Adding content to your Fan Page

Compelling Content in Pages

There’s a couple of different ways to add content to the wall of your Facebook Business Page.  While I am a big fan of Business Pages, I am also highly critical of Pages that offer nothing compelling or engaging to the Fans.  Part of your engagement plan has to be adding compelling content to your wall.  How do you do that?  Here’s four of the most common ways.

The RSS: You can have the content auto post via an RSS feed.  This is how most people will do it.  It’s automatic and they just set it and forget about it. Your viewers will have the ability to “comment” and “like” this from their stream.  Links go direct to your post and are DO Follow.  The text chosen will be the first section of words from your post.  Do your posts all have wonderful attention grabbing content in the 1st paragraph?  They better if you plan on using this method.  While the feed you grab may include pictures they won’t show up on the wall here, just text.

The Embeded URL: Within the Status Update Box (“what’s on your mind?”), by entering the link into the text itself, Facebook will recognize that and create a link for you.  You cannot create the anchor text for this link but it does take the reader directly to the intended destination directly.  That could be a good thing when compared to the next option.

The link within your status update will have a No Follow attribute to it.  Like the RSS, your viewers can “comment” and “like” this from their stream.

The Attach a Link: Under the Status Update Box you’ll see the ability to attach a link, a photo, an event and so on.  By adding your link, Facebook will scan the post for images and text.  Here you can pick a thumbnail image, edit the anchor text, and even add additional text.  We all know pictures engage others.  Many times your post has a great image that brings it all together.  You can chose that image for the thumbnail and it will show up on each of your fans streams!

The link created is DO Follow as well.  Not only will your readers be able to “comment” and “like”, they’ll also be able to “share” this with their friends! Cool!

All good right?  Not so fast.  The resulting page that you linked to doesn’t load directly.  Instead it loads as a iframe within Facebook. You’ll know because you have a Facebook toolbar at the top of the post.  How does that effect SEO?  What about your analytics?  Does an iframe’d visitor even register as a hit?  Things to think about.

The iframed post in Facebook

Facebook Notes: The Notes function is somewhat of a hybrid.  Much like the RSS version it brings in the content via a Feed.  It can put snippets of the post into your stream.  That stream will have No Pictures and No Anchor Text.  Follow or No Follow? It doesn’t matter, the link in the feed doesn’t take the reader to the post.  Instead it takes them to the Notes Box within Facebook.  Depending on your outgoing feed and the way Facebook feels that day, the Notes Box may have a single picture (or not).

Be careful using Notes as links within your original post become a redirect in the Note Box and often times are broken.  Nothing kills return readership like bad links.  Like the Attach a Link version readers can “comment”, “like”, and “share” from their stream.

Bad Links Kill Readers

That’s four different ways to bring in compelling content to your Facebook Business Page.  Which one is best for you and how will you use it?
Next up, we’ll talk about your Landing Page.

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Tagged as: Anchor text, Facebook, IFrame, Note Box, RSS, Search engine optimization, Uniform Resource Locator, Web