Have you ever felt troubled when trying to add a stunning custom tab to your page but don’t know how? Since last year, I had found several that works great in providing sub-tabs and some with fan gate options. Today, it’s all about templates and widgets! Wouldn’t it be great if you can add one of these facebook applications together with some from 23+ Facebook Page applications to improve fans engagement? After all, it’s all about trial and error. Let’s head right to the facebook apps:

7 Killer Tab Customizers for Facebook Pages

#1  GroSocial

Requirement of Coding Knowledge: No

Fans-Gating Content Settings: Available

I love GroSocial for the fact that it makes Facebook customization a breeze with its drag and drop interface, along with slick, sophisticated templates and widgets for all packages. It is super easy to use with clear indication of which apps are free and required payment. Best of all you can try all widgets and only pay if you decided to publish them. You can tweak the tab and element settings and preview them in your WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. For free account you only get to publish one tab for one page but you may create as many tabs and publish the one you are most satisfied with. Here’s a custom tab created using Grosocial for my Page, imagine a lot more you can do with yours! GroSocial auto saves your work too, very neat.

 

#2  Lujure

Requirement of Coding Knowledge: No (except email/button embed)

Fans-Gating Content Settings: Available

Lujure provides templates (limited layout for free plan) and 35 social suites you can choose to add to your tab. There are no ready images in the templates so you need to prepare your own according to the given image size per template. Adjust your page height and background color/image however you wish. Double click at each element to customize its content. Some may require coding knowledge such as embedding your email opt-in form and paypal button. Free plan allows you to install one tab to one managed page.

#3  Social Page Builder

Requirement of Coding Knowledge: No

Fans-Gating Content Settings: For Paid Accounts Only

Like other page tab customizers, Social Page Builder offers free plan that allows you to install one tab to one page. Their templates are quite stylish and more towards retailing purposes. Its editing interface has both design and HTML mode. In order to edit an image on its multi-layer customization, double click it and you will be able to adjust color saturation, brightness or add shapes/text box. You can set hyperlink and alt text for the image as well. Social Page Builder is the only service I came across with spell check ability.

#4  FaceItPages

Requirement of Coding Knowledge: No

Fans-Gating Content Settings: For Paid Accounts Only

FaceItPages is another DIY page tab customizer that offers quite a number of templates and modules for your page. Free account holders will have access to header banner, content block, photo gallery/slideshow and contact module but not the RSS feed (for blog and twitter account). You can add and preview the feed content but in order to get them published on your Page you need to upgrade to paid packages.

Extra info: FaceItPages also has an option to manage/create your timeline cover.

#5  Thrusocial

Requirement of Coding Knowledge: No

Fans-Gating Content Settings: Available

Thrusocial is a great app to design your custom tab with drag and drop application widgets. Unlike most customizers, Thrusocial includes twitter and blog feed in their Free plan (hurray!). The greyed-out widgets are only accessible in paid packages.  Thrusocial provides basic template layout for you to work on and you can manage uploaded images in ‘Gallery’ option. Unsure if it’s just me but I can’t get ‘Facebook Sharing’ button to work on my Page after configured. I was excited to have found a scheduling feature in Thrusocial but couldn’t get that to function either – the message is forever ‘sending’ and never published. But since both features are not essential to me so overall, I’m still quite satisfied with Thrusocial.

#6  FanBridge Fan Page Creator

Requirement of Coding Knowledge: No

Fans-Gating Content Settings: Available

Or known as Damntheradio, FanBridge Fan Page Creator enables you to create dynamic Facebook tab that features audio, video, tour dates, contests and more. Damntheradio is widely used by musicians like Linkin Park and Enrique Iglesias. What I love is that it provides Like-gating feature on single module to attract more Likes on Page. If you include comments in your template, you can only edit or delete a comment from their main site but not within your page. You can download the comments in .CSV format whereas email addresses for the ‘Signup Form’ module can only be downloaded for paid accounts.

#7  ShortStack

Requirement of Coding Knowledge: No

Fans-Gating Content Settings: Available

If your Facebook Page is relatively new and you don’t have enough budgets to create multiple custom tabs like in the above plans, you just might love ShortStack! Differ from most Customizers, ShortStack has no page limitations and you can install up to 12 quick-publish tabs per page. You will have access to sweepstakes, fan gating tabs and other widgets except those required contest database, such as photo submissions for voting etc. Apart from its well designed template layouts, you can rearrange and set so certain widgets are exclusively for fans-view only. For those who have CSS knowledge you can enhance your tab further.  The only catch for this free account is that your fan count should not be more than 2,000. Otherwise you must upgrade to paid packages.

Feeling overwhelmed yet? Don’t be. The more you know what apps are available and what they are capable of, the more you’ll consider what can you offer to your audience. Remember, the purpose of this post is not to ask you to install EVERYTHING but to acknowledge you some of the choices available. Even free plan doesn’t sound so bad as long you don’t mind their ad placements (header or footer) on your Page. Carefully plan out your strategies, after all, 2012 had only just begun. Be glad that even none coders can find joy in setting up an impressive custom tab without feeling burdened.

Now Is Your Turn…

What is your favorite facebook application to create custom tabs? Have you come across better app suggestions? I’d love to hear them out in your comment.

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[UPDATED 25/12/2011] If you want to Insert your external Web Page as one of your Page tabs, now this can be done easily with ready–made custom iframe apps. This will also solve the Secure Hosting requirement for your custom apps to display properly in ‘secure browsing’ on Facebook.

Below method is ONLY useful for those who wish to create iframe application for other Facebook users to add to their Facebook Pages:

It has been almost two weeks since the official launch of iframe app, replacing the good old static FBML tabs on our facebook pages. For those who aren’t sure what is an iframe, basically it is a standard HTML tag to enable a HTML document to be inserted into another HTML page. The benefit of iframes over FBML is that it accepts a wide range of web coding (Javascript, CSS etc) that used to be non-compatible in static FBML to create dynamic content for our custom tabs. Best of all, you can even import your custom made web page to be included in your fan page! Imagine how convenient that would be for your promotional effort!

Since no more NEW static fbml applications can be added to our managed pages, it’s important to know exactly how to work from creating the app to adding it to your facebook page successfully. I will try to be as thorough as I manage:

How to Create and Add Custom iFrame Tab to Facebook Page

Firstly, you need to prepare a html page to be inserted into your facebook page. You may use Dreamweaver for the job and upload the html file to your web server so to be pulled into your fan page later. Or, we can do this the easy way with less complication via a wordpress plugin named Facebook Tab Manager. What I love about this tab editor is that it saves time and keeps the custom tab size limit of 520px wide so no resizing is needed afterward.

Add Facebook Tab Manager to your WordPress Blog

1.  Login to your blog and add Facebook Tab Manager to your plugins.

2.  Activate it and look for ‘Facebook Tabs’ at your sidebar -> click ‘Add New’. Notice that to create the iframe tab content is as easy as how you normally write a new post.

3.  When done, hit ‘publish’. New instructions will appear at the bottom of the post on configurations to register your content on facebook:

Customize Facebook Tab with iframe App

4.  Go to Facebook Developer and start setting up your new iframe app.

[UPDATED Image: 25/12/2011]

[END]

Note:

Some of you who are creating your facebook application for the first time, verification process may be required. If you had already verified your facebook account before this, you can bypass this step. Otherwise, you need to go ahead and select to verify your account with mobile phone or credit card. Or, if you are not comfortable with this step, add an admin who is already done the verification to work on the new iframe application.

5.  The ‘About’ section consists of some necessary fields besides filling in your app name. Add image to your icon and logo so it’s recognizable.

[UPDATED Image 25/12/2011]

Edit your app icon: Settings -> Basic -> Edit icon:

[END]

Tips: Why icon/logo image is important?

‘Icon’ image will show up next to your app name when added as a new tab to your facebook page. ‘Logo’ image will appear in app directory, for example:  you can have a look at your ‘Edit Page -> App after you added it to your page :

6.  At ‘Facebook Integration’ section is where all the hard work landed. Here are some important fields that required to be filled correctly:

In Canvas Section:

• Canvas Page – the base URL of your application on facebook.
• Canvas URL – this is the URL where facebook pulls in your iframe content.
• Secure Canvas URL – the secure version of Canvas URL with ‘https’. Basically the same info you entered in your ‘Canvas URL’.

Complicated? No worries. Refer back to step #3 above and locate the ‘Facebook Integration Tab’ in your blog and copy/paste the links given to you, for example:

[UPDATED Image/Instructions 25/12/2011]

Go to Settings -> Basic -> Select how your app integrates with Facebook -> Save Changes:

To create and associate a new (community) page with your app, go to Settings ->Advanced ->Contact Info ->App Page (Create Facebook Page) (optional) :

[END]

Below is the example of how Canvas section is filled:

*Caution*:

If you are unable to see the iframe app after installed to your page (regardless if you’re in ‘http’ or ‘https’), leave the ‘Secure Canvas URL’ field BLANK. Your iframe tab should be able to work in ‘http’ (non-secured browsing) and in order to view that, you need to go to Account -> Account Settings -> Account Security -> UNCHECK Secure Browsing. This is believed to be caused by a known issue on how our custom app is not visible when viewed in secured browser (https) as described in this bug report.

The bug occurred in February and was said to be fixed in mid March, however it seems that the bug is back again recently and affecting some of my pages. Will follow up on this issue and if you know how to fix this, do share.

In Page Tabs Section:

The important parts are ‘Tab URL’ and ‘Secure Tab URL’. Both links are referring to the html file location including its file name -> Save Changes:

*Caution*:

Again, if your app tab is not viewable, leave the ‘Secure Canvas URL’ field BLANK until the bug issue for secured browsing (‘https’) is fixed.

So now, your new iframe app is created!

Add Your iFrame App to your Facebook Page

[UPDATED 25/12/2011]

Refer to the documentation on how you can add a page tab dialog, or the one near to the end of this post. Clearly there is no longer a view app profile page link available in Developers apps section. No idea why though. [END]

7.  Now go back to your ‘My Apps’ page and select ‘Application Profile Page’.

8.  Then as how you normally add application to your page, click ‘Add to My Page’ -> then Add to the page you want:

9.  See that a new tab is added at your page sidebar. Rearrange the tab [#2(c)] to a preferred location or set it as your landing tab.

*Caution*:

For some web developers who intends to import their external web pages to facebook pages, be sure to check if your page consists of any disallowed ad providers. Thanks to Kim for providing this info so not to violate facebook Terms of Use (refer to the part about ’9. Special Provisions Applicable to Developers/Operators of Applications and Websites’).

10.  You can rename your custom tab by going to Edit Page -> App -> your app name -> Custom Tab Name -> after edit, click Save:

 

So whenever you wish to create a new custom tab, you need to go through all the steps again to get it done. Time consuming isn’t it?

To make things easier, if I could I will try to find other alternatives or ready-apps so even facebook beginners could enjoy as much privilege without having to go through the lengthy steps. Be sure to follow close and don’t miss upcoming posts!

Updated Post to check out:
7 Free iFrame Applications to Create Welcome Tab (Custom Tabs) for Your Facebook Page.

Now Is Your Turn…

How is your experience with iframe app so far? Has it been more useful for your page or not? Do you have any special tips to add? Feel free to do so in the comments.

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It has been four months since we talked about how to receive email notification for facebook page updates. Up till today, this feature remains unavailable on facebook. Apart from regular checking, page admin can only rely on third party applications to monitor upcoming posts and comments from fans.

I had previously introduced Page Notifier and Fan Page Notifier to monitor page activity (read this post to learn more about them). Page Notifier’s free version provides one-time-scan per 24 hours. As much I’m satisfied with its results, I longed for more scans in a day. As for Fan Page Notifier, the last time I got an email notification from it was end of December 2010. Not sure why it stopped. I went back in and updated my subscription recently, we’ll see how it performs few days later.

It’s absolutely fair to have limitations when using a free application, I understand that. In fact, I appreciate the app developers for trying to make our lives easier with these nifty facebook applications. Still, it never stops me to source for better alternatives, which is why I’m thrilled to introduce you these two new, free facebook applications that made my page monitoring a lot easier starting 2011:

#1 Hyper Alerts

Hyper Alerts won me over with its tag line ‘The Feature Facebook Forgot’ (how true is that!). It’s currently in public BETA (FREE) so definitely worth a try. The setup is almost instantaneous, start by registering yourself with an email:

Then, decide how you wish to add your facebook page to be monitored:

Option (1): Add Alert by URL
- All you need is to type in your facebook page URL -> Add, and you’re set. You don’t need to add this app to your facebook page at all! Plus, you can even monitor other fan pages you like but not under your administration.

Option (2): Add Alert from your Facebook User
- This option, on the other hand, requires authorization to access your facebook account. The purpose is to retrieve all facebook pages you are currently managing with your profile so you can select multiple facebook pages at once.

Normally I would go for option (1) since no strings attached (less privacy concern). But in order to receive instant email notification for new posts and comments, I was requested to connect my facebook page with the app anyway with option (1) :

So bottom line, you have two choices based on your alert frequencies:

• If you refuse to allow Hyper Alerts to access your facebook account, you need to settle with either one of these alert frequencies: Hourly, Daily, Weekly or Monthly.
• If you prefer to receive email notification ‘as soon as possible’ for new posts and comments,  it’s a must to add Hyper Alerts to your facebook page (authorization required).

For now, I don’t think HyperAlerts is capable of notifying new photo comments (within photo albums) but only updates from the page wall:

What I love about Hyper Alerts:
It’s always a courtesy to ask if user wants to add the application to their facebook account. Even if we are not ready to allow access for Hyper Alerts, it still gives us other options – that’s thoughtful. I love how a user can opt-out of ‘Own Content’ so only fans posts or comments are notified, reducing the noise in our inbox. Not to mention, the ability to monitor other pages we like is a bonus!

#2  MediaFeedia

MediaFeedia is actually a facebook management tool and ‘fan page notifications’ just happens to be one of the offered features. Similar to most web applications, you need to register (either via facebook connect or email address). Then, you will be asked to import your facebook account to select the pages:

Once confirmed your page selections, go to Fan Page Notifications -> Start Monitoring -> type in your email address to receive page alerts. The maximum number of email addresses you can enter is three:

This is how mediafeedia email notification looks like in your email:

Mediafeedia includes updates from the page admin him/herself. By clicking at ‘Comment’ you will be redirected to your facebook page to reply and view the complete conversation:

What I love about MediaFeedia:
I have started using MediaFeedia since early January, I must say this application is exactly what I was looking for to improve my page monitoring with Page Notifier. The scan results are very similar to Hyper Alerts’ but with extra features such as post scheduling and email invitation to other admins.

Hyper Alerts and MediaFeedia are both showing profile thumbnail in their email alerts. I find that a significant ‘visual’ improvement for page notification apps, also a good way to get familiarized with who our fans are via their profile image.

Now Is Your Turn…

How do you monitor your page updates? If you have been using other facebook page notification apps, how would you compare them with Hyper Alerts and MediaFeedia? Kindly share your thoughts in the comment.

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The incident with merged facebook page and Places has temporarily subsided, thanks to the much-requested ‘unmerge’ button. I didn’t get to explore how the Places page work but as much the Bing map looks attractive on the merged pages, there are numerous reasons why a business owner should think twice before merging.

Last Saturday, I had a light bulb moment when one of the page members wrote:

Although this has nothing to do with a Places page, but undeniably the idea of inserting a Google map into a facebook page is a great alternative! That way page admin can still use an interactive map to guide fans to their business premise without having to worry about page layout and losing landing tab setting due to the merge.

There are several ways to do this but personally I prefer facebook applications over manual HTML embed. I am anticipating for iframe app facebook promised to release in 2011 which will make dynamic content (like Google Maps) to be embedded a lot easier. Until then, here are some facebook applications you can use without having to worry about manual coding at all:

3 FACEBOOK APPS TO EMBED A GOOGLE MAP

#1  BlockWild Map

BlockWild Map lets you add a ‘Map’ tab indicating your business location within a facebook page. No HTML code required. All you need is to fill up your business name and address, the map tab will be up and running:

Notice that you can even announce local events for your business with details such as description, duration, image gallery etc. Fans can interact with you about the event via facebook comment box, or share it with their Twitter or Facebook friends (social buttons available). Since there won’t be any notifications you should check on new comments regularly. To access the complete map, fans can close the event box anytime by clicking at the purple-circled ‘x’:

I love how the tab is named ‘Map’ to suit perfectly for its purpose. However, if I have a customized Google map to highlight special routes or places nearby, I will need more control over the map and how it is displayed. That’s when Contact Tab comes in:

#2  Contact Tab

We first heard about Contact tab from my introductory about facebook page engagement tools (app #13). Back then I didn’t go deep with the Map feature but today, you will see how easy it is to embed a customized Google map to your Contact tab. I’m using First World Hotel, Genting Highlands as an example:

1. Learn how you can customize your Google map here:

2. Once your map is ready, look for the option ‘Link’ at the upper right corner and click at it for the HTML code:

3. Next, locate the ‘Contact’ tab on your page wall -> Edit Application:

4. Paste the HTML code you copied from the map and paste into the iframe box at the lower part of the Contact Tab -> Save Application:

5. After been asked to ‘click to view map’, your fans can use the tools (red-circled) to move around the map, or zoom in/out at will:

I love how Contact Tab is capable of adding a customized Google map, but if only other mandatory fields such as email, website and address can be opted out. The word ‘Contact‘ may not be obvious for fans in finding the map so you may like to mention/add a link to it from your Welcome tab or Info.

#3  Placewidget

Placewidget is also using Google map so if you had claimed your business on Foursquare, you can add this application to showcase the map. But unlike Foursquare main site, the map is non-interactive, merely an image file. A click at it will bring you to Foursquare where you can then explore the map thoroughly.

We don’t know how long we get to stay in the old page format, but until facebook team improvises the Facebook Places for merging, page admins will have some options to show their offices via Google Maps for now.

Now Is Your Turn…

Is adding a Google map or Bing map essential for your business page? Shall the settings for default landing tab and tab-positioning be maintained in the new facebook page layout? Love to hear your thoughts in the comment.

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CHECK OUT: 23+ Essential Facebook Page Applications to Improve Fans Engagement in 2012.

2011 has finally arrived! It’s the moment we renew our pledge to social media commitments and keeping our audiences enthralled with our content! As I went through my blog achieve the other day, I was deeply encouraged by the responses obtained from the below posts, especially in helping page admins to discover some favorite apps of their own:

• 13 Facebook Applications to Promote Your Blog
• 16 Facebook Applications to Boost Popularity of Facebook Fan Page
• 31 Facebook Applications to Enhance Your Facebook Page
• 5 Ways to Create Welcome Tab (Custom & Sub-tabs) for Facebook Page

Coincidentally last month, a reader wrote in and requested for ideas in increasing fan base and fans engagement on their page wall. During my research, I came across Appbistro, a market place for facebook page applications that saved me a lot of time in discovering new applications when I logged in as my Social @ Blogging Tracker page:

Basically what it does is to identify my page type then recommend me the best applications for my facebook page. I can sort the app results based on popularity, rating or price range. Thanks to Appbistro, I found myself a new set of facebook applications for my facebook customization work in 2011. Most applications below are either free or allowing free trial as I know how much we all love FREE stuffs.

Kindly be reminded that this review is based on my personal opinion only and has nothing to do with Appbistro or any app developers sponsorship whatsoever.

To Listen to Fans / Customers Feedback:

#1  UserVoice

I had briefly touched about UserVoice in promoting your facebook page with testimonials. When I finally tested out this app in mid December, what a great substitute for Feedback app this is! Your fans can now provide suggestions for your service/product, and have others to comment and vote for existing discussions. You will then be notified for each new update via email so you can moderate fans posting at once. When you feel a subject has gotten enough feedback, close it so no further voting or new posts can be added to it, except for comments.

Two features I love about Uservoice: page admin can retrieve deleted ‘ideas’ (if you had deleted any posts by mistake) and each response on the forum will not be posted back to any of your fans profile wall – I’m sure most will appreciate that, especially in separating personal profile from business pages.

This application is cross posting between your fan page and UserVoice homepage, where you can setup own alias for the domain (yourusername.uservoice.com). Learn more about their different plans and how extra features such as ‘export’ or ‘unlimited forums’ can meet your page requirements.

If you’re not ready to pay for the service, you can always customize a feedback form using Static FBML all by yourself.

To Give Incentives and Attract New Fans:

#2  Gifts for Pages

Everyone loves FREE gifts! ‘Gifts for Pages’ prepares a facebook tab for you to create branded gifts so fans can distribute to their own friends on your behalf! Inspire your inner creativity and personalize some catchy 130×130 px image icons to grab fans attention. Give them something meaningful or worthwhile to share, then track fans responses via traffic graph. If you don’t like the existing layout, modify the ready CSS file to fit your brand’s image.

It’s always good to learn about giving prior to receiving.

#3  Easypromos

If you don’t know how to customize a promotion tab yet, this is the app for you. Easypromos is FREE for FIRST-time promo only ($15/promotion after that) and you should definitely take a look at the features and configurations, very easy to setup. Specify the length of your promotion period and select the criteria from the given options. One of my favorites is that page admin can encourage non-fans to like your page first before they are able to fill up the entry form.

You may choose how to display this promo on your page wall and check your fans registration form within the application itself.

Note:

Promotions are great but make sure you’re not violating any of these Facebook Promotion Guidelines before set one up.

Extra Read:

Refer to #1 Promotions in 31 Facebook Applications to Enhance Your Facebook Page

To Encourage Fans Participations via Polls and Media files:

#4  Fan Appz

Fan Appz will impress you with its wide range of social media marketing applications. Free account provides Polls, Quizzes and Top 5’s. To me, those are sufficient enough to generate interest and participation from fellow members, if your questions (and images) are intriguing enough:

Page admin can edit or delete published poll or quizzes but not after fans had already voted on them. Plus, you will be given scheduling feature to promote the poll on your page wall so fans from different time zones can participate. To discover more about their paid plans read here. Just remember a free plan will have an advertisement link on the tab and you won’t be able to set promotions/coupons.

#5  ffwdPlayer

I had been asked many times about better ways to import a video channel into a fan page. Besides Involver, ffwd Player can be an excellent alternative to publish videos uploaded by you on other video hosting sites such as YouTube or Brightcove.

The video-import is extremely easy by inserting your channel’s username, then you can configure so to update it automatically with feed (either via uploads, favorites, playlist or search). Customize your video tab with brief description of the videos and include a header image. Your fans can later share the videos with their friends via the ‘Share’ button per video.

#6  Livestream

(image credit: Livestream)

How fun it is you can now broadcast live from your fan page to get in touch with fans all over the world! Just a click at the Livestream tab your fans can enjoy real time interaction with you via the comment box during the live broadcasting. As usual, the ‘Share’ button is highly visible so if your fans find it interesting enough to share with their friends, they probably will. Customize your livestream tab with a catchy header image for brand awareness. Your livestream is not limited within facebook page only, it will be kept in a video library on livestream.com and to be viewed or used on your external sites, such as a company blog.

Another great example of Livestream can be seen on Facebook Live. Read about their paid plans if interested.

#7  Peekeez

Peekeez is very similar to livestream, it lets you setup a live video broadcasting from your webcam on facebook page and encourage fans to comment, share within the tab. Say, if you have a restaurant and you’d like to show off how busy the day can get, Peekeez is perfect for the task.

What makes it different from Livestream is that it does not cross post to its official site. According to their privacy policy that “your webcam can only be viewed on your facebook page” but it’s not entirely free. You may have trial period up to 14 days and after that it’ll cost you $20/month.

#8  Posted Items Pro

Posted Items Pro is basically a tab where you gather your favorite medias to be shared in one place with your fans. All you have to do is decide which media files (blog posts, video, mp3, web link or image) you’d like to feature with proper title, source link and descriptions. For web link, you can even select a thumbnail for the post. Then all the media files will be displayed within a tab named ‘Favorites’. Your fans can comment or share these files with their facebook friends, a harmless and effective way to increase page impressions for your business page.

#9  Clobby Group Chat

Some people told me how they admire Facebook Groups for having the Group chat feature. If you feel the same way, why not try out this real time chat app called Clobby Group Chat? Your fans will be able to invite their friends to join in the chat or ‘like’ a chat, so it’s great for viral effect. I once blogged about this application so if you’re in for a detailed review, kindly refer here Clobby: Facebook Group Chat for Fan Page and Personal Account.

To Encourage Geotagging for Local Business:

#10  PlaceWidget

(image credit: appbistro)

PlaceWidget adds a foursquare tab to your facebook page that includes your venue info with an easy configuration. You can show off mayor, offers and tips to visitors – this is obviously a plus if you and your fans are dedicated users on Foursquare. Comparing to the after-merged facebook places and a fan page, this would not alter your existing page layout and landing tab settings.

Extra Read:

Find out what other types of location you can add on Foursquare here.

For Marketing, Job Opportunity & Branding:

#11  TextualAds

You do aware how prevalent mobile marketing is these days. TextualAds is not for everyone but if you are interested in mobile marketing, textualads is an application that allows your fans to opt in for latest promo or product news via text messages. You will be able to send targeted SMS for your marketing campaigns according to your fans age, country, state, gender etc with customizable layout (css style sheet) and messages – but these are under paid plans, of course. Free account has less customization but may be good to try out:

Just be reminded that people are very cautious with their privacy. If you are going to use TextualAds make sure you had made clear that you will not distribute or misuse your fans’ personal details. Trust is hard to come by these days so never, ever violate that promise.

Extra Read:

To learn more how powerful textualads can get, here’s a post that will amaze you.

#12  Work For Us

What can be more rewarding by offering your fans a chance to work as a team? Work For Us allows you to post job openings on business page. Apart from filling in the forms, applicants can attach their CV/Resume without having to leave the page at all! Work For Us makes it easy to share job opportunity with friends via ‘Share’ button or a personalized private message.

One thing I love about this application is that you can integrate your twitter account and set the tweeting frequency for the new job vacancy.

All accounts are given 30-days free trial or, you can always subscribe to its Free plan for one job slot.

Extra: similar application – Jobmagic

#13  Contact Tab

I absolutely love Contact tab! This is a comprehensive tab about your business info and how your potential clients can reach you. Not only banner image and logo, you can include contact forms, contact methods and embed a comment box within the tab. The setup is very easy, simply fill in the required info and Save it. If you’re interested to display the location of your premise via Google map or Bing map, feel free to do so. A remedy to a plain, dull info tab that makes you stand out from the rest of your competitors.

#14  dPortfolio

I’m all about adding Testimonials and portfolio to your social profiles if you are to promote your business as effectively as possible. As much I prefer custom tabs for the job, but if you are not familiar with customization, feel free to adapt dPortfolio in categorizing your quality work with descriptions. Honestly, I was having second thoughts when placing this as # 14 since I was getting error message when trying to save my project, the page stalled for a long time and didn’t stop. It could be a temporary error since no other users are complaining about this yet, so I’m putting this under observation as I really hope it would work.

There are over 110+ applications on appbistro so these are just the tip of an iceberg. You can learn more about other facebook applications that match your needs by logging in with your user profile in which your facebook page has attached to it. If you are not ready to login with your facebook account, why not browse all the applications here.

The paid apps listed in appbistro are either using their payment API or attach with an affiliate program with them. That’s why some apps can be purchased straight from the site (Cart) while some are not. When enquiring about their future project, I was told that appbistro is working on a whitelabel application store. Any service or website that owns an API can integrate their own application store powered by appbistro, a great news for app developers in search for a platform to showcase and market their products.

Friendly Reminder: some apps require access to your basic facebook info. There will always be a pop up box to alert you what information the app will be accessing so make sure to check them through before you click ‘Allow’. Also, if you decided to discontinue an app from your page, apart from removing it from your ‘Edit Page’, make sure to remove it from your profile’s privacy settings here as well.

Now is Your Turn

How do you plan on enhancing your facebook page in 2011? Will you be using Appbistro or any of the facebook applications above to increase fans engagement? Do share your thoughts.

SPECIAL GUEST on SBT In TWO WEEKS TIME!~

In conjunction with the new year, an honorable guest poster will be here for the first time on Social @ Blogging Tracker! I’m pretty sure most bloggers are familiar with his name and It’s truly a privilege to have him here! So if you wish to know who is my mysterious guest make sure to subscribe so you won’t miss this! I can assure you it’s worth the wait.

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Updated 09/12/2010 for New Profile Layout workaround (below old profile workaround).

Updated 23/02/2011 for New Profile, now you can have a much simpler way to add your Facebook Page. Just delete your job (that created a community page) and when you try to re-add it, you will be prompted to link to your managed facebook page. No extra steps required.

Updated 23/12/2011 for New Profile Timeline workaround (near to the bottom of the post).

Don’t get me wrong, I love facebook. But there are times that I wish users are given more control over things to share on their own accounts. Especially after facebook page was introduced, users who are excited to share their professional backgrounds are constantly brainstorming to break through on a few matters: separating business from personal account, receive notifications for fan page wall updates and most of all, how can we improve page visibility on profile effectively without being annoying?

Getting exposed – Employer Link!

The easiest and most unharmful method is no doubt the ‘Employers’ section in Info tab. But there’s one MAJOR problem with that – no option to place our very own official page link there, instead a community page be created for each field inserted.

Imagine the frustration for unable to showcase our brand correctly with an authentic page. But now a new found fix will change all that – thanks to a Firefox add-on named Web Developer, and you don’t even need to stick with firefox after this, only during the setup.

Web Developer – the magic plugin to fix employer link

If you do not own a firefox browser, Web Developer will give you enough reasons to install it for the sake of your business page visibility. This add-on is for firefox only but final result will work on all browser types. Web Developer adds a toolbar for web development purposes, but no fear as inserting a page ID will get things done with no coding complications at all.

How to Add Official Facebook Page Link to Profile ‘Employer’

Here comes the best part,

For Older Profile Layout (before upgrade):

1.       Firstly, install firefox if you haven’t and run the setup.

Special Note: Good news as Google Chrome also comes with the Web Developer extension and it works exactly the same way!

2.       Next, install Web Developer to your firefox.

3.      Restart the browser as instructed and you will notice a toolbar appears on top of the browser.

4.       Now go to your official fan page and locate your Page ID.

If you already claimed your vanity URL or username, then retrieve your official page ID by mouse over ‘Edit Page’:

5.       Let’s go to your personal profile now : Profile -> Info tab -> Edit

6.       Select ‘Education and Work’ -> look for ‘Employer‘ field box (with ‘Add Another Job’ below it).

7.       Now at your browser, look for the Web Developer toolbar and select Forms -> Display Form Details

8.       Do not be taken aback by the scary looking codes displayed to you. Instead, try to identify the location of this code:

<input name=”work[employer][id][0]”>

Once you have found it, insert your page ID next to the grey box as shown below:

9.       Turn off codes by deselecting ‘Display Form Details’ on your browser and fill in the rest of the details -> Save Changes. You can add as many jobs as you prefer by repeating step #7-9.

10.   Go back to your Info tab and admire the result!

For New Profile Layout:

Updated (09/12/2010)

Now recently facebook had recommended their users to upgrade their personal profile to new layout. This method still works but with a slight twist at the Page ID insertion part. I would recommend you to change the employer link in the old profile first before upgrade to save the trouble. Or if you had done so, then follow exactly from Step 1 – 6 above, then continue the rest here:

7. Type in your Page Name in the Employer box, click ‘Add’ (your page name)’.

Sometimes facebook will load the correct thumbnail of your official page. When that happens, you can stop here and shout for joy! If instead of your page but a briefcase thumbnail appears (community page is created), then go on with the rest of the setups by going to your browser and select:

Forms -> Display Form Details

8. Again, try to locate the location of this code:

<input name=”work[employer][id][0]”>

Once you have found it, change the community page ID to your official page’s in the grey box:

Click ‘Add Job‘ (or ‘Save Changes‘ if you are editing) to confirm your change.

Optional: Sometimes if the page is not updated correctly, try to add details to your Job, for example setting the Time Period -> click ‘Add Job‘ (or ‘Save Changes‘). You can always remove them later after you had successfully added your official facebook page:

Your official page should be added correctly now.

For New Profile Timeline:

Updated (23/12/2011)

For the most recent upgrade to Profile Timeline, slightly different for where the employer link is located and the code as well. Refer to the instructions below after you had installed the Web Developer Add-on. I’m using Firefox 3.6.22 for this example:

1. Go to your Profile Timeline -> Update Info (or click ‘About’) to access your work and education details.

2. Add your work by typing the name of your business page. Sometimes instead of the Page’s full name, try its partial name so it will appear in the drop down:

3. When that’s not working, use the Web Developer -> Forms -> Display Form Details. Then locate the code <input name=”employer_id”> to insert your Page ID in the grey box:

Extra:

Major props to Jon for discovering the fix for old profile layout that saved our day! But there are a few things I came across during the setup as well – the ‘position’ you filled in Employer section will be directed to a community page (of course), just as how the employer link reacts before the change.

So make sure you select the best position title that describes your post. If needed, use the same method to control where the link is been directed to.

Now is Your Turn…

Does this method work for your employer link? Or do you have a better idea for a fix? Love to hear your thoughts.

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Since the new page upgrade, there is a good chance you can better separate your profile from facebook pages, kindly refer to #4 in this post ‘7+ Major Tips in Enhancing Your Upgraded Facebook Page’.

Last week we had covered a major subject about Facebook privacy settings and how each customization can protect your personal profile from Facebook page (How to Separate Facebook Personal Profile from Business Page – pt.1). Today we will be exploring further in terms of profile and page management, along with several practical ways you should know in avoiding clashes between the two facebook platforms:

Part 2:

11 Things You Should Know about Profile and Facebook Page Management

#1  Separate your Business and Personal Contacts with Facebook Lists

A MUST if you have mixed both business and personal contacts in your ‘Friends’ list. Not just for the sake of following up easily in News Feed, but to better control over what to be shared to specific group of people when updating your Wall (will explain later). Follow the steps in decluttering your news feed via Facebook Lists to group your contacts based on requirements.

#2  Control Posting Visibility WITHIN the Profile via Share-ability

Facebook List enables you to hide sensitive information, friends and even real time Wall posts from appearing on some people’s news feeds. Use the Privacy setting in the Publisher as shown below, select whom to block from the info or limiting the update to specific group of people only. For instance, if you about to post a personal update to real life friends, select ‘Customize’ prior sending out the update:

i) Customize your privacy settings to allow only ‘Buddies’ to view it (list name consisting of all your best pals who are invited to the barbeque) OR,

ii) Block list containing your business contacts only:

#3  Tighten Up Privacy Option for ‘Friends of Friends’

The reason I am emphasizing on ‘friends of friends’ is because your business contacts may reach out to your friends for friendship. No way we can prevent that so if you have set ‘friend of friends’ for certain profile information, try to restrict its visibility further via:

i) Custom Privacy: If the person is in your ‘Friend’ list.

ii) Block: If the person is not in your ‘Friend’ list:

Or if you can’t find the user via ‘Name’, just block from his/her profile instead:

#4  Hide Wall Tab from Business Contacts Completely

Another alternative to separate business contacts from personal is by hiding Wall tab from them via ‘Things I Share –> Posts by me’. By doing so, you are only allowing close friends/family members to access your Wall tab, whereas business contacts will be blocked from viewing your account activities and real time updates completely. That way you can still message to business contacts, showcasing them other necessary tabs on your profile without disclosing Wall posts at all!

#5  Page Admin Can Only Represent Him/Herself Outside Business Page

Whenever a page admin tries to comment or post on other facebook accounts, all responses will be seen as coming from the admin’s personal profile that connects with the business page. If your business page has no profile, you won’t be able to comment or join any page at all. Therefore, if you are planning for external networking to boost fan page visibility, a personal profile is needed.

#6  Network with other Fans or Pages via Status Tagging

Status Tagging can be, by far, the only possible way to showcase your business page without giving out your personal identity. But in order to tag, page admin will need to ‘like’ another page with his/her personal profile beforehand (you can hide Liked Pages from Info tab). Even if your profile thumbnail may show in ‘People Who Like’ list, page admins won’t have access to your full profile thanks to the Facebook privacy settings we talked about earlier. Also, make full use of your page’s ‘Custom’ setting whenever necessary:

#7  Assign a Sub Admin for Event Invitations

Another feature that we crave for in a facebook page – able to send personalized invitation to fans for page events. Unfortunately, private invitations can only be done through a personal profile. If you are not comfortable to expose your profile link, temporarily promote a trusted PR or collaborator for this task. Since all email invitations will be going through him/her, be sure to select someone who’s trustworthy for the job.

Extra Tips:

• Share – use the ‘custom privacy’ settings to target business contacts in your ‘Friend’ list.
• Public Event – an event created from a fan page is ‘Public’ by default so by sharing the link elsewhere, anyone can join. (Only events created by personal profile can be made secret)
• Update Fans – like any other updates, it will be kept in the ‘Message -> Update’ folder. Remind your fans to check for it.

#8  Inter-Posting between Personal Profile and Facebook Pages with Social Aggregator

The ease to control what and when to post updates without messing up both business page and personal profile is via social aggregators such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, MarketMeSuite or Ping.fm. Instead of inter-switching between browsers, you can have the status delivered in matter of clicks, or even scheduled.

#9  Ability to ‘Share’ as your Page Profile

‘Share’ is another key influential option for personal profiles. The only workaround for a fan page to ‘Share’ something is to re-post the item on your page Wall and give credit via status-tagging.

When sharing, it’s suggested to do it manually so:

• Can personalize the status
• Post excerpt available with image thumbnail preview (if a link involves)
• To make sure status tagging with @mention works

#10  Mobile Users: Update to Business Page and Personal Profile with Different Emails

For mobile users, a unique email will be given to each profile and business page RESPECTIVELY for updating/media file uploading purposes. Set the email correctly so not to mistakenly post to either one of the platforms. Profile will have its own email ID, while page another.

Facebook Page: Edit Page -> Mobile:

Personal Profile: go to this link http://www.facebook.com/mobile -> look for ‘Upload via Email’:

And last but not least,

#11  Knowing that ‘Privacy Setting’ is not Invincible

Not to be a party pooper but it’s important to be self prepared. Do not post what you don’t want others to find out. Moderate your messages, photos, videos and status updates so that even if there may be security loopholes you’ve got nothing to hide or worry about.

What Do You Think?

Some tedious work isn’t it? As I explained earlier, the idea of this post is not to offer you the ‘best’ method but suggestions that one may find helpful in managing his/her facebook account. Facebook will continue to evolve. No matter how far we go, always remember we are responsible for our online presence and branding. If you do not bother about it, nobody else will.

Did I miss out anything? Share your ideas in the comments. If you missed out part 1 of the story, check it out here.

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The new facebook upgrade has given page admin better opportunity in securing their profile from facebook pages. Please refer to #4 in this post ‘7+ Major Tips in Enhancing Your Upgraded Facebook Page’.

So now, if you have associated your personal profile with a Facebook page, don’t mind using both platforms to boost your business brand and visibility, Facebook is doing you a huge favor with its revolution. But what if we are to separate private network circle from business profile? Is that even possible?

We can modify our privacy level and adhere to several precautions, but there is no 100% satisfactory when it comes to separating the two. A few clients have approached me with this issue, therefore I decided to divide this subject into two sections. This week we will emphasize on privacy settings while the next, discuss the important measures to be taken while handling both apps.

Part 1: How to Protect Personal Profile from Facebook Page

The only way you get to separate a fan page from any personal profile is to create a business account.:

Advise for New Users –

To create a business account:

• NEVER sign up a new profile or click ‘create a profile’ while in the fan page
• NEVER create more than ONE account on Facebook. If you already have a personal profile, DO NOT create a business account or you may violate facebook terms of use.

Updated-1 (11/09/10): It seems like to create a business account without associating to a personal profile is no longer possible. Following a discussion we had at our fan page which confirmed by this post later on, a business page will be needing a personal profile for administration purposes.

Updated-2 (29/09/10): Business account is back again (tested on 28/09/10), the option that requires us to ‘log in’ has been removed, replaced by its previous business acc registration form.

Advise for Existing Users –

If you have connected both sides, be informed there is no way to separate a fan page from a personal profile with a different login. Here are some ideas on what you can do to tighten your profile visibility and manage contacts accordingly:

Limit Profile Visibility

#1  Hide Profile from Facebook Search

The highest level of security is to hide your profile completely from Facebook Search, shield off all possibilities for business contacts to find you via Friend Finder:

Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Basic Directory Information (View Settings) > Customize ‘search for me on Facebook’.

#2  Select a Unique Username or None at all for your Profile’s Vanity URL

So you cannot be found on Facebook Search, your business contacts may still able to locate you via Username – ‘http://facebook.com/yourname’ just may give you out. Do not set one for the profile or modify it if necessary. You only have one chance to edit the profile username before the option will be hidden from you so use it cautiously:

Go to Account -> Account Settings -> Username -> Change to other username

Limit Profile Info-Sharing

#3  Protect Profile Information from Public Viewing

There are several information you can hide from strangers. Modify them properly as instructed by going through your Account -> Privacy Settings -> Basic Directory Information > View settings:

a. Hide your Friend List

If you are to protect private contacts such as close friends or family members, customize your Friend List to ‘Me Only’ or ‘Friends Only’. Be alerted that your business contacts may still reach out to your real life friends so advisable to tighten the option as suggested.

b. Hide Your Education/Work; Hometown

Unless you are using personal profile to enhance your fan page networking with other facebook contacts, otherwise better to protect the info or not fill up your Info tab unless really necessary.

c. Hide Your Interests & Other Pages Joined

If you have liked a page, most likely you will be displayed as a fan on the page via random thumbnail display. You can delete or unlike the fan pages anytime via:

Info Tab -> Edit (Likes and Interests) -> Remove.

If you insist on following these pages, hide them from you Info tab.

Sharing on Facebook:

d. Hide your Contact Information

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings-> Contact Information, set the visibility to ‘Friends’ or ‘Me Only’.

Note: If you have set a vanity URL for your username, it will appear in Contact Information and there is no setting to hide it.

e. Hide your Birthday and other Personal Information

Check through the settings:

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings-> Things I Share

And Info Tab -> Edit

#4  Limit Contact Ability to Your Profile

Below options require you to be selective in whom you are friend-ing on your profile.

a. Send Friend Requests

The highest level of security is ‘Friends of Friends’. It is an option set so to encourage friends to find one another. Strangers will not see the ‘Friend Request’ button until they become friends of your friends first.

b. Send Messages

The highest level of security is ‘Friends Only’. Strangers won’t be able to contact you individually.

#5  Limit the ability to be tagged or shared by friends

You cannot control what your friend is sharing, but you can certainly avoid been tagged by going through the below settings. This will prevent your profile link been exposed to public while making sure no outrageous videos or images attached to your profile:

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings -> Things Others Share

Your friend my still able to use status-tagging on you, at least you can remove the tag as soon as you found it on the wall:

#6  Check and Remove Unnecessary Facebook Applications

Make it a regular habit to check on your Facebook Applications. Remove the game apps by clicking ‘x’ to avoid intrusion or hacking. Be skeptical in all games and quizzes sending your way. Ignore or block the apps for good so they won’t appear on you Wall posts. Go through each section as most of them are opt-in by default:

Go to Privacy Settings -> Applications and Websites -> Edit Your Settings

a. Game & Application Activity

To prevent your recent activity been shown on the app’s dashboard, customize the visibility to ‘Only Me’.

b. Info accessible through your friends

You can set which information you allow to be shared by applications/games/websites when your friends use them. For the info you preset as ‘Everyone’ in the Privacy Setting, the app can automatically obtain the info unless you remove or turn off the platform applications.

c. Instant Personalization

Untick the checkbox if you do not want to be included in the relevant information shown to your friends when they land on Facebook partner websites and vice versa. If you still wonder why we make such a big deal out of this, read this article ‘Facebook’s Instant Personalization Is the Real Privacy Hairball’.  

d. Public Search

This involves Public Search where things you have approved to be shared with ‘Everyone’ can show up on and off Facebook, this including showing a preview of your profile as search results (see below). Do not conflict this option with the ‘Facebook Search’ in Basic Directory Information, synchronize them both.

Updated:

#7 Avoid Tagging and Exposing your ‘Places’

Facebook has announced a new geotagging feature called ‘Places’. By allowing integrations with other location-based services such as Foursquare, Gowalla etc, it enables facebook friends to tag and check in for each other. It may be a good feature to discover interesting places and claiming business premises, even so you should know there are several privacy settings that could protect you from unwanted exposures.

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings -> Things I Share, and look for below settings:

• Limit visibility of Places you checked in;
• Prevent your profile from showing up with other checked in users;

Go to Account -> Privacy Settings -> Sharing on Facebook -> Customize Settings -> Things Others Share

• Disallow friends to check you in without consent.

Suggested Read: A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places

Quite a lengthy procedure in protecting a personal profile right? Precautions can save you from major headaches. Watch out for the next post in which we will be discussing part 2 of separating business pages from personal profile – 11 Things You Should Know when managing them both.

Other Suggested Read : 7 Facebook Changes You Must Know in New Profile (about profile-tagging in Employers and other privacy/application settings for added features)

Now Is Your Turn…

What is the Major issue you faced when managing a facebook page connecting to a personal profile?

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Remember 7 Features to Brand, Market, Manage with MarketMe Tweet? Yup, it’s back again with an updated version MarketMe Tweet V2.0! For those who are hearing it for the first time, it’s a Twitter client equips with branding and marketing features. I’m no marketer but its ‘branding’ ability captivates me since their free app Tweetbrand (was recently pulled to focus on their main product). Imagine if you’re a business promoter, you will do whatever it takes to get your brand out there, reaching out to potential clients as much as you possibly can. MarketMe Tweet is specially designed for the job, see how it’s placing a blog link below my tweet:

I must admit, at first I was a little skeptic about who would actually look at that tiny spot for a web link? Until some of my followers starting to ask how did I place a link to my blog in each tweet, I realized this application has a good chance even for a freelancer like myself!

Of course, it’s not fair to limit MarketMe Tweet capabilities based on my personal preference. Here are other basic features you should know about:

So after using V1 for awhile, I had to find out what are the updated features in the new release. Despite of what has been said in the video, I need to personally try it out to confirm the reliability. Kindly be reminded that this review is based on my personal opinion only and has nothing to do with MarketMe Tweet sponsorship whatsoever. So here goes:

#1  Manageable Interface

I have long hoped for a new interface since I’m a big fan of Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. I can’t be happier with the new columnized interface, a lot easier to view conversations and follow up on Twitter lists. Now we can position, rename, add lists and reload the panes as how we work on any other web/desktop clients!

Remark:

There were times earlier when MarketMe Tweet was unable to retrieve updates – pane returns with ‘No Results’. After referring to their support team I was told that Twitter itself has issues refreshing API limits on certain accounts as explained in this post.

#2  Tweet Branding

Still by far, my personal favorite of the app! This is particularly useful if you are handling multiple Twitter profiles – MarketMe Tweet saves you the trouble to log in and out of the account but manages everything inside the client! You can add multiple brandings for different campaigns or business accounts. The setup is quite simple as indicated in the video (or you can request for a step by step write up and I’ll get it done just for you):

Video tutorial to setup a new brand with MarketMe Tweet:

(Source: by Tammy from MarketMe Tweet)

#3  Tweet Scheduling & Bulk Import

Another improved feature that made my day. It has a sleek sliding panel to schedule tweet (with branding), and drop down boxes make sorting easy (today, week, month, year and beyond). It is convenient to check and modify scheduled tweets, even integrate it with your Google Calender:

A new feature by MarketMe Tweet to import tweets (drafts) and schedule them in bulk. For example, you have saved some interesting links in your notepad, instead of scheduling them one by one you can do it in one-go: place %T% in front, and %D% at the back of your tweet, following date and time (24 hours clock format):

Format: %T% Your Message and Link %D% Date Time

Example: %T% 9 Ways to Enhance Your FB Page http://bit.ly/b9rn2w %D% 01/08/2010 22:10:00

Another method is set the intervals between your bulk tweets (tick ‘Use Override Interval’ to set the minutes):

Suggested Read: 6 Points To Ponder Before Using Automatic Status Updates ; 6 Status Updates Scheduler for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

#4  Geo-tagging for Reply Campaigns

Another important feature offered by Marketme Tweet is to setup reply campaigns for targeted individuals. The app makes it easy to find relevant people based on your location, keywords, following by an opportunity to network. Especially when people are expressing interests about your product, your immediate respond via reply templates can earn you firsthand connections when attending to their needs. It’s optional to set the reply templates though, but in case you do, make sure to personalize it well to not spoil your first image.

Marketme Tweet is now using geo-tagging to filter results so you can discover local clients in targeted area.

#5  Contact Management

i)  Auto-Follow Option

If you are eager to connect with followers, MarketMe Tweet provides an easy option to reciprocal by ‘Follow Users Back’.

In additional, you can opt in to receive daily @Mentions Emails for the latest results:

ii)  Follow Users based on keywords

You can bulk or selectively follow users based on reply campaigns keywords.

iii)  Unfollow Users who are not Following You

To bulk unfollow or do it selectively.

#6  Social Accounts Integration

Facebook profile integration is now available in MarketMe Tweet. You can post status updates, comment and like your friends’ updates within the client itself. It supports multiple Facebook accounts so if you are managing facebook profiles for your clients, you can inter-switch between them. I am having difficulty to retrieve my facebook page and just submitted a support ticket for it. Will update the results when it’s fixed.

Some of you may wonder about LinkedIn integration, that is do-able with Ping.fm. All you need is to copy your Ping.fm API Key and insert it here: Settings > Ping.fm

Your Ping.fm configuration controls the number of social accounts that get to update from MarketMe Tweet. Here I only plan to update my LinkedIn status, so click ‘Send All’ to reveal the box, make sure ‘use Ping.fm’ is ticked before ‘Send’:

#7  Auto RSS Feed

It’s thrilling to see MarketMe Tweet is now providing feed management for users. Now you can import your favorite blogs’ RSS feed (or your own) and tweet them either way: automatically or manually via RT to credit the author.

According to MarketMe Tweet Support, if user chose to ‘Automatically Tweet the feed’ their brand won’t be visible. This is due to Twitter rules and kindly refer here for detailed explanations. Currently, the brand works brilliantly but I’m still having slight issues with the RT prefix of original author. Will continue to look into this.

Suggested Read: Twitterfeed, HootSuite RSS Feeds, and Blog Posting Schedules

Overall, I am quite impressed with MarketMe Tweet V2. It’s obvious how much this app has improved and I can see why. I have been communicating with their support team after trying out the app and so far they are fast to respond and most of all, willing to accept customers’ feedback. MarketMe Tweet is still actively updating its service. Although there are still rooms for improvement but let’s not forget it’s a marketing tool fundamentally.

Its upcoming updates including Blog integration (wonder if it’s something similar to Hootsuite?), Plugins, Enhancement for Facebook integration so forth. At the same time waiting for minor fixes to make the app more user friendly and presentable. For further improvement, I would suggest to add:

• Spelling check
• Filter Search within pane
• Ability to post images or files (documents) in future enhancements

Not bad to strive towards social aggregator, don’t you think?

How do I Get MarketMe Tweet V2?

MarketMeTweet is not free. Currently the lowest price is $99/year (free updates, 6 month money back guarantee) with limited time offer. Kindly look for Pricing & Plan here. At the same time, MarketMeTweet offers affiliate program too, check it out if you’re interested.

Have you been using MarketMe Tweet V2? What do you think of the app and if you yet to try it, what do you think of it so far?

Note: MarketMe Tweet has changed its name to MarketMeSuite to fit its ultimate purpose as a social media management/marketing tool and not limiting to just Twitter only, but Facebook, Google Calender, Ping.fm and more.

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What is Status Tagging on Facebook?

Tagging is a method to ‘nudge’ someone, most commonly used when alerting someone who’s in a picture or video. When we tag someone or a facebook page in our status update, our message will be visible on their Wall if permitted.

Why Tag Someone or a Page in a Post?

Tagging can be a networking tool for acknowledgment and bonding. You can share extremely useful information while rewarding free publicity to the original contributor. Your fans can visit his/her profile and interact. At the same time, your profile or page would also gain some visibility out of tagging, probably a friendship from the page admin too – a win-win situation for all.

What Can You Tag in a Post and How to do it?

You can tag both people and items in a post:

• fan pages and groups you loved / joined,
• your friends,
• events you’re attending
• facebook applications you’ve used.

To tag a profile or fan page is simple, just type in the magic symbol ‘@’ and you’ll notice a description box appearing underneath the publisher.

Continue your sentence for more name selections:

Once you found the page (which then appears as a link when published), click Share:

How to Ensure a Status Tagging that Works?

Two months ago, Debra and I were testing fan page tagging from our respective personal profiles. For some reasons, her post was no where to be found on my page and no luck in discovering why then.

Puzzling enough as it was supposed to work. My facebook page had received several ping backs from other pages after that. But how come even my personal profile was unable to tag my very own facebook page too?

Then yesterday the mystery was solved (well, at least for my part)! It was the Publisher privacy setting that hinders my tagging to Social @ Blogging Tracker – it should be set to ‘Everyone’ in order to post  (My option was set to ‘Friends of Friends’ as default).

But I had to be sure so I ran a test:

Example 1:

Privacy option: ‘Friends of Friends’.

End result: Status tagging failed to display on Social @ Blogging Tracker fan page.

Example 2:

Privacy option: ‘Everyone’.

End result: Status tagging worked like a charm!

In order to post your status message successfully on targeted fan page, there are several factors you need to check on:

1. Your posting privacy is set to ‘Everyone’ on publisher.

Optional: To make sure your selection is permanent without having to change back to customized option everytime you post an update, go to Account> Privacy Settings > Things I Share (Posts by Me) > Everyone.

2. You need to connect with the page via ‘Like’ (be a fan first) in order to tag it.

Same as personal account, you need to be friends with that someone in order to tag the person.

Other Reasons Why a Status Tagging Fails to Display on Page Wall

Sometimes a tagging failed because of the viewing option preset by the page admin. Let’s say if the page is set to view Page Posts only, their fans won’t be able to see your tag unless they tweak the below options:

Also, if you are blocked by the page admin, you won’t be able to tag that page as well.

For a Facebook Page to allow status-tagging, it needs to:

• Allow ‘All Posts’ for default view for Wall.
• Make sure Posting Ability for ‘People Who Like This Page…’ is ticked.

Suggested Read : look for #6 at How to Separate Facebook Personal Profile from Business Page (pt.2)

Now Is Your Turn…

Did you experience any tagging problems with facebook pages in the past? What else would you like to know about Tagging? I would love to see tagging works within Comments too, you think?

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I must thank Heather for bringing up this brilliant question. To me, Twitter Favorites is another hidden gem for content discovery. Apart from discovering smart tips, Twitter Favorites works as a bookmarking tool to collect testimonials, acknowledgments about others and our work. Either way, it deserves more attention from us rather than rusting itself away on the sidebar.

Retrieve the location and RSS Feed for Twitter Favorites

Twitter Favorites is public viewable for all user accounts. Consider Favorites as a ‘resourceful link’ for your Twitter, to retrieve its RSS Feed simply go to the link indicated below then look for RSS feed of user’s favorites below the ‘Following’ chart:

Tools to Import RSS Feed to Facebook Page

Now that you got the feed, here comes the best part: importing the feed to your Facebook Page. Tons of ways to achieve that and if you are already familiar with how Facebook applications can enhance your Facebook Page by adding it to your page, it should be easy for you to carry out either one of the following methods:

Facebook Applications: RSS Graffiti and Social RSS

Most of the applications are now supporting multiple feeds importing, therefore you don’t have to worry about messing up the existing blog post updating to your wall posts. RSS Graffiti and Social RSS both fit well for the job, but the former has a slight advantage over its Twitter posting options:

• ability to personalize favorite tweets as status updates
• eliminating unwanted twitter username right at the beginning (the example stripped my username to make the message more straight forward)

Twitter Web Client: Hootsuite

This is another favorite method of mine – using the almighty Hootsuite you can enjoy the efficiency of RSS Feed updating easily from its web page.

1. After logged on to Hootsuite, look for Launch at the bottom left corner of your dashboard.

2. In launch> Settings > RSS Atom to add a new feed

3. While making your way through the configuration, make sure your facebook page selection is active/ticked:

Web Application: TwitterFeed

So you’re not used to Facebook applications or Hootsuite, how about Twitterfeed that provides the same functionality to update your Facebook Page with favorited tweets easily based on configured settings. Post prefix or suffix, even apply keyword filter to further select your tweets based on Facebook Page audiences.

Social Networking & Microblogging Service: Ping.fm

Ping.fm makes sharing all the more easier! Iit covers a wide range of social media sites other than Facebook Pages and updates them in one-go! It’s comparable with FriendFeed and the process is relatively easy as well ever since Ping.fm included Feeds and Google Reader as one of their services. Just logged on to Ping.fm and go to Superfeedr to customize your feed:

Or, if you prefer to do selective tweets for Ping.fm:


1. First, Log on to your Google Reader and add the Twitter Favorites RSS Feed to your subscription.

2. Back to Ping.fm, go to this link and input your Google Reader username and Add Feed.

3. Once you have hit ‘Share’ over at your Google Reader, Ping.fm will update your Facebook Page and other social media sites immediately as how you’ve configured them.

Points to Ponder:

To identify your purpose and the type of messages you are bound to showcase at Facebook Page members is vital. Mari Smith has shared a few good ideas to use Twitter Favorites even outside Facebook. In addition to that, Favorited tweets are good choices for selective tweets (as you can apply in Ping.fm and twitterfeed earlier) instead of importing the entire twitter stream which can be a turn off if you’re super-twitter-social at times. Try using prefix to create non-intrusive updates, sharing what matters and truly important to your audiences.

What about tweets from Protected Twitter accounts, you say? When you mark ‘favorite’ for a tweet shared by your friend who has a protected Twitter account, although you can view it in your Favorites but it won’t be visible to your followers publicly, only those who are sharing the same connections you have with that protected account. It’s good to see that Twitter is still protecting user’s privacy up till now.

Now Is Your Turn…

Do you have any questions about Facebook? Or any social media issues you’re interested in finding out? I would love to have a Q&A session like this as a blog post as it helps us all to discover new approaches that might be a big step in our respective networking goals. Like Heather, you’re definitely gaining a spotlight and link love for your kind participation here in Social @ Blogging Tracker, I’ll say it’s a mutual benefit for all of us, don’t you think so? Email me and let’s make this happen.

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