Do you need to change your Facebook Page name?  Have you been having trouble finding the how you go about changing your Facebook Page name or URL?

Well have no fear, I’ll show you how to exactly how to get this accomplished (even if it looks like you can’t get it done).

First there are two places that you can “name” your Page.  One is the name that appears on your Timeline and that shows up next to every post in the News Feed.

Changing Your Page Name

You may have chosen a name without realizing how this was going to appear.  If your Page is new or if you have less than 200 Likes, you can easily edit your Page name by accessing your Basic Information in your Page Dashboard.

 

Then you go to your Basic Info and you can easily Edit your name.

 

But if you are re-branding or you just want to tweak your Page name and you have more than 200 Likes you may have the opportunity to make a change 1 time.  I say “may” because this option sometimes doesn’t appear even if you haven’t changed your Page name at some point in the past.

You may see a Request Change link next to your Name as shown here.

 

If you don’t see that Request Change link, you are going to have to go to Facebook Help.  Facebook Help is sometimes very difficult to get any response from.  It will be easier to get your name changed if you have a re-brand with a photo of your website or logo to show your rebranding information.

I recommend submitting your request in two places.  The first one is the Help form for Pages here:  https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/164405897002583

 

I find having a screenshot helps to show your new branding so that Facebook can see that you have made a change.

The second place I recommend submitting a request is to Facebook Ads Help.  Hopefully you are using Facebook Ads from time to time to build your Page and you probably don’t want to advertise your Page if the branding isn’t congruent with your website.

The Ads area seems to be a little more responsive to changes when you tell them that you can’t spend any more money with them until your Facebook  Page name is changed (only do this if you are planning on running an ad campaign).  Submit your request here:  https://www.facebook.com/help/contact?id=615344471812117

 

We did this when we changed our Page www.facebook.com/TheBestKeynoteSpeakers and it took about a week to get it done.  But you may need to submit your request a couple of times if you don’t hear back after a week or so.  Hope those suggestions help!  (Please note, I cannot help with Page Name Changes – you must go through Facebook to get your Page name changed)

Changing Your Page URL or Website Address

The other thing you can change (but it sometimes is challenging) is your Facebook Page URL.  Your URL is the easy and short web address (like www.facebook.com/GrandmaMaryShow).

If you haven’t set your Username yet, go do that right now – it makes it much easier to tell people about your Page.  But BE CAREFUL – this is more difficult to get changed.  Once you set it, the URL is taken and can’t be “released” even if you delete the Page.

It can’t have any spaces between the letter and I don’t recommend putting things like periods or underscores between the words.  Then when you set it, capitalize the first letter of each word.  Even if someone types in the URL without the capital letters it will still go to the right place.

 

If you have already set your URL and need to rebrand, you can sometimes request a one-time change as shown  before.

 

If you don’t have this capability, you will have to go through the same process as outline above with Facebook Help.  I think the URL is as big a deal as making sure your you branding is consistent in your Facebook Page name.  But if your name has changed drastically, then you should get that corrected.

Have you had to change your Page name in the past?  How has it gone for you?  Let me know in the comments (remember I can’t help with actual Facebook Changes, you will need to go to Facebook directly for that.

Are you crunched for time?

Could you use a little Facebook automation in your life? Well, help is here.

Facebook allows you to schedule your page posts.

Many people cheered this feature because Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm and other quirks make using third-party tools like HootSuite or SocialOomph for scheduling your posts less desirable than posting manually.

Let’s dig a little deeper and find out some of the nuances of using Facebook scheduled posts.

First, we will give you the steps to schedule your posts and edit them.

#1: How to Schedule Your Posts

Scheduling is easy—just follow these steps:

• Write your post as you normally would. You can attach photos, add links, add YouTube videos, add tags to other pages and events or just include regular text.
  

 

• In the lower-left corner of your post, click on the clock symbol as shown in the screenshot above. You can now add the year, month, day and time you want the post to go out.
  

Notice that you can also backdate your posts to supplement your Timeline if you wish (more on that later).

You can schedule your post up to 6 months in the future (more months are shown, but if you select more than 6 months out, Facebook won’t accept it). You can schedule the minutes at 00-, 10-, 20-, 30-, 40- or 50-minute marks of the hour. So if you need a post to go out specifically at 2:15 pm, you cannot set it.

• You can also add language and location targeting in your scheduled posts, just like you can in your regular posts. Just click on the Public icon and make the necessary adjustments.

• Once you have everything set, just click the blue Schedule button. Voilà! Now just remember to circle back to your posts later after the scheduled time to watch for follow-up comments!

#2: How to Find and Edit Your Scheduled Posts

To see what you have scheduled and make any changes, just go to your activity log by accessing the admin panel at the top of your page (if you don’t see the admin panel, click the red admin panel button in the upper-right corner), then click Edit Page, and Activity Log. You then see all of your scheduled posts.


If you need to edit your scheduled post, the only thing you can change from here is the time, unfortunately. To edit the text, you must cancel the post and redo your scheduling. To cancel or change the time, mouse over the upper-right corner of the post in the activity log.

#3: You Can’t Schedule Everything

You can schedule links, photos, status updates and videos (although I found scheduling a video to be a bit buggy). You can also schedule a YouTube video link, which will attach as it normally does in your posts.

You can’t schedule some of the other types of posts as you can normally do from the publisher, such as photo albums, posting of events, questions, offers and milestones.

#4: You Can Backdate Your Posts

You can schedule things in the past. I’m not sure why you would want to use the backdating feature other than to fill out your Timeline a bit. But if you have a significant event that you want to post about in the past, I recommend a milestone post instead.

The interesting thing about backdating is that the post does go out into people’s news feed immediately and then is shown at the appropriate place on your Timeline.

#5: Scheduled Posts Won’t be Automatically Tweeted

If you have linked your Twitter account to your Facebook page by setting up www.Facebook.com/Twitter so that everything you post on Facebook gets tweeted (yes, we know that it’s not always a great idea but sometimes it isn’t terrible), be aware that your scheduled posts won’t go out to Twitter.

So if you rely on your Facebook page to supplement your tweets and you move to more scheduled posts, you will have to schedule your tweets with a different tool.

#6: Scheduling Posts Can Bring about More Engagement

What can you expect when you schedule posts? It depends on your baseline right now with your Facebook page—how often you are posting, how engaged your audience is, what you are posting and other factors.

One thing that scheduling can do for you is allow you to post more regularly and increase your posting without spending all day on your Facebook page.

Randi Thompson of How to Market Your Horse Business (and an active member of our Social Networking Clubs) tried an experiment where she upped the number of posts by using scheduled posts on two of her pages.

On her How to Market Your Horse Business page, she went from posting 3 times a day to posting every 3 hours and 5 times a day. Then she had another page, Horse and Rider Awareness, where she was not posting regularly at all. She tried scheduling 3 quality posts per day. Here are her results over a 5-day period.

Now of course this is not a comprehensive study. And this could be done without scheduling posts. But the point is that scheduled posts can make things easier for you so you can batch your work, know that things are being posted at the times you want and you can get on with other parts of your business. I encourage you to try some experiments with scheduled posts on your page and see how things work for you.

And again, make sure you circle back to these posts to follow up on comments!

#7: Scheduled Posts are not Identified or “Punished” in Facebook

When you post from a different scheduling tool such as HootSuite or BufferApp, people can see that you’re posting through a different tool. But Facebook’s scheduled posts are seamless.

Using a different tool to post to Facebook is not all bad. Sometimes it’s much better to save yourself a little time and get the post out with the tool you’re using rather than not post at all.

But Facebook has been known to show posts using third-party tools a little less in the news feed or collapse them. As of this writing, I believe third-party tools are faring well in Facebook. But we all know how Facebook changes.

#8: Scheduled Posts May be Coming to Personal Profiles

The option does appear to schedule a Facebook post on personal profiles, which may be a good thing for people who are using their personal profiles to talk about business. But as of this writing, I could not schedule anything into the future, only for today or in the past.

Not everyone will see big changes by scheduling posts. You still have to deliver engaging Facebook content. But what scheduled posts can do is free up some of your time by allowing you to batch your social media posts into blocks and give you more time to focus on your business.

What are your thoughts? Have you been using scheduled posts? What results have you seen? Tell us in the comments section below!

Note: This post originally appeared on Social Media Examiner and is reposted with permission.

Are you using Facebook for business?  Are you doing it “right”?

Frankly I get a little peeved at all the self-righteous do-gooders who tell you that you are doing it “wrong”.   But I definitely know that there are some no-no’s on Facebook.  While there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” approach, there are some good tactics you can use to improve your strategy.

Make sure you aren’t making these mistakes with your Facebook marketing.  You probably won’t die, but your business could suffer – even worse!  :)

1.  Not posting enough

Not posting enough is the deadly sin I see most often. I see Pages that haven’t been updated in months and sometimes years.  Goodness gracious, if you are going to provide a link to your Facebook Page from your website, make sure that Page is active.  If you have decided that Facebook Marketing isn’t working for your business, just take your Page down.

I recommend posting at least once per day.  Some niches and Pages can do better by posting more often – the sweet spot is often somewhere between 2-5 times per day.  Batch your work by scheduling some of your posts out ahead of time.  I have a great product called the Social Media Success Planning Kit (shameless plug) that can help you create your Editorial and Activity Calendar to help you save time.

2.  Not posting enough helpful content.

Your Page is not there for continually blasting out your marketing messages.  Think of the radio stations you might listen to (ok, used to listen to – who listens to radio anymore?) – would you listen to a station that was all ads?  No!  You’d change the channel and never come back.  Your posts should be 20% marketing messages max (I prefer 10%) and 80% education, helpful tips, and fun.

Sometimes it’s hard to find good content.  I have a blog post that can help:  How to Find the Best Content to Share on Social Media.

3.  Not following Facebook’s rules.

Facebook isn’t policing Pages that tightly.  We’ve all seen rule-breakers from the businesses who have set themselves up as a personal profile (think “JoesCoffee Shop wants to friend you” – no no no) to the Page who is violating the Cover photo rules (which have recently changed, see #6 of this post that will help you set up your Facebook Page the right way).

But just because everyone else is doing it and getting away with it doesn’t mean that you should.  If everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge would you do it too?  No.  Familiarize yourself with Facebook’s rules and keep updated on the changes.  You could be in danger of having your Page shut down and Facebook does it without warning.

Especially watch the contest rules because those are often ignored and will put your Page at risk if you ignore them.  Read this post to get the whole scoop:  3 Tips to Help You Run a Facebook Contest the Right Way.

4.  Closing your Page to comments.

Remember that it’s called “social” media.  Let people talk to you!  Don’t close your page to comments because you are worried about “negative” comments.  Most pages do not get negative comments and if you do, consider it valuable feedback and use it as an opportunity to show that you are listening.

Some industries such as healthcare or financial industries may need to close the page to comments to take regulations into consideration.  If that is the case, mention that in your About Page so people know your reasoning.

5.  Deleting Negative comments.

Do not delete negative comments.  Don’t.  Unless you have a troll.  A troll is someone who attacks you (or the members of your community) and does not respond to attempts to take the situation offline.  Oooo I don’t like those nasties.  This doesn’t mean that the person cannot express their opinion, but if they continually attack you, you can delete and ban them.

Have a written policy on your Page to help you and your community understand how to behave on your Page.  Even though Facebook is an open site, your Page is your sandbox and you make the rules there.  On the Social Media Examiner Page, the rules are written on the About Page.

6.  Not responding to posts.

This is almost as bad as not posting in months.  If someone takes the time to ask a question or post a comment on your Facebook Page, respond!  If someone came to your store and asked a question, you wouldn’t just stare at them.  You would respond or acknowledge them in some way.  If it’s spam, delete it.

7.  Not getting your Fans onto your E-mail list.

This is not a deadly sin.  But this will improve your Facebook marketing dramatically.  You need to tie your Fans into your e-mail list so you can connect with them both on e-mail and on Facebook.  Facebook could go away tomorrow and you would still have the ties to all of your Fans.  Your e-mail list is yours.  But how can you use Facebook to get people onto your list?  Here are some ways:

• Have a special tab with a free report or white paper that you offer your fans.  See my Facebook freebie tab.
• Occasionally post a link to your special freebie landing page and invite people to get it.
• Have a fantastic webinar and post about it on Facebook.  I even have a page where people can listen to some of the best of Andrea’s webinars (I pop in occasionally).  Then I post this link from time to time.
• Run a Facebook contest and let people know when they enter they will be added to your e-mail list.

So there you have it!  Don’t make these Facebook mistakes on your page.  What do you think?  Are there more mistakes that I missed?  Some on this list that shouldn’t be here?  Let Grandma know in the comments below.

And don’t worry too much if you’ve made some of these mistakes – we are all getting better.  We are getting older and wiser, right?  Love ya!