New Facebook Fanpage: Discontent & Positives

Over the last six months, I’ve been advising clients to be wary of putting too much effort into Facebook Fanpages. Facebook is gaining a notorious reputation for making sudden unannounced operational changes. Investing significant resources in custom Fanpages could suddenly and arbitrarily be undone, by Facebook.

This past week Facebook rolled out an upgrade to Fanpages. There’s some significant challenge for administrators to pay attention too. Conversely, there’s some exciting opportunity as well.

This blog post will feature the main discontent with the new changes – namely, that a fanpage’s wall is no longer in chronological order. What does this mean for a business?

It means that Facebook solely determines the order of posts on your wall, both from you as administrator and from those posting to your wall. Do you use your fanpage to publish today’s sweet deals? Don’t depend on that – it’s not happening. Your sweet deal for today could be on page two or three – after posts from last December.

There’s a huge clamor going on for Facebook to provide an option to administrators to restore chronological order to the wall. Hopefully, Facebook will listen.

Positives

• Posting to other pages and to people as your brand.
• Better visuals.
• Fanpage “liking” another Fanpage.
• Featured Page owner.
• Email notifications.

For a great discussion on the positives and negatives on this Fanpage upgrade, go here to a Business Insider article.

All Of Your Friends and Pages: Facebook Cha.Cha.Changes

Have you noticed that you are only seeing updates or getting comments from the same people lately?

That’s because Facebook made a change.You only see posts from people you interact with regularly. To change this: Scroll down to the bottom of the news feed on the homepage and click on ‘Edit Options’, click on ‘Show Posts From’ and change the setting to ‘All Of Your Friends and Pages’.

A Power-User’s Two ‘Beefs’ With Facebook

Hey, Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook crew…

I’m a Facebook Power-User. I got into Facebook, hmm.. about Fall of 2008, and am now above 4800 connections. I’ve maxed out once.

As a professional, with diverse interests ranging from hospitality/culinary to sustainability, customer service, social media, mobile web and more, I am always networking online.

I use Facebook to connect personally with other professionals. Like any power-networker, I belong to many different organizations and groups. I have two frustrations with Facebook, that are limitations to your growth, in my humble opinion.

• Capping the New Groups feature at 10 groups. I love this new Group feature you recently rolled out. I especially like that people who are on Facebook and not on other networks, can be in a online group in an environment (FB) they are used too. I don’t understand the rationale for limiting users to just ten groups, especially since this feature is a great tool for building villages. Is it rack-space that requires the limitation?
• A combined Friends/Pages limit of 5,000. I follow tons of hospitality organizations on Facebook. While I don’t interact with all of them, I am curious as to trends around the world in hospitality online. I know a ot of people have bitched in the past about this limitation, so take this as me signing the petition to increase the limit.

Mark, you’ve created something astounding. I admire the futurist in you. I’m just asking you to help me create awesome villages and communities.

Best,

Jeffrey J Kingman, CEO

Chalkboarder

The Posterous Disadvantage with Facebook

I’ve noticed a disadvantage in sharing blogposts written on Posterous and shared into Facebook. Actually, I noticed this quite a few months ago. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never used Posterous. Take a look at this image from Facebook.

Sharing a Posterous Blogpost Through Facebook

The disadvantage from a Digital Marketing or Social Marketing professional’s eye is the inability to share this message.

Let me explain. The gentleman who wrote this message is a top professional in his field. He writes amazing content and then shares it over Twitter and Facebook. As I read his content in Facebook I wish to share it with my Facebook community – but Facebook does not put a “Share” button on his messages from Posterous into Facebook.

To share his content with my Facebook community, I have to go to his Posterous blog article, grab the url, and make my own Facebook message. The disadvantage for my friend is he doesn’t get to build any community in Facebook with my Facebook village.

By the way, this is by no means a critique of my friend. It’s a critique of the Posterous/Facebook relationship, from a social/digital media professional’s point-of-view.

Sep 19 2010: Wild About Game 2010

Stay tuned September 19th when Chalkboarder broadcasts Social Media On Demand from Mt. Hood’s Resort at the Mountain for Wild About Game 2010.

Twitter hashtag for this event is #wag2010

Check out the action from past Wild About Game events here.

Sep 13 2010 Foodportunity Portland

Stay tuned September 13th when Chalkboarder broadcasts Social Media On Demand from The Heathman Hotel for Foodportunity Portland.

Twitter hashtag for this event is #foodprt

Image by Jackie Donnelly

Check out the action from past Foodportunitys here.

Watch This Page

Social Media On Demand content developed, produced and distributed by Chalkboarder for clients will be shared here as events occur. We hope you stay tuned