COMMENTS
Solid list of tactics. I really like the tip to making unsubscribing easy. I mean if people don't want to read it, you should not want them as subscribers anyway.
Thanks for sharing some great Optsum tips. It really was a great conference and I think everyone took a lot way from it. I know it did. I enjoyed your class as well Mark.
Cheers!
All of these tips are very helpful. When setting up my clients' facebook pages, I always walk them through the set up so that it is under their name instead of mine. I especially liked the last two tips, social media success depends on knowledge of the customer and the business. Social media networks are forums to execute the very things you have been doing for years. I love the last tip about overcoming executive objections by allowing them to listen to the conversation about their company/brand. That is absolutely brilliant. Thanks for sharing.
#4 is really important, but doesn't it contradict what's written in the book Inbound Marketing?
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, or maybe Facebook has made some changes that I haven't kept up on, but aren't all accounts supposed to be real people, not businesses?
Either way, it's important to note that the person who creates the business page has permanent administrator rights.
Great point, Ben. To my knowledge as well, it goes against the Facebook rules unless there is a separate business profile that has been added as an option. My two cents however, is that since FB restricts the way fan pages communicate with fans to avoid spamming, businesses are creating personal profiles in order to protect their personal identities while still being able to communicate around customer service issues with customers. And there are other reasons they do that as well. I don't see Facebook enforcing that rule but at any time they can certainly shut those profiles down. I also have noted that Facebook is realizing that it has to revise some of its rules because it continues to learn everyday how its users, people and businesses, are using this platform and thankfully, they are responsive.
Wow, thanks for the mention, HubSpot! #OptSum was truly a great event, and I really appreciated the workshop-style sessions that got away from theory and really focused on creating and executing a solid strategy.
@Ben: Nothing has changed in the Facebook terms -- you're right that people who have a personal profile are not permitted to also have a business profile. In fact, it appears now that Facebook is pushing users only to the personal accounts. As of this morning, I can't find anywhere on the site where I can create a new business account that's not tied to a real person's profile.
This was an interesting point of discussion at the conference. Businesses regularly tell the new whiz kid employee (or their marketing agency) to set up their page for them. Then, when that employee leaves, or they stop working with that agency, the admin rights for their page walk away, too.
I think it's best to follow the Terms and avoid setting up a personal profile for your business. Yes, it's easier to build a following when you can request friends, but I've seen many "illegal" business profiles get deleted with no notice whatsoever. All those contacts and all that work ... gone overnight.
To Suzzette's point, I think this is an issue that Facebook will need to address sooner than later. If they want more businesses to be advertising on the site, they need to give them the tools to do so effectively. In the meantime, it's best to understand the guidelines before you let someone create your page for you.
I am still working on implementing many of the educational tips and best practices I received at #optsum. The wealth of expertise fortified me on numerous levels and showed me where I need to make some major improvement. Consistency and evaluation were major action words for me. Thanks for the post Mark. Had a great chat with one of your coworkers today.
I really like #4 what a great tip, I know of a business that fell into this trap, no one had access to the Facebook page and they had to close it and start again
Great tips. However, can you do #4 technically? I thought it was against the terms of service to create a profile for a business. Please let me know because it is a good idea if we're allowed.
@Ryan: I went through the page creation process again after HubSpot posted this, and it looks like Facebook is now driving all users to sign up for personal accounts. Their terms of service are very clear that anyone with a personal profile is not allowed to also maintain a business account.
This is why it's critical to think through who should create your brand's Facebook page, and why you need to be careful who is granted admin access. Blatant self-promotion: I recently wrote
a post that walks through this exact issue. Good luck!
Thanks for sharing the great info!
Mark, thanks again for being one of those “sharpest minds” at our first OptSum event … I love that you took so much away from the event and that you’re sharing it here! Looking forward to seeing you again in September!
Tami
@Ben et al -
You can indeed set up a "business account" which is a limited type of account that really only allows you to manage a business page and ads. Here's the info in Facebook's Help Center:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/help/?page=721 Point #4 really advises businesses that they should set up a business account to be used for the initial creation of your business page, since the creator of a page does have permanent admin rights. You can add (and remove) additional admins afterward.
@Suzzette -
Businesses are absolutely not supposed to create personal profiles for their business. In addition to the Facebook regulations, there are all sorts of disadvantages of using a personal profile to represent your business, including:
- profiles require mutual acceptance to become "friends" whereas pages can automatically accept all "fans"
- pages have category-specific info fields relevant to your business
- pages are more likely to show up in searches for companies
- profiles do not have any of the page analytics to measure the success of your page
Our
How to Use Facebook for Business ebook might be of help in this area too.