facebook for business Archives by Mark Murnahan

How to Add Facebook Comments to a Blog and Improve Search Ranking

Facebook for Blog Comments

Perhaps by now you have seen a few blogs using Facebook comments. If you have not seen it yet, you can witness it in action here on “SEO and Social Media Marketing Blog”. Go ahead and look, if you must … but we will get to that part anyway.

When I recently added Facebook comments I was so excited about the increased commenting and Facebook sharing that I knew others would want to know more about it, too.

I want to tell you about some really useful features of this free service, including SEO (search engine optimization) benefits, enhanced user-experience, increased social interaction, and more. Then, I will give you step-by-step instructions on how to add Facebook comments to your blog (or any website).

So, let’s get started. Before I give you the step-by-step “How To”, I want to explain some huge benefits. After all, it really doesn’t make sense to do this if you don’t know why, or how it can benefit your website.

Maybe I should have split this into two articles, but if you are just here for the installation, jump to the installation now. It could get a little geeky around here for some people, but haven’t you ever really wanted to know what makes geeks tick? Read on my “non-geek” friends. I have some love here for you, too!

Facebook Comments Search Engine Ranking Benefit

It is not a secret that Google and Bing use information from social media for ranking websites. Since December of last year, it has been speculated that one of the strongest individual signals Google uses is the number of Facebook shares. That is, the number of times somebody actually shares your website on Facebook. It is really hard to qualify this, and there is a lot of contention in the matter.

Regardless of any potential direct SEO value, when you use Facebook comments, it greatly increases the probability of people sharing your blog on Facebook. Of course, they don’t have to share it on their Facebook wall when they comment, but the option is selected by default. The way I see it is that unless I am ashamed of something I am reading, I will usually share my comments on Facebook, along with the originating article. Other people seem to react the same way, and since the option is so simple and right there in front of them, is it easy to see why it will increase the probability of a blog article receiving more Facebook shares. Facebook shares can lead to blog posts, Twitter conversations, and a whole list of other possibilities. So, in the end, the SEO benefits can come in many forms.

Although Google cannot see much of the information shared on Facebook, there is still a lot of reason to suspect that the crawler can find at least some of it. In case you are doubtful of the value of Facebook sharing to SEO, here are some influential third party references on the matter:

“Facebook + Twitter’s Influence on Google’s Search Rankings” SEOmoz
“What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?” Search Engine Land
“Correlation Data for SEO and Social Media Analysis” SEOmoz

Below is a video from the third article in the list. If you don’t have time for it, just know that Facebook sharing can potentially benefit your search engine rankings, and that Facebook comments are a huge step toward a more interactive user experience … another big step toward good SEO.

Let’s not forget that in addition to the benefit of Google and Bing using Facebook sharing in their rankings, it also opens the floodgates to more people seeing your website. That means more people to potentially share it along to their friends. Oh, it all gets so exponential and mathematical … I think I may need another cigarette!

Facebook Comments Enhance User Experience

User experience sounds so cliché and empty to me, but you understand the notion. Making your website easy and familiar is imperative to its success. The end-user is why we all work so hard to make our websites feel easy and familiar, like sweatpants and a pair of flip flops. It has to be comfortable, or people will stop coming back … or coming at all.

On the other hand, if you focus the website on benefiting the end-user, before you know it, that hard work all starts to make a lot of sense. People start blasting it out to all their friends about how they almost peed their shoes when they found the one website on earth that actually smelled like bacon, and rubbed them like a teenager in the back seat of a Camaro.

Add More Nasty Camaro with Facebook!

If you want to call it “User Experience”, go ahead … I am thinking about the party in the yellow Camaro with steamy windows! Then, before I fall asleep, I will paw through the fridge in search of that bacon I smelled. That is how I see “user experience”, and you can flop on my virtual couch any time. It’s comfy, isn’t it?

Here is how Facebook comments improve the user experience: Let’s face it, everybody who ever wrote a blog wants to see comments … even if only to point out a typosnaphical error. They want to know that they didn’t do all that work for nothing. If you are reading this, you probably have a blog, so you know what I mean. The challenge is in making comments an easy and natural response for the people who read your work.

Of course, you could look at it this way: Maybe everybody except you is a lazy, no-good, deadbeat blog lurker who soaks up your hard work, and laughs in your face when they click away to their next victim.

-or-

You could consider that there are a lot of busy people, and even a lot of them who really don’t know much about blogs, or the benefits of participating. They don’t all know the value of getting to know all of those other readers with the same interests. This makes it your job, the blogger, to fix the challenges. You need to make it easy, and natural to leave a comment, and Facebook comments do just that!

Shoe-peeing, Camaro-sweating, bacon-scented, unicorn-kissing, all-you-can-haul-out-the-door-for-a-dollar brilliant content is not always enough. You have to make it so easy that getting up to deal with a bad case of diarrhea can wait just a few more seconds while they shower you with their lovin’ words.

Facebook Comments Increase Social Interaction

With well over half a billion people using Facebook, it is a lot more recognized than your blog. People know how to use it. Facebook is a comfy, cozy, snugly, familiar place for many people. Those Facebookey people are not so shy to communicate on Facebook. They do it all the time. That is what Facebook is there for, and that is also why it is on my blog (and probably on your blog soon).

Facebook comments meet the challenges of familiarity and ease of use like a hungry blogger meets a greasy bacon sandwich. If people aren’t talking to you, and each other, with Facebook comments on your blog, you can believe it … they really just don’t like you, or other people … At All.

Some interesting things to note is that when somebody comments and elects to share it (along with the article) on Facebook, it will appear simultaneously on the blog, and on Facebook. Replies to that person will then be visible to them on their Facebook Wall, as well as a link back to the article.

For those who have their employer set up properly and visible publicly on Facebook, another neat feature is that their title and company Facebook Page link will appear. That can create additional possibilities for business networking. Of course, the user’s Facebook security settings still apply.

How to Add Facebook Comments to a Blog

The list of nice features goes on, but we can chat about that in the comments. That way you can see how neat it really is from a user perspective. Let’s get to the part about how you can add these nifty Facebook comments to your blog. I am going to explain it based on WordPress, but it is similar for other websites.

I looked for a a plugin for this, but I didn’t find one, so I may write a Facebook Comments WordPress Plugin (actually just a relatively simple installation script) if I get the time. The closest plugins I found were to import comments from Facebook notes, but that is not the same thing at all. This is how to actually include and synchronize Facebook comments, likes, and shares on a website.

This is really not very hard, but Facebook’s documentation is so lengthy that it could get confusing if you don’t know what you are looking for. So, I am going to include the links you will need to visit on Facebook, and what to do when you get there.

If you need help, that just makes a good case for why blogs have comments in the first place.

Step One: Create a Facebook Application – This does not mean going to school for web programming, and creating an app is much easier than it sounds. All you have to do is click here, then click on “Set Up New App”, enter an App Name (like the name of your blog), agree to Facebook’s terms, and then fill in a few more easy blanks.

Once you have the app set up, hold onto that info for a bit. You will need the application ID number in the next step.

Relax, you can do this … really. If you get confused, just add your questions in the comments below, and somebody will help you … probably me. If you start feeling a bout of rage coming on, just put down the weapon and ring me up. I will do it for you for a song. Well, actually a song along with some of your money, but not all of it.

Step Two: Load the JavaScript SDK – If that “creating an application” thing sounded hard, this one sounds like having to share a sleeping bag with your mother-in-law. It is actually quite simple. I don’t know why they make it all sound so difficult.

In this step, all you are doing is adding the basic information the application will need for your website, in the format Facebook needs it. It looks daunting to some people, but if you just look at the example, and find where it says “YOUR APP ID” replace it (the letters only) with the ID number you received when you created your app.

You can either go and copy the code on the Facebook Developers JavaScript SDK page, or just use the snippet below. I suggest using the version where it says “Loading the SDK Asynchronously”. You only need the one snippet of code, and this is the one I use here on my blog. Just be sure to put your new app ID where it says “YOUR APP ID” in this code.

Here is the code you will need:

<div id=”fb-root”></div> <script> window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({appId: ‘YOUR APP ID, status: true, cookie: true, xfbml: true}); }; (function() { var e = document.createElement(‘script’); e.async = true; e.src = document.location.protocol + ‘//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js’; document.getElementById(‘fb-root’).appendChild(e); }()); </script>

Step Three: Copy and Paste the JavaScript SDK – If my mother is reading this, she is probably going to the kitchen junk drawer for glue. That copy and paste thing drives her guano-crazy. I will handle it for my mom when she gets hot on her blogging career, but for you, this will be a snap! Take that snippet of code from above (edited with your new app id) and open your WordPress Theme Editor. It is right there in that place where you add new blog posts. More specifically at http://YOUR-DOMAIN/wp-admin/theme-editor.php (unless you have some freaky-deaky version of WordPress). This is where you can see a list of your theme files sitting there ready to beat up like a row of red headed boys in pink high-water pants.

Pay Attention and Stop Beating Up the WordPress Redheads

The precise placement of this code is not a huge issue. You see … this really is easy! I added mine into the “Header (header.php)” file in my theme. It could have a slightly different name, but you have something like that, where it has all of that header-ish kind of stuff. Within that file, you’ll see words like “head”, “body”, “meta”, and a lot of others. I added my “JavaScript SDK” snippet immediately below the “body” tag. You can see where it is in my source code if you like, but just don’t go giving me any “Grandma Guilt” if you don’t like the html comments in my source code. Just search the code for the word “body”. It’s there … you can find it … I have faith in you.

Paste it your code somewhere right around there (or exactly there), but keep that same page open. You still need to shove some more stuff in there.

Step Four: Add Facebook’s “xmlns:fb” Namespace Attribute to Your HTML Tag – That sounds worse than it is, but we want this to be easy. So, while you have that header file opened, look for this: xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” and add xmlns:fb=”http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml” right behind it … well, with a space, of course.

So it should turn out to look like the example below. Just copy it and replace the old one.

Step Five: Add the Open Graph Protocol – I swear these Facebook guys smoke some crazy stuff to make this sound so darn complex. This is just a series of meta tags … little bits of information about your website and the specific pages, so Facebook knows what it needs to know.

Here is the code you need, with very minimal editing if you are using WordPress. All you need to do is edit the parts in CAPITAL LETTERS. You can pretty it up with line breaks and stuff if you like. It really makes no difference in function.

Step Six: Add the Comments Code – Ahh, this is the easy stuff. You are almost done. You need to paste the code below on your website where you want the comments to appear. In your WordPress theme editor, just click to edit “Single Post (single.php)” or the equivalent in your theme. It may be named differently, but don’t let that eat you up. I added it immediately above my existing comments. Just search the file for the word “comments” and you will probably find it really quick.

The only editing you will need to do here is to adjust the width (520 in my example) to the width you want it to appear on your blog, and also the “num_posts” for how many comments you want showing before the “show more comments” link appears to users.

That should do it. Save everything and start enjoying more comments and Facebook shares.

What About WordPress or Disqus Comments?

To me, WordPress’ built-in comments, Disqus comments, Intense Debate, and etcetera are not replaced by Facebook comments, but rather enhanced.

Disqus is Here to Stay

You cannot import your existing blog comments into Facebook (at least for now), and I still enjoy all of the features of Disqus. So I think it makes good sense to keep an existing comments system in place.

I am keeping Disqus right here where people can embed videos, upload photos, and all the other great networking benefits, but I am also pretty excited about the new addition.

Which one will you choose to use to add your take on the matter? If you don’t leave me a comment, I may just think you are a snob, so please redeem yourself! Oh, and give that share button a whirl, unless you are ashamed of me. 😉

More Useful Facebook Articles:
(You didn’t expect me to stop here, did you?)

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Facebook Page Changes and New Settings You Should Know!

If you have a Facebook Page for your business, you probably already noticed that Facebook has made some changes. Most of it may seem pretty basic, but there are a few things you should know before you just dismiss it as a new design. There are settings you should review, and also some information that Facebook seems to have lost.

When Facebook profiles changed, starting back in late 2010, I was not entirely thrilled, but I adapted. I got used to it quickly, and I like the improved layout.

Facebook certainly caught many people off guard by placing employer links prominently in profiles, but as usual, we Facebook users have adapted. We are resilient, and even when we don’t like the changes, we push through it, and usually find some things we like.

The latest changes from Facebook are easier to take, and it was designed to make the transition between profiles and pages very easy for users. Just as always, the changes require a look at your settings to be sure everything is working as desired. This is why the most important thing you should look for when you upgrade to the new Facebook Page layout is the “Edit Page” button.

The topics I want to address here are the ones I think may catch users off guard, are useful, or a cause of concerns for people holding off upgrading until Facebook forces the change in March. The topics I will cover are as follows:

Facebook Page As a Profile
Facebook Page Default Wall Display
Facebook Page Default Landing Tab
Change Facebook Page Category
Facebook Page Featured Likes and Owners
Editing Your Facebook Page Settings: Summary

Facebook Page As a Profile

Use Facebook as Page

One of the profound changes to your Facebook Page is that you may now use it as a profile. That caught me off guard, because it was something I wished for. Now, when you interact around the web, you can choose to use your profile as usual, or you can interact as your Facebook page.

What mattered more to me is the ability to switch to using your page as a profile in order to view other pages you have “liked” as a news feed, just like you would view your news feed of friends. This provides a much easier view of updates from other business pages you interact with. It also means that they will be able to keep up with you even easier, too!

Facebook made it really simple to switch between interacting with your personal profile or as your page “on the fly”, without logging out and logging back in. If you manage multiple pages, it will allow you to select which page you wish to use, and switch between them easily.

Important: When you post to your own Facebook Page (with the new Page upgrade), you must switch to use Facebook as a page to post. Otherwise, your updates will be posted from your Profile and not as the Page. If your default wall display is set to show “Only Posts by Page”, your updates will not appear in the default view.

Facebook Page Default Wall Display

Without a doubt, there will be people caught off guard with this change to their Facebook Page. Facebook Page administrators have always been able to select their wall settings, including whether it will default to showing posts from “Everyone” or “Only Posts by Page”. Facebook seems to have lost this setting, so it will be wise to check yours. What I found with each of my pages was that they were all set to “Everyone” when I upgraded to the new version.

This is important to a lot of companies, and although it can be fine to allow everyone to post to your Facebook wall, I certainly encourage watchful moderation. It is very easy to reset this to your preferred method, and it is found under the “Manage Permissions” section. This is also where you may set your default landing tab (not changed), block profanity or other specific words.

Facebook Page Default Landing Tab

This is a feature that I know a lot of people have feared would be eliminated completely, but the option still exists (as it should). The old version of “tabs” went away, but the functionality is the same, and each former tab is now represented on the left side of the page.

If you have previously set a default landing tab, it will still be there. I know that gave a lot of marketers and developers a huge sigh of relief.

It appears that the selection of a default landing tab no longer allows for distinguishing between new and existing users. From what I have seen, it seems that it has not changed from any previous settings which were made. However, one concern would be if existing users who “Like” your page were forced to click an extra time to get from your default landing page to the wall. For example: The settings I have previously used will direct new visitors to a nice welcoming tab, but direct existing users who already “Like” the page straight to the wall. This is a commonly used setting for Facebook Pages.

My pages each appear to work just as they were previously set up, but it may not be the same when adding new pages. I say this because the setting for existing “fans” versus new visitors has disappeared in the new layout.

Of course, if you are handy with FBML (Facebook Markup Language), you can create a Static FBML page landing page but then add Wall contents limited by with the “fb:visible-to-connection” function. That just means people would all land on the same page, but existing users would see something different from new users. This is just good information to know, but as it is, I have not added a new page for testing since the change. So, for all I know, I am just seeing “grandfathered” settings. Either way, we geeks can still have fun with our FBML and can work our way around nearly anything.

Change Facebook Page Category

You may now change your Facebook Page category. This is an added feature that many people have asked for. Something that will surely surprise a lot of Facebook Page administrators is that the category you chose for your page when you set it up is gone. I noticed this in each of the many pages I manage. Not a single page still reflected the category it was set up with. Although, it may be stored behind the scenes and just didn’t show up in the new settings, it is definitely worth resetting your page’s category.

Facebook Page Featured Likes

This can be a great setting for any company with multiple Facebook Pages, or for companies who want to help promote friends or partnerships. In the instance pictured below, I have set the pages for my books and my wife’s cakes and confections company as my aWebGuy Facebook Page “Featured Likes”. What happens here is that up to five pages you select as your “Featured Likes” will always be displayed, while any others will be displayed in rotation.

Similar to featured likes, you may also feature page owners, so that people can put a name and face with the person or people behind the brand.

Editing Your Facebook Page Settings: Summary

I know that a lot of people feel pretty inconvenienced to have to edit their Facebook page. Let’s face it though, when it is your business involved, it is worth the attention.

Facebook has made it very easy to find the editing functions, and it is mostly pretty straightforward. Just look for the “Edit Page” button and be sure that you click on every section. It is better to fix it now than to fix it later.

I hope to read your comments about which settings and functions you like or dislike about the new Facebook Page.

Facebook Advertisement Declined: Is Facebook Nitpicking?

I have heard people question how Facebook can support 650 million accounts and remain free to users. Some people have even held the absurd notion that Facebook will someday charge users.

Funding Facebook is something that most users don’t give a lot of thought to, as they connect and have fun with their friends. Most people will easily overlook the huge volume of advertisement dollars Facebook generates from their ads. Advertising is a very successful business model on the Internet (REF: Google, YouTube, Facebook, and etcetera). It is how Facebook makes money, and those advertisements facilitate Facebook’s bloated $50 Billion valuation in January 2011.

Internet users are very accustomed to seeing advertisements. Many of us became relatively immune to much of the advertising, years ago. Yesteryear’s ads were not very well targeted, and many still are not, but that is not because of the tools.

As the Internet grew smarter, ad targeting platforms became smarter. Advertising targeting and reporting is vital to a campaign’s success, and so the tools have evolved to meet the challenges. Facebook has done extremely well in this area, and I commend them. Their system provides for excellent demographic, geographic, and psychographic modeling and targeting, and should not be underestimated.

Facebook advertising can be an excellent tool for business. Make no mistake about that! The information you can learn from Facebook’s ad reporting can provide great insight to a marketing campaign. I explained more about the value and usage of Facebook advertising in a previous article titled “Facebook Marketing: Pages, Customer Modeling, Promoting, and Awesomeness“. That article is great reading for anybody who wants to understand the value of Facebook marketing.

I like Facebook, and I even like the new Facebook profile.

An Unqualified Rant About Facebook Ads

Here is my unqualified rant. OK, maybe it is a little bit qualified, but I realize that some people will whine, snivel, and argue that I am wrong. I do that to people. I give them something to talk about.

I know Facebook ads well. I have used the Facebook ad system for client projects of many types, and I have had a mostly great experience with it. Facebook reviews each ad submitted to their system, and either approves or declines it, and they are doing a good job of it. When a friend recently complained of having his ads declined by Facebook, I thought he must be doing something wrong. After all, I never had an ad declined, but now that has changed.

I finally had my first declined Facebook ad a couple days ago. At first, I thought it was no big deal. Then I realized how silly their reason was for declining the ad. I will show you the ad, explain why it was declined, and also why I think it was nit-picking on Facebook’s part.

First, I will explain that this ad was intended to reach a targeted group of people as a part of my campaign to stop providing marketing consulting services. You see, I am not-so-secretly tired of selling what I do. I love doing what I do, but I do not enjoy the short-sightedness and lack of strategy that I witness with so many companies when it comes to their marketing. I said it well when I wrote “When I Go to Hell, They Will Have Me Selling SEO“. That is because selling the kind of marketing services I provide often makes me feel like I am trying to explain quantum physics to third graders. Perhaps more to the point, it feels like explaining the color blue to blind people.

This ad was targeted at headhunters. You know, those executive recruiting folks. It was to lead them to my aWebGuy Facebook page. Specifically, it was to lead them to the “My Tools” tab of the aWebGuy Facebook page.

I am not applying to companies for open jobs, but I am interested in a long-term objective outside of independent consulting. I know, it may sound like a big step backward. I just want to enjoy my work without having to feel like a third grade teacher while talking with new clients.

I moved far beyond the typical marketing job ages ago, and the type of work that I am qualified for is often not advertised on job boards. It takes a slow-burn approach, and so I want to be sure that headhunters recognize my name when they find themselves seeking to place a new Director of Marketing or VP of Marketing.

The image above is my proposed ad, and Facebook’s reason for declining the ad was explained as follows:

“The image included in your ad is not suitable to appear on Facebook. Before resubmitting your ad, please visit our Help Center for additional tips and examples compliant with our Advertising Guidelines.”

At first, I thought “It is just a picture of my birthday cake. How could that be so offensive?” Then I realized that it was declined for a violation of Facebook Advertising Guidelines section 5 d iii. You may wonder, “What is 5 d iii?” Well here you go:

5. Prohibited Content

d. Ads cannot contain, facilitate, promote, or reference the following:

iii. Tobacco products;

Stand Up for Facebook Ad Rebels!

Here comes the silly part. Based on the targeting criteria, and Facebook’s advertising guidelines, I could have used a couple hookers and a bottle of Scotch, but not my birthday cake. I guess I must just be a real life badass if my birthday cake is banned from Facebook ads, but that’s how I roll!

I love marketing for clients, and I serve them very well, but there is a unique challenge to marketing myself and my future. When it comes to marketing myself, the approach is quite long-sighted. That is because I must be selective about the buyer. This is where you come in, and I am asking you to stand up for my rebelion. Do you know any of those headhunters who should be aware of me? Pass my name along, will you?

If you think Facebook was nitpicking, please click my “Like” button and share this to show that even the rebels have a place on Facebook. Otherwise, you can “Lump” it and just keep reading my blog.

One More Thing! Do you find my birthday cake to be offensive? Go to the aWebGuy Facebook page to see the entertaining back story.

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New Facebook Profile Employer Information Catches Users Off Guard

Update Facebook Employer Information

Facebook recently made a big move with their latest profile updates, but it seems that a lot of people are slow to accept the change. Without a doubt, Facebook’s new profile design includes some pretty significant changes which will impact businesses. The impact can be very positive, but only for people who are paying attention.

Many people are reluctant to adopt the new Facebook profile, but what they often do not realize is what each of the people who did make the change see when they look at a profile. Whether you have updated yours or not, users of the new profile design will see your profile in a way that you, or your company may regret.

I wrote about changes and things to be aware of in a previous article titled “Facebook Profile Changes: Updates to Make Before Switching!“ with cautions of what users should know. Yes, some people listened, especially about the tagged images displayed at the top of the profile, but there is an even more profound matter at hand for businesses.

If you are unfamiliar with Facebook’s new profile changes, I suggest that you see what Facebook says, and also discover how many of your friends have already updated. To date, only 100 of my Facebook friends have updated their profile, but the only view that I have for all friends is the new version.

New Facebook Profiles Display Employers Prominently

The latest update of our favorite social network comes with significant implications for businesses. I think this was a really smart move for Facebook’s reach into business networking, but it will also come with some “growing pains” for users. Those pains can affect employees and employers, alike.

Whether you have updated to the new profile or not, if you have an employer listed with Facebook, it is likely being misrepresented to users of the new profile design. I see examples of this all day long, so if you care how your employment or your company is being represented, you should really pay attention to this matter. The new profile has been made optional, but we will all use the new profiles very soon. You should also note that once you switch, you cannot change back.

Facebook Employer Display in New Profile

In the new design, Facebook places your employer information just below your name. It also includes a link to that employer, and this is where a problem arises for many users. The link, which is automatically created from the employer name listed in your profile, points to a Facebook page which is generated based on the company name. Since it would be worse if Facebook guessed at whether it is the right company, it cannot just link to the actual Facebook page of a company.

Imagine how bad it could be if they linked all of the people who listed an employer name to a given page, and it was the wrong page. Somebody at First National Bank in Spokane could have their employer’s link point to the Facebook page of First National Bank in New Orleans. That would be really bad, but what happens instead is a page that is inaccurate, rather than the company’s existing Facebook page.

When I noticed that my wife’s employer link listed her cakes and confections work as “Owner / Chef at Mad Eliza’s”, I clicked on it to discover that, although we already have an existing Facebook page, there were a few people who had clicked “Like” on the made-up page created by Facebook. Now wouldn’t it be a shame to not take a moment and fix that?

The best way to fix the employer link is to delete the employer(s) and re-add them. Facebook will then allow you to select your employer’s Facebook page, and link to it accordingly. Here is the link to edit your employers. If you have already updated to the new profile, but you are not quite certain about this, just try clicking on the link listed as your employer. If it does not actually link to your company Facebook page, you should probably change that. It is a common mistake, and I have actually even seen this on a respected Facebook marketer’s profile.

If you are an employer, you would be wise to point this out to employees and encourage them to update their profiles. It may benefit both employee and employer to do so. This is especially true in cases where employer and employee are the same person.

How to Change the Employer Listed on Your Facebook Profile

For people with multiple jobs listed, Facebook does not provide an option to select which employer is displayed below your name, but it can be changed. I will give an example of what I found when I updated to the new profile.

Like a lot of people, I wear multiple hats. Yes, I work a bunch of jobs, and while you sleep, I am here keeping this Internet thing we all love up and running. When I switched to the new Facebook, my profile showed things all wrong. Not only did it reflect one of my “less important” jobs right at the top of my profile, it also linked to a non-existent page that Facebook created to represent the company name I had listed in my profile.

To explain how I encountered it, I will explain my jobs. I am the CEO of a wholesale Internet services corporation (2001-present), I am the co-owner of a cakes and confections company (2009-present), and I independently provide marketing consulting services to people who appreciate my marketing talent enough to pay me for it (2000-present). Before that, I was the bearded lady in a circus, but I didn’t include that.

Facebook looks at the most recent employer that is listed as current, then uses the text entered as the employer’s name and represents it as a link in the new profile view. Since Facebook’s system will use the most recent employer as the one to list just below your name on the main profile page, it may not be what you want. In my case, they are all present employers, but Facebook will use the one which started most recently. This makes perfect sense, in a résumé, but what if you want your favorite job represented on your profile home page?

To get the order the way I wanted it, I actually had to put a more recent starting date on my marketing consulting work, and even delete my cakes and confections company from the list. Yes, I lied by shortening my time on the job and deleting a couple of companies I own or have owned … I feel awful, just awful! The truth is that I really only feel a need to go back a decade, except in my formal résumé.

In my case, the most recent addition was “Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections“, which is a company my wife runs, but I am just a co-owner and taste-tester. I don’t want to represent myself as a cake guy … I am a web guy.

It is still important to leave some of the other jobs there, but I don’t want them staring everybody in the face. I just wanted my new Facebook profile to say what it does now: “Marketing Consultant at awebguy”, but it took a little tweaking.

It brings up a few questions for me. Have you had to deal with this, too? If so, what did you do? If you have not already switched to the new Facebook profile, do you know what people are seeing? Let’s discuss this … add your comments and let’s see what others have to say about it.

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Social Media Irony: Does Twitter Hate Facebook?

There surely must be some tension between the social media giants, Twitter and Facebook. After all, social media is a fiercely competitive and also very profitable industry. Once in a while, there is a blaring case of irony to make us laugh.

Irony: “… situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions.” (source: Wikipedia)

Maybe you will not find this as amusing as I do. After all, I laugh at a lot of absurdities that I discover online. Social media is fantastic for a laugh, and I may never get the pictures of people with back-boobs and front-butts out of my head. Yes, that’s right, I said back boobs and front butts. See for yourself at your local Wal Mart store, or follow the humorous links I provided.

NOTE: I know some fine people with back boobs and front butts, but let’s face it Snuggies are cheap, and they could disguise that stuff better than Spandex!

Now back to this social media irony of Facebook and Twitter. We have all heard that we should be using Twitter, right? Anybody in the marketing industry will, at a minimum, recommend reserving your brand name at Twitter.com.

Twitter grew like influenza since 2007, and millions of people flocked to the service to find out what a “tweet” is all about. I must say that it was not without merit, and I have participated quite heartily in the conversation surrounding Twitter.

Long before Twitter … centuries before Twitter (in Internet time, of course) we had Facebook. Facebook really hit the world by storm, and grew to over 500 million users in short order. Do you realize how big 500,000,000 is? It is big … very big!

Obviously, Facebook has a stronghold in the social media industry, but we still cannot overlook Twitter for its complex simplicity. I like Twitter enough that I wrote a book about the service, so this is certainly not a bash on Twitter. It is just an observation.

I also like Facebook, and I can spend hours spying on the lives of nearly everybody I ever knew. Then, of course, there are those many companies who do not even see it coming while I am compiling the information I need in order to crush their business with marketing intelligence that I pick up on Facebook.

A logical and meaningful bash against Facebook is like slapping a hungry grizzly bear with a slab of meat and then hoping I can outrun it. It is one of those things that sounds stupid even when smart people say it. Facebook is a winner in the information age. Knock Facebook if you like, but 500 million kind of speaks for itself.

No, this is not a bashing, but I question how they see each other. What is a good way to open a dialog of speculation on how the two social media giants view the others’ service? Make up your own mind on this (and please share your comments), but to me it seems that a look at each of their usage of the others’ service should say something. What it says could be taken different ways, and I will let you chime in with your thoughts.

Twitter on Facebook

Twitter has a Facebook account with hundreds of thousands of fans. My logical assumption would be that Twitter may actually have something more than 140 characters (the character limit on Twitter) to say to all of those adoring fans. Sure, they have a blog, and of course they have Twitter, but it seems that Facebook is not just “the competition”, and it could serve some great uses for Twitter. It seems that Twitter did not ask for, nor act upon my opinion … or the opinion of the 714,256 people who elected to “Like” them on Facebook. As the image below illustrates, “Twitter has no recent posts.” Surely they have something available if you click on “older posts”, right? No … nothing at all. They signed up for an account and did not use it, just the same way as the overwhelming majority of accounts created on Twitter. Irony? Just wait, because there’s more!

Facebook on Twitter

I guess I never really pay much attention to Facebook on Twitter, but they are there, and using the service. When I want to know more about Facebook, I either look at Facebook or find it on one of my favorite Facebook-focused blogs. Facebook really does not need Twitter, but they apparently found value in embracing Twitter as another tool. I commend them on the choice to use Twitter, and it just makes good sense to me.

In contrast to Twitter’s blank Facebook page, Facebook sends updates using Twitter. As illustrated in the image below, Facebook is not a huge user of Twitter, but has sent 683 tweets since their account was created in March 2007.

Does Twitter Really Hate Facebook?

I guess it is a stretch to say that Twitter hates Facebook, but it is pretty clear that they do not have anything to say to the people who chose to “Like” their Facebook page. It seems that they could at least try it out and perhaps come out and say “tweet”.

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