Ever want to only update your friends with a wall post?  Would you like to exclude our boss from seeing your status?  Well this guide will show you how to pull this off so your co-workers won’t know you are a party animal and you’re ex-girlfriend won’t see that you are still heartbroken .

Here are some possible reasons to use privacy on your posts:

• Keep your work & industry related posts from your friends.
• Block specific users (or lists of users) from ever seeing a post.  This can be great when looking to block competitive companies or workers from seeing your posts.
• Deliver more targeted messaging to your segmented groups of friends.  You could write a social media oriented wall post and send to a social media list, and dial the copy down when just posting to a general internet marketing list.  Having targeted posts can help boost click-throughs by increasing relevancy.
• Block personal posts (and content) from co-workers and other colleagues in your industry

How to Apply Privacy To Your Wall Posts

The key to targeting your wall posts/information is to segment your friends list.  By creating detailed lists of your friends, you will have the ability to block specific lists, or show posts to specific people.  Here’s how:

Click on the “Friends” link in the left column:

Next, you want to create a list.  This list will be how exactly you will segment your friends (and display information).

Making them relevant (high school friends, college friends, co-workers, etc) will help you target your messaging.  My personal lists are:

• Friends
• Not Really Friends (you know those people that add you but you haven’t talked to in 10 years)
• Industry

 

This is what a sample list would look like when completed:

 

Now that you have your lists set up, you can start segmenting your wall posts away!  Let’s look at an example of a wall post for an update that I might want some people in my industry(and my bosses) to see:

Now that I have the blog post typed up, I would click on the “Customize” button.  This would then take me to the following screen where I can choose who can and cannot see the post:

With this update, none of my friends will see the message … only the people that are on my “Industry” list will see this.

Now, if I wanted to show my friends what I am realllyy doing (while blocking from people in my industry,) I would do the following:

I blocked all of my “not really friends” along with “industry” as well as my boss “Chris Winfield” (he is listed as a friend, not an Industry person) so only my real friends can see what it is that I am doing.

So that is how you can make wall posts that are custom tailored to your audience!

Here are a few key tips to remember:

• Make your lists segmented how you would like to deliver your posts (work, recreation, school, etc)
• You can also block (or add) specific people to a post
• Be careful with your default settings – if you accidentally set this, you could exclude a section of friends from seeing any updates

How to Apply These Settings To Other Facebook Info

Now, while we are on the subject, lets talk about how to block other information from specific people – again, those targeted lists will be a huge help!

Firstly, click on the “Privacy Settings” link underneath the “Account” dropdown in the upper right:

Next, you need to select what you would like to restrict the privacy of.  For this exercise, we will restrict the privacy of a photo gallery, so we would click on “Profile Information”:

Now, the next thing to do is to select which section should be changed.  Figure out what you would like to change, then click on the customize button:

I ended up choosing “Photo Albums” section and was able to customize the privacy on an album-by-album basis.  Just like wall posts, you can customize specific elements by lists and/or by person.  Do do this, you just need to show the section to “Some Friends.”  Then you can choose which friends will see it based on the list or profile of that person.  Here is an example of what I might choose for one of my albums:

This would show the specific album to anyone that I have listed (because I selected all of my lists) but will not show the album to anyone who I haven’t added to a list yet.  This can be done with all of your personal information (age, interests, videos, etc) so organize yourself today to make sure that the wrong people are seeing your private information.

 

Setting up these lists and privacy settings is simple, and can save you a good deal of grief if you are a Facebook fanatic.  So create segmented lists and ensure you deliver specific messages & information to the correct people!

534020 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2010/02/16/how-to-keep-your-facebook-wall-posts-info-private/How+To+Keep+Your+Facebook+Wall+Posts+%28%26+Info%29+Private2010-02-16+16%3A25%3A28Greg+Finn

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How much do you trust your fans?  Do you trust them enough to manage your Facebook fan page?  Do you trust them to converse with other fans that might have customer service-related questions or complaints?  A job like this should not be left in the hand of a customer.

Facebook Fan Pages are now thought of as the Brand Community or the Brand Hub.  Facebook users are accustomed to asking customer service questions and reaching out to the brand on these platforms.  If there is another fan behind the driver’s seat, how can the brand be sure they are being represented well?  Because these fans are not trained brand employees, the brand may not not be represented properly.  Why do some brands still allow this fraud to happen when there is a vast amount of knowledge about Facebook all over the internet?

There are many potential Brand Identity Disasters that can occur from misrepresentation on Facebook.  For example, 7Eleven is a very popular franchise, with their 24-7 Slurpees and delicious coffee drinks.  The Official 7Eleven Facebook page is really well done — it has over 185K fans that actively engage with the brand.  However, the brand name is commonly misspelled.  What about when the average consumer searches for “711″ on Facebook?

Here is what they will find:

Problems:

• Over 35 thousand fans have joined a fan page that never updates content and displays a poor image of the brand
• The fan page insults competitor brands with harsh language
• People who misspell the brand name have no option to find the official page

Sometimes the brands who are not participating within social media are subject to letting their fans take over completely.  For example; CVS is currently not participating in Facebook.  The CVS fan page is completely taken over by fans in a negative way.

Problems:

• Over 6 thousand people became fans of an imposter brand page
• The fan page has no brand information
• The fan page lacks any fan engagement on the Wall
• The photos that are uploaded by fans hurt the brand tremendously

Fan photos include an image of a letter from a CVS employee who is upset with the store and how it operates, images of a man who scams people outside of a CVS parking lot, and a faulty flu shot done at a CVS pharmacy.  These images have the potential to turn many customers away from CVS.  When choosing not to participate in social media, brands like CVS should look at competitors like Walgreens, who are extremely active and powerful on Facebook.

Facebook fan pages have the ability to serve as a Community hub where consumers can come and show their appreciation to other fans.  But fans can also actively show their complaints and aggravations with the brand.  Facebook users have become familiar with this practice.

When your customer comes to your Facebook fan page, asking questions about products, complaining, and looking for more information, who do you want behind the driver’s seat?  There are many resources out there to learn about implementing great Facebook fan pages.

Here are some tips on how to better control your brand on Facebook:

1. Search: Look for your brand terms and misspellings of your brand name on Facebook.  Make a list of how many impostor fan pages are out there and tally up the total number of fans that are engaging on these pages.  This is your audience!

2. Prepare: Are you ready to take over these fan pages?  Do you have the right content?  You will need photos, oodles of brand information, witty status updates, and a strategy to implement in order to engage and stimulate the fan base.

3. Create: You will need to create an official Facebook fan page and build it as if it is your website.  You should build tools and “Tabs” that are brand specific.  For example, if you are a movie theater, you’d want a unique way to show movie times.

4. Control: Taking control of the impostor pan pages is easy.  People at digital agencies have frequently dealt with this issue and work hand in hand with Facebook to take control.  It is extremely important to make sure that fans of the brand are getting the correct information.

519315 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2010/02/02/how-to-deal-with-brand-identity-theft/How+to+Deal+with+Brand+Identity+Theft+2010-02-02+20%3A44%3A20Stephanie+Weingart

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If you are a Webmaster or HTML developer, whether in a big company or a small business you should probably know by now that creating a Facebook page can be a very important social marketing tool these days. Hopefully, you already have a Facebook page created for your business; if not, you should definitely look into setting one up and reading up on some Facebook Marketing Tactics.

One important thing about these Facebook pages is that besides standard Facebook wall interaction, they allow you to create custom tabs where you can use HTML to design and build creative small boxes that can be mini-websites on their own.

Here are some examples of the Facebook tabs from Best Buy and Gap:

As you can see, one can get very creative with these – just like for your website design.

Why would you want to create these tabs? Well, it’s a good way to update your Facebook content and promote anything new. If you’re a store that sells products, you may want to create a new tab every time you have a big sale or to outline a new line of products. If you benefit from seasons/holidays, you can update the tabs according to seasonal sales and specials. There are tons of reasons, but the bottom line is that you want to create and constantly update interactive content and stay in touch with your Facebook audience.

So, how exactly do you do add these tabs and work with HTML?

You should add a Static FBML application to your Facebook page, which will allow you to create new tabs/boxes and render HTML code. If you’re having any problem adding the application, check out a detailed explanation from Greg Finn on Customizing the Facebook Page.

Once the FBML Application is added, you can use it to create new tabs and boxes. Just click on Edit next the FBML box and now you can name your tab/box at the top and insert your HTML code at the bottom.

Here you can design and build your layout using regular HTML. It can be as simple as inserting one big image, or building a mini-website.

A few things to keep in mind when working with this application:

1. The max width should be around 750px.

2. Some people find it easier to use table layouts here as they are nice and compact. However, if you’re a CSS stickler who absolutely hates tables, you can use a CSS-based layout.

3. CSS code is allowed. There are a few ways to get it in there. You can either:

• Use CSS at the top of the HTML by including it inside the <style></style> tags
• Use inline CSS within each element by using style attribute, like: <div style=”CSS here”>
• There is a way to reference external stylesheet by following Facebook rules on including files. You would need to specify a version number, which is a bit unusual.

Facebook will rewrite some CSS while rendering so that only elements within your box are affected and not the entire Facebook template.

4. You can include flash files as well. If you’re into flash design, you may just be looking for a way to embed a flash file using this application. You can do so by using the following FBML Code template:

<fb:swf  swfsrc=’http://www.yoursite.com/flash/flash-file.swf’ imgsrc=’http://www.yoursite.com/images/flash-image.jpg’ width=’650′ height=’408′ />

The way FBML includes flash files is that you first need to display an image. Once the user clicks on the image, the flash file then starts to play. In the code above, you need to specify the location of the flash file and the image (as well as width and height). The image can be a screenshot of the flash or a separate intro image; it’s up to you.

5. Image and File Hosting: It’s probably best if all images and other files are hosted externally. If you have a company website already, just host your images on that server. If not, you can look into getting some free file hosting.

6. Image bug fix in Firefox: One small, but annoying thing that I noticed is that some images can have unwanted space in between them in Firefox, which happened to me only when rendered through Facebook (and looked fine on a regular website). This can be especially annoying if your layout consists of images that need to be blended together.

I used the following CSS trick to fix the problem (inside <style> tag):

img {
display:block;
}

Just make sure that rule does not interfere with any other CSS you may have or cause any problems.

7. No javascript or other scripting languages are allowed – so just use HTML/CSS and, of course, FBML.

Finally, once you save the page, it will create the new tab and a box under the Boxes tab. This seems a bit redundant to me, so you can then delete the box itself or the Boxes tab altogether and just leave the Tab. Then you can also drag your new Tab to position it; whenever makes sense.

You can also add additional Tabs/Boxes by clicking on ‘Add another FBML Box’ at the bottom of the FBML Edit page.

449729 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2009/12/01/how-to-create-rich-html-tabs-on-your-facebook-page/How+to+Create+Rich+HTML+Tabs+on+Your+Facebook+Page2009-12-01+21%3A54%3A00Victor+Murygin

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Last week I wrote an article over at Search Engine Land that addressed a number of concerns that I have heard from users who have Pages that are not showing up in Facebook Search.   The article breaks down how exactly you can get your page to show up in the search with 8 different tips and tricks.  Here is a high level overview of them:

1. Use your brand for your Facebook page name
2. Build your following
3. Create a branded Facebook username
4. Create fresh content regularly
5. Leverage domain equity to boost Facebook pages in SERPs
6. Advertise on branded “interests”
7. Fill in all information about your brand/company
8. Spend a little time optimizing your site for Bing

Want the skinny on each point? Head on over to Search Engine Land and check out the article: 8 Tips For Getting Your Fan Page Found In Facebook Search

40386 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2009/10/19/how-to-get-your-fan-page-found-in-facebook-search/How+to+Get+Your+Fan+Page+Found+in+Facebook+Search2009-10-19+22%3A01%3A35Greg+Finn

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This session is all about Facebook and is run by Danny Sullivan, who has segmented off the speakers by topic (advertising, search, events, groups/pages).   The panel has some great speakers who give up some really actionable takeaways, so read up!

Dennis Yu from Blitzlocal is up first and his topic is Advertising on Facebook.  When advertising on Facebook, you need to consider the mindset.  Unlike Google, you need to think about targeting a user (or group of users) who is part of a demographic rather than keywords.  It is a very important concept – it’s about identity, not queries.

Now why would you advertise on Facebook?  It can be cheap and targeted.  Dennis states that the average CPC across the board is around 20-30 cents.  So for someone like a hosting company  this works well compared to something like a $10 click for “hosting”.  Also, many of the advertisers are affiliates, so going with international traffic can be MUCH cheaper (int’l advertising can breech many affiliate terms).

So how else can you be sneaky?  Well, Dennis states that one of the benefits of the Facebook ad platform is that it isn’t really clear on what someone might be buying.  For example, if bidding on keywords in Google, it would be pretty easy to tell what type of keywords you are buying.  When this comes to branded terms, you can really tell if you’re bidding on a specific brand in Google/Yahoo!/Bing; however, this is NOT the case in Facebook.  By leveraging “interests” for advertising, you can bid on users that might like your competition, and it would be nearly impossible to find because it isn’t query based.

Local is also becoming huge in Facebook advertising.  Right now Dennis stated that 74% of FB advertising will come from local – 20-30 cent  CPMs.  You can really go out and plaster the local space and get your message out there on the cheap.

When running ads, you should always test.  Test everything.  Different landing pages, different phone numbers – make sure that you can track conversions from the different ads.  People think the CTR on Facebook is terrible.  Not the case, you just need to make sure that your messaging is on point.  Dennis has seen a 3-4% CTR if targeted right … it’s all about targeting.  Now, things can get a bit crazy if you really scale it out as ‘ad multiplication’, which can be huge.  If you try ad testing with 10 different images, 3 different types of body copy, 5 unique demographic targets, and 2 landing pages you would have over 3000 different items to track, so make sure you can stick with something manageable.  Interest targeting can be good, but watch out for burnout.  Sending the same message to the same group of people over and over again can stop working quickly.

The secret? Send people to your fan page because you get higher viral multipliers.  By taking them and turning into a fan, you can get more and more life from your spend.

Marty Weintraub of aimClear is up next and is talking about Facebook Search and how to leverage it.  The new Facebook search is better (maybe?).  No external engines are allowed to search Facebook, making the Facebook search even more powerful.  With Facebook search, privacy levels are really important.  You can really restrict what is put out there or allow people to see everything.

When showing Facebook search results, it isn’t all about profiles.  Groups can trump profiles many times for popular words, and popular apps can trump most if they’re really popular.  For an example of this, try a search for ‘music’.  If trying to rank for groups the member count is really important.  Do whatever you can to get as many people on your page and groups.

Now like Twitter, you can sort by posts to see interests (for those without privacy settings).  This can be really helpful for finding those interested in your brand or company.  Look around and see what people are saying.

The overall message is – use keywords, leverage anything and everything to get followers and crowdsource your friends!

Will Scott from Search Influence follows next and is covering Facebook Events.  Facebook has some interesting ways to target – for example, by birthday.  Many restaurants offer free cake or offers for your birthday.  This is great because you would probably bring an entire party along.

Another cool trick that Will shares is the ability to hit people right into their inbox for events.  By sending an invitation (or responding to one), you can get the direct message (and email if turned on) to the user.  This can be great for direct response – or for local.

Rebecca Kelley from 10e20 (wahoooooooo!) is up and talking about Facebook Pages and Groups (and how to leverage).  She states that groups are the forums of Facebook.  They were the original pages and many legacy groups exist and are very strong.  Groups can help your branding and traffic and are a very powerful messaging tool.  You can message right into a user’s inbox.  An example of this is the original Search Engine Land group from the times before pages.  If a group is < 5000 in size, the admins can message members directly so keep that in mind if you want the most powerful communication from your group.

Facebook pages are great for branding and for traffic.  Seems like there is more attention to fan pages than from Twitter … it seems like the message sticks a bit more.  Facebook pages can be created for people, companies, local settings, or causes.  When creating your pages, you have a few different flavors when creating the pages; you can create branded pages or non-branded pages.  What is the difference?  Branded pages really are about the company and the branding and communication, where non-branded pages can take off in a viral fashion through a targeted demographic.  If you are a tool company like Black and Decker, maybe creating a page called “girls who can use power tools” could get a broader array of people following you.  Think outside the box when creating non-branded pages, but make sure you execute tastefully.  Something like being a fan of “Laughter” would be great for a comedy site and would have the ability to spread virally.

Rebecca has a real life example from Shoemoney’s fan page and how to leverage it for conversions.  On a page with about 2,000 fans he let people know about a special offer and saw a 19.63% conversion on all of those visits.  To build up his fan page he had spent a few thousand dollars, and then converted enough to make $2,500 profit.  Now that is only with the first promotion, so you can see how valuable a fan could be over the life of the page.

To finish off her presentation she mentions that you have to really be part of the community – be active, be helpful and most importantly be creative.

This was a great panel with loads of information and I think everyone really tossed out some actionable ideas that can start getting you goin’ on Facebook.

395714 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2009/10/07/smx-east-facebook-marketing-tactics/SMX+East%3A+Facebook+Marketing+Tactics2009-10-07+15%3A10%3A43Greg+Finn

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Recently it has been revealed that Facebook is using its members’ profile pictures in their 3rd party advertisements. One member discovered this after recognizing his wife’s profile picture in a dating ad that was being displayed to him, and other folks have noticed their profile pics popping up in ads as well. After hearing about this shocking revelation, I logged into my Facebook account and was appalled to see that my 10e20 coworkers’ pictures were indeed being used in various advertisements. I’ve taken screenshots of these ads and displayed them below:

Thankfully, you can opt to disallow Facebook from using your profile pics:

Click through to  -> Settings -> Privacy -> News Feed and Wall -> Facebook Ads -> Appearance in Facebook Ads – > click “no one.”

Hopefully my coworkers will take the necessary precaution so that their pics won’t end up in any more unflattering Facebook ads.

Don’t forget to follow 10e20 on Twitter and subscribe to our RSS feed!

301113 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2009/07/24/friday-fun-10e20-facebook-ads/Friday+Fun%3A+10e20+Facebook+Ads2009-07-24+18%3A31%3A25Rebecca+Kelley

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In the olden days a sociologist had to find people and recruit them to fill out long arduous forms. Today there is Facebook, and these sociologists are finding out that people generally love to talk about themselves. It is fun to talk about my interests, social networks and life!

Check out the New York Times article ‘On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data’. I would imagine this is being used in many other ways and will be being used more frequently in the future.

14642 Commentshttp://www.10e20.com/blog/2008/01/30/facebook-data/62+Million+Users%3Dlots+of+data%212008-01-30+13%3A56%3A19Patrick+Winfield

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