Good news! Facebook Offers are no longer only available to a select few but are now available to all Pages. Now, here’s the bad news. Unfortunately (for now) Facebook Offers are only available on Pages that have selected the Local Business category and have listed a physical location since Offers can only be redeemed by walking into a place of business. Hopefully that will change soon and all Page owners will be able to create an Offer that can be redeemed through online order forms, over the phone, etc., but until then, the rest of this article will only apply to businesses that are open to foot traffic.

I’m going to assume, since you’re still reading, that your Page qualifies and you already have the Offers option and you’re familiar with how Facebook Offers work, but if you aren’t, this video explains it pretty well.

Facebook Offers obviously provide an excellent new opportunity for location-based businesses with Facebook Pages who want to bring more traffic into their stores, restaurants, car lots, etc. They give you the ability to offer someone a free cocktail with their meal; a free shirt when they buy a pair of pants; a 20% discount; or a free tank of gas with a test drive. But, there’s another benefit to Offers. They can be used to get people to Like your Facebook Page.

When you create a Facebook Offer it’s posted to your brand Timeline and also appears in your fans’ newsfeeds. That’s great if you already have lots of fans and are just looking for ways to get more of them into your store, but what if you don’t already have a lot of fans? Well, one option is to spend some money and buy “sponsored stories” on Facebook. Other options include promoting the offer on your website or blog and via email, and in those cases, many of those people won’t already have Liked your Page and that’s how you’re going to use Offers to build your fan base.

As I mentioned, when you create an Offer it is posted to your Timeline and just like any status update, that post will have a permalink. By copying the URL of that permalink and using the link on your website or in an email you’ll be able to drive traffic to your offer. For example, if you have a restaurant you could put a nice ad on your home page that says, “Click here for a free Margarita” and link to the Offer permalink page. But, here’s where I’m going to suggest a different approach so you not only bring new traffic into your place of business but get them to Like your Page as well.

To redeem a Facebook Offer someone needs to click “Get Offer” below your Offer headline and then they get an email from Facebook with your offer. They can either bring that email in with them or show you the offer on their mobile phone. They DO NOT need to Like your Page to get the Offer. Now, obviously, people who see your offer in their newsfeed will be fans already but that won’t be the case if you promote the offer in a Facebook ad or on your website. So, here’s the solution.

Many of you are already familiar with fangating or offering an incentive on a landing page to encourage people to Like your Page. It involves setting up an app page that you can link to from your website, email signatures, other social networks, Facebook ads, etc. and instead of people who follow those links landing directly on your Timeline page, the first page they will see is your landing page. Landing pages provide an excellent opportunity for you to tell people what your Page is about and why they should click the Like button, and one way to entice more people to do that is to give them an incentive. Some people offer a free eBook to everyone who Likes their Page, or a discount on their first order or a free MP3 download of their latest song, and that’s how you would use the Facebook Offer. Offer visitors that free Margarita, free shirt or tank of gas for “Liking” your Page on your landing page and then just make sure to drive traffic to the URL for the landing page instead of directly to your Timeline page. You can link to the landing page from your website, emails, other social networks and from Facebook ads and now, not only will you be getting more people into your store but you’re also going to be getting more Likes.

What about those folks who don’t follow one of your links and end up on your Timeline page directly and don’t see your landing page? No problem, just create an eye catching app button that links to your “welcome” page and put your offer on the button. Do you think someone that visits your Timeline and sees a button below the Timeline cover that says, “Click Here for Free Gas!” or “Click for a Free Margarita!” will click that button?

By the way, when you offer the incentive on a landing page you don’t want to put the link to the Facebook Offer right on the landing page itself, you would put it on what we call a reveal page that only becomes visible after someone clicks the Like button. Once they Like your Page the landing page refreshes showing them a new page with your “Thank you for Liking us” message and a link to the Facebook Offer permalink.

If you need someone to help you set up your landing page Offer, please click here or email me at hugh at socialidentities dot com.

I thought it might be helpful for some of you if I gave a very simplified explanation of what I feel are the Facebook Insights stats worth paying attention to and why. I have included a screenshot showing a comparison between two of my posts to illustrate my point. I’ve also included Facebook’s explanation of what each metric shows.

Reach: The “Reach” number is described by Facebook as the “unique people who have SEEN your post” but that’s not really true since obviously Facebook has no magic way of tracking whose eyes actually focused on your update. The number simply represents the number of times your update appeared somewhere and the potential existed for someone to SEE it. This could be in your fan’s own newsfeed or in their friends’ newsfeeds if they shared your story, or friends of their friends, etc. If you see a Reach that is higher than your actual fan count, that simply means that it was seen by lots of friends of your fans and of course, that is always a good overall sign that you’re doing something right. It also gives you a good idea of how well your updates are standing up against Edgerank. A high Reach compared to your total number of fans is a good indicator that Edgerank isn’t adversely affecting your views.

Engaged Users: How many people clicked on your post. Most of your fans are going to read the post right in their newsfeed but if you include a link, photo, or video and they click any of those things, it registers as engaging. If your post is strictly text, in most cases they don’t need to click anything so this number isn’t necessarily helpful in determining whether people liked your post or not, but it can be useful in comparing similar posts. For example, if you posted 5 videos in the last week and 2 of them had a high Engaged number and the other three didn’t, you could probably make the assumption that you should post more videos like the 2 that had high Engaged numbers.

Talking About This: This one is relatively straight forward since it simply represents the number of unique people who liked, commented on, or shared your post. It is a very important number though because it is the best way you have of seeing how popular your posts are. The more people who interact, the better your post probably was. This number gives you a quick general indication of what you’re doing right or wrong.

Using my two example posts you can probably tell which one had a link. Even though the second one had a few hundred less views it had a significantly higher engagement number, which means people clicked on it for some reason. The first was a text only post and the second included a photo. Now, please don’t take this to mean that all your posts should have photos, videos or links because all it tells us is that lots of people clicked on it for some reason, but it doesn’t necessarily tell me that no one read my first story. The first story didn’t require any engagement but it did have a higher reach.

The number that is most telling in this case is the “Talking About This” number. Since considerably more people liked, commented or shared the second story, one would assume it was the most popular. That may not necessarily be the case here though because the fact is that the first story was just a quick observation I posted very late at night and the second story is one that included a photo with an explanation of the new profile photos size and I posted it around noon. What the comparison does tell me is that it’s probably reasonable to conclude that an informative post is going to do better than a simple observation. A post with a photo, link or video is probably going to do better than one that is just text and it also tells me that it’s important to know when most of your fans are awake and using Facebook.

I didn’t bother explaining “Virality” because I think it’s obvious and a calculator will show you that it’s simply the percentage of people who interacted with the story in some way and the more people who like, comment or share a post, the better it’s virality potential.

Btw, if you click on any of the Insight numbers it will open a graph showing more details about that number that you can analyze but like I said, I wanted to keep this post simple.

You may have noticed that for the past few days the size of the profile photos on both our personal and business Timelines was fluctuating. Depending on the browser one was using sometimes the photo would appear at the normal size and then other times it would be quite a bit larger. Of course this prompted a lot of speculation that Facebook was changing the size to make profile photos larger in response to new larger size of Google+ profile photos. Others were reporting they thought it was a bug and then eventually reported that it was indeed a bug.

Well, apparently it wasn’t a bug and Facebook has increased the size of our personal profile photos from 125 pixels to 160 pixels square. For most of you this will be meaningless but for those of you who got creative and designed a profile photo that somehow integrated into your Timeline cover, you’re going to need to make a modification to get things to line up correctly again.

For now, the size of the profile photo on our business Timelines remains at 125 pixels square but I really can’t think of any good reason why Facebook would have two different sizes so I suggest being prepared to deal with those images magically growing at some point too.

By the way, there has been no confirmation of any of this in writing on an official Facebook page but according to a “spokesperson” who was contacted by ZDNet, “I can confirm we’ve increased the size of profile photos”. Personally I hate taking the word of a “spokesperson” considering how often they seem to be wrong, but for now, that’s the closest thing we have to an official confirmation.

Edit: Actual confirmation from Facebook has finally appeared via email indicating that profile photos for “Pages” will be changing on April 26. Here’s the text of the email.

“On April 26, we will be updating the size of the profile picture on all Pages. We are letting you know about this small change in advance so that you can update your profile picture on April 26. The new profile picture will be 160 x 160 pixels and will sit at 23 pixels from the left and 210 pixels from the top of the Page.”

I haven’t seen anything official from Facebook about this but over the weekend I made a couple minor modifications to my personal and brand Timeline covers and noticed that after I uploaded them the quality of the images had improved dramatically, compared to the way they looked last week, which lead me to suspect that Facebook may have decreased the level of compression they’ve been using on those images. To keep file sizes small and page load times low, Facebook compresses the Timeline cover images quite a bit. When those images are purely photographic this usually still results in an acceptable quality photo but in the case of graphics or images with lots of red in them or text on them, the image quality is usually quite poor.

I know it’s not a very scientific approach but if you look at the before and after image below that shows a section of my own Timeline cover enlarged 200% to make it easier to see the difference, you’ll notice that the logo in the top image is not exactly crisp and there are a lot of “artifacts” (random pixels) around the logo, the text and the image with the woman on the right, whereas in the bottom shot there are hardly any noticeable artifacts and the image is clearly better.

To see the full effect of the dramatic difference, click the image to view at full size.

I’ve checked the file sizes of several Timeline cover photos and it appears that Facebook is using a jpg compression level of about 50% which is actually not too bad and which I also believe is considerably higher than they were using before.

If you have a Timeline cover photo that doesn’t look as good as you’d like, try reuploading it and see if you notice an improvement. I suggest saving any photos as jpg files with no compression and saving graphics (especially if they contain text) as png files. This way you’ll be uploading the highest quality image to start with.

EDIT: I knew it wouldn’t take Facebook long to plug up this exploit and it took about a week so don’t waste your time trying this because it doesn’t work anymore.

Before I get to the how to part I want to start with a disclaimer. For the record, I’m not a big fan of animated images because unfortunately they tend to be over used. Seeing one here and there can be amusing but a page full of them is annoying. I certainly hope that anyone who reads this and tries it out will use good judgement.

I’m not writing this blog post because I want to turn Facebook into MySpace but because I know lots of us have seen these animated images on other’s Timelines or had them posted by others on our own and wondered how it’s done. I wondered too so did a little digging and came up with the answer. There are at least two Facebook apps that will allow you to post an animated image but they add their own credit and a link to their page so those didn’t interest me. I knew it was done with a hack of some kind and as it turns out it involves an exploit of the mobile uploading of graphics and since animated GIFs don’t work on Facebook the images must be either JPG or MP3 files. There are some converters that will allow you to turn an animation into the appropriate format but I’m not going to get that involved in this post. There are already lots of animated graphics you can find to use without having to convert your own. I’ve also included a few at the end of this post. To get the URL of any of the images just right click and copy the image location.

This hack reminds me of one I wrote about a few months ago that let us change the text of a Facebook @ tag to anything we wanted to say and lots of people had fun with that for a few days but it didn’t take Facebook long to block it so I don’t expect this hack to survive too long either. But, for now it’s working, so here’s how to do it.

Basically you will copy some text, modify a few lines and then paste that text into your browser’s address bar which completes the hack and then will present you with a typical status update window where you can add your own text before posting.

Here’s the code: PLEASE NOTE that it’s important to be sure that all the single quote marks don’t get converted to slanted (curly) correct punctuation marks when you copy and paste this code. Be sure to check your code after you copy it to be sure that your editing program doesn’t change the straight single quote marks to curly ones.

http://www.facebook.com/connect/uiserver.php?app_id=2915120374

&method=stream_publish
&redirect_uri=http://www.facebook.com
&from=YOUR FACEBOOK USER ID
&target_id=ID OF PAGE OR PROFILE YOU ARE POSTING TO
&action_links=[{"text":"Social Identities",
"href":"http://www.socialidentities.com/"}]
&attachment={'media':[{'type':'image',
'src':'URL OF IMAGE ',
'href':'http://www.facebook.com/mysocialidentity'}],
'description':'IMAGE DESCRIPTION',
'properties':{'Like+us':{'text':'Social+Identities',
'href':'http://www.facebook.com/mysocialidentity'}}}

Here is the code as I would use it as an example:

http://www.facebook.com/connect/uiserver.php?app_id=2915120374

&method=stream_publish
&redirect_uri=http://www.facebook.com
&from=167867576571168
&target_id=167867576571168
&action_links=[{"text":"Social Identities",
"href":"http://www.socialidentities.com/"}]
&attachment={‘media’:[{'type':'image',
'src':'https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/photos-ak-snc1/v33379/1481/116/01AweCYyxuSnIAZzEOAABs-0V6i1c:.mp3 ',
'href':'http://www.facebook.com/mysocialidentity'}],
‘description’:'Are you ready to rock your Monday?’,
‘properties’:{‘Like+us’:{‘text’:'Social+Identities’,
‘href’:'http://www.facebook.com/mysocialidentity’}}}

Step 1: Copy the actual code above (not my example in red) and paste it into Notepad or other text editing program.

Step 2: Replace YOUR FACEBOOK USER ID and ID OF PAGE OR PROFILE YOU ARE POSTING TO with the correct ID numbers. You can either post as yourself on a friend’s Timeline or post as yourself on your own. Obviously, if you want to post on your own Timeline you would put your own ID in both places.

Be sure you’re using the actual Facebook ID which is a string of numbers and not the name. If you don’t know your Facebook user ID because you have a vanity URL you can find it by pasting this URL into your address bar and changing YOURNAME to the name of your Page or profile: https://graph.facebook.com/YOURNAME

Step 3: Replace URL OF IMAGE in the ‘src’ line with the URL of the animated graphic you want to use. PLEASE NOTE: You must leave the space at the end of the image URL. I have included a few below you can use and you can find others by searching Google or creating your own. To use one of the images I’ve included just right click and copy the Image location.

Step 4: Change the rest of the information that is currently referencing my own Page (Social Identities) with your own information.

Step 5: Once you’ve completed editing, copy all of the code and paste it into the address bar of your browser and hit your “Enter” key and you should be presented with a typical update window similar to the one below. Add some text to go along with your post, click the “Share” button and watch the magic happen. Or get ready for a ton of comments from your friends that hate animated graphics.

Are you the only admin of your Facebook Page? Then the answer to my questions is no, your Page is not secure. If your personal account is ever, for one crazy reason or another, disabled or becomes inaccessible and you can’t log into Facebook, then you won’t be able to access your Page either. I’ve even heard of people who accidentally removed themselves as admins. I know, it almost sounds like someone accidentally shooting himself, but it happens.

I highly recommend that you add at least one additional admin for your Page. If the unthinkable happens and you do, for some crazy reason, get removed as an admin, at least someone will still have control of the Page. But… that brings up the catch to my question. It’s also possible that your Page is not safe if you do have more than one admin because the other admin(s) can remove you as an admin and if they do, according to Facebook, no one at Facebook can add you back.

So, what we have here is a classic Catch 22 situation. If you only have one admin you can possibly lose control of your Facebook Page and yet, on the other hand, if you do have more than one admin, you can possibly lose control of your Facebook Page.

Here’s my recommendation. You really should have more than one admin or you’re just playing Russian Roulette with your Page, however, you need to be very, very sure that the person(s) you make an admin is someone you can trust and therein lies the rub. Who can you really trust? Wow, this little post is starting to get philosophical isn’t it? I realize it’s hard to know beyond a doubt that we can trust someone, but I think it’s far safer to run the small risk that another admin might get mad at you one day and remove you as an admin than it is to run your Page with only one admin.

The following is not a suggestion and you didn’t read it here, but there is one person you know beyond a doubt you can trust, and that’s yourself. Now, I know that Facebook has a rule that you can only have one personal profile so I can’t ethically suggest anything here, but put on your “read between the lines” glasses and maybe you’ll see what I’m not saying.

Personally, I mostly like the new Timeline and have been using it since September when it was possible for developers to get early access, but it seems that the majority of you aren’t thrilled with the new layout and I see people asking what they can do to keep the old one, a lot. There is one crazy option I’ve seen posted, suggesting that if you use an old version of Internet Explorer you’ll still see the old layout but who wants to use Internet Explorer, especially an old version?

Since Facebook isn’t giving us the option to choose which layout we use — for good reason, since they want everyone to share the same user experience — what can you do other than using the crazy Internet Explorer option? Simple, install the Social Fixer (formerly Better Facebook) browser plugin. You’ll be able to do the following:

Single Column: Switch from the side-by-side view to a single column in chronological order.

Hide Cover Photo: If you don’t want to see the huge photo at the top.

Hide Friends Box: A box for friends is always the first one in the right column, taking up space, so you can hide it from view.

Hide Check-In Maps: Under check-ins, hide the small map that is shown with the location.

Two days ago I noticed that Facebook fan pages had suddenly shifted to the left and were no longer centered. On large monitors that resulted in a lot of blank space on the right side. I remember back in the 90s most web pages were left aligned but nowadays all pages are centered, so unless Facebook was on some sort of weird nostalgia trip, I assumed they were preparing for something. This morning I figured out what. Facebook has added the Ticker to the Chat sidebar when viewing Pages so now you can keep up with what your friends are doing even when you’re not viewing your Newsfeed page.

You must be using Facebook as yourself and not your Page or the Chat sidebar is disabled and you will only see the page left aligned and the Ticker in your Chat sidebar if you’re viewing Facebook on a monitor with a resolution of 1280 pixels wide or larger, otherwise the page is still centered and the Chat sidebar opens over the advertising sidebar and only shows friends available for chat. On larger monitors the Chat sidebar opens to the right of the ad sidebar and shows the Ticker above your list of friends.

By adding the Ticker to the Chat sidebar it’s now always available, even when viewing Timelines and fan pages.

Edit: I just noticed that when I’m using my Timeline (profile) and click on the little “hide” arrow to hide the Ticker it pops open in the Chat sidebar and when I close the Chat sidebar the Ticker pops back to the top of the advertising sidebar.

I bet I post a new phishing scam warning at least once a week on Facebook, — along with lots of other people — and yet, thousands of suckers (sorry for being blunt) continue to fall for them every time. Sometimes the offer is so ridiculous it baffles me why anyone would fall for it, but they do, over and over and over.

This morning I got an email from “Facebook Surveys” and the subject was, “Vote now for your opinion of Facebook features”. I have included a screen shot of the email below and as you can see, they used Facebook’s logo and style to create a very convincing email. Of course, as always, there are all kinds of clues that this is bogus, ranging from subtle to incredibly obvious.

I’m going to list all of the clues, some of which you should have been able to pick up by just looking at the screen shot but others that you can’t ascertain from a graphic.

1. Let’s start with the email subject: “Vote now for your opinion of Facebook features”. That doesn’t even make sense gramatically. Why would I vote FOR my opinion? Wouldn’t I vote WITH my opinion?

2. Facebook wants to give me a free gift for taking part in a survey and my opinion is “greatly valued”? C’mon, Facebook doesn’t ask for our opinions before they do anything, that’s why there’s so much hue and cry every time they change something.

3. From the fine print: “The advertisers in this email are not affiliated with any of the above brands.” Hmmm… the “above brands” being Facebook, I guess but if they aren’t affiliated with Facebook, why does the survey invite look like it’s from Facebook? Oh yeah, to fool the suckers.

4. More fine print: “This is a third party advertisement sent to you by the list owner.” I guess they think that disclaimer covers them legally for using Facebook’s logo and inferring that the offer was from Facebook. I’m pretty sure they didn’t get that advice from an attorney, unless he got his degree from the ACME Law School he applied to from a bubble gum wrapper.

5. Now, for the big clue and the one that the vast majority of suckers never pay attention to. The mouse over. That’s right folks, if you mouse over any link, whether it’s on a web page or in an email, you will see the actual URL that it links to. In this case, assuming you hadn’t read the fine print and already knew it wasn’t going to be a link to a Facebook URL, this would be the time to wonder, when it wasn’t.

All three of the blue links in this email link to the following URL and I didn’t hyperlink it or include the full URL on purpose.

http://bewitch.onlinesportbettingsystemsreviews.com/……

Hello? Why would anyone, sucker or not, click a link for a Facebook survey that went to a sports betting website? Would you? Please say no so I don’t have to come over and slap you upside the head.

So, what have we learned here today? Phishing scammers are crafty, but kind of dumb, and unfortunately, the dumb part doesn’t matter, because as P.T. Barnum once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Now, would you like to see a photo of a real mermaid that has the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish?

Sharing on Facebook is getting out of hand. People joke about not using Twitter because they don’t care what their friends had for breakfast or when they cleaned the cat’s litter box and yet Facebook is adding updates in our newsfeed from apps that let us know what our friends are listening to, watching, and doing as they’re doing it.

I really, really don’t care what you’re listening to or watching right now. Seriously, I don’t. But this morning I noticed Disqus comments in my newsfeed. Really? Why would I want my friends’ blog comments in my stream? I clicked the “Hide all by Disqus” button and took care of that, along with Spotify, Hulu and all the other places Facebook thinks I want to know what you’re doing. Next thing you know they’ll come up with a device to attach to our toilet like this. Is there anything Zuckerberg thinks is TMI?