The Super Simple Guide to Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page Without Blowing a Gasket – Part Three

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Back in part two of this series, I took a look at some of the most popular native Facebook Page applications and gave you step by step instructions on how to set them up. Today in part three, we’re going to continue diving into the native Facebook Page applications so you can make sure you’re taking full advantage of your Facebook presence.

Today we’re going to take a look at how to make use of the Photos and Video applications. These are your chances to really add some content to your Facebook Page. Sure, you can (and probably should) have this content set up on other areas of the web designed for it (Photos could be shared over at Flickr and videos find homes on sites like YouTube), but there is an advantage in housing this content on Facebook.

This fall, Mashable reported that users were now spending more time per month on Facebook than any other site on the Internet. In fact, Facebook users spend an average of 5 hours and 46 minutes per month on the social community, making it many people’s “home base” for the web. (For perspective, that’s three times as long as they spend on Google.)

This is something that can’t be overlooked. Social media is all about meeting people where they are and giving them access to your information in the ways that make it easiest for them. Why make them follow you around to YouTube, Flickr, your blog and so on, if you can easily deliver all of that same content right to their doorstep on Facebook?

So all that said, let’s get back into the thick of things.

Getting Into the Admin Panel

The first thing you’ll need to do in order to work with applications is to get back into the admin panel for your Facebook Page. To do this, you’ll need to log in to Facebook and go to the Facebook Page you want to edit. Once you’re there, look underneath the large avatar on the left and find the link that reads “Edit Page.”

Clicking on this link will take you back into the Facebook Page admin panel. Once there, you’ll want to scroll down to the section that says “Applications.” Once you’re there, you’ll need to scroll toward the bottom to find the box labeled “video.”

Using the Facebook Video Application

If you’re an online marketer, you’ve heard of YouTube. You’ve heard about the amazing time on site stats (still more than 30 minutes per visit the last I checked) and you know how well consumers engage via video content. Video gives people a quick and easy way to digest information, get entertained, or become motivated. YouTube has also always held value because of how easy it is to share videos with friends.

Thankfully, these same values apply to video on Facebook. In fact, some might say video on Facebook holds even more value due to the naturally viral nature of the site. More on this after we talk about how to actually get your video on Facebook.

Since I started writing this series, Facebook has thankfully made a few steps toward improving usability. You no longer have to move your mouse over to the far right of the box to click on the blue mystery pen icon if you want to edit things. Now there are clearly labeled “Edit,” “Application Settings” and “Remove Application.”

Click on the “edit” link to get started. If you’ve never used the video app before, you’re going to see a fairly blank screen that looks like this:

Don’t worry, you’ll have content in there soon enough. Just click on either the big text link dead center that reads “Add Videos” or go find the grey box in the upper right corner that says “+upload video.” Click either of these buttons and you will be taken to a page that will let you either upload an existing file or record a new video.

If you’re uploading an existing video, click the browse button and navigate through your files to find the one you wish to upload.

While your video is uploading, Facebook will ask you to prepare a title and a description for the video.

When that’s done, go ahead and click the blue “Save Info” button.

Doing so will take you to the default viewing screen for the video within your Facebook page.

Publishing the video will also make it appear on the wall of your Facebook Page, like this:

…and in the Pages stream of your fan’s Facebook pages, like this:

Once someone watches the video, they’ve got several options. They can tag the video if they spot anyone they know. They can embed the video on any page on the web by cutting and pasting a snippet of code (like you do with YouTube). They can also share the video…and that’s really where the power of uploading videos to Facebook lies.

When one of your fans sees your video and decides to share it, they have the option of adding their own message and then sending the video out to their stream of friends.

Once they share it, it will go out on their stream the same way any other update would.

That means the video you uploaded for your own group can quickly be shared with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of other Facebook members who don’t follow you, because they’ll see it in your fan’s stream when they choose to share it. It’s one of those great viral benefits that is native to the Facebook community.

For those of you already using YouTube there are also quite a few YouTube related apps worth looking into. We’ll explore some of them in a later post in this series. For now, let’s move on to another visual area of Facebook.

Using the Facebook Photo Application

Photo sharing is one of the older forms of social media on the web. Sites like Flickr, Photobucket and Zooomr have been bringing communities together around a shared love of photography since long before Facebook became popular. While there’s still a lot of value to investing in those communities, many companies are choosing to use Facebook as their centralized content hub in the social media world and are taking advantage of Facebooks native photo application.

To get started, you’ll need to once again return to your Facebook Page and look for the “edit page” link under your avatar.

From there, scroll down to the “Photo” box and click on the “Applications Setting” link.

The first option to pop up lets you decide if you want your photos to show in a tab or in boxes. (If you’ve forgotten, tabs are the navigation options that run along the top of your Facebook Page and boxes are the literal boxes of content that appears down the left hand side of your Facebook page.) Pick whichever ones you want, I’ve set mine to display via both tabs and boxes.

Next you’ll need to click over to the “Additional Permissions” tab so you can make sure your photos will publish to your stream.

Once you’ve made sure your settings are right, you’re ready to start adding photos. From the edit application page, you can click “edit” in the Photos box:

You can also get to where you add photos by clicking on the “Photos” tab on your Facebook Page.

No matter which route you take, you’ll end up on the page showing any existing photo albums as well as a grey button that reads “+Create a Photo Album.”

Clicking that button will take you to a page featuring three form fields allowing you to name the album, specify the location where the photos were taken and describe the contents of the album.

Fill in all the fields and click the blue “Create Album” button. This will take you to an upload page allowing you to browse your hard drive to find the photos you want to upload. Once you’ve located them, make sure the photos you wish to upload have check marks next to them and click the grey “Upload” button at the top right corner of the browsing box.

Once your photos have uploaded, Facebook will take you to a page giving you the option to add a caption to each picture. You can also decide which photo you’d like to act as the album cover by clicking that option underneath the picture.

If you decide you don’t want to upload a certain photo after all, just click the “Delete this photo” option and continue working your way down the list.

While you’re captioning your photos, don’t forget to tag any individuals that might be in them. This works especially well for event related photos being posted to an events page. To tag someone, simply click on them in the picture. A window will pop up allowing you to type the name of the individual into a form. If they are one of your existing friends or contacts on Facebook, the picture will send out a notification to both the person and their network that they have been tagged in one of your images.

When you’re finished, click the blue “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page. This will update all the caption, delete any photos you’ve marked for deletion and tag any photos you’ve added people to. A window will pop up asking if you’d like to publish the photos to your news feed. Click “Publish.”

Once you’ve uploaded your pictures, you’ll be taken to the album view. If you look at the very top of the album, you’ll see options to edit, organize or add more photos to this album. The Edit button will return you to the page you were just on for writing captions, tagging people or deleting pictures. The add more photos option is fairly self-explanatory.

The organize option is handy if your photos need to be sequential. Clicking it allows you to drag and drop the photos into the specific order you want them to show. For instance, my photo of dicing the apples should have come AFTER the photo of pouring water into the pot. Using the organize feature, I can simply drag and drop them into the right positions.

Once you’re satisfied, click the blue “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page.

The Alternative Way of Doing Things

Of course one thing I’ve learned about Facebook is they like to offer a million different routes to get to the same exactly place. That’s part of what makes writing a comprehensive how-to guide so difficult. With that in mind, here’s a quick bit of insight into the “other” way of posting photos.

Head to your Facebook Page and locate the photo icon just below the form box on your Wall.

You’re faced with a couple different ways of doing things if you go this way. The first is to upload a single picture to your account. To do this, click on “Upload a photo from your drive.” This will pop up a window asking you to browse your hard drive for the specific image.

Once Facebook knows where the picture is, just click “share.”

If you have a webcam and select the webcam option, it will walk you through taking a photo with the webcam and uploading it to your account. If you choose the “Create an Album” option, you’ll be asked to type in a name and description for your album before proceeding into the exact same steps I outlined above.

No matter which route you take to upload your photos, you’ll want to click back to your main Facebook Page to see how they show up on your wall when it’s done.

It will also broadcast to the any of your fans on their “Pages” status updates list.

Of course if you tagged any individuals in your photos, the specific photo you tagged will broadcast out to their wall and have the chance to be viewed by all of their friends as well.

Coming Up in Part Four

In the next article in the series, we’ll take a look at both the Notes application and one of the best third party applications for integrating your blog posts into the mix on your Facebook Page.

More Articles In This Series:

Part 1 – Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page

Part 2 – Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page

Part 3 – Setting Up Your First Company Facebook Page

Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, the Social Media Faculty Chair for MarketMotive and offers small business social media strategy & consulting. Jennifer enjoys the challenge of finding unique and creative ways to connect with consumers without spending a fortune in marketing dollars. Though she now prefers to work with small businesses, Jennifer’s clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings and Highlights for Children.

Looking forward to Part Four! So far learned a few things to apply, but the fourth in series is where I have explored very little. Thank you.

Cool content,

Need to read more throughly and absorb. One thing I noticed in the past with fb is I could get video up way easier on my personal page than my business fan page. Have not tried as of late just wondered if it was still an issue?

Bill,

It’s likely still the same issue. The problem with Facebook is they don’t bother with usability. They set it up and leave it up to everyone else to figure out how to navigate things. That’s why I’ve gone over the top in detail on how to do all this stuff step by step.

The problem is Facebook Pages (for biz) are tied to your personal account. That makes it VERY easy to think you’re uploading something to your Facebook Page when you’re actually in your personal account. You have to make sure you go to your Facebook Page and upload the video/photo/blog post/note/etc from within the page.

This is a huge problem with apps too. Only some apps are compatible with Pages and it can be tough to figure out which are which. Install the wrong app and you’ll find all your Page content publishing to your personal profile. (That’s what actually prompted this series, watching a friendly nearly throw his laptop out the window because everything he tried to upload was publishing to his personal account.) 🙂

On a side note, awesome to see you here. Took my kids to Maize Valley’s fall festival a few months back and we had a wonderful time. (Any other Ohio folks, check out the review…it’s worth a drive to get there! http://www.theheroofcanton.com/outdoor-adventures/maize-valley-farm-winery-hartville-ohio/)

Just wanted to say a big ‘thank you’ for this series on Facebook and SEO. Really well thought out and well structured and presented. Many thanks indeed …..

thank you very much for all the useful information. I heard about your site through Blizzard Marketing. keep on posting!

Hi Jennifer,

Great series of articles on Facebook pages – but wow what a wait for the promised part 4, nearly 4 months now.

Can we expect it soon? Hope so.

Warm regards
Tony

Hi great article I’m 1/2 way through my facebook page set up…quite easy so far thanks to your detailed posts thanks for that. Ian

Thanks Jennifer,

This is a great tutorial on getting a Facebook Page up and operating. Clear and concise !

Liza

Love your articles — I hope you start to address some seemingly simple options… options that I find on other Facebook Business pages I just can’t seem to add to my own! Drives me crazy! The one that I want to add right now is the option to add photos to my business page from photos already loaded on a personal page… I have found it on other Business pages, but for the life of me cannot figure out how they added this option… it is labeled as “Add from my Photos”, and you can see an example of it on the “Pensacola Beach, Florida” page.

Hello! In your journeys have you ever encountered a solution to how fans can be permitted to add photos to a particular photo album within a page’s photo space? By all accounts it was once easily done and that slice of functionality dropped off at some point?

Appreciate your clear directions!

Great article, thankyou. I have a question though. How to get my company’s name as the facebook address? For example: www.facebook.com/mycompany
I cant figure this out at all, and it would be great to include on our cards and emails.

Thanks,
Hess

Hi Jennifer, I am so new and green to all of this and somewhat fearful of getting started but hey with all this wonderfully detailed information and encouragement, I am definitely going to get over my fears and do it anyway! I expect I am going to become a bit of “How How How” and “Help Help Help” terror. Anyway Jennifer, thanks again for your gererosity in helping others much less ITsavvy than yourself. May it come back to you onehundredfold. Yvonne, Galway, Ireland.

Thanks, great set of articles. I have tried setting up some business pages but are confused by the add admins section…it seems not to accept any admins with email addresses starting with ‘info@…’ and I also find that the admins list does not display the name of some admins, just a little portrait box and an option to delete the admin…but no info on which admin it is. I hope you might cover this in a future article.

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