Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked by people to blog on a couple of things that are really bugging them. So here’s the two top offenders:
1. Farmville – How to hide it
A common problem. Whether it’s Farmville or Fishville, Mafia Wars or whatever the latest craze is it seems to drive people mad. There is however help at hand, hiding these games from your newsfeed without hiding the friends using them is relatively simple:
- Find a post from one of your friends using Farmville on Facebook:
- Hover your mouse over the top right hand side of the post and ‘Hide’ will appear:
- Click ‘Hide’. Facebook will give you the option of hiding the game or hiding the user. Click ‘Hide Farmville’
- Facebook then confirms your action:
And that’s it, Farmville won’t bug you again!
2. Using Facebook Profile Pages for Business
I’ve blogged about this before but the problem seems to be getting worse and it’s really annoying people. Two people have asked me to blog about it in the last week.
This morning I logged onto facebook and this was what my news feed looked like:
Flooding a newsfeed like can prove an annoyance to people and you run the risk of users hiding your profile altogether. Apart from just being annoying there are other reasons you shouldn’t use a profile page for your business:
- A Facebook fan page is visible to the whole world, you don’t need to be a Facebook user or logged in to view it. Because of this it is also visible to search engines, giving you inbound links to your website improving your search engine optimisation.
- Demographics – Facebook offer some great demographics, you can see what age group your fans fall into, whether they are male or female and in what geographical area they live. This means you can see if you are targeting the right audience with your page.
- Respect your customers, respect their privacy. By using a personal profile page for business you are asking friends to share personal information with you but all you offer in return is marketing information. This isn’t a fair exchange and is likely to annoy fans and attach some negative sentiment to your brand.
- Facebook don’t want you to do it, they could close your profile down loosing you your friends in the process.
If your still not convinced look at this profile page that is promoting a business:
This is space that should be devoted to offering valuable content to your customers and enhancing your brand. Yet on a profile page it’s cluttered with irrelevant information.
So if you value your customers and fans please, please, please change to a business fanpage!
At Spiderworking.com we set up business fanpages for customers, offer training, consultation and even Facebook campaign management. Get in touch or call us on 01 442 9410 to find out more.
Great stuff and so simple when you know how – thanks Amanda – I am off to hide Farmville and Mafia Wars and Cafe World …….
Some great points here – perfect for sharing on my Business (fan) page 🙂 Whilst I too recommend to clients that they have both a profile and a separate business (fan) page, I wasn’t aware of points 1 and 4 – so thank you for those. I do have to say however, that not being able to connect to a Liker properly is frustrating. Eg. It would be nice to be able to follow a Liker as a business, so without having them as regular friends. I guess the solution is to create a couple of friend groups called ‘likers’ and ‘business networking’ and apply settings accordingly, but that feels horribly cumbersome and complicated. Would love to know your thoughts on that? Cx
Hi Claire,
Thanks for your input. I know exactly what you mean about not being able to connect on a business level with people. I seem to have virtually turned my personal profile page over to business these days and have found new ways to communicate with my ‘real friends’. Setting filters works to a certain extent but it isn’t really thorough enough for me.
I think this is one of the key things about social networking though, you are not just representing a brand, to some extent if you work for yourself or work for a company doing social media you become the brand. It all goes back to people buying from people.