Facebook for Business SuperGuide
uly 7th, 2009 by Robin Broitman
Facebook has certainly garnered a lot of attention these past weeks- first with it’s new vanity URL feature and then with it’s changed privacy features.
Facebook’s vanity URL feature – particularly for Facebook pages – is of particular interest to businesses. As Facebook continues it’s explosive growth heading towards 250 million active users, more and more businesses are hoping to leverage Facebook for serious business purposes. Facebook’s new feature allows businesses to create a custom url for their business page – something that wasn’t possible until now. (If you haven’t gotten your custom name, read Facebook expert Mari Smith’s post: How To Secure Your Facebook Username (Vanity URL).)
Want to sharpen your skills and learn how to really leverage Facebook to grow your business?
Below I’ve put together a comprehensive collection of resources, tips and advice on how to use Facebook for business purposes including:
Facebook’s vanity URL feature – particularly for Facebook pages – is of particular interest to businesses. As Facebook continues it’s explosive growth heading towards 250 million active users, more and more businesses are hoping to leverage Facebook for serious business purposes. Facebook’s new feature allows businesses to create a custom url for their business page – something that wasn’t possible until now. (If you haven’t gotten your custom name, read Facebook expert Mari Smith’s post: How To Secure Your Facebook Username (Vanity URL).)
Want to sharpen your skills and learn how to really leverage Facebook to grow your business?
Below I’ve put together a comprehensive collection of resources, tips and advice on how to use Facebook for business purposes including:
- General Guides, Tutorials and Help
- Facebook Pages and Groups
- Events and Causes
- Tips and advice from a range of experts for
making the most of Facebook - Advice for Non-Profits
- Other Facebook tools, applications & features (including Facebook Connect)
- Facebook Statistics
Read more: http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/facebook-for-business-superguide/#ixzz0VaEDdrMN
Comprehensive Guides and How-To’s
- How To Use Facebook for Business
From Hubspot: Free downloadable 22 page E-book – very comprehensive with advice on setting up your profiles, setting up/promoting a business page, groups vs. pages, setting up a group, advertising on Facebook and measuring/analyzing.
- Facebook for Grownups
From Butterscotch- 10 part video with step-by-step instructions for how to sign up for Facebook and how to create a Facebook profile.
- Facebook Help Center - official Facebook Help
- Facebook’s Complete Privacy Presentation
From Mashable: Check out all the details provided by Facebook on their new privacy settings.
- Books:
- The Facebook Marketing Bible: The Guide To Marketing Your Brand, Company, Product, Or Service Inside Facebook
From Justin Smith: Provides an introduction to what’s possible on Facebook to the spectrum of marketers from brand advertisers to volunteer grassroots evangelists. The Facebook Marketing Bible contains three detailed sections: Tools for Guerilla Marketers, Tools for Advertisers, and Tools for Application Developers. Each part outlines the best available channels and strategies for reaching your audience inside Facebook.
- Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business
From Steven Holzner: In Facebook Marketing, best-selling author Steven Holzner reveals new social marketing techniques that do work, and shows you exactly how to make the most of them. Using true case studies, Holzner introduces powerful new techniques from today’s smartest Facebook marketers…and helps you avoid pitfalls that can cost you money and credibility.
- I’m on Facebook–Now What???: How to Get Personal, Business, and Professional Value from Facebook
From Jason Alba, Jesse Stay,Robert Scoble and Lee Lorenzen: This book explains the different parts of Facebook and helps you understand how you can get the most out of your Facebook account. It helps you understand what you could or should do in Facebook to further your career, business, or job.
- The Facebook Marketing Bible: The Guide To Marketing Your Brand, Company, Product, Or Service Inside Facebook
Facebook Pages and Groups
- Facebook | Pages
Official Facebook Page that walks you through the steps of preparing and setting up a Facebook Page. Also links to Facebook Ads to find new fans.
- Facebook Pages Product Guide
Official Facebook PDF document providing an overview of how to use the new Public Profile Pages.
- 7 Tips To Getting Started On Facebook For New Businesses
FromKrishna De’s BizGrowth News: Basics for new businesses who want to get started with a Facebook Page to build their brand online. Includes tips on registering your Facebook page, choosing keywords, creating an about page, setting a default page, designing the look of your profile, setting privacy setting and finding fans.
- Should a Facebook Page Be Part of Your Digital
Marketing Strategy ?
From Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog: Paul Chaney explores advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook as part of a marketing strategy. Also looks at Groups, Events and personal profiles for businesses.
- Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?
From Mashable: Howard Greenstein clarifies the difference between Facebook’s Pages vs. Groups and reviews the factors you should consider when choosing which is right for your organization.
- Facebook Group and Brand Pages Best Practices
From Social Media Explorer: Review of best practices for organizations who want to create group and/or brand pages on Facebook.
- Building A Facebook Fan Page
From Janet Fouts: Easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions for building a Facebook page. Also read part 2 with additional tips on how to “dress up” your Facebook page by adding applications, content, tagging and more.
- Killer Facebook Fan Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies
From Mashable: Callan Green provides five mini case studies of brands that are doing everything right when it comes to Facebook fan pages – Pringles, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Adidas, and Red Bull.
- How To Create A Powerful And Engaging Facebook Page
From Corporate Dollar: Advice on creating a compelling facebook page for your business from branding the page with a custom image to making use of the new features available including the tabbed interface, direct feeds for fans, multi-media integration, discussion groups and more.
- How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans
From AllFacebook: Suggestions for making the most of the new Facebook Pages and their updated features.
- What, Why, and How of Facebook Pages: An Expertise Roundup
From Beth’s Blog: Beth Kanter provides a nice roundup of expert advice from folks like from Mari Smith, Jesse Stay, Collin Douma, and others on using Facebook pages.
- 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page
From Mashable: Rundown on the 5 things that contribute to an effective Facebook Fan page from “networking with other platforms” to “creating a resources” to “creating contests that encourage participation.”
- How to Develop a Successful Facebook Page
From MarketingProfs: Mark Ivey provides success strategies and highlights some of the key features of Facebook Pages.
- 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page
From Mashable: Alison Driscoll review eight essential apps for your brand’s Facebook page – from Facebook Notes to Blog RSS Feed Reader to Twitter App and more.
- Two New Ways to Update Facebook Pages without Using Facebook
From ReadWriteWeb: Discussion of services from hellotxt and Ping.fm that let Facebook administrators update Facebook Pages.
- 4 Reasons Why Marketers Should Choose Facebook Pages Over Facebook Groups
From Inside Facebook: Advantages of Facebook Pages vs. Groups for marketing your business.
- 5 Tips to Revive a Fading Facebook Group
From John Haydon: Advice on how to inject fresh life into a fading Facebook group – from “getting in touch” to “freshening up the page” to “throwing a party” and more.
- Facebook Tips: How to Use the New Business Page Layout
From E-commerce Guide: In-depth look at recent changes made to Business Pages plus tips on how to use new features, such as status updates and Wall feeds to better connect with your Facebook fans.
- New Facebook Pages: A Guide for Social Media Marketers
From Mashable: Curtis Hougland and Kristen Vang of Attention write- As more and more marketers use Facebook as a key conduit for brands online, it is important to note some of the new changes to their Business Pages. Following last fall’s overall redesign, these pages will now migrate to the same Wall and tabs design that personal profiles have used. You can explore the new format and follow Mashable on Facebook at Mashable’s Facebook page. Following is a rundown of what youneed to know :
- The 30 Most Popular Pages on Facebook
From Inside Facebook: Since Pages launched in late 2007, they have become the easiest way for brands to get started marketing on Facebook. Today, 3.5 million users become Fans of one of the several hundred thousand Pages on Facebook each day. Here’s the list of the 30 Most Popular Pages on Facebook.
- How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans
From All Facebook: Review of the the primary benefits and changes for Facebook’s new and updated branded pages.
- Now, Any Business Can Tap 53 Million Facebook Users (For Free)
From Hubspot: Stats on Facebook along with basic how-to on creating a Facebook Business Page.
- Facebook Fan Boxes: Embeddable Facebook Pages
From Mashable: Adam Ostrow discusses Facebook feature that allows Page administrators to embed the latest activity from their Page on their own website.
- 10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Page Owner Should Know
From Inside Facebook: Strategies for employing important SEO tactics within your Facebook Page to help your Page reach more and more Facebook fans.
Events and Causes
- YouTube – Setting up a Facebook Cause
From My Charity Connects: This video provides an overview of the Causes application on Facebook and provides a step-by-step guide on how to create one.
- 50,000 Members In 6 Days
From Feverbee: Advice on using Facebook for Causes (and more).
- Wild Apricot Blog : How to promote your non-profit’s cause on Facebook in five easy steps
Wild Apricot Blog : More advice on using Facebook’s Causes application.
- Effective Fundraising with Facebook Causes
From The Nonprofit Technology Network: Advice on getting started using Facebook causes.
- Top Ten Tips For Creating BUZZ With
Facebook Events
From Why Facebook: Facebook guru Mari Smith explores the art of using the Facebook Events feature effectively to generate buzz for your event.
- Facebook Events and The Power Behind Them
From SocialMediaBlogster.com: Advice on using Facebook events to power up your marketing.
Tips and Advice
- Inside Facebook Blog
Inside Facebook is an independent blog based inPalo Alto ,California , focusing on Facebook and the Facebook Platform for developers and marketers. Provides agencies and marketers with information to help them understand the opportunities and risks associated with investing in both Facebook and Facebook applications. Provides reports and insight on the campaigns marketers and brands are deploying inside Facebook.
- The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook
From Inside Facebook: Review of different Facebook opportunities for marketers, advisers and application developers.
- Facebook Marketing Solutions | Facebook
Official page from Facebook run by Facebook employees intended to help brand marketers market their brands using Facebook. Includes case studies from a number of large brands using the tool, tips and how-tos, and discussion with marketers.
- Facebook Week: Facebook Resources, Analysis and Insights
From Mashable: Collection of articles providing resources and analysis of Facebook. From building a better Facebook page to making a truly viral Facebook meme and more.
- 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business
From Web Worker Daily: Meryl Evans outlines 32 ways you can turn Facebook into a highly effective business tool.
- Facebook Tagging For Business | Social Media Explorer
From Social Media Explorer: Jason Falls provides advice and 5 rules for using Facebook’s “@” tagging feature for business purposes.
- How to build a Facebook community (14 “levers” you need to be pulling)
From John Haydon: Excellent article with tips for growing your fan base organically.
- The Anatomy of a Facebook Meme
From Mashable: When compared to other social media sites, Facebook has a much larger potential reach for “memes” (ideas that people can’t help sharing with their friends) but is quite restrictive on the ways in which these memes can spread. To identify the characteristics necessary for a meme to thrive on Facebook, we must look at what the restrictions demand from them
- 20 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know
From HongKiat: Post covers some interesting things you can do on (or with) Facebook; inclusive of tricks that are not documented or unknown to many, as well as tips to stay connected better with your friends – includes tips such as sharing flickr photos to Facebook, scheduling Facebook messages, choosing what Friends show up in your Friends box, and more.
- HOW TO: Use Facebook for Professional Networking
From Mashable: Boris Epstein provides advice on how to setup your Facebook for professional use, how to find others to network with, Facebook features that work for professional networking, and ways to maximize the value from those features.
- Facebook’s New Privacy Features: A Complete Guide
From Mashable: Ben Parr offers an overview of Facebook’s new privacy features.
- Seven Steps to Graphing Your Facebook Strategy
From Tech Crunch: Review of seven major aspects of Facebook you can use to increase the visibility of your startup, business, product or service: from Setting up your Profile to making connections to sharing your content.
- The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base
From Inside CRM: long list of 100 tools and tips for leveraging Facebook as a business tool.
- Using Facebook for Marketing – 10 Company Examples
From Dave Chaffey’s Right Touching Blog: Showcase of businesses from a range of sectors who are using the Facebook pages.
- HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook
From Mashable: Personal branding expert Dan Schawabel provides a guide to building your personal brand on Facebook.
- How to Build an Impressive Social Networking Presence, Beginning with Facebook
From Social Media Power: Advice on how to build your presence onsocial networking sites starting with Facebook.
- What to Do if You Forgot to Register Your Facebook Trademark URL
From Advertising Age: Steps to take if your trademark was taken by someone before you had a chance to register it.
- 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence
From Mashable: Tips to optimize your presence on Facebook, including the right way to create profile and thumbnail graphics , how to show different content to Fans and non-Fans, creating DIY vanity urls, and how managing what and when you post can lead to greater success.
- 5 Tips for Optimizing your Facebook Marketing
From Marketing Profs Daily Fix: Paul Dunay offers up options to consider when it comes to the tactics of marketing on Facebook – from advertising to applications to content syndication and more.
- How To Use Facebook “Notes” To Get More Traffic
From Corporate Dollar: Advice on leveraging Facebook’s Notes application to drive web traffic to your website.
- 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally
From Web Worker Daily: Discussion of how you can use Facebook to benefit your professional career from hooking up with old co-workers and current connections to setting up your profile and security settings to incorporating your other social sites like Twitter or even your own blog.
- Focus on Facebook: Interview with Kristin Foster, Digital Strategist
From Ogilvy PR: Discussion of Facebook strategies for brands.
- Facebook for Business: Can Brands Ever Get It Right?
From ClickZ: Anna Maria Virzi explores how brands can translate their Facebook initiatives into tangible results (e.g. sales) with some advice on getting it right – from deciding “if you branding is willing to make the investment” to developing “modules for core activities such as contests, coupons and videos/photos” to maintaining “content to keep engagement high” to “buying media to drive traffic.”
- FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster
From Mashable: How to use Facebook features that allow you to choose what you show and to what type of people. By using friend lists and playing with your privacy settings, you can create different views for each segment of your life.
- 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
From Mashable: How to use Facebook features that allow you to choose what you show and to what type of people. By using friend lists and playing with your privacy settings, you can create different views for each segment of your life.
- Finding and Engaging Your Brand Evangels on Facebook – Left The Box
From Left The Box: A technique for easily finding people that are already publicizing your brand to their friends on Facebook.
- HOW TO: Create Branded Promotions on Facebook [500 FREE Invites]
From Mashable: Discussion of Wildfire’s web tool and Facebook application that can help you create branded promotions on Facebook. With a few simple steps, Wildfire will help you create a comprehensive promotional campaign for your brand on Facebook, Ning, MySpace, and your website involving sweepstakes or a user contest.
- How To Remove An Application From Your Facebook Profile
From Make Use Of: How to get rid of a Facebook application when you find you no longer have a need for it.
- Getting the Facebook Crowd to Spread Your Widgets
From eMarketer: Interview with Liza Hausman who heads up marketing for widget platform and ad Network Gigya about how advertisers use widgets and the future of the applications onsocial networks such as Facebook.
- Facebook Search Tips
Advice from Facebook’s help pages on searching for people and their content.
- Ten Facebook Tips for Power Users
From Macworld: Here are ten tips to tweak your profile and get more out of Facebook. These tips go beyond the typical and include ways to stay better connected to your friends and look good doing it.
- The 30 Standard Facebook Profile Photo Styles
From All Facebook: Trying to decide what type of photo to post in your Facebook profile (or any other profile for that matter). Here Nick O’Neill offers a rundown of 30 profile photos styles that you’ll find most often when exploring your Facebook friends list. If you’re looking to portray a professional image, check out Nick’s pick for Personal Branding Master- social media nonprofit expert Beth Kanter.
- How to Grow A Useful Network with the Social Media Site Facebook
From The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur: Advice on using Facebook as a tool to grow your business network.
- To-Do List for Facebook and E-Mail Integration
From ClickZ: Advice from Ed Henrich on how marketers can properly integrate their Facebook presence (Facebook Connect, Pages, Groups) with their email programs.
- How to Friend Mom, Dad, and the Boss on Facebook…Safely
From Read Write Web: Oh no! Your mom just joined Facebook and what’s even worse, she wants to be your friend. More and more people are finding themselves in this situation today and unsure of what to do. Friending mom and dad, the boss, or other work colleagues opens up the details of your private life for the whole world to see – and you might not be entirely comfortable with that. What’s to be done?
- 10 Things All Businesses Should Do to Market More Effectively on Facebook
From Inside Facebook: Here are Inside Facebook’s top 10 ways business owners can more effectively leverage Facebook to reach their target audience and drive more business.
- How to “Friend” Someone On Facebook Without Showing Your Status Updates | MakeUseOf.com
I’m sure that this has happened to you before. Someone you have ties to, whether it’s a co-worker, your boss, or even worse, a parent, has finally discovered social networking and wants to be your newest Facebook friend. Imagine for a moment that I worked at Domino’s Pizza and that I don’t want my boss to know that I just became a fan of Papa John’s (writing this one’s gonna make me hungry). Here’s what I would do to keep that fact confined to my closer friends.
- Facebook Etiquette: Five Dos and Don’ts – PC World
From PC World: Suggestions for managing your Facebook profile and your overall social networking persona, and warnings about places where you can get into trouble with people who matter to you personally and professionally.
Advertising on Facebook
- Facebook Ads 101 – How to Set up and Track Facebook Ads
From Subliminal Pixel Labs: Rundown of how Facebook ads work, how to set them up and what tracking and optimization features they offer.
- How-To Guide: E-Commerce Marketing on Facebook
From Internet.com: Leveraging Facebook business options can provide a new channel for your customers to interact, and at the same time help you acquire new customers as your Facebook fans spread the word about your business to their friends. In this Facebook how-to guide, learn how to use two of the business solutions offered by Facebook. First- the steps you need to take to create your own Facebook Business Page (also called a fan page) and then, the tasks involved in creating a Facebook Ad campaign, which can be used to send visitors to your Web site or new Facebook Business Page.
Advice for Non-Profits on Facebook
- Non-Profits on Facebook
Facebook’s official page with advice for non-profits on using Facebook.
- Using Facebook for Your Non-Profit
From Techsoup: Helpful range of resources for non-profits who want to use Facebook to connect with their supporters including a beginners guide to Facebook, promoting your cause on Facebook, and more. Also includes links to outside resources.
- Facebook’s New Public Profile Pages: Good News for Non-profits
From Wild Apricot Blog : Facebook just got a lot more friendly for non-profits with the announcement of Public Profile Pages. This means non-profits now be able to “share all types of content with an unlimited number of users” and Facebook users will be able to comment on the posted content, just as they would on the personal profile page of any Facebook friend.
- Video Tutorial: How To Embed A Social Or Fundraising Widget Into Your Facebook Page
From CorporateDollar.org: One of the most effective social media tools available to small non-profits are embeddable widgets. Youtube videos, fundraising widgets and social networking widgets can empower your fans to take action for your non-profit. Video tutorial on how to do this on Facebook.
- So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop!
From Beth Kanter: Recap of NTEN Webinar featuring Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Marketing at Facebook and Adam Conner from the DC Office on the emerging best practices for nonprofits who want to set up Facebook Fan Pages. Includes list of best practices and links to a good collection of solid how-to articles on Facebook pages.
- 4 Facebook Tips for Nonprofit Success – See What Others are Doing
From Beth’s Blog: Guest poster Frank Barry offers up four tips to help non-profits make better use of Facebook and some great case studies
Other Facebook Tools, Applications and Features
- 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook
From Mashable: Here are over 30 Facebook applications to help promote, network, communicate, collaborate and accomplish more with your business.
- Facebook Powertools: 150+ Apps, Scripts and Add-ons for Facebook
From Mashable: Rundown of the the leading browser extensions, desktop applications, Greasemonkey scripts and applications for Facebook – more than 150 in all.
- 20+ Great Greasemonkey Scripts for Improving Your Facebook Experience
- Facebook Connect:
- Facebook Connect
From Facebook Developers: Explanation of Facebook Connect which enables integration of Facebook Platform into websites. Allows website users to: Seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with your website, connect and find their friends who also use your site, and share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook.
- 10 Great Implementations of Facebook Connect
From Mashable: Ben Parr reviews some implementations of Facebook Connect that stand out against the rest. Some are on this list because of the seamlessness of their integration, while others for their usefulness. And here are even 10 more.
- HOW TO: Add Facebook Connect to Your Blog in 8 Minutes
From Mashable: Video tutorial for adding Facebook Connect to A Blog.
- Six Months In: 10 of the Most Interesting Cases of Facebook Connect in Action
From Inside Facebook: Review of 10 interesting Facebook Connect uses including CNN, Bravo.com’s Real Housewives ofNYC and more.
- Facebook and The Washington Post: More Than Meets the Eye
From Mashable: Adam Ostrow explores the Washington Post’s implementation of Facebook Connect into it’s website including future opportunities this integration might offer.
- Facebook Connect Comes to Digg
Once Facebook Connect has been activated, you’re able to publish your Diggs, comments, and submissions back to your Facebook News Feed. You can also quickly invite your Facebook friends to Digg.
- Facebook Connect
- Facebook Application on Delicious
Add the Delicious application to your Facebook account and publish information about your bookmarks to your Facebook profile.
- Selective Twitter Status on Facebook
Selective Twitter Status lets you update your Facebook status from Twitter – BUT you can choose which tweets you want – just end a tweet with #fb when you want to post it as your Facebook status – simple! * Avoid confusing your Facebook friends * Don’t swamp your profile with too many updates * Leave certain updates on Facebook for longer.
- Five Things You Can Do With This New Facebook RSS App
From ReadWriteWeb; Review of Chia’s Facebook application that allows users to grant permission to pull theor Facebook newsfeed out of the site and publish as an RSS feed.
- Facebook Video 2.1.1
The popular Greasemonkey Facebook video script is now a full-fledged Firefox addon that lets users download or convert Facebook videos, and embed videos outside of Facebook.
- SocialToo Vanity URLs for Facebook: Better Than the Real Thing?From Mashable: For organizations who have fewer than 1000 fans and can’t get official vanity URLs, SocialToo is offering vanity URLs that redirect to your Facebook profile (with support for pages coming soon). A bonus too: analytics are offered.
Statistics About Facebook
- Statistics
Official statistics from Facebook
- Facebook Pages Statistics
Statistics on Facebook Pages
- Facebook Marketing Statistics, Demographics, Reports, and News – CheckFacebook
CheckFacebook.com is not affiliated with Facebook. Each day, CheckFacebook.com tracks data reported from Facebook’s advertising tool to help marketers and researchers understand how Facebook is spreading across the globe.
- Why Facebook is growing wrinkles
From Telegraph: Older users are jumping on the social networking bandwagon as if their lives depended on it – and in some cases, they do.
- Women Over Age 55 Fastest-Growing Group On Facebook
From MediaPost: Results from survey showing that women age 55 and over are the fastest-growing U.S. demographic group on Facebook. The number of women on Facebook is growing faster than men in almost every age group, and women now make up 56.2% of users (as of 2/09).
- Facebook Users Are Getting Older. Much Older.
From Mashsable: Analytics company iStrategyLabs has examined the demographics stats from Facebook’s Social Ads platform, and they’ve reached some very interesting conclusions. Facebook usersbase, as a whole, is getting much older very fast.
Read more: http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/facebook-for-business-superguide/#ixzz0VaETpuHA