My current foster dog, Norman. What breeds, do you think?!?!

In last week’s webinar about creating custom tabs on your Facebook pages, we talked about inserting a Paypal donate button. Some of you were getting error messages from the donate button that wouldn’t let donors progress on to the donate page. NOT GOOD!

As near as I can tell, there is some piece of code in the code generated from Paypal that Facebook just doesn’t like. So I’ve come up with a workaround. It’s not that difficult, but there are a few steps, so you may need to watch the video a couple of times! As always, let me know if you have any questions by posting in the comment section below, or post on my Facebook page. That way everyone can benefit from the answers.

Hope this helps!

If you missed yesterday’s webinar where we learned how to create custom tabs for our Facebook pages, you can watch the recording here!

If you still have any questions, please post them in the comments below; I’m glad to help. And if you watch this video but it’s still not something you think you can do (or want to mess with), I can create your custom tabs for you, along with graphics and content. Just click here to find out more!

Thanks to everyone who attended the webinar, and please post in the comments below if you have any requests for other webinar topics to cover!

P.S. Have you heard about the Shelter Marketing Master Class at Sea? It’s going to be awesome….

Join me this Thursday, September 1, at 12:00 pm Central (1:00 pm Eastern/10:00 am Pacific)

If you haven’t already set up a Facebook page for your organization or business, you’ll need to do that first. You can learn how to create a Facebook page in this video.

This webinar will show you how to install custom tabs on your page with any content you want to share with your fans! You can also keep content hidden until someone becomes a fan, if you wish!

Facebook has changed a lot over the last six months, so join me to learn how to set up your own custom Facebook page–for Free.

You need to pre-register for the webinar, so please click here to register now!

Let me be clear: I am NOT selling anything on this webinar. And it’s not just a “here’s why you should have a Facebook page” kind of thing. I am going to walk you through the process, step by step, and answer your questions at the end. This is designed for beginners, not advanced computer users. Please join us–these tend to be really good webinars (if I don’t say so myself!)

If you couldn’t make it to the webinar, I recorded the whole thing, so you can watch it here. Keep in mind it’s about 1 hour long, so you certainly don’t have to watch the whole thing through; just skip around to the parts that interest you. In the coming days, I’ll try to cut it up into smaller videos by topic so you can more easily find what is relevant to your situation.

I got some great feedback, too. One person said it wasn’t quite basic enough, so in the next few weeks I’ll put together a SUPER remedial (just kidding!) Facebook webinar, going over the basic basic basics!

I also want to do one that’s a bit more advanced/intermediate, so you can see how to do some specific things, like create a custom Facebook page. Some new tools are available now that make this pretty easy and they are even better than old Static FBML!

So here’s the video. You’re seeing it recorded from my screen, so from time to time you’ll see the GoToWebinar control panel; just ignore it.

Please post below and let me know what webinars YOU would like to see in the future!

PS….have you heard about the Marketing at Sea Conference for animal welfare people? This is going to be incredible. Four days on a luxury ship with animal welfare marketing experts who will walk you through the process and share secrets for marketing your shelter–i.e. raising money, recruiting volunteers, doing more adoptions, more spay/neuter surgeries, etc.!! The price is very reasonable, and I’m one of the speakers! I’d love to hang out with you this February, poolside…so check it out!

GREAT news for so many of you who have multiple Facebook pages for your organizations–you can now merge the two (or three or four) pages!!

So many of us have had different people working on our social media for our organizations, and we have different pages, groups, profiles, etc. created. Now we know we need to have just ONE page for our organization, and here’s how to get there!

Keep in mind, this is for merging two PAGES. If you have a profile or a group, these instructions aren’t for you. There is currently no way–that I know of–to convert a group into a page, but you CAN now convert your Facebook profile into a page!

How to do it

This is a two-step, very simple process, but it will take a couple of business days. BIG thanks to Beth Kanter for sharing this information that she got from her insider contact at Facebook! (It helps to have friends in the right places)!

The first thing you have to do is get your page–the one you want to KEEP–”authenticated” by Facebook. Basically what this means is that Facebook needs to determine that all these pages belong to you and that they belong to your organization. So this is where you put the name and URL of the page you want to merge “into.” The page you want to keep. The other pages, the ones that you want to merge into this page, you’ll enter those pages in step 2.

So to get your page authenticated, go to this page and copy and paste the URL of your page into the form. They say that it will take up to 2 business days to get authenticated. (UPDATE August 2011: This is now taking up to a month; they are REALLY backed up!)

Now, just in case you don’t know how to find your page’s URL (I never want to make assumptions here!) that’s what starts with http://www…..in your address bar at the top of your browser, and looks something like this:

After you’ve received the email from Facebook that your page has been authenticated, you can do step 2!

Go to this page and enter the URL and name of your MAIN page, the authenticated one–the one you want to be your one page when this is all said and done.

Then you enter all the URLs of the pages you want to merge into that page. (these are called your “inauthentic” pages). If you have more than five inauthentic Pages that you would like to merge into your Page, just refresh the form after submitting it. You can then submit an additional request.

What happens now? Facebook will merge your pages! The fans of all the pages will now become fans of the main page. (in the case that someone was a fan of both pages, well, they’ll just remain a fan of the remaining page).

Will the content transfer over?

NO. This is VERY important to note. If you have pictures, videos, or any other content on your pages to be merged, be sure to copy and save it BEFORE you do this. Once the pages are merged, you will no longer be able to access your “inauthentic” pages anymore, and that content will be gone forever. ONLY fans will be merged.

Hopefully, this will help clean up and streamline your organization’s Facebook presence! Be sure also on your remaining “authentic” page that you have at LEAST two admins, just in case something happens; it’s never good to be the ONLY person in charge of your page.

Good luck and please post here if you have any other questions or problems!

How do you get rid of the pages, if that’s what you should do? How can you keep all your fans and friends? What’s the best thing to do?

It’s a little different for everyone, depending on your situation.

If you have a Facebook profile for your organization, then you are in violation of Facebook’s terms of use. Please read more about this and what you can do here.

If you have more than one page for your organization, then it’s a little more complicated. It IS a violation of Facebook’s terms of service to have more than one Facebook page for the same organization, but it’s not uncommon.

There really isn’t another solution except to choose one page (probably the one with the fewest fans) and post repeatedly “We are combining our pages! Please go to page xyz (URL) and become a fan, because this page is going away on Friday!” something like that. Tell people a few times via wall posts, and then you just have to bite the bullet and delete that page. (click here to learn how to delete a Facebook page)

Will you lose some of those fans? Sure. But chances are you have a lot of duplicates, and some people are just not interested anymore. So even though you will lose a few people in the conversion, it’s still worth it. You’ll gain new fans from your concentrated effort on your one Facebook page, and continued engagement will see that pay off over time.

So I am getting a lot of messages about the video I posted a couple of weeks ago about how to convert your profile to a page. THAT process is pretty simple, but people are confused about what to do with the data file they have downloaded, and how to get all the “stuff” that was on their profile, into their page!

Here are three videos that cover this process in detail.

In Video 1, we’ll talk about how to get your data out of Facebook once you get their email telling you it’s ready for download. (if you need to know how to initiate the download, check this video about that).

In Video 2, we’ll go over the actual process, step-by-step, of converting your profile into a page.

In Video 3, we’ll look at that ZIP file Facebook sent you, learn how to open it, look at what’s inside and what to do with it.

I want you to be totally informed about this whole process so you know exactly what to expect. Facebook gives us enough surprises, right!?

Please post comments below if you have any questions, or post on my Facebook page and I’m glad to help! As you know, Facebook changes frequently, so if there are updates, I’ll post here on the blog. And if YOU see anything new or different, let me know, too!

p.s. here are the links I mention in the videos, so you don’t have to write them down:

The post telling you how to get your data file out of Facebook

The link directly to the page on Facebook where you can initiate your profile to page conversion

Video 1: Metamorphosis: Getting your Data OUT of Facebook

Video 2: Converting your Profile to a Page

Video 3: That ZIP File and What to Do With It

Now that you can convert that old profile to a page, what do you do? You don’t want TWO pages out there to maintain!

If you already have a page created on Facebook, there’s no way to roll your profile into that page, or merge the two, unfortunately. If you convert your profile, then you’ll have two pages.

What you can do is convert your profile to a page, IF it’s the one that has more friends (they will be converted to fans). If
your fan page is much smaller than your profile, it would be best to just delete that page, then convert your profile to a page, and start from there.

Chances are, those people who were fans of your page were ALSO “friends” of your profile (so now they’re still “fans” of your new page). And if they weren’t, well–they’ll find you over time.

Whatever you choose to do, announce it for a week or so before you do it so people will be aware of the upcoming change.

To recap, you have two scenarios:

1: if your “profile” is a lot bigger than your page, and has a lot more “friends,” then just delete your existing page and convert your profile into your new page. All those “friends” will become “fans.” (note: be SURE to download your Facebook data first so it won’t all be lost when you convert your profile.)

Also, note that the friend to fan conversion takes an hour or so. So if you had 5,000 friends, and when you convert, you only have 10 fans, don’t panic. You’ll see the number go up as Facebook completes the conversions.

2. if your “page” is much bigger than your profile, but you still have some “friends” lagging over on the profile, post on your profile wall and send friends messages telling them that this profile is going to be deleted, and you need them to become a “fan” of the page instead (give them a link right to the page). Do this several times over the course of a week or a few days. Then just go ahead and delete the profile. Those folks who didn’t fan the new page are probably not that active, maybe they’re not even on Facebook anymore. So don’t worry about those people.

If you have any questions, post below in the comments section or on my Facebook page–we’re all here to help!

As you may know, Facebook “profiles” are for individual people. “Pages” are for businesses and organizations.

Having a profile for anything other than an individual person is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. If you don’t convert your profile to a Page, you risk permanently losing access to the profile and all of your content. This means they can delete your profile, at any time, without warning, for being in violation–even if you aren’t doing anything “wrong.” It happened to a  rescue in Oklahoma just last month.

But NOW, if you accidentally set up your Facebook presence as a “profile,” you can switch it over easily, AND all your “friends” will automatically become “fans”!! Pretty exciting.

So, here is what you need to know, because (as with all things Facebook) it’s definitely possible to mess this up!

What will transfer over?

Right now, ALL your friends will become fans, and it will keep your same profile picture. That’s IT. So if you have notes, photos, videos, etc. it will NOT copy those over–UNLESS you do a couple extra steps, which I’m going to outline for you below.

Is it permanent? Can you switch back?

Yes, it’s permanent. No, you can’t switch back.

So how do you do it?

If you have extra content on your profile, like notes and other photos (besides your profile photo), you can easily download this to your computer, and then re-upload it once you convert your profile to a page. So you have to save this information first. If you just recently created your profile, you don’t need to worry about this.

To do this, Watch the video below or follow these steps:

1. Click on Account Settings (upper right corner).
2. Click on “learn more” next to “Download Your Information.”
3. Click on “Download.”
4. They will send you an email with a link to download the file when it’s ready.

 

 
DO NOT start converting your profile to a page until you’ve downloaded that file!!

So, if you’re ready to convert your profile to a page, click here to start. (the link will open in a new window so you can still see the instructions here)

Are you not sure what kind of page you need to create? Watch this video to understand what kind of Facebook page is right for you.

BE SURE you are logged in to the account that you want to convert! If you maintain your own personal account, plus one for your shelter, be sure you’re logged into the right account, because there’s no going back.

This account you’re logged into will become a Facebook “Business Account,” and will be the admin for the new page that it’s creating. So now you an add other people as admins to your page. It’s really important to have other people as admins on your page, age least one other person, just in case something happens to you. So make sure you set up some other admins on the page!

If you’re having trouble, comment below or on my Facebook page, and I’ll be glad to help!