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Insight Dezign

When they search, make sure they find you.

Edward Booth

How do I hide my facebook profile?

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclaimer for more info.

Part of being a business owner is being social. This is how we build our customer base.

In 2014 part of being social means being on social media networks like facebook. You understand that and you know your business needs to be on facebook but you don’t want your personal information on facebook. But facebook requires you to create an account to create a page for your business.

“Isn’t there a way I can do this without signing up for facebook?”

Confusing to most people is the difference between your “personal profile” and a “page”. Let me see if I can explain the difference

Facebook Account – Where you manage your profile, pages and news feed among other things.
Personal Profile – Your personal information available for friends or the public to view depending on your settings.
Facebook Page – Similar to a profile but for your business, group, event, cause, etc.

A page does not automatically give visitors access to your personal profile if you have one.

Below are two sets of instruction to hide your personal profile. One for those just starting and one for existing users.

New facebook account

When you sign up at facebook you have to give a little bit of personal information to begin. This is creating an account for you. Don’t confuse this with a profile or a page.

Once you are in, facebook immediately starts asking your for more personal information to create your “personal profile”. Almost all of these questions have a “skip” option on them. Skip whenever you can until you are in your news feed. After you are in you can begin to create a facebook page. When you page is set up be sure to follow the additional instructions below to hide your profile.

Existing facebook account

If you already have a personal profile on your facebook account that you want to hide but want to keep your account to manage your page follow the instructions below. Some settings can only be set as low as “friends only” so if you have friends on your profile they will still be able to interact some. If you want to completely hide you need to de-friend them as well.

Hiding your personal facebook profile

  1. Log in to facebook
  2. Click on the gear in the upper right corner and choose “Settings”
  3. On the left, click “Privacy”
  4. “Who can see my stuff?” – change future posts to “me only”
  5. “Who can contact me?” – change friends requests to “friends of friends” and inbox filter to “Strict”
  6. “Who can look me up?” – change email and phone to “friends” and search engines to “no”
  7. On the left, click “Timeline and Tagging”
  8. “Who can add things to my timeline?” – change to “only me” and review to on.
  9. “Who can see things on my timeline?” – change both settings to “only me”
  10. “How can I manage tags people add…” – change reviews to “on”, audience to “only me” and tag suggestions to “no one”
  11. On the left, click “Followers”
  12. “Who can follow me?” – change to “friends”
  13. “Follower Comments” – change to “friends”

Facebook Privacy Settings

Facebook timeline tagging

Create a Facebook page without a personal Facebook account

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclaimer for more info.

UPDATE: It seems that Facebook has changed this. You can no longer create a Facebook account without a personal profile. However, you can still make your “New” (hint hint) profile completely private and essentially invisible through privacy settings.

These days it’s important to manage your online business presence. What presence you ask? If you’re a traditional bricks and mortar business and you are listed in the yellow pages, chances are you have a presence on the internet. There is a good chance you have a page on Facebook as well. Data is shared on the internet and the search engine, Bing shares their business listings with Facebook. People may already be liking and commenting on your business.

When I’m working on a website for a client I also ask them if they have a Facebook page. I am almost always met with the question, “Don’t you have to have a Facebook account to do that?”. The answer is no. If you are reluctant to put your personal information on Facebook, create a Facebook page for your business without a personal account by following these instructions.

  1. Start by going to facebook.com
  2. On the welcome screen below the sign up box is an area to “Create a Page”
    Facebook Create a Page
  3. In the next step you need to select the type of page you would like to create and fill out the information. Select the type closest to your business but don’t worry, you can change it later.
    Facebook Page Type
  4. After clicking “Get Started” you will be asked to enter a small amount of personal information then hit “Sign Up Now“. This is not creating a personal account for you.
    Create Facebook Account
  5. Finally, check your email to confirm your new account. Facebook will walk you through the additional steps to customize your page.

 

For more thorough instruction and tips on using Facebook to market your business, contact Ed Booth.

How can I create a separate admin account for my existing facebook page?

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclaimer for more info.

UPDATE: It seems that Facebook has changed this. You can no longer create a Facebook account without a personal profile. However, you can still make your “New” (hint hint) profile completely private and essentially invisible through privacy settings.

The Problem:

You followed Facebook’s original rules and used your personal account to set up a Facebook page for your business. Now you want to create an Admin account just for your page that is separate from your personal Facebook page. There are a number of reasons you may want to do this such as:

  • Your selling your business and want to transfer the page to the new owner.
  • You want to give access to employees who don’t have personal Facebook accounts.
  • You want to be able to use your personal account to interact with pages you manage without worrying about changing to your personal profile first.

Whatever your reason, this can be done.

The Solution:

  1. Follow the steps you would normally use to create a new page without a personal Facebook account.
  2. Check your email and activate the new account.
  3. Log out of the new account and log into the account you are currently using as admin for your page.
  4. From the Admin Panel for your page select “Edit Page–>Admin Roles“.Facebook Admin Panel
  5. From the “Admin Roles” page, enter the email address for the new admin account and hit “Save“.
    Facebook add Admin
  6. A pop up should appear asking you to enter your password. Enter the password for the account you are currently in.
  7. You should now see the new account listed as an admin.
  8. Log out of your personal account and log into the new admin account which should now show the admin for the page.
  9. If you manage multiple pages repeat steps 4, 5 & 6 (before logging out of your personal account) for each page you want managed in the new account.

 

For more thorough instruction and tips on using facebook to market your business,contact Ed Booth.

How do I Post a poll on facebook

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclaimer for more info.

Update: Polls or the “Ask a Question” has been removed from facebook. If you would like to post a poll or are looking for additional options you can do so with the following facebook app. http://apps.facebook.com/my-polls/

****THIS FEATURE HAS BEEN REMOVED BY FACEBOOK****

Using facebook as the page you are managing, you will see the area you normally use to update your status.

Click on the “Event, Milestone +” portion and you will see an option to ask a question.

Choosing question, you will then see a box that says “Ask something” and “Add Poll Options”.

Click on “Add Poll Options” and enter your question in the box with your option choices below. You can also choose to allow responders to give their own option.

“Post” your poll and let people know about it. Be sure to comment as time goes on to keep it fresh in people’s minds and give it more exposure.

If you found this post helpful, please let us know by rating it below and for more thorough instruction and tips on using facebook to market your business, contact Ed Booth.

How do I get on the first page of Google?

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclaimer for more info.

Lately my clients have been asking me “How do I get to the top of Google?” Competition on the world-wide web has been growing rapidly and trying to claim your space is getting harder. Search engines such as Google use complicated algorithms to rank your page that are always changing.  This is my attempt at sharing my knowledge of SEO with you.

How does one improve their rank on the search engines?

Many small business are often approached by companies that offer to get them on the first page of Google. Some have systems that work, some don’t and some can actually hurt your ranking. Everything that these service do you can do on you own, and often times better. The following are some tips on things you can do with your website to help improve your ranking.

Keyword/phrase research

In the early days a website could just load a bunch of keywords in a meta-tag on their website and search engines would use them to get and idea of what you website was about. Unscrupulous website builders would load their site with keywords that were popular and had nothing to do with their website to try to get you there. The larger search engines will often ignore the keyword meta-tag now. That doesn’t mean we should ignore doing the research. Keywords or phrases placed carefully in the content of your website will do a lot build the authority of your website. Google offers a free keyword tool you can use to research what words or phrases are being search for your business. Think carefully how you search and how others may search. Now think about the question or terms your customers use when asking about your product or service. Try researching these. You will see the results that show you how often those are searched as well as other words or phrases that may yield better results. The keyword search will also show you how much competition there is on a word or phrase. If you look carefully you may be able to choose some that have good result and low competition.

Website content

Carefully construct written content for your website using the keywords and phrases you have researched. Use some terms multiple times but be careful not to overuse them. You don’t want to seem like you are just trying to stuff your webpage with keywords. When building your site think carefully about what your customers are looking for and a logically menu system for them to find it. If you are referencing other information on your site consider creating a link. When making a link avoid using “click here” use a phrase that defines where the link leads and add the “title” tag to the html to better describe the link. Keep content to a minimum and use headings and outline structure to make skimming the content easier. If a visitor to your site finds the content overwhelming they may leave and what good is getting someone to visit your site if they don’t stay? One last tip on content, look to your competition for clues. If you search using the keywords you’ve chosen, who shows up? What do they have on their website that you think is helping them rank higher?

Page Title and meta tags

Look at the top of your browser window. Possibly in the tab. This is your title and this information is contained in the code of your website in the title tag. There are additional tags that can be used for search engines that are called meta tags. One of these tags is the description tag. The title tag and the description tags are used by Google when showing search results. Try to be descriptive of the page content when creating the page title and description and make them unique to each page. A more descriptive listing had a better chance of being clicked on and more visits to your site improves your rank. More on that to follow.

Google's use of Title and Description Meta Tags

 

Descriptive URLs

A URL is the full address of the page you are viewing or trying to view. What do you think is better https://insightdezign.com/how-do-i-get-on-the-first-page-on-google/ or https://insightdezign.com/?p=472? Both of these URLs will get you to this page but the first one is more descriptive. Search engines pay attention to URL as well and will use it to determine if your content is relevant to the search being requested. Try and choose your URLs carefully.

Sitemap

A Sitemap is a list of all the pages on your website. It is a XML file that search engines can read. If your website is new or has pages that may not be linked yet is helps search engines find them. When you change content on your website you should recreate your Sitemap and resubmit it to the search engines. Some content management systems like WordPress have plugins that can automate this for you.

Linking

Ready? Take a deep breath because I think this is one of the most important parts next to your content. Google uses links to find your website and rank it. If other sites don’t link to your website then the chances of being found are much smaller. Part of Google’s algorithm looks at how many sites link to you, how relevant those sites are and how many people are clicking through to your site. What does this mean. Don’t just go getting anyone to link to your site and offering a link back. Think of more valuable ways to use links. Can you offer some content on your site that others may want to link to from within their page’s content? This would be the best type of link much more likely to be clicked on than a link listed on a page called “Links”. Look for industry related website and see if you can write guest blog pieces that link back to your site. Try and find industry listing site, chamber of commerce site, networking groups in your area that allow you to put your information with a link on their site. Find lots of ways to link to your site but do it carefully.

Google+ Local

Google+ Local, often called Google Places or Google Maps is Google’s free listing for your business. I often compare this to a yellow pages listing but with much more to offer. Chances are if you have a “bricks and mortar” store and have been around for a while you already have a listing. IF not you can create one. Either way, as the business owner you want to claim this listing and make sure it is filled out completely. This listing can link to your website as well as provide quick information to those looking for your product or service. It also now uses a Zagat rating to rate your business and allows people to leave reviews on your business. When someone searches Google for your type of business and enter a location, Google will often show results with a map and list of locations. If your profile is complete, has a better Zagat rating and offers more reviews it can mean your listing will appear at the top of the list. Work with existing customers and ask them to rate you and leave a review. When a new client visits ask them to leave you a review as well. Google+ Local is quick way to move your site up the ranking and drive more traffic to your site.

Alt tags for images

Do you have pictures on your website. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “A picture’s worth a thousand words”. While this may be true for anyone with eyes a computer doesn’t have eyes. The only thing Google knows about your image is what you title it when you save it. Unless… One of the things you can add in the code is called an alt tag. Alt tags are used in two ways. Originally they were used as a place holder for when an image doesn’t show and for screen readers for those who are visually impaired. Now they have an addition use for search engines. Have you ever tried using Google’s Image search? Google keeps track of all the images it finds when looking through websites. If your image has an alt tag that describes the content of the picture it stands a much better chance of showing up in search results in an image search. Once again, and opportunity to drive more traffic to your website.

Domain name registration

Often overlooked. This simple little trick and help improve your rank a little and every little bit counts. When registering your domain name choose a longer term. Rather than 1 year or 2 years consider 5 years or 10 years. This sends the message that you plan on being around a while and search engines like that.

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, etc… all of these social media platforms offer a way for you to interact with large numbers of people and drive traffic to your website. There are numerous ways to use the different types of social media and many articles and books have been written on them. I’ll do my best put together a few at a later date and put links back here when I do. So come back and check later.

Content Management System (CMS)

Using a content management system can give your website a boost in the search engine results as well as simplify many of the above items. Matt Cutts of Google has come right out and said that WordPress takes care of 80-90% of SEO. Something as simple as using a CMS can help your page rank. If you have and extra 45 minutes I would highly recommend watching this video.

Google offers a few tools to help you optimize you website. I suggest taking some time to look through each of them and begin using them. Google’s “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” is also a great reference tool.

I hope this information has been helpful. Please leave a comment below. If you are looking for help with this, please contact me for a free half-hour consult to determine the scope of your project and pricing.

Why does my business need a website?

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. Please read my disclaimer for more info.

What do you do next?

Your business is online. You have a Google places page and are listed. Why do you need to go the extra step and create a website?

Information!

Think about it like this. Lets say you move to a new town. You sit down at your computer and look for a hair salon. You go to Google and type in “Hair Salon” or maybe just “Salon”. Google uses your connection and determines you are using a provider in a specific town (Geo-location services) and returns results for that area. Not what you want? Add a City and State or zip code to your search. The results are then presented to you with a map and a list of places.

Some of the Salons have a website and others just have a Google places page. You are looking for a salon that provides a specific service. You visit each salon website, check out reviews and ask around before deciding on which one to try. Maybe there is a special that entices you.

The point is, Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., provide the minimum amount of information about your business. Your customers have questions. They want more information. You need a website to provide that. Think of your website as your best sales person available 24 hours a day. This sales person should be able to answer your customer’s questions and convince them that you are they person they should do business with.

Start by breaking your business down to its simplest parts and answer these basic questions.

  • What problems or needs can you help your customers with?
  • What services or products do you offer?
  • What differentiates you from your competition?
  • Why should clients choose you?

Then, put together information about you or your company.  Explain how you got to where you are and what makes you different. Sometimes it’s easier just to jot down notes and expand on them later. You don’t need to create your masterpiece now. That will come with time.

Next, Try and gather some testimonials. One of the best ways to do this is direct your customers to your Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, etc. page to leave a comment. Then ask them if you can use it on your website. However, while some of them may have the best of intentions, remembering to do this is easier said than done. Ask them to write a quick review for you while they are still there or send them an email asking for feedback.

Compile a list of Frequently asked questions. Play both roles. Pose the question and then answer it. Having the question and the answer is going to help your website be found if someone search on that particular phrase.

Finally, sit down and prepare your material. Look at other websites, think about your layout, what images  you may want to use and what colors. Try and put together a rough design of how your visitors will navigate through your site. Remember people have little patience. Try to get them were they are going quick.

Ready to get started? Contact Ed Booth for a free, half-hour consultation.