Monday, June 27, 2011

Use Facebook as Your Fan Page (Instead of Your Personal Profile)

Based on a comment on one of my earlier posts, I wanted to provide a simple walk through of how to use Facebook as your Fan Page instead of your Personal Profile. This will increase allow you to "like" other pages, see a news feed of their content and comment on and like their posts as your Page instead of yourself, and in doing so, increase exposure for your Page. Here's how:

From your Page, click "Use Facebook as (Page Name)"






















OR

At the top of any page within Facebook, click "Account" then click "Use Facebook as Page" then click "Switch" next to the name of the Page you want to operate from.























You can then click on the Facebook Home button to view a news feed of content from the other Pages that your Page "likes", or you can find new Pages to "like" using Facebook Search.












You can also visit other Pages and write on their walls, and like and leave comments on their posts or posts by their fans.














When you're done using Facebook as your Page and want to switch back to your personal Profile, click "Account" then click "Switch Back to (Your Name)"























As always, if you have any questions please leave a comment or email me. Good luck taking advantage of this opportunity to increase exposure for your Page!

Friday, June 10, 2011

Can Facebook Page Administrators See My Profile Information?

As a Facebook user, you might be concerned about the amount of information you're sharing with the world, and rightly so! But do you need to worry about what the corporate big brother behind your favorite brand's Facebook page can see? That depends on your privacy settings. 

Most Facebook page administrators manage their pages from behind a regular Facebook account. That means that they can see the same information about you that other Facebook users see. How much they can see depends on what you allow the following groups to see: Friends, Friends of Friends, Networks and Everyone.

Facebook allows you to customize your profile info to show or not show to these groups. As I've mentioned before, you can further break this down to hide info and activity from certain groups of people. To do this, click Account>Privacy Settings>Custom>Customize Settings.

While you're at it, go ahead and customize the information that appears when users search for your name. 

Click Privacy Settings>View Settings and change the dropdown on each profile section that will show when a user looks you up in a search, depending on the category they fall in. Since I belong to fairly wide networks, I limit visibility of detailed information such as my friend list, hometown and activities to Friends Only. Since I want people outside of my Friends and Networks to be able to find me, I allow Everyone to search for me and send me direct messages and friend requests. People I have connections with may have an easier time recognizing me if they are able to see my education and work info, so I share that with Networks and Friends.

Customizing your privacy settings, especially since they usually default to "Everyone", will ensure that Facebook page administrators can only see the information you are willing to share with the general public.