It’s about time!

If you want to see posts you have already scheduled, just click “use activity log” under “edit page”.

They then appear in a list where you can change your scheduled posts, remove them, or publish them instantly.

First, navigate to your Facebook company homepage.  Then click on “edit page” > “manage notifications”.

You’ll then get to a simple control panel like the one below.  Simply check off:

Email Notifications: Send notifications to youremail@whatever.com when people post to, comment on, or message your Page.

There, that wasn’t hard now was it?  Just click save changes and you’ll be good to go!

To me, buying Facebooks Likes today is equivalent to when website owners bought a thousand (or some kind of a “too good to be true” amount) article submissions, search engine submissions, and bogus text (footer? or sidebar?) links all for a ridiculously low price. Internet Marketing scams like these have been around forever and they always will be.  They might not last a while, because Google (and hopefully Facebook) catches on and changes their algorithms to detect scams and quick money/ranking schemes.  Luckily Google’s smart new algorithms have devalued purchased links, tons of spammy text, lame question/answer sites, and low value article links.

Until Facebook and social media networks find a way to combat the newest scams to gain likes and followers, here’s why you should be weary of buying any sort of a fan or like.

1. Suspicious Fans
   Many Facebook page owners who purchase likes have noticed the likes have come from strange profiles names, locations that don’t even match up, and have unrealistic profile information.  Some have profiles that say they are previous manager’s at large corporations, then when you look at their birth date it doesn’t even come close to making sense!  This is just one example.  You’ve probably already noticed this too, but I’ve noticed some friend requests I get have names that just look suspicious. Stay clear away from these type of likes or friend requests because there’s a reason why it looks fishy.  Think: no conversions or even virus.
2. A Modern Internet Scam
   There’s always a new scam out there.  Right after a new website or technology comes out or Google changes their algorithm, the scammers are ready to create the next loophole to cheat the system or make a quick buck.  Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are all targets of the most recent internet scams since their high popularity.  Common sense but you can see the shift in momentum if you have been working on websites for at least 5 years.
3. Little to No Value
   What value does having these purchased likes bring to your table? The only thing I can think of is having a high fan value that may attract legit “likes”, but is it worth it?  Not to me.  I would never want strange likes and non-readers on SocialMediaSEO.net.  It would make for a very boring, uninterested fanbase don’t you think?
4. The Wrong Way to Gain Facebook Likes
   When you look at the overall picture, it’s not worth gaining likes by buying them.  It’s all short term recognition that you don’t want.  You don’t want temporary results for your company or website.  Temporary results may be gratifying at first, but in the grand scheme of things you’re looking for customers whether they are simply reading your content or buying a product.  They won’t buy or read if their lame user’s set up from robots or overseas workers.  One my favorite examples that shows the Wrong way to gain Facebook likes comes from The Oatmeal called “how to get more likes on Facebook“.
5. Common Sense (Duh)
   Come on, you really think that buying 3,000 fans is the right way to do things?  I may be repeating this one like a broken record but I’m going to reference The Oatmeal again.  The Oatmeal creates awesome content, is it a wonder where they got their 642,000 Facebook fans from? I’ll bet you that almost all of those fans are active readers and engage constantly.  Buy likes or beg for them and you’ll end up disappointed in the end. (kind of like forcing a relationship where one is just not interested, friends can see the disaster from a mile away!)

So how do I gain a ton of Facebook Likes the right way?

Lets face it, you’re going to have to work the hard way to gain your Facebook Likes.  Yes, you could gain a million by having an article, video, or product going viral, but don’t count on that.  Just create start your own blog beautiful content and your audience will come.  Put a simple like button on your website, people will see it.  You don’t need a flashing Facebook button that looks like the Las Vegas welcome sign, we all get it by now!

Facebook is rolling out a new Facebook Offers feature, which will allow businesses to create coupons and publish them to a news feed.  The offers can be distributed through your customer news feed or even promoted as a Sponsored Story.

It’s not surprising that Facebook is releasing a feature like this, especially since they’re moving towards additional ways to monetize.  They tried launching Facebook Deals, but that didn’t catch on.  So instead they launched FB coupons still targeted towards businesses but with a different approach.  I think it’s a good idea, however I feel that Facebook is starting to get flooded with Apps, Memes (stupid pictures, quotes), Ads, and now Coupons from businesses!  It’s turning into a big advertisement.  I think I could write a whole post about how Facebook is actually on a downfall, but I’ll get to that later.

What do you think, are Facebook Coupons a good thing?

Fair question, because it wasn’t too terribly long ago (I’d say about 6 months ago) where, once you built your Facebook Fan Page > gave it a title > then published it, there was no changing it.

If you gave your page a title that you didn’t like, and then published that bad boy, your only option was to delete the page and start over.

Which would be fine for a page that is new and doesn’t have any fans yet.

But what about when your page isn’t new and it’s a couple months down the road and you think you need to edit (or change) the title of your Facebook Fan Page?

Limit on the number of fans to change / edit your Facebook Fan Page

First of all, you can’t do anything with the name or title of your Facebook Fan Page if you have 100 fans or more.  Once you get to where you have 100 fans or more, you don’t have any other options for changing the title except to delete your page and start over.

But if I have at least 100 fans already, I don’t think deleting and starting over is a wise option, unless the the title is just so far out of whack that a change is necessary.

Then again, I would think you’d have noticed that before you reached 100 fans.

Anyway… I digress.

So assuming you have less than 100 fans on your Facebook Fan Page, I can now proceed to telling you how to change (or edit) your page title (or the name of your Facebook Fan Page.

What’s the name (or title) of my Facebook Fan Page anyway?

Great question – glad you asked.

The name (or title) of your Facebook Fan Page is the name you see directly to the right and to the top of your Facebook Fan Page logo.  Here’s a screenshot of my Facebook Fan Page:

Why is your Facebook Fan Page name (or title) important?

Another great question!

The title (or name) of your Facebook Fan Page is important because it’s the equivalent of the <h1> tag on any other web page.  And the <h1> tag is, from Google’s perspective, the most important and most relevant starting point for ranking pages in Google’s index.

And Facebook Fan Pages are indeed crawled, indexed, and ranked in Google search for specific keyword phrases.

Here’s my Facebook Fan Page in Google for keyword phrase “social media seo“:

Ok, so in case you didn’t know this yet.  The blue part of the search results are pulled from what I was just referring to – the <h1> tags of the web pages.

And as you can see in the Google search results, the title (or name) of my Facebook Fan Page is in fact the <h1> tag of my Facebook Fan Page.

So that’s why this stuff is important ya’ll… it affects your presence and exposure in Google search results.

How to change the name / title of your Facebook Fan Page

Again, assuming you have 100 fans or less, here’s how to can change / edit your Facebook Fan Page name (or title):

1)  From your Facebook Fan Page, click the “edit info” link at the very top of your Facebook Fan Page

2)  Click “Basic Information” – it’s the link along the left hand side.

3)  The fourth section down is called “Name:” – if you have less than 100 fans, you’ll be able to edit your page name (or title) here.

Hope that helps…

—–

Facebook Fan Page Tips

You can get this article, and other Facebook Fan Page tips, at my Facebook Fan Page Tips article directory.

One of the greatest advancements in Facebook Fan Page customization was when Facebook deprecated the FBML app and allowed apps to be added to pages that utilized full HTML.  This one single move opened up a whole new world of Facebook page customization and utilization.

However, one of the biggest complaints from developers – at least initially – was when the Facebook page app wasn’t quite right in either height or width and you’d get a scroll bar.

Well it seems that Facebook has resolved this issue for developers with ‘Fluid’.

Fluid is a new feature in the Facebook app’s height and width settings.  Instead of checking a fixed width or “show scroll bar”, you can now select ‘Fluid’ and your app will adjust automatically to remove the scroll bars.

Let me know if you are using ‘Fluid’ and still have problems with your scroll bars.

Most small businesses get their customers from their local area.  Locally owned small businesses are – and you’ve heard this before – the backbone of America. And with the rise of social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc…), small local businesses are trying to figure out exactly how they can leverage the new social media platform to do things like increase foot traffic, convert more sales, and increase new customers.

And interesting statistic was released that showed only about 15% of fans on a locally owned businesses’ Facebook Fan Page are actually local. Put it another way, 85% of fans on a locally owned businesses’ Facebook Fan Page are not local.

This sounds like a problem to me…

I mean, what’s the point in a small, locally owned business having a Facebook Fan Page if the majority of the fans aren’t even from the market in which they do business?

There’s gotta be a way for a locally owned business to grow their Facebook Fan Page with fans who are actually from their local market.

Great news – there is!  And I’m about to share with you the #1 most effective way for a locally owned small business owner to grow their Facebook Fan Page.

How to grow a locally owned small business Facebook Fan Page

Here’s the short answer – doing give a ways!

I figured I’d just throw that out there so as to not keep you waiting.

That’s right – give a ways is, without a doubt, the most effective way a locally owned small business can grow their Facebook Fan Page.

But now let me define what a give a way looks like for the small, locally owned business.

Keep your give a ways locally targeted

If you are a locally owned small business, and you are looking to do a give a way with the intent of building your Facebook Fan Page – and the purpose being to generate more business and revenue from your local customer base – then it wouldn’t make much sense to give a way something that redeemable on a national level.

To build your local fan base, you have to run give a ways that are both relevant to your local customer base, and that also are redeemable only within your local market.

AND…. make sure that the first stipulation in the give a way is that you are a fan of your store’s Facebook Fan Page.

For example, let’s say I’m a locally owned clothing store and my primary customer base is women ages 25 – 40.  Of course, revenue is generated solely from those customers walking in my front door and purchasing clothing.  However, I need to increase my Facebook Fan Page fans with people who are actually within my local market.

A great idea, considering this particular market demographic, would be to give a way something like Chik Fil A giftcards, or some other popular restaurant.

But the restaurant MUST BE local, and you must put a stipulation on your give a way that the coupons are ONLY redeemable within your local market.

Another great angle on this strategy would be to find a popular restaurant that is only found in your local city, or within the neighborhood of your store.

The point is, target your give a ways to the local market so that the fans you build from your give a way only come from your local market.

And the amount of money you spend on running give a ways (like a $20 gift card to Chik Fil A for example) is nominal compared to impact of growing your Facebook Fan Page with actual local customers and being able to send out promotions and deals to those who are in your city.

Check out our entire list of Facebook Fan Page Tips & Resources

It’s rare indeed when things like this happen, and of course, my first instinct is to start getting all spiritual and ask “what does this all mean” and “is someone trying to tell me something”?

I think none of the above, and I’d say let’s just chalk it up to coincidence.

Within a one hour span this morning, I was asked twice, by two different people, the same exact question:

How do you make money with your Facebook Fan Page?

The first person who asked me did so via email.  They were trying to figure out what product would sell best on a Facebook Fan Page (I’m going to address that below).

The second person did so on the phone while we were talking about the differences between making money on a tradition blog or website, versus making money on Facebook (also addressed below).

Affiliate Products

Probably the most effective way I’ve seen so far to make money on Facebook, or through your Facebook Fan Page, is through the promotion of affiliate products.

For example, this morning’s deal of the day on Amazon is a Kodak Mini Video Camera with SD Card (Grey).

As an Amazon Associate, someone who makes money on Amazon through affiliate marketing, this was a great product for me to tell my Facebook fans about.

So I wrote an article about the product on my blog and then shared that article to my 5,000 plus fans on Facebook.

Exactly how many have sold so far, I’m not sure.  I won’t actually know the sales figures until tomorrow.  But the principle stands, promoting affiliate products through your Facebook fan page is a great way to earn revenue through your page.

What products should I focus on?

This is such a great question for any Facebook fan page admin, and the answer, to me anyway, is very simple – you must promote products that help your Facebook fans.

Let’s face it, your Facebook fan page is made up of people that share a common interest with the content and purpose of your Facebook page.  So sharing and promoting products that would actually help your fans is the obvious way to go.

Since I share a lot of technology and social media news through my Facebook page, and that in turn grows a large fan base built around that subject, it only makes sense then that the products I promote would be related to technology.

So items like the Kodak Mini Video Camera was a perfect fit, because more than likely, the fans of my Facebook page would be interested in gadgets like this.

So there really isn’t one answer that fits all in response to the question, what products should I sell / promote to my Facebook fan page fans. The proper response would be, sell products that are going to help your fans and add value to their lives.

There’s a lot to be said for making an effort to add value to others.  Most importantly, people recognize your effort and appreciate the attention.

So affiliate marketing is just one way you can earn money off your Facebook fan page.  What are some other ways you’ve earned money off your Facebook page?

Your business, and your brand, are critically important to you, I realize this.  Making the most of every opportunity is a way for you to propel your business forward to more growth, more influence, and more profitability.  But what opportunities should you actually pursue?  How do you know what opportunities can actually give you the best return on your effort for growing your business and your brand?

I can’t say I know the answer to that question in full for your exact business.  Every business is different, every market is uniquely dynamic.  I can say though, regardless of what your business is, or what brand you are striving to build, Facebook can be a game changer in so many way.  Facebook can because the one tool that allows you to build a massive audience of people who recognize your brand, understand your business, and see the work and expertise that you possess – regardless of what field of work you are in.

I have a friend who does home repair and small scale construction.  It’s only him and his partner, and they work hard giving out quotes on new jobs with the hopes that just a few of those clients will actually hire them.

They built a Facebook Fan Page a few months ago and started sharing news, updates from their industry, and images of their projects.  And my friend tells me now that traffic and interaction on their Facebook Page has more than doubled.

2 Key Components To Building Your Brand On Facebook

Has all they work and effort paid off yet for my friend?  Maybe in some cases, sure.  But by no means does the growth my friend’s page is experiencing mean every single new interaction is going to result in a new sale.

But what my friend is doing – what he’s at the very forefront of building – is the brand and influence of his business.

#1:  Frequently Update Your Facebook Page

On Facebook, you have the opportunity to keep reminded a growing audience people about your business.  Each update, each new picture, each new interaction, is a reflection on your business and your brand.  And the more you interact and update your Facebook fan page, the more brand recognition you are building.

It’s like having a TV commercial for your business where you get to control the frequency of the play times to your target audience.

#2:  Interact With Your Audience

You have to interact with your fans.  If you are doing the hard work of updating your Facebook Fan Page everyday with news and information that’s valuable to your audience, you have to take a little bit extra time to interact with your audience.

When someone replies to your update, or comments on an image, or asks a question, responding to that person will make a huge impact on that person.  And when that person feels like you actually care about him or her, and they see you are taking the time to interact with them, they will be more apt to interact again.

This process allows you to continue to build your influence with this one individual, but the ripple effect is equally value.

The more someone – or a group of people – interacts with you on Facebook, the deeper your exposure can be throughout Facebook.  When someone interacts with your Facebook page, that interact typically shows up on their friend’s wall stating that you interacted with that Facebook page.

That wall update is a direct link back to your Facebook page, and it’s on someone’s wall that you probably don’t even know.  And I’m sure you can see the cycle of exposure I’m getting at here.

The more you interact with your fans on Facebook, and more active you are updating your page, the more exposure you’ll get to more people, allowing your brand to continually grow and spread to more people.

Being consistent, day after day, with this process will eventually lead you to a tipping point where you see your hard work pay off.

What about you?

What are some ways you’ve grown your Facebook page’s audience and influence?

A form of online marketing that is fast growing in popularity is Social Media, and in particular Facebook.  The opportunities for leveraging Facebook, and integrating Facebook as a marketing tool are numerous.

It is certainly worthwhile taking the time, and putting in the work, to understand the potential that Facebook holds and capitalize on the opportunity.

Most new marketers on Facebook make a huge mistake by assuming that by posting just a few regurgitated wall updates is going to open up the flood gates of new fans and new opportunities for business.

My friends, that’s just not the case.

But there are some things you can do, some strategies to implement on a consistent basis, that will help you to grow your Facebook fan page.  And when I say “grow” your Facebook page, I’m implying in more ways than just shear fans.  A healthy Facebook page has a growing fan base, ongoing conversations, direct interaction from admins, and back tagging from other people and other Facebook pages.

Here are 5 proven steps that you can take, on a consistent basis, that will help you to “grow” your Facebook fan page: 

1)  Link to your Facebook from your site

This is easy to do, and an excellent way to promote the fact you have a Facebook page. Facebook is easier to update, and something new will keep potential customers always coming back to your Facebook page to see if anything has changed.

2)  Add it to your marketing

A mention of your Facebook page on your marketing material is an easy way to entice people to visit your page. By including it in all forms of marketing, both online and offline (printed) material, your business is reaching a wider range of potential customers. It is also worthwhile adding it is a link to your signature for all email communication.

3)  Keep your Facebook content fresh

Neglect is the worst thing that could be done to a Facebook page. Potential customers will quickly stop visiting if they see that nothing has changed the last few times they visited. New content will also see your Facebook page appear on others news feeds frequently, and help to get people’s attention and interest.

4)  Keep in touch with your followers

If someone takes the time to comment or ask a question on your Facebook page, then take the time to reply or answer their question. This will start the possibility of further communication, but is also a nice way of showing that you are interested in what visitors to your Facebook page have to say.

5)  Consider what you put on your Facebook page

Anything you put on the page should be interesting and help to draw potential customers in. Make sure they are interesting, and ultimately, make sure they don’t happen too often. At best, an update once or twice a week is viewed favourably, and doesn’t spam the news feeds of your potential customers and visitors.

6)  Take advantage of Facebook tagging

By using the @ symbol in a status update, you can make mention of another page by typing their name. If the name doesn’t turn blue, then the page is not able to be tagged.

Tagging other pages helps promote their content.  And by helping promote other people’s content, you will build brand recognition for your own Facebook page.  I’m always aware, and always appreciative (which means I notice, recognize, and remember) those who have tagged my Facebook page in their own updates.

What about you?

What other proven methods are you using to promote your Facebook Fan Page?

Are there strategies that you’ve implemented that are proven to grow, promote, and increase the effectiveness of your Facebook Page?

Share your tips in the comments below!

Below are my thoughts about an ebook / e-article that I’m putting together on how to add a “invite friends tab / Facebook app” to your Facebook Fan Page.  I get asked abut how to do this A LOT and figured it’s time to put something comprehensive together.  Again, an e-article is coming that you’ll be able to purchase (I think anyway)

You don’t need to be an online marketingand SEO professional to know the importance of Facebook for your professional career, but how many of us take advantage of the full features available to make our Facebook page really pop? Creating an attractive page and interacting with your network in style will greatly improve your page views.

In this article, we look at some tips to make your page look good and attract more regular visitors.

As a local business owner, you don’t really care about ranking high in national or global search results.  If you own a sea food restaurant in downtown Atlanta, then you want to target those who are searching on Google Maps, or using keyword phrases such as “best seafood in atlanta” – which triggers local Google Maps search results.

So here are some tips to ranking higher in Google local search results.

1)  You need a Google Places page

I’m telling you right now, if you are a local business where your customers come to your location, then you need to have a Google Places page for your business.

Get your Google Places page here.

Do this for me – go to Google and search for something like “seafood in atlanta” and tell me what you get?

This is what I see when I search “seafood in atlanta” from Google:

Tell me what you see here as the top search results?

That’s right – it’s all about Google Maps listings.  Well guess what, these Google Maps listings are not appearing by accident – they are appearing because Google Maps is feeding off data from Google Places.

Same thing with Google Places via mobile phones

The same exact thing occurs when I search “seafood in atlanta” from my iPhone.

Check it out – here’s what I get when I open Google from my iPhone and search “seafood in atlanta”:

The search results you see above are, once again, being fed directly from Google Places.

So the whole point here is critically important – your local business MUST HAVE a Google Places page in order to have a shot of connecting to people in your local area searching for what you offer.

2)  Create full Google Places listing & pages

After you create your Google Places page for your business, you need to now fill it up with a lot of relevant information.

Two main areas I’m going to focus on here is “categories” and images”.

Categories:

With Google Places, you have 5 main categories that you use to define your business.  Let me just tell you this – if Google Places doesn’t have your main category listed as a one that pops up automatically, then create your own custom category.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

You HAVE TO, HAVE TO, HAVE TO make sure that your get highly relevant, and keyword targeted categories represented in your categories.

And also make sure you take advantage of all five (5) categories.  A lot of businesses only use two or three categories, and then wonder why they are being outranked by businesses who are using the full five (5) categories allocated to their profiles.

Images

This is one area that always amazes me when it comes to businesses using Google Places – they never upload their own images to their page!!!??

Why is that?

I don’t really know to be honest with you – perhaps they just don’t know any better.

But the majority of images I see on a Google Places pages are ones from third party websites – not ones the owner himself or herself uploaded.

Added your own images, and uploading them directly to your Google Places page gives that content exponentially higher value from an authoritative standpoint.

And there isn’t a limit – at least that I know of – to the number of images you can upload.

So get out your camera, start snapping images of your interior and exterior business, and get those images uploaded to your Google Places page – it’s really a big deal.

3)  Facebook Pages and Facebook Places

I’m not going to get into the full details of how to setup a Facebook fan page and Facebook places location for your local business, but I need to tell you that nothing is more important to have up and running in conjunction with your Google Places page than a Facebook fan page and Facebook places page for your local business.

With your Facebook fan page, you can actually create a page designed and templated specifically for local businesses.

With your Facebook places page, you can can do the exact same thing as with your Facebook fan page, but have the added benefit of showing your visitors – on both desktop and mobile devices – your map listings, specials, etc…

Best of all, the most fully developed Facebook fan pages and Facebook places pages you have for your business, the more information and relevance will feed back to your Google Places page and make it more authoritative to help it rank even higher in the search results.

If anyone needs helps with creating a Google Places page, Facebook fan page, and / or Facebook places page for their local business, feel free to give me a call – I’d be more than happy to help you out.

Robert Holland @ 706-363-0335

Or email me:  admin@socialmediaseo.net

That’s right, in 7 hours, Leo Messi’s Facebook Page has generated nearly 7 million fans!

Messi is known in some circles as the great soccer player in the world, and had this to say (translated) via his new Facebook page:

“Hola! Welcome to everyone. Thank you very much for the great number of messages that I have received. I am so excited! From now on we will be more closely connected … through Facebook.”

He went on to say “as it is difficult to tell you what it’s like during a game, I am sharing with you this video from Adidas that shows the passion and the emotions I feel on the pitch.”

The way I see it, being an entrepreneur today nearly requires you to be engaged online.

Is it an “absolute” that you need to be leveraging the web to be successful with your new business venture?

Of course not.

However, the internet – when used effectively – will allow you build a conversation around your new venture faster, and more efficiently, than ever before.  Building a conversation around your new venture is critical in helping you build your brand.  Building your brand, and a growing audience of fans around your brand, is mandatory for your and your new venture to reach critical mass.

Once you’ve reached critical mass, now you have fans – or as Seth Godin would describe them… a tribe – of people who are cheering your business, products, and services out of their own desire and pride because they are associated with you.

Can this be achieved outside of the web?  Again, I don’t want to completely rule that out because obviously there are examples of businesses starting, and thriving, without it.

But the effective use of online tools such as Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and live streaming can help you reach critical mass faster than ever before.

And with all of these tools, you can build an audience of followers faster than ever before who you can instantly reach out to, communicate with, and get feedback from.

I’m starting this Web-A-Neur Series because I know the economy is tough, and starting a business in this economy is even tougher.

You’ve gotta be strong, diligent, and extraordinary in order to set yourself apart today, even with the easy accessibility of the Internet.

I’m proposing with this part 1 introduction that the Internet can be a key factor to lifting your business, products, or services faster than any other tool that exists.

If for nothing else, when it comes to the Internet, typically your only cost is the internet service itself.

After that, the tools online are mostly free – at the least effectively ones anyway like Facebook, Twitter, and starting your own blog.

The biggest cost you’ll pay, in my experience anyway, is the time and commitment required to build your brand using the Internet.

You can’t just create a Facebook Fan Page and expect it to flourish and take your business to critical mass in a week – that’s just not realistic.

Nor can you start a blog today and expect to be getting 2,000 visitors a day by next week. Again, that’s unrealistic.

The internet is no different in regards to having to build your brand and create a following of fans that are sold out to you and what you are offering.

It takes hard work, perseverance, and a commitment to achieving your goals.

After that however, the Internet can allow you to reach a global audience of customers, fans, and buyers on a scale that before the Internet was just not possible.

Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership Seminar

Case in point, I spent the day yesterday at our church taking part in Dave Ramsey’s Enterleadership seminar.  This is a seminar to help entrepreneurs and small businesses be more successful and make better decisions in every aspect of their business.

No, Dave Ramsey was not physically at my church though.

A group of about 12 people were watching the seminar via a live stream from Dave’s church in Nashville, Tennessee.

I would say there were about 200 – 300 people who were physically in the church sanctuary watching Dave Ramsey live.

But hundreds of thousands of people tuned in via the web to watch the exact same seminar.

The internet allowed Dave Ramsey to reach at least ten times more people than were physically in the church watching.

There was a Twitter hashtag (#entre) created for the event so that viewers could be part of the real time discussion that was happening on Twitter.

And all of the products, and additional seminars that Dave Ramsey was promoting reached critical mass because of the Internet, not because of the people who were physically present in Nashville.

In the follow up articles of the Web-A-Neur Series, I will be talking more about how you, as an entrepreneur, can leverage the tools that the Internet provides so that you can achieve critical mass with your business venture.

There are definitely right ways, and wrong ways, to go about doing this.  From the content you share, to the mindset you have, leveraging the Internet for your start up requires some planning and solid execution.

As I close this article, what are some ways you’ve been leveraging the Internet for your startup ventures?

What online tools have been more effective for you building your audience and brand?

Not only are brands able to build highly customizable Facebook tabs out of pure HTML, javascript, and CSS, but you can now brand your tab with a cool little web icon.

With the old FBML apps for your Facebook page, you were restricted to that dull, boring web icon for your custom tab.  This is the small, gray icon that showed up underneath your Facebook page logo in the tab navigation section.

But with iFrame tabs, you can fully customize your tab’s web icon so your Facebook Fan Page starts to take on more of a “website” navigational feel, and gives you – the brand – the ability to fully own and customize your Facebook pages.

The way you add a customize web icon to your Facebook iFrame tab is as follows:

1) Login to Facebook

2) go to your iFrame app (located in your Facebook developers section)

3) click “edit settings”

4) in the middle of the next section you’ll see the “icon” and the “logo” – the “icon is the image that controls what shows up in navigation section on your Facebook Fan Page.

Here’s an example of a Facebook page where I customized each iFrame tab currently running:

The only criteria for your Facebook iFrame tab icon is that it needs to be 16×16 pixels in size.

As you can see above in the image, I set a custom web icon that relates to the content located on each of those custom iframe tabs.

This will help you personalize your Facebook Fan Page and build your own unique brand on Facebook.

Don’t underestimate the power of having a web icon for each of your Facebook page iFrame apps.

When it comes to growing your Facebook Fan Page, there is one thing I’ve learned from my own experience at the SMSEO Facebook page – the number of fans at any given time showing on my page are in a constant state of flux.

This means, the total number of fans who are following my Facebook page is constantly changing up and down.

Why this is, and how this happens, is beyond me. I have to assume that people are always “unliking” my Facebook page, while new people are coming on board.  This is the logically explanation, in my opinion.

With my fan page climbing to more than 4,500 fans (at this moment it shows 4,508… could change any minute now!), the variance of the fluctuation seems to be increasing as my fan page grows.

It’s sort of like watching the stock market – it climbs, drops, and has moments where it seems like its going to completely crash.  But then, over time, the number continually increases, growing more and more followers each day.

If there’s a lesson to be learned, I would say it’s this – do not worry about the day to day fluctuation of the number of fans you have on your Facebook fan page.

If you watch your numbers minute by minute, then you’ll drive yourself crazy and become trapped in a cycle of unproductive wasted time.

BELIEVE ME!!!! I KNOW!

Instead, use analytics like Facebook Insights to track the number of new fans, page views, viewers, etc… that are coming to your Facebook page over wider spans of time. These numbers will give you a better understanding of the growth of your Facebook Fan Page over time.

I just added a new app to my Facebook Page and to be honest with you, I’m not sure what the app is called technically, but it’s the app that allows you to invite your friends to a Facebook Fan Page by simply clicking on their images or typing in their names.

In fact, this “Facebook Invite” app will allow you to invite up to 40 people to my Facebook page – or your Facebook page if you had it running.

I’ve seen it running on previous Facebook pages, like on the the hugely popular Manchester United Football (soccer) page.

There’s one huge difference though between their page and mine – when I added the app via the Facebook iFrame app integration, it’s allowing me to invite up to 40 people at once – the Manchester invite app says that you can only invite up to 16 people at once.

So my Facebook invite app is nearly four times more productive than their’s – which would be great if it would allow my Facebook page to grow to even a fourth of what their’s is (currently they have 11.2 million fans!).

Here’s how I added the Facebook Invite app to my Facebook page:

I first followed the basic steps of creating a Facebook iFrame tab for your Facebook Fan Page.

Under the “Facebook Integration” > Page Tabs – I clicked “FBML” instead of “iFrame”.

And then in the html file, I added the follow FBML snippet:

This creates a very nice looking, and very effective, Facebook invite app where people can now come and invite all of their friends to join your Facebook page.

When building the apps, I named it “Join SMSEO!” so that throughout the sharing process, the message is consistently “so and so invited you to Join SMSEO!”.

Basically, whatever you put in the title of the app is what will show up all over the process, and including in the invite message your friends receive.

Let me know how the integration goes for you!

Last week, Facebook rolled out a new functionality called Facebook Questions.

Facebook Questions functions as a recommendation engine, providing a social tool for feedback, opinions, and insight that leverages the 600 million plus users on Facebook.

The power of Facebook Questions is that:

1. it’s social, powered by Facebook so that any question you post can reach people beyond your initial circle (i.e. friends and fans), and
2. it provides instant research for business and brands on anything from what are your favorite topics, to favorite drinks at restaurants, to what products are you looking forward to the most this coming holiday season.

But in order for brands to leverage Facebook Questions, you can have to first know how to use it.

Here’s a quick, easy “how to” for using Facebook Questions to conduct research, get feed, and to build your very own recommendation engine for your business and brand:

1)  Use Facebook as your “Page”

In order to use Facebook Questions to gain feedback and insights for your business or brand, you have to switch to using Facebook as your page.

The easiest way to do this is to, once you are logged in to Facebook, click “Account” in the upper right hand corner of Facebook > then click “Use Facebook as Page”.

2)  Enable Facebook Questions

Now that you are using Facebook as your Page (business, brand, organization, etc…) you are ready to enable and start using Facebook Questions:

Go to > http://www.facebook.com/questions

And that’s it…

3)  Create your first campaign

Now you are ready to create your first campaign to gain feedback from the fans of your Facebook Page.

Of course, as I’m sure you know, if you didn’t switch to using Facebook as your page, then you’d be creating a “questions” campaign as your personal profile.

Now you simply type in your question, and add options for people to chose from.

Here’s what it looks like:

Leveraging Facebook Questions:

Getting Facebook Questions up and rolling, and post questions as your “Page” (your business, brand, organization, etc…) is the easy part.

The power of Facebook Questions comes in the questions that you ask, and even more importantly, the choices that you offer.

If you ask the right questions, and provide the rights options as answers, you’ll be able to gain insights and get recommendations from fans in ways that were not possible before.

And you can take your Question’s campaign even one step further by putting your fans in control of adding even more options from which to chose from.

At the very bottom of the Questions form, you see the option to Allow anyone to add options.

This means, not only can your fans interact with, and respond to your question and options, but they can add their own – giving your business even more valuable feedback from your fans, users, customers, etc…

What do you think about Facebook Questions?

What are some ways you see your business or brand leveraging Facebook Questions?

You could quickly create a long list of reasons “why” it would be beneficial for  a small business to leverage Facebook. Reasons such as 600 million users worldwide and growing fast, the fact that over half of all Facebook users login at least once per day, the fact that “friend recommendations” hold more weight online then nearly all other forms of referral… and the list could go one.

But instead of creating a long list of “why”, I believe it would be more beneficial to a small, medium, and even a large business, to get some insight into “how” to leverage Facebook to grow their business.

The “how” is applicable, in my view, to any sized business – from the small business, to the large corporate giant – because ultimately they “how” are principles of action to follow in using Facebook; a model if you will.

3 Way To Grow Your Business Using Facebook

1)  Be active on a Facebook Fan Page

Having a Facebook Fan Page is without a doubt one of the most effective ways any business can leverage Facebook. Not just having a Facebook Fan Page though, but actually leveraging it, making it active, making it productive, and sharing a lot of content each day is how you bring that page to life.

I’ve written before about how a Facebook Fan Page is equivalent to the law of momentum – the more active the page is, the more fans will come to it over time. Inversely, the less active your page, the more your fan page will shrink and lose its influence in your marketplace.

2)  Integrate Facebook into your website and blog

In today’s age of the relevance of social media, you MUST bring that influence directly to your own website or blog. You have to integrate your own web properties directly into the social media landscape, making “your business” a part of that social media graph.

The best way to do this is to utilize Facebook plugins (which are free) and add elements like your Facebook fan box and a Facebook commenting plugin directly to your website or blog.

A Facebook fan box is basically an element (a box) that shows the number of fans currently on your Facebook Fan Page, and has a “Like” button where people can become a fan of your page while viewing your blog.  Now you can grow your Facebook page directly from your blog by giving your visitors a way to interact with your Facebook presence.

Here’s a “how to” for adding a Facebook fan box to your website or blog.

A Facebook commenting plugin is, in my opinion, the most powerful tool that Facebook has released to date. By integrating the Facebook commenting plugin, you in essence are creating a commenting system for your website, your blog, or any other web page that you own.

Here’s a “how to” on integrating Facebook comments into your website or blog.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

You can see the Facebook plugin at work here at SMSEO at the bottom of this article, and every other article here at this blog.

You can also see where, and how, I’ve added the Facebook plugin to this standard website called Holy Ghost Swag.  This site would otherwise be a static HTML website. But now, because of the Facebook commenting plugin, it’s a social media platform and has integrated directly into the Facebook graph and giving it massive exposure that before would have been impossible to achieve.

The benefits of having a Facebook commenting plugin integrated into your site is that when someone leaves a comment, it distributes that comment to all of their Facebook friends, giving you a huge distribution of a link back to your website. And then when anyone comments or reacts (like, share, etc…) to that original comment, it then redistributes what is now a conversation to all of their friends on Facebook.  As you can see, with just a few people commenting and interacting through the Facebook commenting plugin, you can quickly achieve exposure to thousands of people that otherwise wouldn’t have been thinking about visiting your website today.

3)  Facebook insights and analytics

Finally, you can leverage Facebook insights and other analytical tools to learn exactly what elements of your efforts are reaping the biggest rewards for growing your business.

The Facebook Insights tool is available for you to review and analyze your traffic data from Facebook for both your Facebook Fan Page and your website where you have Facebook integrated.

The Facebook Fan Page insights is viewable directly on your Facebook Fan Page, in the upper right hand corner and it’s called “View Insights”.

You can read more about how to leverage insights for your Facebook Fan Page here, but let me just tell you that I utilize my fan page insights to see exactly what are the page updates – what type of content – that gets the most interaction (comments, likes, shares, etc…).  Because the updates that are getting the deepest levels of engagement are the updates that are giving my Facebook page the highest level of exposure and bringing in the most visitors.

Insights for your website is a relatively new tool and you can read about how exactly to integrate insights for websites here. But let me tell you that just like the insights for your Facebook page, the insights for website is equally powerful because it will tell you what pages (blog posts, articles, information pages, products, etc…) within your site are getting the highest levels of engagement.

This information is invaluable to you as a business owner because it tells you what pages are most interesting to your visitors and customers, and gives you – pardon the pun – insights into how you can shift your focus more on what it working at driving traffic and exposure from Facebook, and also what’s not working and what pages you improve on.

Obviously, the pages (blog posts, articles, product pages, etc…) that are working, you want to focus more on that content.  If you are a publisher like myself, then it will tell you what types of content generates the most interaction throughout social media, and in turn the highest return of traffic back to your site and the greatest brand exposure. This is obviously the type of traffic that I want to write more of.

Likewise, if you run an online store, with insights for websites you’ll be able to see what products are generating the most interaction and engagement throughout social media.  Now you’re armed with information that tells you what products generate the most interest with your customer base and what is driving the highest level of brand exposure for your business throughout social media – obviously powerful information to be armed with as a online seller.

Conclusion

Facebook has over 600 million users and is growing fast. I would confidently argue that the majority of your customers are on Facebook, engaging friends and Facebook pages on a daily basis. Because of this, you have the opportunity to use this free tool (being Facebook) to help you grow your business and leverage the power of social media for your marketing and brand building efforts.

These are some ways that I’ve learned how to leverage the power of Facebook for building both traffic and brand exposure throughout social media.

What are some ways you are integrating Facebook into your online marketing efforts?

Do you have any experiences you can share with some of the tools I’ve mentioned above?

The process for setting up a new iFrame tab for your Facebook did just get a bit easier with the new “Facebook Tab URL” field in the “Page Tabs” section of your application.

The “tab url” field used to be a place where you have to enter only the page portion of the URL being used for your iFrame tab.

Here’s what it used to look like:

Some people struggled with this because they weren’t completely sure what goes in that field.  And by putting in the wrong information, you’d end up with an error.

Now the iFrame tab URL is a whole lot easier – it now simply has you enter the entire URL of your iFrame tab.

Here’s what it looks like now:

The new “Tab URL” should make it a whole lot easier for you to setup your Facebook iFrame tab because now you can simply enter the URL of the page where your tab code resides.

It seems like a small change, but it’s one that in my opinion makes it easier to create tabs for your Facebook page.

I realize this is a bit of a stretch…

But if you’ll stay with me for a moment, I’m sure you’ll have a better understanding as to why I just associated the growth of your Facebook Fan Page with Sir Isaac Newton’s Law of Motion.

If you recall from high school science, there are actually three Laws of Motion that Newton came up.

The one I want to focus on here is the law that states an object in motion tends to stay in motion – an object as rest tends to stay at rest.

This law of motion, or inertia, or velocity, or momentum – ah yes… I like that word momentum – is critically important to understand as you push to grow your Facebook Fan Page.

Because simply the best way to grow your Facebook Fan Page is start making it active.

Remember, an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

The problem here is that the same law has a direct inverse affect that states an object at rest test tends to stay at rest.

Here it is put simply:

If you want to grow your Facebook Fan Page, your influence, your audience, your community, then you’ll get active and start moving forward – start getting productive, start sharing, interacting, building relationships, making connections, etc…

If you want your Facebook Fan Page to shrink, remain stagnant, have no influence, have no interaction – then you’ll remain complacent, not putting any effort  into your Facebook Page, not making connections, not reaching out, not creating some energy, etc…

The good news about Newton’s Law of Motion:

There is some excellent news hidden in Newton’s Law of Motion that states, an object will remain in its current state of motion (or lack thereof) until a greater force comes against it – then it will shift course.

Isn’t that great news for so many aspects of our lives?

Just knowing that your life will continue down a certain path, but if you take action against that path, the path itself can change completely.

The same is true with your online marketing efforts and your Facebook Fan Page growth.

No matter where you are in your online marketing efforts – no matter how many fans you currently have on Facebook – no matter what you are doing right now… at this very moment with your life, all it takes is a bit of effort, energy, and “fight”, and you’ll shift your course.

Putting this in terms of a Facebook Fan Page, you’ll get more fans, more influence, more customers, and more prospects.

With the recent introduction of full html and javascript capability for Facebook Fan Page iFrame tabs, it only makes sense that Facebook would add HTTPS capabilities.  Some users browse Facebook only in HTTPS browser mode, which means they are browsing Facebook securely.

Well when someone visits your iFrame tabs in secure mode, if your apps are setup with an HTTPS URL, then the tab won’t be presented.

This will also allow app developers to potentially integrate payment methods and credit card forms to their Facebook Fan Pages.  With an HTTPS canvas URL, the page where the credit card form resides would be fully secured.

To make your iFrame tab HTTPS capable, simply add your URL to the “Secure URL” field in your Facebook app.

But one thing that can quickly settle the matter is some hard, fast numbers.  Like how many “fans” someone has following them on Facebook – that’s a pretty good measurement tool.

So when it comes to “most popular” musicians, there is a new king on Facebook and his name is Eminem. Coming in with 30,374,000 and counting, Eminem’s Facebook page took #1 spot from Lady Gaga who now sits at #2, with Michael Jackson at #3, followed by Rihanna and then Linkin Park to close out the top five.

via BallerStatus

In that announcement, Facebook spelled out the timeline for closing the door on the FBML apps and stated on March 11th, 2011, you’ll no longer be able to create new FBML apps for your Facebook pages.

This is what Facebook had to say in regards to the FBML apps:

On March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app. While all existing apps on Pages using FBML or the Static FBML appwill continue to work, we strongly recommend that these apps transition to iframes as soon as possible. Lastly, we want to be clear that our deprecation of FBML does not impact XFBML, such as the tags that support social plugins.

So even though tomorrow, you’ll no longer be able to create new FBML apps, your existing FBML apps are not in jeopardy of shutting down. As Facebook stated, Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work.

Also via Facebook’s official Twitter profile today, Facebook let the world know that the new Facebook Fan Page upgrades are starting to roll out, and that over the next several weeks, all pages will be upgraded to the new platform.

I wrote an article highlighting what I see as the 5 best features of the Facebook Fan Page upgrade.

To get a preview of your Facebook Fan Page in the upgraded state, visit here > facebook.com/pages/status.

But one thing that has seriously annoyed me are the games that keep pushing new messages and updates to me – on a non-stop basis.

Point in case – CityVille.

I get no less than 20 updates and messages from the CityVille app each day. And today I had enough, so I wanted to remove it.

It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do, I have to admit.

Some people might laugh at this, but I couldn’t easily and quickly find a way to get rid of the CityVille app, all the while fear was overcoming me as I new any second now one of my friends was wanting me to be their neighbor!

Here’s the easy way to remove yourself from an app:

So here’s what I did to quickly remove myself from the CityVille app – which would be applicable to any app on Facebook.

1) Visit the actual app on Facebook – for example, go to CityVille as if you are going to play the game.

2) Once you are physically at the app, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen and you’ll see a gray’ish looking text link that will be the name of the app > go ahead and click that text link.

3) Now you should be at the app’s page on Facebook .  This looks just like a Facebook Fan Page.  Now you need to scroll down to just below the fan box on the left hand side and find the link that reads “Remove App” > go ehead and click it.

And that’s it.

You have now removed yourself from the that app and you’ll no longer receive any updates or notifications from that app.

I’ve been asked several times from people about the possibility of running Google Analytics for the new iFrame tabs.

And so I’ve been searching for a way since last week to make this happen – to make Google Analytics run within a custom iFrame tab on a Facebook Fan Page.

The benefits would be great because you’d be able to see what kind of traffic your new app was getting.

However, my searching came to end yesterday when it occurred to me why Google Analytics, or GetClicky, or any other analytics tracking code for that, cannot run on an iFrame tab.

The reason is because iFrame tabs are iFrame’s.

Duh… really?

I realized yesterday that because these pages are an iFrame running within Facebook, the application that you build it not generating it’s own unique page views, only the page views from within Facebook.

So in the traditional form of pasting your Google Analytics code into an iFrame app, it’s not going work.

This doesn’t mean, however, that traffic analysis is not possible – because it is.

But the analytics integration has to come from within the code and frame of Facebook, not Google Analytics.

The bottom line – is it possible to analyze traffic to your iFrame apps?

Yes.

Will it happen by pasting Google Analytics, or any other analytics code, into your iFrame tab?

No.

Stay tuned as I continue down this road of generating analytics for iFrame tabs.

In my experience now of going on 2 years of growing my own Facebook fan page, consulting others, and being a part of explosive fan page growth with several clients, I’ve come to realize that their is only one tried and true method to growing your Facebook Fan Page.

It can all be summed up in one word – ACTIVITY.

In fact, the very algorithm that drives Facebook user’s newstreams leans heavily on “most recent activity”.

This means, the most recent and most relevant updates are what will be seen at the top of Facebook user’s newstreams.

Now apply this to your Facebook Fan Page, and it means that if you want your fan page seen by more people, which then attracts an ever increasing volume of fans, logic tells you that your page must become more active.

Let me share an example from one of the pages I run.

It’s for my tablet blog called TabletCrunch.com, where I write occasionally about the musing of the tablet market.

So I don’t write everyday in this blog. In fact a couple of weeks can pass where I’ve written nothing at all.

But then there are moments where I create a lot of content in a very short period time, and of course all of this content is syndicated to my Tablet Crunch Facebook Fan Page.

There is a direct corelation, each and every time, between the increasing number of fans on my Tablet Crunch page and my activity on that page.

When I’m active on my Tablet Crunch Facebook page, fan numbers increase.

When I’m not active, the number of fans stalls.

It’s very simple actually, and again, it’s a function literally of the algorithm that drives rankings in users Facebook newstream.

The more active your Facebook page, and the more engaging your content is that’s coming from your page, the more fans you’ll get… period.

The less active you are with your page, proportionally the less fans you’ll see joining your page.

Along with the new Facebook commenting system, Facebook announced an update to Fan Page walls that now allows you, the page admin, to filter your wall stream in just about every way possible.

Here’s what Facebook announced via Facebook Pages on March 1st:

We have made updates to the Page Wall, which you will begin to see in the coming hours. You can choose to filter Posts by the Page or from everyone (both Fans and Page). People can filter posts from everyone by Top Posts, which shows most interesting stories, or Most Recent, which shows posts in chronological order. Fans can switch between views by toggling the viewing option in the top right corner of the page wall.

So the “admins” can filter every option as they chose.

Fans also now have the option to filter posts as well, which is a great way to help keep your fans engaged in your on-going, and ever increasing discussions in your wall.

Facebook understands that the path to deeper engagement is more exposure in the wall. The more users are able to find the unique conversations within a wall, the longer users will stay engaged with these conversations and thus the longer they will remain on the Facebook platform.

The issue, according to Facebook, is that some admins are currently unable to edit events hosted by their page.

The only feedback from Facebook on this issue is that they hope to have the issue fixed shortly.

Have you seen these problems with the page hosted events on your Facebook page?

Let us know in the comments below and maybe we can help resolve this issue.