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How to Protect Your Online Social Media Presence Using Facebook Business Manager

Posted on August 4, 2014 by jessestay

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Facebook’s recently released Business Manager is a God-send for any social media manager or strategist or even security department desiring to manage multiple Facebook Page admins among dozens (to even hundreds or thousands) of Facebook Pages and Ad accounts. With just a few clicks you can know exactly who has access to your Facebook Pages and Ad accounts, and remove that access within just a click. As an agency, this is a dream come true! But there’s one element of security marketers and businesses need to be aware of, and it could compromise their entire Business Manager access if they’re not careful.

The problem I’m referring to is social engineering. The fact is it’s pretty easy to duplicate or copy another person’s Facebook account. I saw it happen just today – a fraudster finds the friend of someone influential, copies the account of that friend, and starts friending the same people the original person was friends with. If they can make it far enough, the account can look pretty authentic! And if you’re onto them they’ll just block you so you can’t report them (more on that later).

So what happens when a Facebook Page admin, or Business Manager admin is the target? The fraudster just needs to send a request from Facebook Business Manager to one of the owners of the Facebook Page as someone that looks like a legit admin of that account, and if that admin is not paying attention, before they know it, they’ve been removed from the Page, and the new owner is posting on their behalf with basically whatever they want. It could be a Social Media manager’s nightmare!

So how do you protect yourself? Here are a couple tips:

Email or call the person sending you a request. This is probably the easiest way to protect yourself. Don’t trust their Facebook account, as it could be hacked. However, sending them a separate email or even better a phone call or walking over to their desk, ensures that you’re messaging them at a guaranteed communication channel. If they respond and say it was them, you’re good to approve the request!
Also, don’t trust an email from someone that says they sent you a request – it’s easy to spoof the “from” line of an email. Always make sure you directly email them (not in a reply), and ask them if you must use email.
Turn the management of your Facebook Page and Ad Account access over to your security team. Marketing teams may hate me for this one, but it truly is the safest means. Your security team is trained to watch for stuff like this (and if they aren’t, have them contact me and I can get them trained!). A good security team will both watch out for your security, ensure only those that need access to your accounts have access to them, and also empower you as a marketing team to get as much done as you need to get done. A good security team will never be a hinderance, but also protect your online presence as a company.
Only give the requesting party the access they truly need to your page or ad account. This is important. It’s so easy to just give “admin” access to just anyone, which means that individual can completely remove other admins making it a nightmare to recover your Facebook Page. Some times if it’s an agency, and you don’t have the experience to manage your page, admin access is appropriate. But make sure your agency (such as Fit Marketing, the company I work for – your security is something we have experience with, and are good at) understands how to keep your account safe, and make sure you email them to know it’s them sending the request. Beyond that, ONLY give access to people what they need! Hopefully your agency is following this as well (many agencies don’t, so be careful).
Develop a contingency plan. Most companies don’t have one of these. A contingency plan can help your organization prepare in the event someone does compromise your Business Manager access. It can also ensure employees are educated and following best practices to make your company as secure as possible. Companies such as Fit Marketing and myself can help you develop a solid contingency plan for your business.

Facebook Business Manager is an incredible tool – I’ll be posting more about it on the Fit Marketing blog shortly. It can actually make your organization safer if used right. However, if business owners and marketers aren’t careful, your social media presence could easily, and quickly be compromised. Hopefully these tips can help secure your social media presence using the tool.

ANYONE Can (and Should) be a Marketer! My New Business and Focus

Posted on September 23, 2013 by jessestay

About 7 years ago I was sitting in a full-time job, developing software as a senior engineer for UnitedHealth Group. I loved writing software, and began writing a few tools on the side just for the fun of it. I couldn’t build an audience though! I was stuck – great software, with nowhere to go. I’ve heard this over and over again from other software developers, small business owners, executives, product managers, and the like, all lacking the proper skills they need to grow an audience successfully and do it without paying an expensive marketer or social media professional. I feel your pain!

I spent the next 7 years experimenting and trying new methods I learned from friends of mine and other marketing experts to where I finally think I’ve come up with the optimal process in growing audiences and revenue from those audiences. I ended up writing 6 books from my experience. I began to take some of my software development skills to take things I learned writing documentation for Facebook, Inc. and turn that into a concept I call “social design”. I learned perfect methods for Facebook, and Google+ Page growth. I learned ways to advertise on Facebook that many Marketers today still come to me asking about. In all honesty, I don’t share any of this to boast, but to show the learning process I went through.

You’ve probably seen me lately trying to figure out “my next thing”. Do I look for a job? Do I consult? Do I build a product? I’ve been meeting with a lot of people, and received some amazing advice. Today I’d like to announce what that next big thing is!

Today I’m announcing my “Everyone a Marketer” program with a series of webinars, online training curriculum, corporate retreats, and individual coaching all catered to showing anyone from the software developer, to the business executive, to even the marketing department itself how to grow significant audiences, and how to grow revenue from those audiences. The idea is that I want to show you, and every one of you how to become a marketer. I want to show you how to grow audiences. I want to show you how to sell to those audiences. I want to show you how to target to specific audiences. I want to show you how to learn who your audiences are. I want to show businesses how to engage their employees as marketers and social assets for the organization!

I’m kicking it off TODAY with the announcement of my first webinar in the program! I’m calling it, on this same theme, “Everyone can Learn Facebook Ads! How to Build Fans and Revenue With FB Ads”, or “Mad Facebook Ads!”. I’m spending 1, jam-packed hour to show you techniques I’ve learned with the organizations I’ve worked for, and clients of mine that will grow Facebook Pages using Facebook ads at a very low cost. Have you ever seen $.002 (that 2-tenths of a cent folks!) per like in your Facebook ad campaigns? I have! I want to show you how.

Registration is fairly cheap considering the value you’re going to get – for $150 you get access to the webinar and the Q&A for 1/2 hour afterwards (That’s half of what I charge for consulting!). This is potentially thousands of dollars in savings you’ll get from the knowledge you’ll receive in the webinar! My hope is for you to get much, much more out of this than you put in – I’m extremely passionate about this subject, and making YOU successful! If you don’t want to attend the live webinar, you can download for a reduced price the recorded version after the webinar is finished.

YOU CAN REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR HERE! GO NOW! 🙂

It doesn’t stop there! I need your help! If you want to join me in growing this webinar, I have set up a simple affiliate program for you to help me promote the webinar. Each affiliate gets 33% of any ticket sales they refer, which is pretty good for an affiliate program in my experience! Will you please SHARE this webinar with your friends and family? TO SIGN UP AS AN AFFILIATE, CLICK HERE! This is a great opportunity!

I’m limiting this to just 100 people per day (2 different days, same webinar), so act quick – I’m predicting this will sell out quick! Again, GO HERE TO REGISTER! This will sell out soon!

Oh, and STAY tuned for more! I’ve got much, much more planned for this program! I want YOU to learn what I’ve learned! If you want to learn more, GO HERE AND SIGN UP TO RECEIVE UPDATES!

With Facebook’s New Page Design, Do We Really Need Twitter?

Posted on February 12, 2011 by jessestay

(Alternate Title: “Twitter: 3 Years Later and Nothing’s Changed”)

Talks of acquisition, deprecation of whitelisting, charging for API access – Twitter’s doing all they can to reduce cost and become more profitable. It’s actually a typical story for them. I’ve written the same post several years in a row – about 4-5 years strong and Twitter still hasn’t changed. Yet, it seems Facebook is always changing, and they’ve been around for almost the same time. I’ve been looking for the excuse for years now (remember when I quit Twitter, and came back?) to be able to reduce my usage on Twitter. The fact is I’ve got almost 30,000 followers on Twitter, and it’s a great megaphone for me to get word out and share. I’m not required to have a 2-way relationship, and people can just click “follow” and they’re immediately getting my updates in their stream. Until recently, Facebook made that really hard – it was hard to be a brand on Facebook, follow others, and build real relationships as a brand. However, Facebook changed that recently, when they started allowing brands to “like” other brands and Pages and follow them in a stream, just like a normal user’s account, with their new Facebook Page redesign. Now, I can “Use Facebook as (my page)” and see other public, more anonymous, accounts just like I do on Twitter. There really isn’t much difference! And I get more features!

Twitter has much fewer active users (they quote in the hundreds of millions, yet when I look at my sample of that data, only 30% of Twitter’s users have more than 20 updates total!), much less engagement, and it’s much harder to organize the conversation. Let’s add to the fact that as a brand I’ve sent numerous email requests to the company asking to advertise with no response back. On Facebook it’s much easier to represent yourself as a brand, it’s much easier to network, and there are so many more integration points to share and get into people’s conversations! I have weekly conversations with my Facebook account rep. I get Insights telling me how well my posts are doing. I have a self-serve ad interface where I can get real-time stats on how many people my ads go to. I have accounts with hundreds of thousands of users as an audience. I have APIs and Search APIs and Real Time APIs to all these public accounts as a developer. I’m really starting to think, is it really worth using Twitter any more?

In an era where the competition is fierce, has more features than you do, and is more appealing to brands, where the money is, I’m afraid it might be the time to sell for Twitter. I’ve suggested before that Twitter would end up in an acquisition and I fear if they can’t start competing faster and better, they’re going to get left out in the dust, with a lower and lower value. I hope they can prove me wrong, that they can accomodate brands better, and start competing with the likes of Facebook, but I’m afraid Facebook’s recent move makes Twitter an even less necessary platform for brands than ever before.

Maybe I’m wrong – can you share with me why you think Twitter is still more valuable than Facebook for users, developers, and brands? I admit I’m now out of options.

Image courtesy http://www.chaaps.com/facebook-vs-twitter.html

UPDATE: See my latest post, “How to Replace Twitter With Facebook” if you want to know how to do this.

Facebook-hosted "Pages" are No Longer Necessary – Here’s Why

Posted on August 5, 2010 by jessestay

Social Media Examiner shared some advice I gave on their Facebook Page recently regarding the warning about Facebook “boxes” being removed from Facebook Pages in the next week. The reminder was met with a lot of concern from subscribers, who had grown attached to the ability to customize the look and feel of their Facebook Pages through the Static FBML app on Facebook and the ability to add custom “boxes” to the Wall of their Page. The other concern is that Facebook will also be switching to the smaller, 520px Tab format, reducing the amount of surface area for a custom tab to add personalization to a Facebook Page. I argue all this concern is moot however – there is something better Page owners can be doing that they aren’t, and that is moving their Pages over to their own websites and managing the interface there instead of on Facebook.com, and I think that’s the direction Facebook wants Page owners to go.

At Facebook’s sold out F8 developer conference this year this focus seemed evident. Facebook launched a series of new “Social Plugins”, and a protocol (called Open Graph Protocol) enabling any website to essentially become a “Facebook Page”. Right off, website owners could simply put a “like button” Social Plugin on their website by copying and pasting an iframe tag from Facebook’s developer site, and immediately, with some added meta tags added to the section of their HTML, they could have all the functionality of a Facebook Page right on their own website.

Facebook had a great demo at the conference, which Jolie O’Dell (from Mashable) pointed me to (see her article about it here), where they basically took all the content from Lady Gaga’s Page and converted it to its own, customized website with its own look and feel that you could easily change themes. Facebook-me.com, which appears to still be there, enabled customized themes to be applied to profiles, perhaps similar to MySpace in a way, but in a way that website owners themselves could host those themes on their own servers. All this could be done through simple Graph API calls and some customization on your own server. See their demo they gave me here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix0OY6_6y_8

For instance, if you query http://graph.facebook.com/stay/feed in your browser, immediately you’ll be presented with a parseable feed taken straight from my Facebook Page of all the posts put there. Re-format that in any way you like and you have your own customized Facebook Page. No login necessary.

It can be even better though. Rather than letting Facebook host the data, you can handle most of it on your own through Social Plugins. For instance, let’s look at what happens if I want to make StayNAlive.com its own Facebook Page (in fact I’ll do it right here so you can try it out when I’m finished). I simply go to http://developers.facebook.com and click on the big green “Add Facebook to my Site” button, then click on the Social Plugins link. Select the “Like Button” social plugin, and enter http://staynalive.com in the URL box. Click the “Get Code” button, and you’ll be given code that looks like this:

http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fstaynalive.com&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=80

Now, if I put that at the top of the website, a like button appears, and my website is now a Facebook Page. Go ahead and click “like” and you’ll see what I mean. Now you’re subscribed to my “Page”, you’ll get all the posts I send to your news feed, and best of all, any links to the “Page” go back to my actual website, and not Facebook.com.

Becoming an Admin

To get all the benefits of turning your website into a Page and having the full flexibility of customization, you’ll need to make a couple updates to the section of your site’s HTML. These meta tags follow a standard called “Open Graph Protocol”, and by following it, Facebook will know how to represent your site inside Facebook. There are different tags that can specify the title of your site, a main image for your site, and more, but the most important tag you need to add to your site’s section is a meta tag that looks like this:

This specific meta tag identifies the user, 683545112 (which happens to be my Facebook ID), as the admin for your website on Facebook. To get your Facebook ID, the best way I use is to go to your profile, click on your profile image, and look at the number after “id=” in the URL. That’s your Facebook ID. You can also specify multiple Facebook IDs in the content attribute of the meta tag by separating them by commas.

Once you specify this, next to your like button that you just installed you’ll see a “Admin Page” link next to the like button that, by clicking on the link, will take you to what looks like a regular Facebook Page on Facebook. It’s from there you can post updates to your fans and have them see it in their news feed. Also, once you’re identified as an admin, any link to the Facebook Page in your own Feed will link back to that admin interface on Facebook.com. (not to the website itself, which is what all other users will see)

For other meta tag identifiers you can use, view the source of this website and look in the section – look for the “og:” meta tags. You can also read more about it in the developer documentation here.

The Feed

By using this method, you get all the benefits of any normal Facebook Page on Facebook.com. You just have to install the proper Facebook Social Plugins to get what you want. For instance, if you want your visitors to see a feed of all items you’ve posted to the feed, install the “Like Box” social plugin, and enter the ID of the Facebook Page you just set up. (to get the ID, go to the “Admin Page” link next to your like button, and it’s the long number in the URL) Look over on the right of this website to see an example of the Like Box feed.

As mentioned above, you can also post items to your feed. Click “Edit Page” on your admin Page, and you can set up an RSS feed to import notes into your feed. I can also post videos, pictures, or anything else, just as I would a normal Facebook Page hosted on Facebook.com.

Importing Your Blog Posts

You’ll notice the “Like Box” on the right that has all the posts from this blog on it. That’s because I’m importing the RSS for this blog and now ever time a new post goes out all the people that have “Liked” StayNAlive.com via the link above will get all the posts I submit via this blog. This can be a great alternative to allowing users to subscribe via RSS.

So there you have it – any need to customize a Facebook.com-hosted Page is now moot. We don’t need them any more. I see no reason for hosting on Facebook itself if you need full customization. In fact, all links your visitors see in Facebook will now point back to your own website and not Facebook.com. When the user likes your website it will now appear in their interests and link back to your website. That can be good for SEO. Search results will link back to your website, and hints will show up for all your visitors’ friends, pointing them back to your website.

This, IMO is the ideal way to set up a Facebook Page now. The Facebook Page hosted on Facebook.com is not the future. Your website is the future, and Facebook has made it completely possible for you to own this experience.

Are there any reasons you can think of not to use this method? What other tips do you have? I’d like to hear them in the comments and I’ll update this post as it makes sense.

LDS (Mormon) Church Facebook Page Surpasses 300,000 Likes on Facebook

Posted on July 2, 2010 by jessestay

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is no stranger to technology. With several of the web’s most traffic’d websites, a very popular Youtube Channel (MormonMessages), one of the top Facebook Pages, and a great host of mobile applications enabling members to read scriptures and listen to talks from leaders wherever they are, there’s no doubt the Church knows what it’s doing. One of the big efforts the Church has built is its Facebook presence on its official Pages. Today, the Church’s official Page surpassed 300,000 likes and growing on Facebook.

Currently the Church has Pages for its Mormon Messages (53,000 likes), the Church’s Family History Library (3,300 likes), and even the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (46,000 likes). The Church’s main, official account, http://facebook.com/LDS, serves to be an outlet for the highlights of each of the Pages and other announcements for the Church to its members. The Church keeps its Page regularly updated with interesting items for its members.

The LDS Church has a worldwide membership of over 13 million members. Those members speak over 90 languages, and the Church broadcasts its message out to each of those twice a year in its Semi-annual General Conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah every year. With such a broad audience, it’s important for the Church to have an outlet to enable members to access that content, and find useful messages they can then bring back to their local areas and congregations. In addition, Facebook enables a great way for members to share information and inspiring messages from the Church with their friends.

It’s rare you see much word on the use of Facebook in a religious setting, but it makes complete sense in regards to virally spreading a message around the world. I’m very excited to see these messages spread, and if anything, this can be an interesting thing to watch if you’re a faith-based organization looking to get word out to your members in creative ways.

Mormon or not, if you want a refresher to your day and enjoy inspiring messages to lift up your day, be sure to like the page at http://facebook.com/LDS. (oh, and don’t forget to click “like” on this article)

Disclosure: In my day job, I am currently working as the Social Media Architect for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While they are currently my employer, this article by no means represents any official announcement, declaration, proclamation, or doctrine on behalf of the Church. All claims or topics written are solely my own opinion and not the opinions or official word of the LDS Church. To be clear, regardless of my day job, I am still a member of the Church and I still believe its teachings and will always have beliefs to share surrounding the Church and its teachings. What I write here should be considered as such.

The "What You get From Facebook Pages" Series: Default Widgets and Applications

Posted on April 19, 2008 by jessestay

On FacebookAdvice.com I am starting a new series on “What You get From Facebook Pages”. Over the next week or so I’ll cover several topics on how you can best optimize Facebook Pages for your business. In the first article I’m covering the default widgets and applications that are installed when you set up a Facebook Page. Read more about it here.

Need some help getting a Facebook Page set up for your Organization? I do consulting! Contact me at jesse at staynalive dot com and I’ll get you setup with a plan on how you can utilize Facebook to bring your company more customers.