Facebook Hashtags and Your Business

Love them or hate them, hashtags have become a big part of the way we communicate with each other online. And they’re only going to become more pervasive thanks to the latest changes being made to Facebook.

There had been rumblings about Facebook fully embracing hashtags on their platform for a while now. And really, people have already been using hashtags on the site for a while. Facebook is just giving hashtags greater functionality, by making them searchable and turning them into clickable links. Once clicked, a hashtag will not bring up a feed of posts that have been used with that hashtag. Facebook has already started rolling out the changes, but they won’t be in effect for all users right away. Facebook will begin rolling out the changes today, but they won’t be in effect for all users.

This new development can help businesses in several ways. First, while Facebook hasn’t announced this feature, it’s to be presumed that they will be offering advertising space in the trending hashtags section. This will give businesses a chance to engage and be noticed by potential customers while participating in timely discussions. And secondly, it will give businesses the opportunity to monitor popular conversations and produce related, engaging content.

It will take a while to see just how big of an impact hashtags will have on Facebook, so stay tuned for more info.

Does Facebook have anything to do with seo?

The short answer is yes FB has implications on rankings. The big question is how you use it.

1) Improve the placement of your FB page
2) Trying to use FB to improve the placement of your website.

If your goal is #1, then there are various traditional SEO activities you can do. You then need to concern yourself with what people can do once they get there.

If you are only worried about #2, then the only thing to do is to get the FB pages ranked more highly, so that the few links to your website are worth more.

In either case you’re going to be building the prominence of the FB page, but why you are doing it is the most critical question to answer. This will determine your course of action.

Facebook Changes the Way Fans Like

Facebook has been busy rolling out changes, like new layouts to their Fan Pages, which you can try out now. But the newest update was done to their Like feature. Now Likes will act more akin to Facebook’s share feature. When someone Likes a page on your website, a link to it and an image of your choosing, will show up in the users news feed and on their wall. It’s a great way to gain additional prominence to your website, and when someone likes it, the website page will become a part of Facebook. Here’s what Facebook has to say about the change:
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Facebook publishes update for Business Pages

Our clients have begun adopting the optional Facebook Business Page update that is touted to enable us to make use of:

  • Notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
  • A place to showcase photos along the top of your page
  • A news feed for your page
  • The ability to Like and post on other pages as your page

Some early comments:

just went to the new FB profile for the site’s page and it is not showing the six photos of people who have liked the page recently.

and…

any insights into why the page is showing posts out of date order?

I’ll be looking at it this afternoon, and our professionals will update a couple of others we run including our own so we’ll get to see what it does. Since it is a new upgrade, I would expect it to be “buggy”, those things are probably beyond our control, but should be cleared up as FB brings it out to the wider populace; all pages will be automatically be upgraded on March 10.

Right now the upgrade is optional, and since you opted for it you’ve found a couple of bugs, next time you’re logged in, try and contact FB or submit feedback about your experience. That’s why they make it optional is so that early adopters try it and let them know how it works out.

Try the preview option before you commit!

Social Media Tips and Links

People may have trouble justifying their work with social media purely from a traffic basis.

However, the greatest benefit, besides brand building and of course sales, is in great relevant, timely links often from a great number of sources.

With that in mind here are 3 tips to help guide your work.

  1. Always make sure that what you publish is a permanent URL. This means that links to your post or items within your post provide a lasting benefit.
  2. Use software and plugins that automatically distribute your content on the networks the provide linkbacks (twitter, digg, reddit, facebook)
  3. Make sure that your content provides a balance of personal and business information. It is this balance that makes your social media persona interesting and attractive!

3 articles I read this week

1) An article about companies using free games on Facebook to generate leads for advertisers, this was really interesting to me, mostly because it explains why half my facebook friends keep trying to pry me into Mafia Wars or some damn thing.

www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/

2) Another article from TechCrunch concerning Facebook, see a pattern here? This one concerns more general advertising, and really draws attention to why spam exists; It makes a profit.

www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/how-to-spam-facebook-like-a-pro-an-insiders-confession/

3) Can’t help but get into some political news, despite my general attempt to avoid it during business, but this one deals with how money affects politics and I think it’s important for everyone to pay attention to such things.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013004574515681098665524.html