USING FACEBOOK FOR BUSINESS
Business users can Create a Page for their business or a Group for a community of users.
SETTING UP A FACEBOOK PAGE FOR YOUR BUSINESS
A business page is different from an individual Facebook page. Anybody can like your Facebook page by clicking a button. When you have an individual page, each friend requests must be approved, which is an arduous task if you get the response you want from your Facebook endeavor.
To set up a Facebook page for your business, follow these steps:
1. Launch your favorite web browser and navigate to www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. The Create a Page page opens.
2. Choose one of the options for the type of page you want to create. You can create a page for a local business, brand, product, or organization or
for an artist, band, or public figure. If you’re creating the page for yourself, use your own name, for your business, use your business name. Or, if you’re
creating a page for a product, use the product name.
3. Enter a name for the page. Use your own name, the name of your business, or the name of your product for the page name.
4. Select the check box to agree that you’re the official representative and have the right to set up the page. You may also want to click the link and read
the fine print regarding the Facebook terms.
5. Click the Create Official Page button.
You now have a bare-bones Facebook business page.
CHANGING YOUR BUSINESS PAGE SETTINGS
To finish tweaking your Facebook page, follow these steps:
1. Click the Edit Page link on the left side of your business page. A plethora of options appears.
2. In the Settings section, click Edit. The Settings options you can edit appear.
You can:
. Restrict the countries from which users can like your page.
. Restrict the age of the people who can become fans of your page.
. Determine whether the content can be reviewed by the general public or only page administrators.
. Determine whether the page is gender specific.
3. Make any changes you want. You know your business, so you know which restrictions are applicable to your business page. Eg: If your product is available
only in South Africa, you can prevent viewers from other countries from liking your page.
4. Click the Save Changes button. Your settings are saved.
CHANGING YOUR WALL SETTINGS
To edit the wall settings for your page, follow these steps:
1. Click the Edit Page link on the left side of your fan page. A plethora of options appears.
2. In the Wall Setting section, click Edit. The settings you can edit for wall posts are displayed.
3. In the View settings section, choose the default view for the wall. This step determines whether to show only your posts or to show your fan’s posts
in addition to yours.
4. In the View Settings section, choose an option from the Default Landing Tab drop-down menu. You can have the default landing tab be on the
Wall, Info, Discussions tab, or any of the other standard tabs such as Photos, Events, and so on.
5. Choose whether to auto expand comments on stories. The default option expands comments on stories by default. The other alternative is to collapse
comments on stories and allow visitors to expand comments to make them all visible. The default option takes up more room on your page.
6. For any permissions that you don’t want your fans to have, deselect the permissions in the Fan Permissions Posting Ability section. By default, fans can
write or post comments, post photos, post videos, and post links to web pages on your wall.
7. Click your avatar.
8. Click the Write Something about <page name> link on your wall. A window opens in which you write a brief bio that shows up on your profile.
1. Write a brief intro paragraph about your business. You’re limited to about 250 characters. Your bio should look like an author’s bio on a book dust
jacket – short, sweet, and to the point, with enough information to get the curiosity of page visitors.
2. Click Save Changes. Your changes are saved.
ADDING A PHOTO
Follow these steps to add a photo to your page:
1. Click the Question Mark icon on your business page. The Question Mark icon is the default avatar for a Facebook business page. You can put a much
better-looking icon there, such as a picture or company logo. After you click the icon, a new page appears that enables you to upload a photo.
2. Click the Change Profile Picture link. Another page opens. You can upload a GIF, JPEG, or PNG file that has a file size no longer than 4MB.
3. Click the Browse button. A dialog box opens, and you can browse for a file on your computer.
4. Follow the prompts to select the photo and then click Open. The path to the image appears in the text box.
5. Select the check box to certify that you own the rights to the image and do not violate the Facebook terms of use. When you select this check box,
you make the Facebook lawyers happy because the liability is on you if you upload a famous movie star’s picture rather than your own. If you don’t
click the Check Mark, you can’t upload an image.
6. Click Upload Picture. In a flash, you’re on Facebook in the flesh. A thumbnail image also appears. This image appears on all pages except the wall. The
image on the wall has a dimension of 200 x 200 pixels.
7. Click and drag the thumbnail to adjust the image. This step determines how the image will be cropped to create the thumbnail.
8. Click the Save Thumbnail Version button.
ADDING INFORMATION TO YOUR FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE
To add information to your Facebook page, follow these steps:
1. Log into your Facebook business page and click Info. You can edit the Basic Info and Detailed Info tabs.
2. Click Basic Info. The page refreshes and you can add as much or as little information in the categories.
3. After modifying your basic information, click the Save Changes button. Your information is saved to your page, and the Detailed Info section expands.
4. In the Detailed Info section, add as much or as little information as you want. List all web sites associated with you and your business, including your
Blog and Twitter page. Add only the web site URL, not the name of the site. If you try to add a name for each site, Facebook thinks it’s a web
address and inserts the text http://www in front of it.
5. Click the Save Changes button.
1. Click Done Editing.
ADDING A PHOTO OR VIDEO TAB
Facebook lets you conveniently organize photos and videos on tabs, which helps people who like your page to easily find this content. To add a photo or video tab to your Facebook fan page, follow these steps:
1. Log into your Facebook account and navigate to your business page.
2. Click the Plus Sign (+) icon to the right of the last tab on your page. A drop-down menu appears with a list of tabs you can add to your page.
3. Click Photo. A photo’s tab is added to your page. If you’re adding photos to a business page, you probably already have the Photos tab.
4. To add a video tab to your page, click the Plus Sign (+) icon again and click Video.
Your business page now has photo’s and video’s tabs.
You can change the order in which tabs appear on your page. Click a tab and drag it to the location you want. If the tabs you want to appear on your profile are collapsed, click the right-pointing double arrow next to the last visible tab on your profile to display the hidden tabs and then drag a tab to its new position.
LINKING YOUR BUSINESS PAGE TO YOUR TWITTER FEED
Follow these steps:
1. From the Link Your Page to Your Twitter Account section of your page, click the Click Here link. The Link your Facebook Page to Twitter Page appears.
You cannot do anything directly from this page, but the print and graphics look nice.
If you happen to navigate away from your new business page at any time before connecting Twitter, log into your personal page and then go to www.facebook.com/twitter and your business page appears.
2. Click the Link a Page to Twitter button. Another page with pretty graphics appears.
3. Click the Link to Twitter button. Now you’re in Twitter.
4. Enter your Twitter username and password and then click Allow. This step gives Twitter permission to link your Facebook feed with your Twitter page.
Twitter checks your credentials to make sure that your username and password are correct and then you’re redirected to Facebook.
5. Accept the default options, or deselect any Facebook feature that you don’t want to appear on Twitter.
6. Click the Save Changes button. The Facebook features you select are linked to your Twitter account.
ADDING ADMINISTRATORS TO YOUR FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE
You can delegate your Facebook tasks by creating additional administrators. When you create them, they can log into your Facebook business page and take some of the load off your back.
To add an administrator to your Facebook page, follow these steps:
1. Ask an associate to like your page. Have her log into her Facebook account, navigate to your business page, and then click the Like button.
2. Log into your Facebook account. Your Facebook page appears in the web browser.
3. Scroll to the People Like This section and then click See All. The people who like your page appears in a separate window. Notice that the Make Admin
button appears next to each name.
4. Click the Make Admin button next to the name of the person who likes your page who you want to promote to administrator. A dialog box appears,
asking you to confirm that you want to promote the person’s status to administrator and warning you that he will have the same control over the page as you do.
5. Click the Make Admin button. Your associate now has the same control over the page as you do, except they cannot appoint new administrators or
delete the page.
CREATING A CUSTOM TAB FOR YOUR BUSINESS PAGE
Rather than let fans land on your wall, you can create a custom tab that tells them about you or your business, similar to the home page of your web site. Further more, you can use Facebook options to have your custom tab appear whenever someone visits your page.
To create a custom tab, follow these steps:
1. Log into Facebook and navigate to the following URL: www.facebook.com/home.php#!/apps/application.php?id=4949752878&ref=ts. The static
FBML page appears. The static FBML application lets you enter Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) or Facebook Markup Language (FBML). If you know
how to use HTML, you can write the code in the static FBML application to insert images and text on a tab.
2. Click the Add to My Page link. A dialog box listing your Facebook pages appears.
3. Click Add to Page next to the avatar for the page for which you’re creating a custom tab and then click Close. The application is added to your page.
4. Navigate to your Fan page.
5. Click the Edit Page link. The options you can edit appear.
6. Scroll down until you see the text static FBML and then click Edit. The Edit FBML page appears.
7. Enter the title of your custom tab in the Box Title field, and then enter the page text in HTML format in the FBML field.
If you don’t know HTML, ask your web designer for help.
8. Click the Save Changes button. Your changes are saved.
9. Click the link to return to your main page. The link has the page name and is in the upper left corner of the dialog box.
10. Click the plus sign (+) icon and choose the name you gave to the static FBML application in step 7.
The tab appears on your page. At this stage, you can drag the tab to a different position. However, the Wall and Info tabs always appear before any other tabs. A bit more work is required to make this tab the default option that everyone sees when they land on your Facebook wall.
11. Click the Edit Page link. The Editable Settings appear.
12. Click Edit in the Wall settings section. The section expands and shows the options you can modify.
13. Choose a tab from the Default landing tab for Everyone Else drop-down menu. Visitors to your business page now see your custom tab.
You can create other custom tabs by using the static FBML application. Follow these steps:
1. From the Wall tab of your business page, click Edit Page. The list of options you can edit appears.
2. Scroll down to the custom tab you created with the static FBML application.
3. Click Edit. The settings for the custom tab you just created appear.
4. Click Add Another FBML box from the bottom of the dialog box. FBML 1 appears beneath the custom tab you just created.
5. Click Edit and follow steps 7 through 13 in the previous step list.
The custom tabs you create with the static FBML application appear in the Boxes tab. Click the plus sign (+) to the right of the last tab and choose Boxes. Click the Pencil icon to edit your tab. Choose Move to Wall to Move the Custom tab to the left column on the wall.
CREATING A CUSTOM URL FOR YOUR BUSINESS PAGE
You can create a custom URL for your fan page when you accumulate more than 25 fans. A custom URL is like branding, because it has the page name associated with it. You can send the custom URL as part of your email signature and use it with your other social media.
To create a custom URL for your business page, follow these steps:
1. Log into Facebook and navigate to www.facebook.com/username.
If you’ve set up a personal page and you have more than 25 friends, a message box indicates that your username has been set. You also see an option to set a username for your business pages.
2. Click the Set a Username link for your pages. The section labeled Each Page Can Have a Username appears.
3. Choose from the drop-down menu the page for which you want to set a custom username.
4. Enter a username and then click the Check Availability button. If the name is available, a message box appears and says so. Follow the prompts to specify
the custom username. You can then use the custom username to direct people to your page.
FINDING OTHER FACEBOOK APPLICATIONS
You can explore other applications that may be suited for your business page by following these steps:
1. Log into your Facebook account and then navigate to your business page.
2. Click Edit Page. A list of settings you can edit appears.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and then, in the More Applications section, click Browse More. A treasure trove of Facebook applications appears.
4. Scroll the applications. When you see one you like, click the icon and then add the application to your page.