The New Facebook - Some Trips & Tricks

Since Facebook launched the 'new look' for their Home Page this month, many users have criticised its layout. But as with any change, there are pros and cons... and ways around it.

Changing the Look of Your Facebook Page

First, let's take a look at a few ways to change your the look of your new Facebook home page.

1) The following article from InsideFacebook.com offers some tips on how to customise your facebook page. These include;

• Hiding Friends you don't want to see
• Grouping friends into Friend List
• Change your default home page filter

Read the entire article here: 3 Tips for Customizing the New Facebook Home Page


2) And for those who want to return to the old look, Steve provides a summary of how to change it.

Sometimes we forget the whole point about using Firefox is that, with extensions, we can customise the surfing experience. The new Facebook 'design' is a good example; you can be sure that if others don't like it there will be an add-on to fix it.

Facebook Purity and Facebook Fixer can both be used to fix design issues with the new Facebook. Both are Greasemonkey scripts, so you'll need to install this first. But you'll be able to:

* hide annoying friends and their quiz obsessions
* hide the annoying 'Highlights' column
* and much more.

Advantages of the New Facebook Page

One of the strengths of the new Facebook setup is that it offers more power to those who have set up a Business Page.

From here on out, whenever you post to your Business Page, a feed will appear in the 'News Feed' of all of your Fans (unless they decide to 'Hide' it).

So use this opportunity to your advantage - give your Fans some brief, relevant information about your business - current specials, upcoming events, etc. They will see your information right in their Feed, giving you great access to you customers. Keep it brief & interesting - don't give them a reason to click the 'Hide' button!

Facebook Users Are Getting Older

Despite the occasional misuse of the web as mentioned in a previous post (Facebook Scam), it is still the most cost-effective channel where small businesses can focus their marketing efforts.

Our recent infatuation with Facebook, and the marketing opportunities available there, is a result of the changes that have been taking place on this very popular social networking site.


Facebook is continuing to experience an outlandish growth rate.

Last month, the greatest percentage increase came from Women Aged 55 and older - a segment which has a lot of purchase power and decision-making clout.

"Nearly a quarter of all Facebook users are over 35 today - quite a change from Facebook’s roots as a social networking tool for college students just a few years ago."
InsideFacebook.com

This is why we continue to recommend that our clients set up Facebook Pages for their businesses.

Visit our Facebook page here:

• Delphis on Facebook

Facebook Surpasses 150 Million Users per Month

Today the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced:

Facebook’s audience has now crossed the 150 million monthly active user mark. If Facebook were a country, it would now be the 8th most populous in the world. From Inside Facebook.

While many small business owners are still reluctant to jump into Facebook, surely gaining access to 150 million people on the web is nothing to scoff at!

Granted a large portion of Facebook users are younger citizens, but recent demographics from Facebook show a substantial growth in the 25+ age group.

So if you're not accessing this totally free source of potential visitors to your website, why not? Sign up for an account, then get started with a page for your small business today.

A good example of what you can do with a page can be seen on the one we created to promote Dominica, and the growth from 0 to 3,700 fans in just a few months is a testament to the potential Facebook offers.

Facebook Pages v. Facebook Groups - Which is right for you?

Regular readers of our blog know that we've been promoting Facebook as a great social media site for small businesses to establish a presence (here and here). Traditionally, there have been two different ways of doing this - through a Page or a Group.

With the rapid growth of the Facebook community that is upon us, we recommend creating a Facebook Page for your business, as it gives you more depth, versatility, and interactivity with your customers.

Here is a summary of the differences between a Facebook Page and a Group (from InsideFacebook.com):

Facebook Pages — Facebook “Pages” (that’s with a capital “P”) were created to give businesses their own profile on Facebook. In fact, originally, the code that made up a Facebook “Page” appeared to be almost exactly the same as that which generated user profile pages.

Pages give your business or brand an identity on Facebook. With a Page, those interested and following your brand can become “fans”, and when they do so, all their friends will see this. You can store photos, videos, information about your company, and custom applications on your Page. All activity on Pages gets posted back to your Mini Feed for all your friends to see. Click here for a detailed overview on what fields you can store on a Facebook Page.

Groups — Groups on Facebook are similar to Pages, but are meant to be built around a group of people rather than an individual business or brand. Groups have no “become a fan” feature, and do not share as much information with users’ friends as users interact.

More information about the differences between Pages & Groups, see this article on The Goggles Do Nothing Blog.

The Facebook Page is therefore a more powerful marketing tool. When your followers sign-up as fans, you can easily send them updates. You (and your fans) can upload photos and videos, creating more content on a daily basis. There is also a discussion board and new features are being added all the time.

So if you are on Facebook and you have a business, ramp up your marketing efforts and add a Page today!