and running a local promotion, you may not want to send your notification to all of your fans around the world. Facebook actually allows you to customize who sees each of your updates. In the “Share” box at the top of your page you will see a button called “Everyone” on the left of the main “Share” button. Clicking this will give you two options – 1) Standard share this post with “Everyone” option or 2) Customize – which will open up a new window allowing you to select what language and country you want your post to go to.

4. Create and Post Events

Do you have a big sale day or event coming up that you want people to attend? Creating an Event on Facebook gives you a great way to advertise it and let your fans rsvp, comment, and share it with their friends! If you don’t see an “Events” tab in your top page navigation, click the plus “+” sign in your top page tabs section and select “Events”. You will then be taken to the “Events” tab where you can “Create an Event“. Now you can always easily create or view your events in your top tab bar.

5. Spam and Haters

Facebook has controls in place to allow you complete control over anything posted to your site. If you encounter a problem with a spammer or destructive comments you have options. You can remove someone from your fan page or permanently block them as described in #1 Protect Yourself of this article, you can delete individual comments by clicking “Delete” in the comment’s box underneath the comment, and you can delete individual posts by mousing over the far right of the post and clicking the “Remove” button that appears.

If you decide that you don’t want fans to be able to post content on your wall or want to limit their settings, click “Edit Page” under your profile picture on the far left. Then click “Wall Settings” from the list below. This tab allows you to change the default landing page as well as giving you control over what Fans can or cannot do. On the Captico Page our fans can post to our wall, post photos, post videos, and share links. These things all appear to come from the individual fan and can be moderated by us at any time.

6. Content!

You want to make your Facebook Fan Page a fun and informative place to be! Once you have your basic information set up (which you can manage by clicking “Edit Page” under your profile picture on the far left), you want to get to work bulking it up. Click the “Photos” tab in your top navigation to create photo albums and upload pictures of your products, offices, staff, events- anything at all! Click the “Discussions” tab to get a forum started. The “Reviews” tab is a place for your fans to post reviews about your company, its products, and services! You can also add new tabs by clicking the plus “+” sign.

Hopefully this article helps get you posting and networking with your fans. Remember that Facebook is a conversation and transparency is key. Interact with your fans and give them a reason to join – coupons and incentives go along way – but be genuine!

Don’t set it and forget it! Post at least once a week – but don’t over post or you’ll annoy your fans. You’ll find a happy medium as you get to know your fan base.

Captico can not only set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts for you, but we can manage them as well. Let us know if you would like more information on these services. Thanks for reading and please share any tips or advice you may have – or ask any questions – in the comments section below!

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You may also be interested in:

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Facebook: Like

Facebook Ditches Fans in Favor of Likes

Fan Pages are a way for companies, brands, products, bands, organizations, etc to have an official presence on Facebook. While you “can” create a profile page for your company, Facebook frowns upon it and will shut it down if they come across it. Profiles are for people, Pages are for everything else. Like Profiles though, Pages can be enhanced with applications, fan other pages (through the “Add to My Pages Favorites” button), post pictures and updates, receive comments, etc. Pages cannot send messages to individual users though. If you send a message to a user, it will appear to come from your personal account.

2. Creating a Fan Page

You will need a Facebook profile of some kind to create a Fan Page. I manage Captico’s Fan Page under my personal account, but no one can see that or access my information so feel free to do the same. When I post on the page it comes from Captico, not from me. If you don’t have a personal account, I will explain how to create a business profile.

• Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
• You have 3 Options – Are you a 1) Local Business-Select one. 2) A Brand, Product, or Organization. 3) An Artist, Band, or Public Figure. Select Which of these is most appropriate, and be sure – you cannot change your category once it is chosen! I picked “Local: Professional Services”.
• Name the Page- Be very specific and make sure you don’t have typos!! You cannot change the name once you create your page! (You can delete it at anytime though.) I typed “Dog Days of Summer Heating & AC”. I also checked the box to “hide” the page while I work on it so that no one will stumble upon it accidentally while it is under construction.
• The last step here is to enter the captcha – those funky words at the bottom- so Facebook knows you aren’t a robot automatically setting up phony pages.
• You now arrive at a new page. At this point, if you have a Facebook account, select this option and you will be able to manage this page (and any others you create) from it. Simply log in and progress forward. If you DO NOT, select that you do not have a Facebook account. Enter your email address, choose a password, enter your birthday and fill out the additional captcha. Be sure to check the box (after reading) that you have read the Terms of Agreement. An email will be sent to you to confirm that you have set up an account. (PLEASE NOTE: Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts. Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests. You CAN later convert a Business Account into a Personal Account, but NOT the other way around.)

If you checked the “Do Not Make Page Public” box while setting up, now go to your “Settings” section of your “Edit Page” tab and select “Publish Page“. You can always “Unpublish” or hide your page as a draft at any time. (Though once you’ve got fans, I don’t suggest doing this.)

Pages can have as many admins as you would like. If you want to add administrative control to another member of your company, they must first fan the page, and then you can “Make Admin”. Be careful who you give control to though as they can access all of your pages settings (though not your personal ones) and all posts they make to the page will appear to come directly from the page itself. They cannot, however, remove admin power from the creator of the page, though admin privileges of others can be added or removed at any time.

I hope this helps get you started! Check out: Managing Your Facebook Fan Page (Basics) for the next step!

Captico can not only set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts for you, but we can manage them as well. Let us know if you would like more information on these services. Thanks for reading and please share any tips or advice you may have – or ask any questions – in the comments section below!

______________________________

You may also be interested in:

How to add Facebook Like and Share Buttons to Your Website

Facebook: Like

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1. Decide if you want it.

Companies left and right are adding video to their product pages, to their “about us”. They are posting information and promotional segments on their websites. You can now walk a potential customer through a complicated process, or the steps for using a product. You can give them a better look at what they are buying and entice their senses. According to the BIA Kelsey Group, viewers engage more after watching a video, with clicks for more information increasing by 30-40% and phone inquiries by 16-20%.  Web video is a proven selling technique and is far cheaper than traditional advertising.

2. Get it done.

Whether you take a DIY approach (perhaps through a blog format) or hire someone to do it (Captico can include it in an SEO/SEM campaign), you find a way to get some videos put together that reflect your goals and brand image. Remember that this video can add to your credibility, build trust, and improve your customer experience, so whatever you do, do it right. If the goal of your video is to sell a product, make sure that it:

a) Tells the viewer why to buy the product or service;

b) Explains what they need to do or the steps involved clearly – whether that is “click the buy button” or walks them through a sign up process;

c) Motivate the viewer! Make sure you have a call to action and end the video on a strong note!

Your video does not need to be lengthy or overly flashy- in fact its better if its not, customers can see through overly scripted sales pitches- but you need to keep your end goal in mind and focus the viewer onto doing what you want them to do. [I recommend reading Creating Persuasive Interactive Video for E-Commerce.]

3. Get it out there!

Whether you host the video on your own site or embed it from a YouTube service, you need to get it in front of people. Post it on your Facebook page and add it to your Google Local Business Listing.

Don’t forget optimization in your video plan though. Search engines return what are called “blended results” meaning they find images, videos, articles and more, so you want to take advantage of this.  According to a recent experiment by Nate Elliot of Forrester Research, when analyzing search results from common queries, they found that on the keywords for which Google offers video results, any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index. That’s HUGE for any business. Elliot suggests the following tips for optimizing your online videos:

a) Insert keywords into your video filenames. [Google pays a lot of attention to the titles of videos]

b) Host your videos on YouTube, and embed those YouTube videos into your own site. Google says its algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and any views embedded videos receive on your own site get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube. (And yes, nearly every video we saw Google blend into its results came from YouTube.)

c) Optimize your YouTube videos by writing keywords into your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.

d) Embed videos into relevant text pages on your site. The context provided by the text on those pages (which is hopefully already optimized for search as well) will help the search engines figure out what your videos are about.

e) Also create a video library on your site, so Google knows where to find your video content. (Google Video Sitemaps can help with this too.) Write keyword-rich annotations for each video in the library.

[You may also want to read additional Video SEO Tips and Techniques.]

You may also be interested in reading: ROI: Web Video sells. Even if customers don’t watch it!