Instant Reply on Facebook. Let the Visitors to your Facebook Business Page Know What to Expect Regarding Your Typical Response Time to Facebook Page Messages

Here's a handy little piece of info to show your Facebook audience that you care.

Edit the settings for your response time to your page and even consider adding an instant reply message. 

Remember, these are messages to your page, not posts or comments.

Here's a few examples of why and what you should think about.

1. An auto-response will show people that you care and that their message didn't just roll out into the digital universe.

2. Some of my smaller businesses don't get tons of messages at the beginning and so they don't think to check for them. The instant reply feature can tell people how to reach you more quickly if they need to.

3. What if you go on vacation? This feature, again, helps people to know that the message was sent and could give alternatives to contact you.

4. What if the nature of your world is that you just can't answer right away. Very small businesses can't answer when they are on a job or project. Instant reply will tell people this and set expectations.

How do you set up your instant reply and indicate your typical response time for messages? 

On your page, click settings on the right side.
Then click on "messaging". It will bring you to the screen below.

Should I Make Facebook Business Page or a Facebook Profile Page? Why should I even have a business page?

Making a Facebook business page has become the norm. Its getting to the point where it adds credibility to a business. For large national businesses it can be a revenue driver but what about for small to medium sized local businesses?

Well it still matters. Here's why:

1. It does add credibility to your business. In today's world, people turn to online reviews to make decisions about whom they will do business with. Having a page with a few hundred followers makes you seem more legit. Ironically, you don't really have to have reviews on the page, you just have to have the page and have followers.

2. It allows you to keep some top of mind awareness with your clients. Facebook has, how-ever, made it hard for you to show up in your follower's feeds if they don't interact with you. Unless of course you pay to boost your feeds. I prefer to help my clients make their content interactive enough that boosting doesn't have to be a thing. 

3. Facebook is climbing the ranks as a "search engine". I put that in quotes because they are not as big for search as some may think, but it's still something to be mindful of. While Facebook tries to capture this space, it's good to get your page started and get some action going. Even if this is a growing time for you.

4. Taking the time to build a page early on gives you a history and time to grow in anticipation of the time when you will really need the page. Grow now while you can.

5. There are things you can do to take advantage of and convert even a few followers without spending tons of, or even any, money.

Should I have a Facebook page or a Facebook business page?

Definitely a business page.

1. Regular profile pages (like we have as people) only allow for up to 5,000 "friends". Some day you may care about that.

2. Business pages allow for more marketing options that you may choose to take in the future. 

3. Business pages come with "Insights" which are page metrics that you can also take advantage of in the future. 

4. People can "check in" to a business page.

5. You can schedule posts ahead of time. (we'll cover that later)

6. You can't change your profile page into a business page later. You can only tell people that you're doing it and hope they follow. 

7. You can add admins to your business page if you ever have someone who will be helping you maintain it. On a profile page you would have to give them your log in. Ack!

8. Really... just make a business page.

I am concerned about comments on my site. I am concerned because I work in a very sensitive industry (like financial or medical) and need to protect my brand image. 
This is a true concern and it's also manageable. With my sensitive clients, I recommend turning the ability for others to post on their page off. These settings can be changed later as you get to know your "fans" better and get more comfortable. At this time, you can not prevent people from commenting on your posts (this feature seems to come and go) but you can adjust your content so that it is "public friendly" and you can delete or hide comments after they are made. (click on the soft grey x that appears as you hover over the offending comment)

To turn off the ability for others to post on your page (as per Facebook):

If you allow visitors to publish posts to your Page, their posts can appear in Visitor Posts on the left side of your Page. If you allow photo and video posts, these posts can also appear in your Page's Photos and Videos sections.

To allow or disable posts by other people on your Page, you'll need to be an admin. If you're an admin:

Click Settings at the top of your Page. 

Click Visitor Posts. 

Click to choose Allow visitors to the Page to publish posts or Disable posts by other people on the Page. If you allow visitors to publish posts, you can choose to: Allow photo and video posts or Review posts by other people before they are published to the Page. 

Click Save Changes.

My customers aren't online (ugh, really, still?)
Your customers may not all be online but there are sooooo many of them that are that you aren't aware of OR there are many new customers that ARE online OR there are advisers (family and friends) to your customers online. I have had several financial and medical clients who thought this and it turns out not to be true. There are benefits from being online where so many people are. EVEN if I were wrong, it's free and requires only some time so let's at least try.
Forbes has a FB page.
Senior Living has FB page.
MENSA has a FB page.

Too old, too rich and too anything is no longer is a thing. Let's not be left behind.


I am small business working from a home or location that i don't want put online. What do I do? 
or
I don't want the review section showing on my page right now. What do I do?

Read our post on blocking your address and setting it up so that reviews and or maps don't show on your page.

So go ahead and set up a business page on Facebook and we'll discuss what content you should post in our next blog.

Have You Looked at Your Pinterest Analytics Lately? (Pinterest 101)

Are you aware that Pinterest has analytics to look at, too?
The client I am using in this example has been doing passive Pinterest for awhile on their own and we are going to add it to the mix of coordinated marketing that I will be doing for them so this Pinterest analysis is their first.

The analytics tab for Pinterest is very easily accessible right on your home screen. It's right out there on the left side.

Let's click on overview.

Here you will see the overview (hence the name) of your account activity.

First thing that most people need to do is verify their website (see the confirm site button in the upper right module).

Starting from the upper left, you see a snapshot of your average DAILY impressions and viewers. 

In the middle is average MONTHLY viewers and average MONTHLY engaged people.

Below this is the top performing pins for your account.

Let's look back at top left module (your Pinterest profile) and click on "more". This information is more detailed and has the 4 tabs across the top to review impressions, re-pins, clicks and all-time.

All-time shows your best performing all time pins, and references similar pins from other people that perform better in search and then also in all interactions. I really do believe that all of these tabs are really self explanatory so I will not bore you with details. Please contact me if you want more details on this.

Going back to the main dashboard, let's click on "more" next to Your Audience.

This is a bit deeper dive into the demographics that make up your audience. Please note the 2 tabs on top, Demo and Interests, This information is cumulatively used to help you get the best image of who your viewer/follower is and what will be of interest to them.

Now you can go back to the upper left corner of your dashboard, hover over Analytics and click on Profile. You will notice that it's the same info as the "more" buttons next to each module that we clicked before. 

As this is a 101 walk through, this is the time for you to simply gather the new insights that you now have into you Pinterest account, successes, and most importantly... who your followers are.

You should be developing your audience persona.

For example, if your main audience is women aged 25-35, then you should develop a persona based on this. Amy is one of the most popular names for women in this age group (a Google search will help you name your persona).

Get an image of a 30 year old woman. This is the face that you think of when you market to your persona.

Your audience persona in this instance, then. would be Amy. She is 30. You got some insights into what she is interest in from you Pinterest analytics. You can get more demo info from her from your Twitter Analytics and from your Google Analytics. Don't try to knock this project out in a half hour, develop your persona as you go along. Use the developed(ing) persona as your muse.

Removing the Facebook Review Section from your Business Facebook Page

An interesting question was asked of me this week. "How can my client remove their review section from their Facebook Page?"
I don't typically recommend taking the review section out. I am a staunch advocate of handling reviews correctly so they are not only not a problem anymore, but so that they help you. That being said, I have clients who aren't at that point yet. Plus I wanted to know how to remove the section just because.

I didn't think it was going to be tricky until we looked into it a bit. 

Turns out you can't just remove the Facebook Reviews Section. 
There are two work arounds that we found.

1. Remove the maps from your page. For some reason, this makes your review section not appear. Transversely, if you want a review section but aren't using your full address or map, you won't get a review section. This is something for people running businesses from their home to consider.

2. Change your page category to a non-business category.

**We would really love to hear from you if you know another method. As of November 2015, this is what we know.

For most clients, we are opting to change the business category over removing the map. We feel maps can be important for future clients and haven't seen any negative things occur with the changed non business category. Here are the two ways to do it.

To remove the map you do the following:

1) Click manage pages under the little drop down arrow in upper right corner.

2) Click on "About" then "Page Info" then "Address".

3) Click “Edit” on the right side of the “Address” line.4) Under the map un-check the box that states “Show this map on your Page and enable check-ins.”.

5) Click “Save changes”.

The Reviews Section should now be removed from your Facebook Page.

To change your catagory:

1) Click manage pages under the little drop down arrow in upper right corner.

2) Click on "About" then "Page Info" then "Category".

3) Click edit next to Category and make your site a non business category. 

In our example here, we have the full address with box checked, but made the category non business and reviews still went away.

No review section even with address and map.

Review section appears because both category and business are completed.

Properly handling reviews is coming in future posts. Please follow us to keep reading more.