SIMPLE FACEBOOK INSIGHTS

Measuring Your Influence

ELECTRONIC EDITION

RUSSELL MICKLER

SIMPLE BOOKS

First Printing: April 2011. Version 1.0.

© 2011. Russell P. Mickler. All Rights Reserved.

Written in the United States of America Between February 2010 and March 2011

Prepared using Oracle OpenOffice ® 3.2 on Ubuntu 10.10

Times Font 10 pt

Some of the material in this book, though revised and expanded, originated on the author’s blog.

Praise for Simple Social Media

“I needed a book that spoke to a social media challenged business owner. I found it. The book is

very straight forward and talks a language that I can understand. I am using the principles

presented in this book, and my Facebook page is growing and I actually know what I am doing.”

– Terry, Amazon.com Review

“I liked Simple Social Media because it explained HOW I should be posting and/or blogging. It

tells me when it is the most effective time to do it and on which days ... Russell Mickler uses a

plain-English method of instruction that a business person can understand.”

– Isaac, Amazon.com Review

“Russell has avoided the all too typical geek speak, and explains things in a clear and well

researched book. He answers the questions we all have: "What's in it for me? Why should I use

it? What is the return on my investment?" ... Simple Social Media is a must read if you want to

understand what social media can do for you and how to get started properly.”

– Rusty, Amazon.com Review

“If you're a web designer with your own business or work for a large company, this is a great

book to read. It will help you fully understand social media and how to be successful at it. It will

also help you come across more knowledgeable and should boost your confidence and increase

your bottom line as a web entrepreneur.”

– Riley, Amazon.com Review

“Mr. Russell Mickler is like the person in a corn maze that not only points the way, but escorts

me personally through the maze. I am still in the very early stages; however I appreciate having

this book as a guide.”

- Dr. Marc, Amazon.com Review

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has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or

omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of information contained herein. Every

effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is

implied. The information is provided on an “as is” basis.

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COVER DESIGN

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Russell Mickler

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russell Mickler, Principal Consultant of Mickler & Associates, Inc., has over 16 years of professional experience

leading and managing IT organizations. As a technology consultant, Mickler assists small to mid-range businesses

with crafting and executing technology strategy. In addition to earning his Master’s Degree in technology from the

University of Oregon, Mickler is a Computer Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a Microsoft

Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). Mickler teaches graduate and undergraduate technology courses for many

universities across the country. Mickler is the co-author of several books concerning Information Technology and

Information Security. Mickler is also a public speaker on matters concerning social media and technology, and

creates all types of media at micklerandassociates.com and his blog reinventwork.com. Russell Mickler and Mickler

& Associates, Inc. can be found on Facebook, on Twitter at @micklerr, and emailed directly at russell@simple-

books.net.

OTHER BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS BY THE AUTHOR

Simple Social Media

READER FEEDBACK

It's my hope that you find this book useful and practical, and as my reader, you're the most important critic in the

world. If you have comments or suggestions regarding this book, please feel free to send your ideas my way via

email, Facebook, or online surveys. I'd love to receive your feedback.

READER SERVICES AND MATERIALS

Many materials, presentations, videos, and downloadable forms mentioned within this book can be found on the

author's website, www.simple-books.net/simple-facebook-insights.

- To Regina, with whom all things are possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Why is a Social Networking Strategy Important?

What Should My Business Say on Facebook?

Changing Consumer Preferences Concerning Email

What’s a Facebook Friend Worth?

Facebook Pages vs. Profiles

Facebook Insights

What Are Active Users and Interactions in Facebook?

Facebook Insights User Dashboard

Facebook Insights Interactions Dashboard

Facebook Edgerank

Interpreting Facebook Insights

Conclusion

FACEBOOK PAGES VS. PROFILES

What You Will Learn

• Understand the differences and technical distinctions between Facebook User Profiles and Pages

• Identity the kinds of behaviors that Facebook considers suspicious and could result in a User being banned

from Facebook

• How interactions with the walls of Pages result in News Feed activity that are seen by Facebook Users

• Explain the differences between Pages and Groups on Facebook, and the different ways both can be used

by businesses to reach an audience

Understanding Facebook’s Rules for Engagement

Facebook is built around people.

When a person signs-up for Facebook, they are become an Active Facebook User and are given a Profile. A

Profile is a space Facebook Users can call their own. Users customize Facebook Profiles to describe themselves,

upload content of all kinds, articulate their likes and dislikes, and voluntarily reveal bunches of invaluable

information about their consumer preferences and passions. They can even extend some of the features of their

Profile by installing Applications to sort of “trick-out” their Profile so it can do different things.

Figure: Author’s Facebook Profile

Over time, Facebook users “friend” each other and create expansive networks of people they know that I’ll refer

to as tribes. “Friending” is Facebook’s action for interconnecting one Facebook Profile to another. Tribes are

regional clusters of Friends whose Profiles are interconnected on Facebook. They share a basic relationship from

association, family, genuine onground friendships, casual interests, business relationships, or plain old romantic

entanglement. Regardless, that relationship may never directly translate to people actually knowing each other.

Tribes are like a big cocktail party. There are a lot of people who may indirectly know each other from real-life

and others who may be absolute strangers yet share some connection in the tribe. Some people in the tribe are very

charismatic - they’re the hub of activity – whereas, just as in real-life, others are introverted wall-flowers. Still,

others may be highly influential and people will listen to them when they speak, and yet others aren’t taken very

seriously at all. Some people are outrageously funny; others are dreadfully dull. Some are interesting and smart!

Some, well, not so much. And even though Facebook may not be an accurate depiction of real people and their real

personalities, people - their interests, interactions, perceptions, opinions, ideas, and character - are at the core of

Facebook.

Facebook Pages, on the hand, are artificial Profiles that represent abstract ideas. They might champion causes,

promote businesses, highlight interests, or illustrate broad whimsical concepts. Facebook Users create Pages, and a

Facebook User can practically create as many Pages as they want. In an upgrade in 2011, Facebook greatly

simplified their Page types to just six categories from eighteen:

• Local Business or Place

• Company, Organization, or Institution

• Brand or Product

• Artist, Band, or Public Figure

• Entertainment

• Cause or Community

So you’ll notice that business – set up under Facebook per their Terms and Conditions – are Pages and not

Profiles. People visit Pages, view content on Pages, and subscribe to Pages by “becoming a fan” or “liking” pages as

a means of socially identifying with the values, principles, products, or services represented by the Page. Facebook

users might even share content from Pages within their network and drive traffic to Pages.

Tip: So Why Are So Many Businesses Profiles?

Narrative

Figure: Author’s Facebook Page

Pages are socially-crippled within Facebook. Where Facebook users “friend” each other’s Profiles, users of

Facebook “like” a Page, and Pages cannot “friend” Facebook users. “Liking” a Page is an entirely voluntary act on

behalf of the Facebook user. That limitation prevents pages from creating extensive spamming networks within

Facebook. Users must opt-in and offer their Consent through a LIKE.

A Facebook User’s motivation to “like” a Page represents a form of Consent – they might be interested in

receiving more information, updates, and content from the Page over time; content published to the Page by its

owner will flow to the User’s Top Stories news stream. Subscribed Users will continuously receive content from the

Page. However, another part of a User’s motivation is to send a signal. Facebook Users are advertising to their own

Friends that the Page (and its values, message, services, or meaning) have some importance in their lives; “liking” a

Page is a form of promoting it to others in their network and their social network – in turn – may flock to LIKE the

Page, too, since it stands to reason that they share similar values and beliefs. If a Facebook User “likes” a Page, it’s

an open invitation to join their tribe’s cocktail party.

Pages weren’t really part of Facebook’s overall design when it started and – painfully – Pages have evolved

through trial and error. In fact, managing a Page as a Facebook User is a somewhat wacky, abstract idea: in

Facebook’s most recent incarnation, you literally assume the identity of a Page by switching to it, and the Facebook

User literally becomes that Page. In that moment, the User steps outside of their own Facebook “body” to become

something else – their social network changes, their “Friends” are no longer “Friends”, and the things they “liked”

are no longer available to them. Yikes! Who am I?

Figure: Author Switching Between a Facebook User and a Facebook Page

Honestly, this is a very confusing concept to many of my small business clients because they can’t tell “who

they are” at times, and besides that, Pages are just a strange thing in a universe centered on people. In a way, Pages

are like a talking sandwich board with a face on the top of it left in the middle of a tribe’s cocktail party.

“Hullo,” says the talking sandwich board when greeting members of the tribe as they walk by, or, if they’re

voluntarily introduced to the sandwich board by members of the tribe because the sandwich board, you see, can’t

walk up and talk to a person… that’s against the rules. The person must walk up to them. “A pleasure; allow me to

introduce myself. I represent the photocopier merchant down the street and thought you’d like to know how we help

our customers. Please LIKE me.”

Um, awkward.

Part of your challenge in co-existing as a brand in an electronic universe built around people will be to

overcome this awkwardness. Your Page is obviously not a person in Facebook. You’ll need to blend your brand’s

message, identity, and ideas with the ongoing narrative of the tribe, and, develop a way to listen to what the tribe’s

asking of your Page. In a way, you must personify your brand.

Tip: Using a Face on a Facebook Page

Narrative

Technical and Policy Distinctions - Profiles and Pages

Facebook makes several functional and policy distinctions between Pages (owned by companies, community

interests, celebrities, artists, forms of entertainment, and brands) and Profiles (people).

Anybody can create a Profile. Even fake people can create a Profile so long as they’re tied to a unique email

address although Facebook really frowns on that practice. It’s free and all Facebook requires is that you’re over the

age of 13. Thirteen isn’t arbitrary: it corresponds to an age established by a federal law pertaining to the legal

collection of Personal Private Information from minors, so Facebook is very strict when it comes to their minimum

age requirement. Now, if Facebook had their druthers, all Profiles must be real-life individuals and held under a real-

life individual’s name, and they’d be over the age of 13; Facebook would prefer that just one person use only one

profile. However, that’s terribly difficult (if not nigh-impossible) for them to enforce.

Tip: What Kind of Information Does Facebook Capture About People?

Narrative

Facebook does have the ability to patrol and control its subscribers after their sign-in and then take corrective

action on suspicious activity by banning (blacklisting) User accounts. Mostly their action happens after-the-fact

where indicators and metrics highlight suspicious activity in their system. Banning a User turns off their ability to

log in to Facebook and prevents access to their Profile and any Pages they created. In monitoring for suspicious

activity, Facebook will go so far as to ban Users for:

• Being under 13 years of age

• Acting as a business under a Profile

• Acting suspiciously under a set of multiple Profiles

• Multiple people acting suspiciously under a single Facebook User account

• Posting content that clearly violates their Acceptable Use Policies (depicting nudity, drug use, graphic

violence)

• “Friending” too often and too quickly – that creates patterns that look like spamming activity

• Importing too many contacts for “Friending” will also look suspicious to Facebook (as if you’re importing

a huge direct marketing list) and they may temporarily ban the User

• Creating multiple Profiles that coercively bends Facebook’s Acceptable Use Policies – they’ll actually

terminate all of your User accounts if you’re thought to be spamming or harming other Facebook users

• Creating blatantly fraudulent Profiles

• Using a Profile as a nickname rather than your real name

• Creating Profiles representing animals, pets, or inanimate objects

• Posting copyrighted material across your Page or Profile

• Posting too many backwards-facing links to external websites

• Creating too many posts in a week, or, copying and pasting the same content over and over

• Messaging Group members excessively

• Being overly obtrusive in your beliefs or ideas (or products) and pushing them (spamming them) on your

Facebook Friends

• Excessive Poking

• Cyberstalking and cyberbullying

• Creating applications that harm other Facebook users and violate their Acceptable Use Policies

• Should a Page questionably promote its products on Facebook – example: encouraging users to press LIKE

to win a prize, or, through a count of the number of fans (“the 200th

fan will win a t-shirt!”), or, by Tagging

photos to win a prize, or, by asking Facebook Users to Tag or Mention their Page in status updates

Obviously, there are a lot of reasons that Facebook might take action in banning Users but this isn’t a

democracy: this is Facebook. They’re the ones who run the system, make the rules, and enforce acceptable use.

There’s subjective opinion on acceptable behavior on behalf of their censors who look at “frequency” and “too

much” and “excessive” that are truly impossible to predict, and horror stories abound on the ‘Net of just normal

people being banned for outwardly silly things. Perhaps the best rule of thumb would be to use common sense when

using Facebook for promotional activities. If your goal is to promote your business or cause with Facebook, bear in

mind:

• You are a marketer who is a guest on their computing platform – act like a guest

• You are a User but also a cause, brand, or business – clearly delineate content between your role as an

individual or as a person representing a cause, brand, or business

• Follow the rules – when in doubt, err on the side of politeness, courtesy, and selflessness

• Avoid magic pills – people who offer means of obtaining 10,000 LIKES overnight are likely cheating the

system, and repeating their methods won’t bode well after your account is banned

• Openly gaming the system repeatedly is cause for Facebook to take corrective action and ban your account

Aside from generally maintaining and changing your Facebook Page, when you login to Facebook as your Page

– again, it’s admittedly somewhat counter-intuitive – you can:

• Post content as your Page

• Interact with content posted to your Page as your Page

• Post content on the walls of other Pages that your Page has LIKED

• Interact as your Page with other content posted by Pages your Page has LIKED

• See Interaction Notifications for your Page as your Page – those notifications found at the top of Facebook

where you acquired X-number of new fans, or, so-n-so LIKED your recent post, etc.

• You can ban other Pages from posting to your Page

In these situations, it’s like your Page or your brand is responding, talking, engaging, and interacting with

people on Facebook. Alas, it’s the talking-billboard syndrome. You can overcome that problem by leaving a

signature with your first name at the bottom of each post; example: -Russell. It’s a simple touch that makes your

interaction more personal. Also, if you always want to post as your Profile rather than your Page, you can change

Your Settings under the Page’s Settings by unchecking the Posting Preferences checkbox. This will tell Facebook to

use your Profile for posts instead of your Page.

[picture]

Now, Pages on Facebook are optimized to share content and collect information in a way that Profiles are not.

Pages also have certain programming features that Profiles do not which is significant to anyone who wants to

customize their page with code to make it snazzy. Registered users on Facebook create Facebook Pages and they can

create as many Pages as they’d like, but only an official representative from a real organization, business, celebrity,

or brand can create a Facebook Page to represent them. Ownership of Pages can be contested and misrepresentation

is a fast track to being banned. A Page can have what’s referred to as a “Business Account” that’s separately set up

for billing and administration purposes so that brand oversight can remain consistent with a company rather than an

individual who might leave the company.

Tip: How to Set Up a Facebook Business Account

Narrative

Facebook Usernames

On Facebook, Profiles and Pages can be given shorter, easier names by which to reference them on Facebook.

They’re referred to as a “Vanity URL” but Facebook refers to the process of assigning a username to the Page or

Profile (as if that distinction doesn’t muddy the waters even more). Where possible, businesses would want to assign

a username to their Page for convenience in referring to it and promoting it.

Examples:

Profile: www.facebook.com/russell.mickler

Page: www.facebook.com/simple.books

Assigning a username to a Profile or Page is a simple matter:

1. Your Page or Profile must have at least 25 Friends/Fans.

2. Under your User account (and not as a Page), you would access www.facebook.com/username.

3. You can then select to assign a username to the Pages where you’re an Administrator, or, to your User

Profile.

4. The username is subject to availability – it must be unique and not previously registered.

Walls, Messages, and News Feeds

Walls are an area on the Facebook Profile where new content is added by the Profile’s owner. It’s the main

stage of Facebook where new content is loaded by Users. When a User writes a status update, they’re “writing to

their wall”. New content from Users may come in the form of status updates, photos, videos, audio clips, notes, or

links to other content on the Internet.

“Writing on a wall” other than your own depicts leaving content on somebody else’s Profile – unless directly

prohibited otherwise through a security setting, Friends are generally allowed to write on each other’s Wall. Writing

on somebody else’s wall generates an email from Facebook to the corresponding User to notify them that somebody

just interacted with their Profile. It’s a great way to get somebody’s attention.

Unlike a Message, posting on a Wall is a public exercise. Messages are private. Anybody who is a Friend of the

Profile may see the material that was posted to the wall. Users can send Messages to other Users, but Pages cannot

send private Messages to any User. Now, follow closely, because this gets confusing:

• Pages have walls.

• Users can post to the Page’s wall.

• However, Pages cannot post to the wall of a User’s Profile.

• Pages cannot post to a User’s wall even if the Page was LIKED by the User.

• Pages can post the wall of another Page that the Page has LIKED (yes, Pages can LIKE Pages).

• Pages cannot Message other Pages.

What you should be seeing here is Facebook’s intent to cripple Pages from interacting socially with Users, and

that the ability for a Page to privately Message Facebook Users would be construed as spam. Pages cannot directly

Message a Facebook User nor can Pages post to a User’s wall, keeping with Facebook’s tradition that User

interaction with a Page is entirely voluntary.

That said, we see where Pages can interact with other Pages and even solicit ideas directly between them. Pages

can LIKE other Pages and even share content. Still, all Pages are prohibited from interacting directly with Users.

When a User logs in to Facebook, they are presented with a News Feed that shows them the Top News Stories

at the moment. Further, the User can Switch to assuming the role of a Page and receive a separate News Feed for

the Page. In both cases, what content gets displayed to the User at that moment is determined by a special algorithm

Facebook created called Edgerank which is explained later in this book.

Content posted to the walls of Profiles and Pages show up in the News Feed. Unlike Pages, Profiles can create

new wall posts that have certain security controls around it so that exposing content to others can be selective. Pages

don’t have this ability. When a Page posts something to its wall, all subscribed Fans of the Page will receive the

update in their News Feed. There is only one exception. Unlike Profiles, Pages can “Target Stream” a wall post. If

you’re an administrator for a Page, when you post a status update, instead of making it to everyone you can down-

select and select the option to customize the update. You can then select a location (like a country) and the languages

you’d like to direct the status to. This will post to all of your Page’s fans so that, say, English-speakers in the United

States aren’t bombarded by an Arabic message you’re sending to Fans in Saudi Arabia.

By this time, you might be saying, oh wow, Profiles have it all-over Pages – why don’t I just create my business

as a Profile so I can directly Message people, target my wall posts, and aggressively FRIEND others? Well,

remember Facebook’s Terms of Service. Also, Facebook has some built-in controls to help curtail this behavior. For

starters, Profiles can only have 5,000 Friends. That’s it. As a User, you can’t have more than 5,000 Friends … sorry.

And although that’s not bad for people, that’s really bad for brands, and there’s no way to “transfer” Friends to a

Page after that 5,000 limitation has been reached. Yikes!

Tip: The Facebook Profile to Page Converter

[Editor’s Note: Actually, at the time of this writing, Facebook did release a Profile to Page conversion tool and it

was out for about a week before they shut it down after gleaning very unhappy feedback from people who’d tried

using it. A conversion tool may be in the works but it’s apparently still a little ways off yet.]

So that’s a pretty big incentive to get it right the first time and just start out as a Page. Meanwhile, something

else very relevant to this book is that Facebook Insights – the tool used on Facebook to measure fan interaction -

isn’t available for Profiles: it’s designed only to work with pages. That in-and-of itself should be motivation for the

small business owner to exclusively market their products and services on Facebook pages rather than profiles, but

here are few more pieces of trivia about Facebook pages:

• There’s no limit to the number of Pages a Facebook user can set up

• There are no practical limits to the number of Fans a Page can acquire

• Facebook Insights only becomes available to Pages after earning 30 Fans or LIKES; Insights isn’t available

to the Page until this minimum threshold is reached

• Page names cannot represent a classification of brands or products, like, “Pizza” or “Beer” - they have to be

specific

• Pages aren’t separate login accounts to Facebook; instead, regular Facebook users who have Profiles are

delegated Administrative rights to a Page

• Pages have no practical number of maximum connections

• Meanwhile, a Profile can only FRIEND up to 5,000 people

• Facebook Pages are crawled by search engines; they contribute to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and

are good for businesses

• Facebook Profiles have layers of additional personal privacy protection around them, and that protection

can be toggled to allow or disallow indexing

• If a Page has 100 Fans or under then its name can be changed by editing the “Basic Information” section of

the page; however, if your page has more than 100 fans, then you can’t change the page’s name – you’re

stuck with it

Facebook Groups vs. Pages

A Facebook Group is another means of connecting a bunch of Facebook Users. Groups are a lot like “Clubs” or

“Special Interest Groups” in real life. Users create Groups, may set variable Group permissions, and they can create

as many Groups as they like. Users may join Facebook Groups as members of that Group, and only Facebook Users

can join a Group; Pages cannot join a Group.

Figure: Author’s Facebook Groups

There are more than a few negatives about Groups for the small business marketer on Facebook.

• One, Group content isn’t indexed by search engines like Google, and the content created by a Group falls

within Facebook’s “secret garden” and is invisible to non-members

• Two, Groups can have options that could conceal it from a master directory – Groups can be entirely

obscured from other users on Facebook for privacy purposes

• Three, only Facebook users can join Groups and not Pages, so content that’s posted in Groups can’t be

easily branded

• And four, Facebook Insights ignores Group content and you can’t report on it

However, if we were to set those limitations aside, there are some fairly interesting advantages to Facebook

Groups:

• Where Pages must reflect a specific entity, Groups can represent just about anyone with similar interests or

any topic

• Groups have the ability to send bulk invitations to Friends

• Groups can also send Messages to Facebook Users

• Group members can engage in Chat discussions together

So where might groups fit in to your Facebook strategy? Groups are great for having quick, interactive, and

personal discussions among Facebook Users, and for attracting attention to a topic among Facebook Friends sharing

a similar interest. Groups are really good for promoting ideas virally: as Group memberships can be made en-mass

by extending invitations to Users, it’s possible to get a large number of people to join and start buzzing over a topic

quickly. Pages, meanwhile, have to be individually shared to Users and Groups through Mentions. Groups are a

horizontal approach to reach a lot of people across many different interests and demographics on Facebook.

Tip: Facebook Groups and Privacy

Narrative

Groups have their own “homepage” although I’m hesitant to call it a Profile or a Page because it’s neither.

Figure: A Facebook Group – the Science Pub of Portland

So why not create a Group for your business instead of a Page? There are lots of reasons. Again, doing so

violates Facebook’s acceptable use policies because Facebook clearly intends business entities to be Pages and

nothing else. Also, Facebook crippled Groups so that only Groups with 5,000 members or under could do direct

(private) Messages to Facebook Users to avoid the potential for abuse. Content created on Groups don’t add any

value to search engines or to being found online. Group’s homepage can’t be customized to the extent that a Page

can. Interactions against Group content aren’t measured by Facebook Insights. And posts made within a Group can’t

be branded with your Page.

Pages are best for maintaining long-term relationships with your fans and customers. They create a destination

on Facebook that’s easy to find and refer to. Pages are a permanent, indexed location for content, sweepstakes,

giveaways, audio, and video about your products and services. Interactions on Pages can be tracked by Facebook

Insights. Pages are a vertical approach to maintaining customer relationships, contact, and visibility.

Mentions

Profiles, Pages, and Groups enjoy the ability to be recognized by Facebook in status updates through the use of

Mentions. If you are logged in to Facebook and writing a status update, and if you’re a member of a specific Group

or if you’ve LIKED a Page, or, you are Friends with specific people, you can Mention them in the update. A

Mention is performed by providing the AT-sign (@) in the status update and by typing the first couple of letters of

the Friend, Page, or Group. A list will appear allowing you to select which party you’d like to reference in your

update.

A Mention creates a convenient clickable link in your update back to that Profile, Page, or Group. Further, the

status update posted with a Mention then appears on the wall of the mentioned party, and cross-posts the status

update to all of the Facebook Users who’re members of a Group. Mentions are an effective way to get a status

update in front of many different people.

Getting Your Ideas Out

Facebook Users immediately include others on content that they post to a wall. When the Facebook user writes

to the wall of a Friend – unless the post was specifically made private - their post can be seen by their mutual

Friends in their News Feeds. The mere act of posting on the wall includes others on the dialog. They can also see,

respond, and interact with the post.

Meanwhile, if a Facebook User posts to the wall of a Group - or if they Mention a Group in their status update -

then all users of the Facebook Group receives a copy of the post in their News Feeds.

When a Facebook Page posts a status update to its wall, all of the subscribers to the Page will receive a copy of

the post in their News Feeds. However, when a Facebook User posts to the wall of a Page or Mentions a Page –

depending on the settings the Administrator placed on the Page – the post will appear exclusively on the Page and

won’t be broadcast into subscriber’s News Feeds. It’s still visible on the Page but the Facebook User must

intentionally go to the Page to read the updates posted by others.

Considering all of the inherent and convoluted rules surrounding Users, Pages, and Groups, I like to talk about

four communication strategies you could use to get your ideas in front of other people on Facebook.

1. Under your Facebook User account, you can personally write a status update on the wall of Facebook

Friend’s Profile, or a Page that you’ve LIKED, or on the wall of a Group. Your personal name gets associated

with an idea that is broadcast to all of your all mutual Friends and Group members. Cleverly, you could

Mention your Page in the status update which creates a convenient link back to your Page in the update, and the

new traffic has the potential to generate more LIKES for your Page and thus more visibility for your content.

This is as Facebook intended.

2. Under your Facebook Page, you could provide a status update that reaches a vertical audience that’s

voluntarily waiting to hear from your brand. The update made on the Page is submitted into the News Feed of

subscribed Users. It’s a reasonable and predictable way to get ideas from our Page in front others; however, it

doesn’t get our ideas in front of new people – just Users who’ve subscribed to our Page. It won’t generate any

new LIKES for our Page. In that way, the audience is very predictable and static, and it’s a communication

that’s intended on Facebook.

3. Meanwhile, as the Page’s Administrator, under your own Facebook User account, you would receive a

copy of this update in your own News Feed. You could then Share the post (an interaction in Facebook) to a

Group by using a Mention. The Mention would then cross-post your original message from the Page as a

personal status update horizontally across many Facebook Users connected to that Group. With cross-posting to

a Group, your Page is Mentioned in the post so that other Facebook Users in the Group could immediately link

to it, and, your ideas are reaching a much wider audience who’re not subscribed to your Page. This strategy isn’t

necessarily intended on Facebook but it’s not discouraged either. It may be perfectly valid for you to Share an

item from a Page with a bunch of other Facebook Users with a similar interest, and you can leverage that to

your advantage.

4. Finally, your Facebook Page could directly post an update against another Page’s wall. That status update

would appear with your company’s branding on the wall of another Page, having the potential to be seen by a

wider audience who’ve subscribed to that Page. That could potentially drive more traffic against your Page.

Also, all of the subscribers to your Page would receive the status update in their News Feed. Now, the mere act

of writing to the wall of another Page doesn’t distribute that post to the News Feed of all subscribed Users, but

that post can be seen by Users who visit the Page. The limitation of Pages updating the walls of other Pages is

as Facebook intended.

Key Takeaways

• Rules, rules, rules. There are lots of rules concerning how Facebook manages Profiles, Pages, and Groups,

and the rules are just controls to prevent people from abusing Facebook. Be mindful and respectful of those

controls in your promotion efforts to avoid being banned.

• There are different approaches to promoting your brand on Facebook. In marketing your business in

Facebook, you will using a combination of personal, vertical, horizontal, or direct status updates using

Mentions on Profiles, Pages, and Groups to gain visibility, acquire more traffic, and potentially earn more

LIKES.

• Facebook will make a celebrity out of you - you are your brand. Remember that on Facebook you

personally share a direct relationship to your company and your brand. You’re as much a spokesperson for

your brand and – in fact – it is Facebook’s nature to make a celebrity out of you and harness your fame so

that you might promote your Page to others.

Summary

In the context of business marketing, Pages have it all over Profiles because we can track interactions in

Facebook Insights! Use only one Facebook User account to set up multiple Pages reflecting your marketing

interests. Use your real name on Facebook and avoid doing anything so excessively as to get banned – it may serve

you well to review Facebook’s Terms of Service. I’d recommend you use Groups to stay connected to a large

community of users who’re hosting conversations about your industry, field, or area of expertise. Contribute to the

Group as yourself, respond to people, and engage in the conversation as you and be visible - all the while -

incrementally promote your Page through Mentions in status updates.

References