Following several recent online marketing and networking seminars and workshops, I have been struck by the number of newcomers to social media, who are still very confused by the difference between Profiles and Pages. And, I have to admit, that since Facebook made them more alike, it’s not surprising.

Profiles

What is a Profile?  Profiles are online spaces for people to share, converse, as individuals.

Where do I set up a Profile?

• Click here to create a Profile.
• Fill out the Sign Up form, and follow the prompts.
• You now have a Facebook Profile from which to invite people to connect, and respond to Friend Requests.
• You can also Like Pages and Groups from your Profile.

Pages

What is a Page?  Pages are online Facebook spaces for organisations (including businesses) to share as organisations.

Where do I set up a Page?

• Click here to create a Page.
• Select “Local Business”, enter a Page Name (an organisation name is normal), check “I’m the official representative..” and click Create Official Page.
• You now have a Facebook Page, which you can direct people to, to encourage them to keep up to date with your organisation.

How to Make Your Page Public

Another useful point to note, kindly pointed out by Ivan, is that public Facebook Pages are indexed by the search engines, another good reason to set up a Page for your organisation.  People searching for your product or service have another place to find you online.  Go to Account>Manage Pages

• Click Go To Page next to the appropriate Page
• From the top of the Page, select Edit Page
• Under Settings, select Edit
• From the Published dropdown list, select Published

Other useful links, listed by content, all geared toward beginners:

Hints and Tips

Privacy on Facebook

What Not to Do

Facebook Friday Series

How to Decide Who To Add

Reasons to Use Facebook

The advice below is geared at professional users, not anyone else.  You are trying to lose friends and alienate people on Facebook aren’t you? That’s what you’re trying to do isn’t it?

• Spend your time on Farmville and other games and make sure everything you do there is updated to your Profile, so everyone knows just exactly what stage you and your other 200 friends have got to in the game.  Do this with every game.

• Like every Group that people recommend whether it’s relevant or complimentary to your business or not, including things like I’d like to see things from your point of view but I can’t seem to get my head that far up my ass.  This makes you look engaging, as you’re interacting with others.  ;P

• Connect with everyone that sends you a Friend recommendation.  It doesn’t matter whether you know them, or have any connection to them or not.  The more friends the better.  Numbers are everything.  (You’re the type who throws your business cards around like confetti, right?)

• Don’t be selective; post every Twitter and LinkedIn update to your Facebook Profile and Page.  That way, you wear people down by the sheer force of repetition, and you know, the more times people see your face and logo on Facebook (and other social networking profiles), the more likely they are to click into your website and buy multiple products.

• Don’t bother with adding your email address or telephone number on your Profile or Page.  If people really want to learn more about your service, they will figure it out.  Everything’s available on Google, innit?

• Share all photos of you and your friends and family.  The more photos in your albums, the better.  And, the more you show of your personality, the better.  Getting drunk and falling out of your top shows character, “ladies”!

• Send people Friend suggestions over and over again, for new people you want to help on Facebook, even though no-one is interested.  This is a charitable activity, and the newbies will love you.

• Ignore the growing numbers of people hiding your Facebook stream.  It’s their loss.

• Give other people advice on how to use Facebook, but don’t do any of this yourself.  People know that you know what to do and how to engage with followers, it’s not necessary to model this behaviour.  You shouldn’t have to prove yourself.

• If people disagree with you on Facebook, or post a negative comment on your Page, delete them.  There’s no room for differences of opinion or other viewpoints, it creates a bad impression of your business.

• Randomly follow people, then engage them in 2 hour Facebook Chat conversations.  When they politely try to leave the conversation, ask another question.  Or, better, make a random creepy flattering comment about their appearance.  They’re sure to stay on and talk longer.

Allen and I are huge followers of the right to express sarcasm at any given opportunity, and we are fully aware that it is the “lowest form of wit”, so we’d love to hear your crucial suggestions for how to lose friends and alienate people on Facebook.

Guest Blog Post by Property Pal.  You would have to have been living under a rock recently not to have noticed the furore over Facebook privacy issues.  They have certainly got something of a huge reputation management problem on their hands at the minute.

We’ve taken a quick look at some of the visualisation tools available on the web and had a look to see if their potentially shark jumping moment can be pinpointed.

Blogpulse

Blogpulse monitors social mentions across the blogosphere, by examining terms inside blog posts.  This particular graphing visual shows ‘facebook privacy’ becoming more of an issue mid April to present, with more and more mentions.  At its peak the term existed in 0.12% of blog posts tracked across the blogosphere.

Delicious

Delicious provides visual analysis of the number of bookmarks being bookmarked by users across the web at any one time.  In this particular graph the snapshot has been zoomed out to current.  In total across the Delicious network there have been 54760 bookmarks tagged “facebook” + “privacy”, showing the concern of web users in general.  The graph also illustrates the jump in the number of bookmarks in the past.  January 2010 showed 1386 saves with these two tags.  March 2010 has exploded with 2472 bookmarks – a 78% increase in the number of bookmarks.

This graph from delicious shows the trend for people tagging Facebook alternative Diaspora, indicating a negative response to the internet giant’s current policies.

Google Trends

Google Trends at a top level shows that around December 2009, a number of stories broke out about Facebook’s privacy.  Online rights organisation Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) labeled aspects of Facebook’s privacy change “downright ugly”.

Drilling down further into a month on month data set, we can see news reference volume making a gradual linear increase.

Google News Trends

Following the roll out of Google’s new interface, Google news archive search graphically shows stories that have been launched on the topic of Facebook privacy.  The peak in this case shows that most stories were generated in December.  However, it is worth noting that the blogosphere is not included in this dataset – only the larger multi-author publishers and newspapers.  This represents much more mainstream media and their impact.

Digg Trends

Digg Trends show that the most stories on Facebook privacy (and promoted) have been during this month.

Further diving into the data shows that this month, there has been about 15 more stories than the average promoted and Dugg.

The data for stories that weren’t promoted is just as interesting – for the number of stories submitted, regardless of whether they have been dugg or buried, there has been a 335% increase.

Twitter Trends

Trendistic monitors tweets across the Twittersphere, and as the other visualisations have show thus far, there is definitely still a correlation with data from elsewhere along the graph.  Notice December’s mentions nowhere near the peak for May.  Another Twitter meme tracker reports over 4 thousand links in the past week alone pertaining to the privacy issues.

Overall we can see from some of these meme trackers that the stories are continuing to percolate through online communities and social networks.

Some thought leaders such as Tim O’Reilly have figured that privacy being open may actually be a better scenario for the web.  Gary V thinks we’ve taken our eye off the ball, with Facebook continuing to evolve, adapt and change over time to satisfy its users.  Lest we forget ‘beacon’.

Facebook is attempting to put out the fires, but it will certainly be interesting to see how things progress from here on in and how they handle this obvious growing online concern.  What do you think?  Will it become an issue?

About PropertyPal

Today’s guest blog comes from Paul Anthony, who works as Internet Marketing Manager for Northern Ireland’s largest property website, PropertyPal.com. His role within the company includes managing all search engine optimisation, search engine marketing and social media activity.

PropertyPal.com is Northern Ireland’s number 1 property website, displaying details of more homes for sale and rent than any other website. It has around 95% of all properties for sale and rent, and at any time stocks over 40,000 properties to buy or rent. Including at time of writing approximately 5,000 houses for sale in Belfast, and 1,770 houses for rent in Belfast

It is independently owned and has more properties to rent in Belfast than any other Northern Ireland website since January 2010.

You can also find them on Facebook.

Following a request from a group of business people in Omagh, we are holding a seminar in the South West College on 14 June.  This seminar has been run several times before, mainly in the Belfast area.  Comments are always positive.  Here are some recent responses:

“Had all relevant aspects explained and plenty of opportunity to ask questions.”  Kerry Smyth, Knowledge Transfer Centre, QUB

“I went to a Social Media Workshop run by Dawn from Sensei last week in Antrim. Dawn managed to condense a huge subject into a very simple, easy to follow and interactive presentation. There were people there who didn’t have a clue about social networking. There was a lot of excitement in the room and there were many questions about the possibilities. Dawn was very calm and professional and managed to keep people interested throughout. I would have no hesitation in recommending Dawn to run courses for my company or anyone else’s for that matter. Very pleased. (First published on Lookaly).”  Dean Langasco, I Love Mondays

Who Should Attend?

This session is for anyone who wants to gain a quick-fire overview of what social media is and how it can be incorporated into a business marketing and networking strategy.   It is most suitable for those who are new to online marketing, or those in the very early stages.

Results

This seminar will help you to:

• Understand the benefits and meaning behind the jargon and hype
• Know what to do to establish a professional online profile
• Access relevant industry information and local business assistance
• Keep in touch with your customers to encourage repeat sales
• Network more effectively with other SMEs

Thanks to South West College, Omagh, who are hosting this event.

A similar event will be held in Limavady.