With all the Facebook changes lately it’s easy to get confused. My head is spinning. Now, you can Like another Page as your Facebook Page and comment on their Page as your Page. And Like a comment on a Page as your Page. So much Liking to do and so little time!  But why is it good to Like another Page as your Page?  Haven’t I already Liked them once?  Now I have to re-Like and I don’t like that!

There are some benefits to Liking a Page as your Page:

1. You can’t comment on another Page as your Page unless you Like it as your Page first.
2. You get more visibility as your Page when you comment on another Page (but don’t be spammy!)
3. You get a special News Feed of just the Pages that your Page has liked when you click Home when you are logged in as your Page.  The News feed will really help you keep track of all the Pages that you want to see and separate them out from your personal News Feed.

Watch the video tutorial to show you how to navigate everything, how to Like and comment and how to keep it all straight!  And make sure you like me at www.Facebook.com/GrandmaMaryShow – leave me a comment on my Page as your Page!

This question came in from a loyal reader and I thought I’d make it into a tutorial.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with affiliate marketing, in a nutcake, it’s basically promoting someone else’s product with your own special link that will track if you get a sale.  If you do, you will get a commission on the sale.  This can be a great way to make a little (or a lot) of pocket change.

But be CAREFUL!  There are a couple of considerations when you decide to promote affiliate products.  Number one, don’t promote crap!  Make sure it’s a good product that fits your audience.  Your Facebook Page is not an ATM.  If you oversell your audience, they will leave.  You have worked hard to build up your Facebook audience and you want to be providing value first and foremost.  So when you find something good that you believe in and will help them, then you can share it with your community.

The other consideration is the FTC guidelines that came out in 2009.  They do require that you disclose when you are receiving a commission on a product you are promoting.  You can read all the gory details here:  FTC Affiliate Guidelines.  These guidelines mostly came from the spammy promotions and false claims that people were making to sell stuff.  But they affect how you should post.  Basically you need to disclose that you will get a commission if people purchase the product.  Watch the video for to see the language I use and how to ensure the trust of your community.

Where do you find good Affiliate programs?  Here is a partial list.  The example in my video shows how to post links on your Page with an E-junkie product.

• Amazon.  You can get a commission on anything sold on Amazon.
• E-junkie.  Mostly e-book products but also much more.
• Share A Sale.  A wide variety of products and they have banners and logos you can insert into your website sidebars.
• Commission Junction.  Similar to Share A Sale.
• Affiliate Wealth Partners.  Run by my friend, Mary Kay Morgan, this is a great place to partner with conscious businesses (she screens everyone!).

Watch the video for all the ins and outs of promoting affiliate products on Facebook. If you have a question about affiliate marketing, let me know in the comments!

Woooweee Facebook has rolled out some big changes to the Pages!  We knew it was coming when the gave us a sneak peak into the new look back in December.  No more tabs, new notifications for comments and Likes, logging in as your Page, new photos at the top – yikes!  Here’s everything that has changed in a nutshell.

• Logging in as the Page.  Now you can comment on other Pages as your Page and Like other Pages as your Page.  That is fantastic!  You used to have to tag them to show up, but now we can talk as our business pages.  But only on Pages that we like as our Business Page, not on personal profiles.  Take a look below at how I posted on my co-author, Phyllis Khare’s Socially Congruent page (and go Like her too!)

• New Notifications.  When you are logged in as your Page you will see notifications when someone comments on your post or likes your Page.
• Photos at the top.  You can delete these or get creative with them.
• New Navigation.  To get to the Page dashboard the Edit Page button is in the upper right.
• News Feed for your Page Likes.  Click on Home and you will see the News Feed for all the Pages you Like as your Page.  (This is getting circular)
• No Tabs, side bar menu. Tabs are gone but available as links on the side.  So far it looks like the Default Landing tab is still an option.

And there’s lots more little nuances.  Watch the video to see all the changes!  Now it’s time to take my meds.

Facebook Marketplace is a handy Application developed by Oodle that many people don’t know about.  But if you need to find a job, sell your stuff, buy a car or even find a vacation rental, then you should check it out at http://www.Facebook.com/marketplace.  What can’t you do on Facebook?

The four big areas it’s used now are Apartment rentals, home sales, auto sales and jobs.  If you are a car dealer, this is a great way to show your inventory on your Facebook Page.  You can see Ford of Kirkland has a tab with all their Marketplace listings. If you are a Realtor, you can do a similar thing with your house listings.  Handy!



All of a sudden your Facebook account is posting weird things on all your friend’s walls about some new diet or some “funny” video that they have to watch.  But it’s not you!  You aren’t on some crazy diet.  What’s going on?  Most likely it’s an Application.

Facebook Applications are developed by 3rd parties and they aren’t always above board.  Some of these developers are just looking to get their spam out onto Facebook and that burns my bunions.  Many times you don’t even realize you have given an Application permission to access your information.  You are happily clicking around Facebook tra-la-la and bam, you’ve given an Application permission to post to your wall or more.  Sneaky little devils.

Here’s what to do when that happens:

1. Change your password.  Just because that’s easy to do.  Go to the upper right corner and click on Account and then Account Settings and then your Password can be changed there.
2. Check your Applications.  Again in the upper right, Account, then Privacy Settings.  Then in the lower left under Apps and Websites click the Edit your settings link.  This will show you all the Applications that have access to your profile.  Some of these Applications have the ability to post on your wall or your friends wall.  Delete any App that you don’t recognize.

Now maybe your account has really been hacked and you can’t get back in and bad things are happening.  In that case, you can lock it down by going to http://www.Facebook.com/hacked.

Watch the video for all the details and be careful out there!

Facebook has a handy notification feature for your personal profile but currently, there is no way to get notified when someone posts something on your business Page.  That burns my bunions.  You want to know when someone is responding to your post or posting something directly on your wall so you don’t have to keep checking back all day long.

Here are four ways you can get a notification so you don’t miss anything.

1.  Page Notifier – a free Facebook application that sends you an e-mail when people respond to your Facebook wall post or post something directly on your wall.  It’s free when you choose the once a day scan which may not be enough for you.  You may want an update sooner than that in which case you can upgrade to the paid version.

I like it because it shows comments from older wall posts that you may not scroll down to see.  Someone might comment on something from 3 days ago and you don’t notice it.  You will get an e-mail notifying you of that.

2.  Fan Page Notifier.  This is a free application that will notify you when anyone posts directly on the wall of your Page.  But you won’t get notified if they comment on a post you put on your wall.

The nice thing about this application is that the free version notifies you of posts as they happen.

3.  Like your post.  This is a handy trick you can use.  When you post something as your Page, just click the Like.  If someone responds to your wall post, you will get the Facebook notification to your personal Facebook account.  So you can use this trick in tandem with option #2 to have all your bases covered.

4.  Google Alerts.  You can use this to alert you of wall posts as well.  You can sign up for a Google alert with the URL of your page and the term “ago” to show you any new wall postings.  Select “as they happen” to get an immediate alert.  Watch the video for more explanation.

Hope that helps, come say hello on my Facebook Page www.Facebook.com/GrandmaMaryShow and I will be alerted

Split testing your Facebook ads is an important part of running a successful ad campaign.  What is split testing?  Split testing or A/B testing is changing one thing about your ad while keeping all the other variables the same and testing to see which ad performs better.

How do you split test and how do you analyze the numbers?  Here are some best practices for split testing:

• Only change one thing at a time.  Your main variables are the title, the picture, the copy and the targeting.
• Run the ad under similar conditions if possible.  Same time of the day, same bid (although bid prices vary), same length of time, etc.
• Dig deep into the reports.  It may look like one ad did better but check the conversions.
• Always create a new ad, don’t try and tweak one that didn’t perform well.  Facebook makes it easy to click on “Create a Similar Ad” so you preserve your settings.

Watch the video to see how to dig into the reports.  And if you want to go further, make sure you sign up for the free Facebook Ad Secrets webinar at noon PT on January 19th.  It will be recorded so if you can’t make it, sign up to get the recording.

Sign up for the Webinar on January 19th:

You can sign up right here to get the webinar information to Facebook Ad Secrets or take a look here: Facebook Ad Secrets

Everyone wants to win!  That’s why running a Facebook contest is a great idea.  People love a good contest.  But Facebook has a lot of rules around contests that most people aren’t aware of.  Running a contest that doesn’t comply with Facebook’s terms could get you banned.  We don’t want that.

The biggest rule is that you need to administer the contest through an Application.  That means you need to run your contest on a tab on your Page rather than by having them respond to a Wall post or uploading a picture to your wall or similar-type no-nos.  Luckily there are several companies who are dedicated to administering Facebook contests while following all the rules.

Here are some of the applications that administer Facebook contests:

• Wildfire – easy to set up and can be as little as $50/week.
• North Social – also easy to set up they charge per month and based on how many  fans your page has – good rates.
• Votigo – they currently focus on larger scale campaigns and can be very customized to your needs.
• Fanappz – I have not personally tried them but Bob Saget uses their quiz application.

Now to some of the rules and what you can and can’t do.  You can request that people Like your page to enter but you can’t automatically enter everyone who Likes you.  You can also have people upload photos and videos but only through the application, not to your wall.  To see all the ins and outs of the rules, take a look at the Promotions Guidelines on Facebook’s site.

I get into some of nitty-gritty of how to set up your contest with the Wildfire Application here:

Now you know how to set it up correctly and within Facebook’s terms, but what makes a successful contest?  I like to think of in terms of 3 P’s.  Planning, a good Prize and Promotion.

Planning

Don’t just stick your contest up on your Page and hope people enter.  Make a plan for the goals of your contest.  How many entries do you want, how many Likers, how many new subscribers?  How will you promote the contest?  Will you have a banner on your site, a blog tour (this takes planning to set up!) or press releases?  Make sure you have a promotion schedule in place so that you are reaching new people every day.

Prize

Give away something good!  You may want to poll your audience to find out what would be valuable to them.  You can give away a spot in your 12-week coaching system to draw attention to that product.  It doesn’t have to be extremely expensive to be valuable to your audience.

Promotion

This is the most important part.  Get the word out every day about your contest.  Tweet it, enlist friends to help spread the word, put links to the contest on your Facebook Page every day, have a link on your website, do a blog tour, write press releases, e-mail everyone and ask them to send it to anyone who is interested.

One nice aspect of Wildfire is they have a place to browse current contests.  This may get you some additional exposure as well as be a good place to research ideas.

Whatever you do have fun, learn from your contest and run another one.  They are great vehicles for connecting to new people and giving your brand some buzz!  And if you run a beauty contest, be sure and vote for Grandma LOL!

It’s time to clean your Facebook house!  Get rid of those Friends who you don’t really like anyway, Unlike those Facebook Pages (but not Grandma!) and block the ex-boyfriends.

You can also hide applications in your News Feed using these same techniques.  But while you are cleaning house, take a look at the Facebook Applications that have access to your information and clean those out too.  You can see how to do that in this post:  How to Stop Playing Farmville.

Start fresh and love your Facebook News Feed again! But don’t hide Grandma!

How to get more Fans or Likers, let me count the ways.  Here’s a list and you may or may not like all of them.  What is your favorite method to get more people to your Facebook community?

1. Suggest your Page to your personal Facebook Friends (Update: the Suggest to Friends link is gone so now you can just post the URL to your Facebook Page as a link in a status update to let your friends know about your Page)

2. Ask your community to suggest it to their friends (Tell them to click the Share link on the bottom of the left sidebar)

3. Put a Like Box on your Website

4. Add your Facebook Page URL to your signature

5. Put a Facebook button on your website

6. Use Wisestamp.com to put little fancy buttons into your signature

7. Run a Facebook ad campaign

8. Put your Facebook Page URL on your business card

9. Tag other pages and people with flattering notes (use sparingly!)

10. Post every day

11. Encourage interaction on your posts

12. Write an article, submit it to places on the web and in the author bio, put your Facebook Page URL

13. Guest post on blogs and put your Facebook page URL in the bio

14. Use pictures creatively and have people share them

15. Write something controversial to get a conversation started

16. Tweet the link to your Facebook page occasionally

17. Make friends on forums and encourage people to Like each other’s pages

18. E-mail personal friends and influencers and ask them to share your page with their audience if it makes sense.

19. Make an interesting YouTube video and put a link to your Page in the description.

20. Put a link to your Page in your LinkedIn profile

21. Buy fans – just kidding. Never do that. Ever. I’m serious. Never.

22. Run a Fan of the Day (or Week) like Oreo to encourage interaction.

23. Have a Welcome Page that asks people to Click Like when they get to your Page.

24. Run a Contest. You will need to use an Application like WildFire or Votigo to do this.

25. E-mail all your current customers and let them know about your Page.

26. Let people know what they will get when they Like your Page. Give them a top 10 reasons why your page will help them like Make Use Of

27. Put a sign up in your place of business.

28. Create a Welcome Page that has Fan-only content. They have to click the like button to get the special gift.

29. Share tips that will help your community. If you share valuable information, people will watch for your posts.

30. Offer special discounts and deals only through your Facebook Page.

31. When you create a Facebook Event, invite people and ask them to invite others – they will see the creator of the event as your Facebook Page

32. Put your Facebook Page URL into your signature in any forums you participate in

33. Be interesting

34. If you have an interesting link you are sharing, ask people to share your post with others (your Page name will show up when they share your post)

35. If you go to events, take pictures and have people tag themselves in the photos (you can tag them if you are Friends with them, otherwise, they will have to tag themselves)

36. Ask people to Stumble, Digg and Bookmark your Facebook Page.

37. Don’t oversell – too many sales posts and people will unlike or hide you.

38. Post videos – people love to watch short, helpful videos.

39. When you add new friends who might be interested in your business, suggest your page to them or send them an e-mail.

40. If you are in a Facebook group and it makes sense to post a link to your Page, do it. Don’t be spammy about it – just let them know what you offer on your page.

41. Create free content (e-book, webinar, radio show) and put a link to your Page in the content, or give your Page a plug.

42. Encourage people to post questions on your Page wall.

43. Share your own Facebook Page status to your personal profile. A link to your Facebook Page will be visible.

44. Ask opinions. The more people post that on your page, the more likely you will be Top News.

45.  Love your Likers!