How To Create A Facebook (Fan) Page [VIDEO]

Posted on June 19, 2010 by Jesse Luna

Facebook Pages allow businesses and individuals to create rich branded pages within Facebook. Every major brand in the world is running to build engaging and “sticky” pages on Facebook, because that’s where the people are.

Are your customers, non-profit supporters, constituents, and neighbors on Facebook? You betcha. So why not give them an opportunity to connect with you and your brand?

This tutorial will show you how to get started on building your own Facebook Page (I refer to them as “Fan Pages” in the video). This is Part One of the Facebook Fan Page project so make sure you bookmark this page, subscribe to the email blog posts, and/or subscribe to the RSS feed to keep track of further developments.

Your feedback is golden. I love Comments like a fat kid loves cake.

And don’t forget to view the full Transcript below.

Transcript

[Music]

Hi this is Jessse Luna. Today I’m going to show you how to create your own Facebook Fan Page.

First go to Facebook and get logged in then navigate over to the “Ads and Pages” link and click on that.

I just clicked on that. You’ll see a couple of the other Fan pages that I’ve created.

We’re going to create a new page so click on the Create a Fan Page button [Create Page].

This will take you to the Create A Fan Page [Create a Page] site [page].

And we are going to select “Local Business.” Select the type of business. This is going to be a Store.

Now we put the name of the page [typing]

And I put in “Handmade Tesoros” is the name here.

I select that I am the official representative

And now I’m ready to create the official page

I click on the button

And there we are, we’ve already gotten started. We now have a Facebook Fan Page.

Now it’s time to configure it and make it look pretty.

So let’s start with adding a nice picture here.

We go up and click on the Edit Picture. We’re going to Upload a Picture.

Now we’re going to browse and navigate to the picuture that we’re going to upload.

There it is.

[Picture is uploading] The ideal size for a picture is 200 width by 600 height.

Although you can use different shapes if you like.

But this is a nice size because if fills up that whole left side of the page.

You can see that is really nice and it takes full advantage of the space that is available there.

Now we have our Handmade Tesoros logo there.

We’re ready to do some more configuration so we’re going to go down to the Edit Page

And click on the Edit Page link.

And I just want to take a look at some of the Wall Settings.

The important section is to make sure these are all checked on here.

And these are the Fan Permissions.

And this will help you get your fans more activated in things that are going on with the Fan Page.

It’ll allow them to post photos, videos, and links on there.

You want to make sure that that’s turned on.

The second thing we want to do is to add the Static FBML application.

So I’m going all the way to the bottom of the page where it says “More Applications.”

And I’m clicking on the Static FBML page [link].

Now what you do is you go up and click on the “Add To My Page” link.

And I just clicked on that.

Now I select the page that I want to add it to. I select “Handmade Tesoros.”

And I can Close that and it’s been added.

Now I’m navigating back to my page. I just hit the Back button [on browser].

And I’m ready to go back to the pages.

[Navigating]

I took the long way there

And now I’ve done some very basic configuration. We added our picture

and we added this strange FBML section to our fan page.

The last thing we want to do on this uh part of the video is to

update the little information section

Right where it says “Write something about” and then your page name.

And we’re just going to go in there and put a description.

And that’s saved. You just have to enter it.

And then we’ll get back in the next video and learn how to configure the FBML section.

[music]

Privacy Erodes On Facebook

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Jesse Luna

I don’t usually do “reblogs” but the Matt McKeon blog post, “The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook“, is so striking and timely that I had to comment on it. The post is a visual chronicle of Facebook’s privacy changes since 2005. In 2005, content was only visible to limited circle of friends and their immediate network. Fast-forward to today and almost all of a Facebook user’s activity is available on the Web.

I think users are getting the short end of the stick on this deal and this type of privacy erosion will eventually lead to a mass exodus from Facebook. What? It’s already happening?

Publishers, on the other hand, are writing about the privacy issues but aren’t ready to put the kibosh on their Facebook strategies.

This privacy leakage ties into my post on the Geolocation Privacy Proposition. McKeon’s infographic doesn’t include “Location” but that could be just around the corner.

Click here to view the full McKeon blog post.

A Powerful Way To Visualize Your Blog’s Keywords

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Jesse Luna

Your assignment: Report back on how people are finding their way to your blog via Web searches. Take that information and make a change based on that finding.

You could dig into your blog’s built-in stats feature (if it has one) and find one or two interesting tidbits about keyword searches. Or, if you’re a masochist, you could try to access your raw log files and parse out referrer search strings. Lastly, you could walk into your sophisticated analytics program and start running massive reports and get deluged with data.

But, there is a simpler way. Enter Wordle.net. Wordle.net is a word art site that works by analyzing text. Paste in a set of words and it returns a beautiful word cloud. Simple.

I created this first word visualization by pointing Wordle.net to my jesseluna.com blog URL. This won’t tell me about visitors to the blog, but it will give me a quick look at what the blog is really offering up in terms of content. The larger the word, the more times it is being used throughout the blog site.

Now that you know what you’re serving up to search engines, you can see what web searchers are really looking for based on keyword data.

These are the steps I took:

Log into Google Analytics account.
Navigate to the site you want to analyze.
You’ll be on the Dashboard. Go to Traffic Sources > Keywords
You’ll see a list of keyword phrases under the “Site Usage” tab on the main part of the page.

If you’re using Google Analytics or any other stats tracking system, you should become very familiar with this keyword information. These are the words and phrases that people are searching over to get to your Web site.

Go to the bottom of that data table and select “500″ from the “Show Rows” drop down menu. The page will refresh and you’ll see the top 500 sets of keyword phrases.

Export that view by going to the top of the page and clicking on the “Export” drop down and selecting .CSV or .XLS. Download it or just open up the file.

In the Excel file, scroll down until you get to the Keyword data and copy all the keyword phrases in that column.
Go to Wordle.net’s “Create” tab then paste those keywords phrases into the “Paste in a bunch of text:” text area.
Click on the Go button and in a few seconds your word art will appear.
Use the tool bar to filter for language, change the color scheme, layout, and color and explore.
You can now save the image to the Public Wordle gallery, take a screen shot of it and save it on your computer, or if you have Adobe Acrobat installed, you can print to Adobe Acrobat and save it as a high resolution image in PDF format.

This is the resulting keyword visualization.

From this visualization, I can tell which of my blog posts have driven the most traffic to the blog. I can see words related to my How To Add A Facebook Fan Badge To Your Blog post which included “Facebook”, “Tumblr”, and “Badge” keywords. When I compare the first visualization at the top of this blog to the one just above, I see that there are a lot of matches between what I’m writing and how visitors are reaching the blog. That’s what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about.

Take Action
If you do try out Wordle.net and analyze your site’s keywords, don’t just sit on any new insights, take action. For example, I rarely write about Tumblr because I primarily focus on writing and teaching about WordPress blogs. But now, I’m going to schedule a couple of Facebook + Tumblr blog posts this month. I’m always looking for good tutorial topics.

Review
In this blog post we learned how to create a word visualization of your site’s content using Wordle.net. We also learned how to create a visualization using actual keyword search data from an analytics program. Lastly, we learned that we have to take action on our insights.

I hope this blog post was useful. If you created a visualization, feel free to comment below or post your Wordle.net art to the JesseLuna.com blog Facebook Fan Page.

Image Credit: Wordle.net

How To Add A Facebook LIKE Button To Your WordPress Blog [VIDEO]

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Jesse Luna

Facebook unleashed its new wave of site integration tools including the new Like button for external sites. This button works like the regular Like button on Facebook, where you see a status update and can give it the thumbs up.

Please note, this post is rated D for Daredevil.

To implement these changes you will need to muck around in the PHP. So make sure you’re wearing your developers propeller hat and some sort of Star Wars attire.

This micro video tutorial shows you how to find the Facebook button code, add it to your site’s template code, and get it up and running. However, this video only shows you how to add the Like button to the Single Post page in your blog. You’d also want to do the same thing with your Main Index Template page.

If you really don’t want to tinker with the template code, there are some plugins floating around. I’ve seen three different plugins already but haven’t tested them out yet. If you developed a Like button plugin, drop a comment with a link to the site. I’ll add comments to this post as I see them as well.

Site Personalization With Facebook

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Jesse Luna

I’ve been overwhelmed by all the Facebook changes. Things are moving as quickly with Facebook as they are with Twitter. So I thought I’d review the Facebook changes one chunk at a time and see some of the practical implications, for sites and for users.

One of the changes Facebook just launched is its site personalization services. This allows external sites to display content based on information from a user’s Facebook account.

For example, I just visited Pandora.com for my morning music fix and saw this:

Because I was logged into Facebook, the Pandora site was able to:

Display the top header bar with my Facebook profile picture. The bar also includes the message ” Hi Jesse. Pandora is using facebook to personalize your experience. Learn More[link] – No Thanks[link]“.

Display my profile picture below the music tracks and pull in links to artists I had Facebook fanned (Snoop Dogg and Susan Boyle).

Initial Reaction

I wasn’t surprised to see these additions because Facebook had posted a massive picture to my Facebook Wall and description of some of the changes. My first thought on seeing the change was to think “Wow, that’s pretty cool.”

I was viewing the change from the perspective of a blog owner who could potentially do something similar. However, I could see how people could be freaked out after seeing the change. “Why is Facebook following me, even out on the Web?”

User Privacy

So what do you do if you don’t want Pandora to display this Facebook information and connections? You just have to click on the header and either click on the “X” or on the “No Thanks” and your Facebook profile and your artists pics go away.

I tested the persistence of this “No Thanks” opt-out action by refreshing the browser, opening things up in a whole different browser and the Facebook information did not reappear.

Facebook Posse To Go?

I also visited the food review site Yelp, and the site displayed my Yelp-using Facebook friends.

These are friendly faces so I didn’t mind seeing them on the site. Most of the time I’m on a different social network, I do want to find users that I friend on Facebook or follow on Twitter.

Further Research

I didn’t test to see what happens on the Facebook side of things after doing key actions, like adding new Pandora channels or adding new Yelp reviews. I imagine that would require further exploration of Facebook privacy settings which I’ll reserve for a future blog post.

Bottom Line

I like the personalization changes, so far. I’m going to actively explore all the “under the hood” mechanics of the Facebook-publisher connection and test things out jesseluna.com when that is possible.

I think that major “disconnects” will occur when we start seeing our Facebook information on sites that we don’t want to associate with in any way shape or form. For example, if an employment site like Monster.com starts using this feature, it could start publishing information to your Facebook account. I haven’t researched how things appear on Facebook, so this is speculation. But if your boss follows you on Facebook, you could be in for a lot of explaining.

What do you think about these personalization features? Cool or creepy?

A Non-Techie Reviews the iPad

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Belén Rodríguez

The iPad will never replace my desktop, but it has already replaced my laptop after just two days.

I love, love, love it!

@JesseLuna said it best: “If HBO was your ‘home box office’, then the iPad is your ‘mobile box office’.”

It’s also a dream for reading, blogging, and managing social media networks on a realistically readable device. (I love my iPhone, but the small screen has its limitations.) I know I will be using my iPad for most of what I do as a non-techie user. I also know I will still need to go to my desktop for large professional projects and probably most photo editing. (More on photos later.)

My setup consists of the iPad, the Apple cover, the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, a stand, and a lap desk. (And sometimes earbuds.) This is perfect for sitting in an armchair. Of course, if I were at a desk or table, I would not need the lap desk. Also, when lounging in bed the stand is too precarious, so I just lay the iPad flat on the lap desk. The Apple cover is made of a grippy rubber material that doesn’t slide around at all, which is awesome.

Being a creature of habit, the first things I tried on my new iPad were all the things I already used on my laptop and/or iPhone: Safari, Gmail, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Netflix, Scrabble, Momento, iTunes, Wikipanion, and Notes.

Overall, these all worked as well or better than the on the laptop/iPhone. There are a few tiny glitches, where features don’t work the way I expect, but all of them are software issues, which I’m sure will be addressed by the developers.

Aha! moments:

- streaming Netflix in bed (with earbuds) while my husband sleeps

- stocking my iBooks shelves with free texts thanks to Project Gutenberg

- writing this blog post in Pages which I will later email to @JesseLuna

All of these tasks could be done with some other gadget or device, but before now I would have used a separate gadget or device for each activity.

New stuff I love on the iPad: Pages, iBooks ereader, Marvel comics viewer, Toy Story read-along, NPR, USA Today, and ABC viewer. Gorgeous picture quality, leagues better than my (10-year-old) PowerBook. Super-fast over WiFi. Screen size is perfect for personal viewing. So many options – both media and content!

Stuff I haven’t done, yet, because it isn’t supported: Hulu.

Stuff I haven’t done because I haven’t bought the right app(s): games.

A final note on photos: there is a camera connecter accessory, but I didn’t buy it. I simply took photos with my iPhone, emailed them to Flickr. On the iPad I opened the Flickr app, selected my image and saved it to my Photos, then accessed it from there. That works fine for me.

JesseLuna.com

Moving people to action with social media

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