social media « ((little fat notebook))

Posts Tagged ‘social media’

How to: Create A Facebook Page

laelene Posted in how to guides，Tags: bloggers, blogging, business, facebook, facebook pages, how to, social media, tutorial, work

28 January 2016

[Editor’s Note: This is an updated version of the original blog post that is now nearly three years old! This includes up-to-date instructions after some changes to Facebook’s interface.]

I decided it was time for me to create a Facebook page for my little blog, so I can really try to build it out and maybe get some followers! I’d like to think that what I’m putting out there is educating or entertaining someone, but I’ve never really promoted it so it’s time to take action.

When I went to create the FB page, I (for the life of me) could NOT find where to choose the “Personal Blog” category! And that’s what spurred this entry. Read on to learn the basics for setting up a Facebook page and how to select a category like “Personal Blog,” “Personal Website,” and more!

Creating Your Facebook Page

First of all, here’s where you can create a new Facebook page. As you’ll see, right away they want you to choose a category. Your desired page may fit multiple categories, so it’s up to you to decide which one is best for your needs. Of the 6 types they’ve laid out for you (1. Local Business or Place; 2. Company, Organization or Institution; 3. Brand or Product; 4. Artist, Band or Public Figure; 5. Entertainment; 6. Cause or Community), all but the last one have a dropdown menu with category choices. Don’t worry if your desired category isn’t there – just pick what’s closest or tickles your fancy. In my case, I went for “Brand or Product”and chose “Website” from the dropdown.

You will be asked to enter your page name, which should be the title of your blog, the name of your business, or whatever you want the world to know your page by. Note that Facebook has certain rules in place about what is allowed in a name – for example, I tried to enter my blog name, ((little fat notebook)), but it was immediately rejected because I’m not allowed to use symbols. You are allowed one set of parentheses, but there can only be two words in it (like this) and obviously I’d have three if I went for (little fat notebook). Alas, I then tried just plain “little fat notebook” and that’s not allowed because the name must start with an uppercase! I didn’t like how Little fat notebook looked, so I went for the boring old Little Fat Notebook. Luckily, you can change it after the fact!

Setting Up Your Facebook Page

Once you agree to their terms and click Get Started, you’re prompted to fill in a description and add links to your site(s). They now allow you to choose your vanity URL (the pretty one that looks like https://www.facebook.com/littlefatnotebook instead of https://www.facebook.com/pages/little-fat-notebook/457453117668145). Check out my post on claiming vanity URLs to learn more. Choose carefully, you can only ever change it once after that. Next upload an avatar/profile picture to represent your page.

You can then add this new page to your Favorites area for quick access. That’s the part on the left when you go to Facebook.com. Finally, you can indicate your target audience including where they’re located, what age range they’re in, their gender, and their indicated interests. You’ll then be taken to your brand new Facebook page! A quick tour is given and then you’re given free reign. Feel free to add a cover photo, invite friends to like your page, and share your very first post!

Changing To A Better Category

Now here’s what you’ve been waiting for: how to make the page exactly as you want it! Under the cover photo area, click About. This takes you to Page Info where you’ll see the category you chose. Alternatively, at the top right, you’ll see Settings, which takes you to a page full of them. Along the left is a menu with “Page Info” – that brings you to the same place. Hover over the Category section to find the Edit button. From there you’ll see that the category and subcategory choices are far more plentiful than they let on earlier in the process! That’s where I found a previously unmentioned category called “Websites & Blogs,” which contains the subcategory option I had been hunting for: Personal Blog. The nice thing is that you can change this at any time, so as your site/brand evolves, you can update the category accordingly.

So there you go! I hope that helped. If you found it useful, please like my page to show your support. 🙂

A few other tips:

When you reach 30 fans, Facebook will provide “insights” about your page, which include data about the reach of your page and each post (how many people see it, pretty much), how many people are talking about (sharing) your posts, and how many posts you’re putting up daily. You can also find cool demographic information about your followers. Basically if you’re into data, you’re going to love this part.

Note that I was able to update my page name from Little Fat Notebook to all lowercase. Unfortunately you still can’t add symbols, but as mentioned before, you can use one set of parentheses.

From now on, you can choose to interact with Facebook as yourself (personal profile) or your Page. This option is available for anything public that multiple profiles can access. You won’t see it for posts related to your private friends, for example, since Pages cannot post to personal profiles. But on other pages, you can choose to comment/like as yourself or your Page.

I used to highly recommend putting your website URL in the Short Description so users can easily click to your site from your FB page. Now Facebook has added a Call to Action button instead, so you can set that up to get users to your site. None of the options are particularly blog-friendly though, so I’d like to see a “Read More” or “Read Now” action.

Now that you have a Facebook page, check out my tutorials on:
~how to manage your Facebook page
~how to link your social media accounts
~how to claim your vanity URLs (as mentioned earlier in the post), and more!

You can find all my “how to” posts for useful tips like how to make a favicon and random things like how to set your iPhone/iPad to stop playing music at a certain time or even how to win a Facebook contest!

If you have any questions or tips of your own, I’d love to hear them! Please do share. 🙂

When a trip to NYC becomes so much more

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: experiences, facebook, friends, instagram, nyc, opti, panda, pictures, shadow, social media, starfish, travel, yelp, zen

11 November 2013

I should have known a weekend trip to New York could be so much more. As it was, this was set to be an awesome long weekend: Panda and I would spend a day going through my old town of Brewster, then spend a day in the city before heading home on the third day to settle back in for a shortened work week. I was really excited to revisit the areas of my early teens, from Westchester to Putnam counties. It was also a chance for me to share a bit of my childhood with Panda. We were both looking forward to exploring New York City together for the first time – this was my first long weekend since starting work and I wanted to make the best of it (and we most certainly did)!

posing on bright yellow street art sculpture in park in nyc

Don’t just have fun – document it and share it and tag it! Friends might just come knocking.

I’ll share more about the trip another time. What really struck me about this experience was when I posted a few items to my various social media channels. Something completely unexpected happened again and again: my friends in the area began reaching out to say they were nearby! This is exactly what social media is great for, encouraging connections that otherwise would have been easily missed. There were my Singaporean friends and former coworkers who messaged me that they were in the city for one more day before returning home. There was the Yelp comments from my college friend who lived in my building one year and was now in grad out in New Jersey. Then there was the Instagram conversation I had with another college friend, who did Orientation with me (and Panda) and was now doing her residency in Jersey. I mean, I knew I had friends out in the region, but it hadn’t occurred to me who I might be able to meet up with on our trip!

Each of them reached out to me on a social media channel last night and I messaged all of them through those different channels. Funny how they all found me through a different site/app! By this morning, I had arranged to meet with my grad school friend (Shadow) and the Singaporean coworkers (Starfish and Zen). Shadow met us at our hotel in Secaucus, where we had breakfast together. Panda knew her from when we hung out in college, so it was nice for the three of us to catch up and meet up so far from UCLA. I had thought she was still doing Teach For America, but she’s already well into her first year of a grad program! After she left, Panda and I headed into the city to meet up with Starfish and Zen at the MOMA. It was really nice to be able to introduce them to each other, since I talk about them here and there and now Panda has a better impression of who they are. We hung out for about an hour before splitting ways – they were off to a lunch meeting and we were due to head home.

I’m really glad I was able to get those two brief encounters with people I love seeing. Too bad Opti, my optometrist residency friend couldn’t meet up as well… that would have rounded things out nicely. Still, it’s great to know that next time I head up north I’ve got some friends to hang out with. And to think, it was all because I shared bits of my life on Facebook, Instagram, and Yelp! I guess next time I can do a better job of letting friends know my plans, since I probably could have met with a bunch more had they known.

365great Day 146: Facebook

laelene Posted in 365great，Tags: 365great, childhood, college, experience, facebook, pictures, social media, ucla

07 August 2013

Learn more about 365great here.

The social media network that started it all. I remember back in 2004, I was getting ready to start college in the fall and there was this new thing called The Facebook trending. I ignored it at first, figuring it to be some silly fad, but when I got an invitation from a friend of mine who doesn’t do frivolous things, I decided to give it a chance. Before I knew it, I had found (and messaged) a ton of people set to take the same classes as me in fall quarter. Some of them replied and we struck up a friendship in the lonely month before school started when all my other friends had already started at their universities. UCLA is one of the last, if not the last school system to start up. From there, I started finding old friends from many of the other states I’d lived in, including childhood best friends all grown up. I loved Facebook for that, since when I was younger, every move meant losing contact with my entire social network. Back then it was either pay for long distance phone calls or write letters… so of course we did none of that – too expensive and too much effort! Over the years, my use of it has evolved from making sure I didn’t lose track of acquaintances to sharing all kinds of fun pictures. It’s nice that I can check in on friends at my leisure and get an idea of what they’re up to. For keeping us connected without constant effort, I value Facebook and it has always been my favorite social media site. It connected me back to a childhood I’d lost! Isn’t that great?

365great Day 117: Flickr

laelene Posted in 365great，Tags: 365great, flickr, online, photos, pictures, sharing, social media, storage, technology

09 July 2013

Learn more about 365great here.

Awhile back, I began to compare photo sharing and storing options because I didn’t want my hard drive to be my only backup. I wanted a place where I could easily store the gigs upon gigs of photos and videos that I’ve taken over the years (for free). This way, I can also access it from anywhere in the future, so I don’t have to lug around the hard drive whenever I want to gain access to old pictures. Since I wanted to be able to use old photos as if they were on my computer already, I needed a site that would let me store and download the images at full resolution. In Flickr I found the perfect solution. They offer a great interface, full resolution downloads, and 1 terabyte of storage! They also have a social component that might be a nice bonus feature to use. How can you go wrong with free online storage of your media? I’ve been uploading hundreds of pictures and I’m still at less than 1% of my limit. That’s unbelievably great.

FMSPhotoADay June 2013

laelene Posted in photo blog，Tags: fmsphotoaday, pictures, social media

01 July 2013

Here’s my final FMS Photo A Day pictures for now. I’ve done it for three and a half months and I’m ready to try my own challenge. Check out my previous months’ postings too.

: [B is for…] boxes galore! My cat would love this. {Walden filter} 6.1.13

: [A moment] channeling a lion. 6.2.13

: [On my table] all the essentials for work! #nofilter 6.3.13

: [After dark] the bunnies come out. {Kelvin filter} 6.4.13

: That wildfire last week did a number on our [environment]. #nofilter 6.5.13

: Helping [transport] this lizard to safety. {Hudson filter} 6.6.13

: [Bright]. {Lo-Fi filter} 6.7.13

: [An animal] [from down low]. {Sierra filter} 6.8.13 & 6.9.13

: [You!]. #nofilter 6.10.13

: [Something funny]. 6.11.13

: [11 o’clock] enjoying my new goodies. {Amaro filter} 6.12.13

: At the hotel, the extent of my [kitchen]. {Rise filter} 6.13.13

: [Texture]. 6.14.13

: [From above]. #ucla #commencement #engineering 6.15.13

: [Family]. 6.16.13

: [Centered]. #cake 6.17.13

: [Street] map. 6.18.13

: [Currently reading]. 6.19.13

: [Cute]. 6.20.13

: [Lunchtime] at the convention center. {Amaro filter} 6.21.13

: [Enjoying life]. 6.22.13

: [Last] one clean’s a rotten coin! {X-Pro II filter} 6.23.13

: [Negative space]. #nofilter 6.24.13

: [Sharp]. #nofilter 6.25.13

: Skies were pretty [empty]. #nofilter 6.26.13

: [Into the sun]. 6.27.13

: [Red]. {Mayfair filter} 6.28.13

: Looking [in my bag]. 6.29.13

: [Handwriting]. This is how I map out my blogging. 6.30.13

How to: Manage Facebook Pages

laelene Posted in how to guides，Tags: blogging, blogs, debugger, dlvr.it, facebook, facebook debug, facebook pages, how to, mobile app, networked blogs, pictures, rss graffiti, social media

30 June 2013

First on the agenda: using the correct “voice”

Whenever you are on Facebook interacting with content, you have the choice to use your personal profile or one of your Facebook pages. By default, you use your personal voice whenever you’re on people’s profile pages or business pages and you use your Facebook page voice whenever you’re on your own Facebook page managing it.For example, when I go to http://facebook.com/littlefatnotebook, if I like or comment on something, it shows as littlefatnotebook doing that action whereas if I go to some other business’s page and comment, it shows a comment from my personal Mary Qin account. If you want to comment as your page, then go first to your Facebook page and click the “Edit Page” dropdown menu. The last option, “Use Facebook as” is what you want. Now if you navigate away from your page, you will find that it preserves that setting and won’t switch to your personal profile as it normally would. Along the top bar, you can see which voice you’re in.

Getting more likes with exclusive content

To get more likes you could always run an ad or hold a giveaway, but if you want to up the ante for free, try setting up a tab with exclusive content, which can only be unlocked if people like your page. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of bigger brands doing this (though they mostly do it for giveaways). “Like us to enter!” they say. For the technical details on how to create locked content, check out Kira’s tutorial. You can get creative with what you offer and a lot of it depends on your brand. If you’re a blogger, you can include a list of resources for free stuff. If you sell things, you can include a special discount code. If you’re a musician, you can include a free download for your latest track. You get the idea!

Using the Facebook Pages app

Facebook created a Pages app that you can download for free to your mobile device. This makes it much easier to manage your pages on the go and it allows you to check out the Insights for your page. This also shows you notifications for your pages so you can tell whether there’s been action there lately. It’s a nice little app to keep handy!

Bringing out “posts by others” into your stream/timeline

Have you ever noticed that when visitors comment on your page, it gets relegated to a tiny box on the side called “Recent Posts by Others” that is barely visible? Well, if you want any particular post to show up in your timeline, go to your page and choose Edit Page>>Use Activity Log. Find the post that you want bring out into your timeline stream and click on the little pencil icon on the right to edit. You can choose “Allowed on Page” or “Highlighted on Page” to have it show up mixed in with your posts. Highlighting it will just make the box bigger and more obvious in your timeline. Of course you can also choose to hide any post as well.

Have fans set up “Get Notifications” for better visibility

It’s hard to get people’s attention in the vast sea of posts being added to Facebook every day. You can encourage fans to get your updates by scrolling over the Liked button on your page and checking “Get Notifications.” This will ensure your posts don’t get overlooked as often and will count towards the total notifications that person gets, so each update on your page is shared with them. Facebook actually doesn’t show everyone everything in the news feed, so your updates may never get much visibility otherwise.

Using Facebook Debugger for posts

Facebook Debugger is such a neat tool for those of you who may want to dig deeper into the details of your posts. If you’ve ever found that an image is not being pulled when you try to share a link to your page, you can come use the debugger to figure out why. If any errors are found on your page, you’ll see yellow boxes outlining the issue. Maybe the image was too small or you just updated it and you need Facebook to pull the new data, but it hasn’t updated yet. Try doing a hard refresh (press Ctrl+F5) and see if that fixes it.

Networked Blogs & similar auto posting programs

If you’re a blogger, you probably want your posts updated to your Facebook (and Twitter) feeds but you don’t want to manually do it every time. That’s just extra work, as if blogging wasn’t time-consuming enough! You can easily set up automated posts with Networked Blogs, dlvr.it, or RSS Graffiti. I tested these and found that Networked Blogs worked best for me because it can pull an image when there’s only a video in the post, whereas the others either have no image or pull my picture from the sidebar. Additionally, Networked Blogs allows me to manually publish a post in case I needed to do that and I’m picky enough about my posts that I sometimes have to edit the post. Some of the others only publish when a new post is up and don’t allow you to republish manually. You can also use these to set up updates to your Twitter feed so you don’t have to worry about promoting new blog posts there either!

Setting up featured likes

On the right side of your page’s timeline, you will find a “Likes” box that showcases some of the other pages that your page has liked. These will rotate randomly unless you choose to feature certain likes. To do that, go to your page and navigate to Edit Page>>Edit Settings>>More…>>Featured. Here you’ll see the option to Edit Featured Likes (up to 5). The ones you choose will always show up in that list on your page. If you look at mine shown to the left, the first three are featured likes that always remain the same. The last two continue to change randomly each time someone loads the page.

So those are some of the random tips I have for managing Facebook pages and getting the most out of them! Do you have any tips to share?

365great Day 104: mobile devices

laelene Posted in 365great，Tags: 365great, blogging, laptop, mobile device, music, pictures, smartphone, social media, tablet, travel

26 June 2013

Learn more about 365great here.

Where would we be without smartphones, tablets, and laptops? It has made my travel experience so different from my childhood’s. I was on my phone almost the entire time we were on the tarmac waiting to take off today, posting pictures on Facebook, blogging, and otherwise staying connected with the world. I think we sat there for 3 hours, but it didn’t feel too long since I was getting my social media on. Oh, and I had Pandora too! Chilling out to music was nice. Before mobile devices existed I would have napped and written in my journal. Maybe read a book if I brought one. Now I can go about my life almost as if I weren’t stick in a on plane. That’s great!

365great Day 91: Cloud Magic

laelene Posted in 365great，Tags: 365great, apps, cloud computing, cloud magic, iphone, pictures, service, social media, technology, the cloud

13 June 2013

Learn more about 365great here.

Cloud Magic is a wonderful little app that I found a few months ago. It’s basically like a global search of your digital footprint, which means that one search term brings up results across your email, social media, calendars, contacts, and online storage accounts. What a convenient way to find something when you can’t remember where the information might be stored. Or, in my case, I love using it to see if I got any emails with “congrats” or “congratulations” so I can make sure I know when I’ve won something. I use different emails depending on what type of site I’m entering a giveaway on and sometimes those accounts have filters so it’d be tedious to go through each to see if I got a relevant message. One search in Cloud Magic and *boom* it’s all right there for me to browse. You can even reply to emails right in the app! Of course, there are plenty of other ways to use it as well and you should totally give it a try! It’s so handy and absolutely great.

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