What the New Facebook Means for Businesses

Everyone that uses the "almighty" Facebook has definitely noticed their big changes that they implemented last week. And as many of you know, not very many people are happy about them. You are just worried about that business Facebook page that they've spent hundred of hours on building, maintaining and expanding. So what do all of these changes mean for you and your business page?

There are two major underlying changes that business owners need to be aware of when it comes to posting on their Facebook wall. Oversharing and overloading. They sound like one in the same, right? Not really. As always, being a business owner on Facebook is a challenging task. You must interact with customers on a personal and positive level, but you have to make sure that you don't over do it. Just like any other type of marketing material, people don't want to be flooded with hundreds of ads continuously. I always tell people, "Effective marketing messages with minimal contact." Make what you put out there such high quality that you don't need to contact potential customers 100 times to have them get the point. This goes the same for Facebook posts. Make your posts valuable and effective so you don't have to post every single day.

On the other hand, overloading is loading up your page with so many applications that when people come to your page, they are distracted by all the bright shiny lights, applications and games that have nothing to do with your products and services. Games and applications are great ways to get people to your page, don't get me wrong. But if you have so many that people have no idea what your products and services are, what's the point? My suggestion is to stick to the basics, be personable and give people quality.

The less you waste people's time and the more you seem like an actual person instead of a business, the more interaction you will receive. And interaction leads to relationships, and better relationships, lead to sales.

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Facebook Edgerank: How to Get Your Posts to Appear More Often on Your Fan's News Feeds

You make interesting posts and you try to be as personable as possible, but it just seems like your posts aren't popping up on your fan's feeds very often. What is it that determines which posts appear more often and higher on news feeds? It's called Facebook Edgerank and the higher you can make your rank, the more exposure you'll get to your fans. It's a win/win. Edgerank is a complicated algorithm seen below, so what the heck does it mean to you?

Huh? You're still lost? Yeah, so are we.

Ue= affinity score between viewing user and edge creator

We= weight of this edge type (create, comment, like, tag, etc.) Essentially it means, how popular is the post

De= time decay factor based on how long ago the edge was created

Affinity

This is a score based on the proximity or how friendly you are with someone. You've probably noticed this before; checking out someone's page a few times within an hour and all of a sudden they are in your news feed more often

Edge (Post) Weight

This is a basic formula which determines the importance of a post. Pictures are more important than text posts, videos are more important than someone "liking" a page, etc. There's no set-in-stone hierarchy to certain types of posts, but there are certain types of posts that clearly do have higher Edgerank than others.

Recency

The final element of this equation is related to frequency, also known as time decay.  The longer a post has been up, the more it has "decayed." Newer posts have higher edgerank because of the fact that they're news! People want recent information, not something from two days ago.

Don't worry about the math, just do the following to up the "weight" of your edgerank and effectively increase your prominence on fan's feeds.

There are a few distinct post types you can use to raise your Edgerank and increase your visibility to your fans:

1. Videos Posting videos are seen as an action of high value and importance. People would rather watch videos than read long posts about your products. Let's face it...people like information to come easy.

2. Links Links automatically generate a short summary and picture from the page you're linking to, which makes your post stick out a ton more than a typical text post.

3. Encourage Interaction Asking for input, suggestions, or opinions is a great way to get your fans to interact with your page and company. Making sure people understand that you value their input is a huge part in the success of your business.

4. Be Personable It doesn't always have to be business! Wishing your fans a happy holiday or to have a nice weekend goes a long way to get people to value your company and it's products and services. Be a friend before you try selling them something and your sales pitches will go a lot further.

5. Post During the Social Media Rush Hour There have been thousands of studies on when the best time to post is, but in our experience, posting between 3 and 5 pm is by far the best time. We think this is true because people are getting done with work and logging into Facebook to check on what is going on. Numbers have shown that Facebook traffic almost doubles between these hours.

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New .xxx domain names- How will they effect my business or trade mark?

ICANN (The domain name governing body) has recently announced the release of .xxx domain extensions. Members of the adult entertainment industry are now submitting registration requests for domain names with the new .XXX extension which correspond to their existing domain names and trademarks.

Many of our clients have received solicitations from domain registrars encouraging them to file an application to block their domain from the .xxx extension with costs for this service between $200-$1,000 per year.

I'm not a lawyer but here is my opinion on this:

As the Internet grows ICANN is going to keep coming out with extensions (.biz. net .xxx).  I feel that it's a waste of time and money to keep buying up extensions just to protect your brand. People looking for a legit product or service won't be typing in yourdomain.xxx they Google you or use the domain printed on your marketing materials.

At Foremost Media, we own the .com, .net and .biz extensions and we use them for different purposes like a support site, email and server routing. I wont be blocking ForemostMedia.xxx. In my opinion this is a tactic by domain registrars to get you to spend money. I would also believe that .xxx sites would be the subject of heavy filtering on search engines so unless your looking for porn they I just don't see .xxx domains popping up on a Foremost Media searches.

If you do decide to pass on blocking your the .xxx version of your trademark or domain ICANN also provides opportunities to challenge trade mark violations in domains down the road via their Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy ("UDRP").

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