Trying to Figure Out Facebook Privacy Settings?

It seems there has been a lot of talk lately about the Facebook privacy settings and how they can impact what information is shared about you. The Facebook privacy policy is one of the most extensive on the web, and it can take an hour or better to wade through what they have a right to do. So while everybody is up in arms, I’m fairly certain you would have been aware of the changes if you had the time or desire to read that document (being facetious here).

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do to secure my private Facebook information. While reading blogs and following information, I have yet to get a clear-cut answer. And then today on Mashable I read about a simple solution: Reclaim Privacy. It’s a simple a plug-in for your web browser that can scan your Facebook account and let you know what privacy settings allow your personal information to be shared.

I installed the plugin in less than 5 seconds (you just drag it to your bookmark toolbar), and in less than a minute I had my report. My personal information could be shared by any of my friends on Facebook. I corrected the setting, and now I got a green light – my privacy is once again secure on Facebook.

I hope you find this helpful. If you are tooling around on Facebook, feel free to become a fan of our Facebook page.

Adding Google Analytics to Your Facebook Page

You’ve got your Facebook Fan page, and you’ve set up the administrators, now is a great time to figure how to best utilize your energy and time in maintaining your page. Installing Google Analytics on your Facebook page can give you some real insight into what kind of marketing works best on this Social Media giant.

What Is Google Analytics?
According to the Google Analytics Website, it is “the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.” In other words, it is a free service that extracts traffic information from websites and generates readable statistics about the visitors to that website.

How is it Beneficial to Analyze My Facebook Page?
Google Analytics offers you a clean, straight-forward way to see when you’re gaining traffic to your page, and what is drawing peoples’ attention once they get to your page. Maybe after you do a status update, you get 10 more hits, or you find out that when you post too many in a week, you actually get less traffic.

How Do I Do it?
Mahalo.com has a detailed, easy-to-follow guide to setting up Google Analytics on any web page.  This involves setting up an account with Google, and inserting Javascript into your pages. But we’ve also located a great blog post from the Social Media Examiner that gets into using and installing Google Analytics more specifically for your Facebook page. It will give you a step-by-step guide to setting it up as well as using it. You may even want to scroll down and read the user comments for some extra tips and discussions.

Let us know how it works for you! Were you able to easily install Google Anayltics on your page? Once you get used to using it, do you find it helpful in directing your Facebook marketing strategies?

Adding Administrators to Your Facebook Fan Page

Facebook’s Help Center  has some easy instructions for adding administrators to your Facebook Fan Page. We will walk you through each step to make the process even easier!
To appoint other users as Page Admins, take the following steps:

1. Select the “Edit Page” option when you are viewing the Page you currently administer.

This will take you to the Control page where you can edit your settings and applications.

2. Scroll down to the list of current admins on the bottom right column and click “Add.”

3. Choose the names of any people from your Friend List that you would like to add as Admins.

If the individual you wish to invite to admin your Page is not presently a member of Facebook, simply type their email address in the “Add Admins via Email” field. They can then register for the site and will be able to accept the admin request as soon as they join Facebook.

4. Click the “Add Admins” button.

The friends you select will be able to help you manage your Page. Every Admin can manage the Page from their own Facebook account using the Page Manager application.

You can an unlimited number of administrators for your Fan Page; just be sure that everyone who helps to administrate your fan page is “on the same page”

We welcome your feedback. How many administrators do you have for your fan page? Do you find it easier to have one person in charge, or is it helpful for your business to have additional administrators?

Create a Fan Page for Your Business on Facebook

When you’re logged into your personal Facebook account, no doubt you’ve seen the sidebar “Suggestions”, telling you who you might want to be friends with, or letting you know that several of your friends are fans of Trader Joe’s or “Sleeping in late”.

Creating a fan page on Facebook may or may not bring you direct business, but having a presence in another social media outlet is never a bad idea. Setting up and maintaining a Facebook fan page is easy and seems to even be getting easier as Facebook grows and makes improvements.

Have a Personal Page First

Facebook rules state that you have to have a personal page in order to have a page for your business or blog. So make sure that the person responsible for adding and maintaining the fan page either already has or sets up a personal profile on Facebook before continuing. Accessing and updating the fan page is done through this personal account (other administrators can be added later). Note that though the fan page is created and maintained through your personal Facebook account, none of your fans will be able to tell who created the page, and there is no page administrator listed publicly.

Creating Your Fan Page

Log into your personal Facebook account, go to the page titled, Create a New Facebook Page and select a category for your fan page. Enter the name of your page (e.g. “Landau Design” or “Sales2Win.com Fan Page”), and decide if you want the page published right away. If you’re going to be needing to track down photos or logos and company information that isn’t ready to input when you create the page, you may want to publish the page at a later time, once you’ve had a chance to populate the page entirely.

Read the agreement and when you’re ready, click “Create Page”. Your page is now on Facebook! Make sure to become a fan of your own page by hitting the “Become a Fan” button at the top of the page, next to the page title.

Populating Your Page

You’ll need a few things to add to your page once you’ve created it.
• Photos and/or logos
• Website address and contact information

Photo: By rolling your cursor over the image box with a question mark in it, you’ll see the words “Change Picture” appear;

when you’re ready to upload an image or logo as your page’s primary photo, click there and choose “Upload a Picture”.

You can then browse your computer for the image you’ll be using and add it to your page. A square image is ideal, and will display particularly well in the thumbnails that show up on fan’s homepage news feeds.

Company info: Hitting the “Info” tab under your page’s title will bring you to your company information. Click “Edit Information to add your contact information, location, and hours, if desired.

Status updates: Status Updates are a good way to announce a promotion or exciting news for your company or blog. Simply type a short sentence or two in the text box that asks “What’s On Your Mind?”, and click “Share”.

Slogan: You can add a quote or slogan for your company in the box under Your Logo or photo.

More information: You can create photo albums, add links you’d like to share, create events for fans to attend or share with their friends, and a lot more. Click around your fan page when you get a chance, in order to see what features Facebook is offering to help stylize and personalize your fan page.

Share Your Page

You can share your page with your friends by clicking the “share +” button in the bottom of the left column of your page.

This will bring up a box that lets you type in a personal message and post about this fan page on your personal page,and will display in your friends’ news feeds. You can also opt to click “Send as a Message Instead” to email individuals privately about the fan page. You might ask friends to “suggest” the page to their friends as well.

Link to Other Social Media Accounts

Now, you can link your Twitter and Facebook updates. There are several ways to do this, and you may want to use this blog entry by Jennifer Van Grove to help you decide which method is right for you.

While this is useful and I do recommend linking the two, my opinion is that you should consider the Facebook app called “Selective Twitter” for doing your Twitter-Facebook dual updates. This allows you to choose which tweets you want to share on both Twitter and Facebook, simply by using the hashtag #fb to differentiate.

How Frequently You Should Update

Facebook isn’t like Twitter in the sense that one status update a week might work well for your page on Facebook and still be seen by your fans, but your followers on Twitter are more likely to see your Tweets if you Tweet more often (an effective means of marketing).

Generally, people on Facebook are there for personal use and to see what’s going on in the lives of family and friends, but they get a kick out of publicly being a fan on Facebook of something or someone they enjoy, and knowing their friends can see it. So share worthwhile information, but don’t overwhelm them with too much marketing.

Finding the Link to Your Fan Page

Once you post your first status update, you will see it in your Facebook news feed. Your company name will be highlighted, and will be a link to your Facebook fan page. Simply click on the name of your company, which will take you to your page, then you can copy and past the URL from the top of your browser window. You can now use this link to share on other websites as a way to promote your Facebook page. Alternatively, you can type the name of your fan page in the search box at the top of your needs feed or personal page, and Facebook will automatically bring up the names of friends or fan pages that match your search, and you can click on the link there.

Follow Landau Design on Facebook

You can become a fan of the Landau Design Facebook page. We would love to hear your feedback for ways that we can make it better.