5 Fun Facebook Facts

  You may or may not have accepted Facebook's new TIMELINE layout...you may be in denial! We just wanted to assure you that Timeline is actually very interesting and doesn't affect how you Facebook (just made FB a verb!)...so don't worry...you will get used to it eventually!

We wanted to share with you a few fun features to enhance your Facebook page (not your personal page, but your blog or business page). There are quite a few things you can do to use Facebook  to your advantage, and the first one is:

1. Create a cool photo graphic for the top of your page. The size of this image should be 851 pixels by 315 pixels (find a cheat sheet HERE). You can create this graphic yourself using Photoshop or Elements...there are also many apps for creating online without software such as HERE and HERE or you can easily try PicMonkey's collage options that are already sized too!

Go to PIcMonkey, click on Collage, then Layouts (looks like three little boxes). Then choose the FB Cover style you would like to use, as shown above. Then you upload the photos or type in the text you'd like to use. Save to your computer and then upload to Facebook. Pretty swift!

Don't forget Facebook's Rules about Timeline:
Cover images must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as "40% off" or "Download it at our website"
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page's About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as "Get it now" or "Tell your friends"
  Cover images are also PUBLIC. Everyone can see your cover image. 

2. Okay, so now you've got a great image graphic on your Timeline that everyone will remember. What else can you do to make your Facebook page fabulous? You can add cute tab images too! Did you know that?  The Photos tab box will always be there, but you can change the others pretty easily.

If you love Pinterest and want everyone else to love your boards, it is easy to add a Pinterest tab without any work on your part.  Learn how at Woobox. Readers can view your boards and stay on Facebook at the same time! Woot! Here's detailed instructions from the Woobox blog.

OR

You can also do it yourself and add any tabs you like...complete instructions located at Face It Pages ...click over and try it yourself! They have a FREE membership option, which is what we used.

Here's our before shot (expanded - as only 4 tabs show):

And here's our after shot (not expanded):

3. So now that you've accomplished the impossible (finding time to get this all done!) you can sit back and relax. NOT! Wait a minute! You need interaction on your page now...how on earth are you supposed to get that?

Social Media is the latest (and greatest!) form of getting noticed, and we mean by Google. Google is becoming the Godfather of the Internet...if you want to be popular, you want to do what Google likes. You will get better page ranking if you are using Social Media and getting real interaction with readers and fans. The first step, of course, is always having excellent content on your blog, always! Secondly, use Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest to interact and drive readers back and forth from your blog site to those social media sites. You want Tweets and Pins and Comments! Having 5000 Google Friend Connect Followers does not mean you're going to get a high page ranking on the Godfather's, ahem, we mean, Google's search engines.

What to do? Have social media icons located prominently on your site. Make them cute and match your blog etc., but make sure they are visible to the naked eye! We've listed some pretty cool icons here, so check out those free resources. We also suggest going to Etsy and finding a graphic designer to make you some custom icons...they aren't expensive and it's so worth a few dollars to have social media icons checked off the to do list! Right?

4. Some other tasty tidbits about Facebook: you can add your shop right to Facebook. You can also add a Contact Form directly to your page...these are called embedding web pages.
If you want to learn how to do that we suggest reading FaceItPages Methods of Embedding Web Pages. If you need any help, just drop us an email and we'll give you some suggestions too.

5. Lastly, don't forget to publish your blog to your Facebook page. You can do this manually every day which is super easy. But you can also sign up with Networked Blogs and have it done for you! (Although, here is an article we found about NOT using this app..."Facebook prizes manual posting over third-party applications and so your automated posts don’t get as much weight in the News Feed."  And here's a response. Makes you think doesn't it?) Remember to do one or the other! You can also do both, hand publish and use an app. This is a great way to interact with your readers...ask them a question about your post and have them answer on FB. Networked Blogs also publishes your posts to Twitter immediately too! Here's an example of what this looks like:

Hope you found these Facebook Facts helpful! Did you know you can type in your Facebook questions into the Facebook SEARCH box and find answers? Facebook even has a help page!


Question of the Day: If Pinterest is the #2 social media preference. What's your number one? Facebook or Twitter?