Ken Hood

The Bad News: Many of the Facebook Page promotions being run by small businesses today are violating Facebook Promotions Guidelines. They may get their pages banned and lose all of their fans.

The Good News: The "rules" for compliant promotion on Facebook are easy to understand and easy to follow.

The Rules
Facebook has simple to understand guidelines. The penalty for not complying with them (I know, I sound like a Borg Drone) is catastrophic. You will comply... or else.

The Highlights
(Quotes from the Promotion Guidelines 4/12/11) 

• The following activities fall under the guidleines: "A 'sweepstakes' is a promotion that includes a prize and a winner selected on the basis of chance. A 'contest' or 'competition' is a promotion that includes a prize and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria)."
• "You will not administer a promotion through Facebook, except through an application on the Facebook Platform."
• "You will only allow users to enter the promotion in... the application box in a tab on a Facebook Page."
• "You will include the following disclosures (including) 'This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.'"
• "You cannot:  Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by liking your Page, checking in to your Place or connecting to your Platform integration."
• "You may require that an entrant like a Page... before providing their full entry information for a promotion."
• "You cannot:  Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as posting on a Wall of a Page,  uploading a photo, or posting a status update."

What it means in simple English
Anytime you do anything on Facebook that has a winner, you are subject to these guidelines. Your promotion can be mentioned on the Wall, but it may not be administered from the Wall. You cannot condition entry into the sweepstakes, promotion, contest or competition based upon any action that requires the entrant to do something on Facebook. You may require that a participant "Like" your page in order to see the promotion details and to enter the promotion (through use of a "reveal" tab). It's a fine line but an important one.

Non-compliant promotion examples

1. "Help us hit XYZ number of fans by next Monday and we will give away a gift card!"
2. "Upload a photo, get your friends to Like it, and the most amount of Likes wins."
3. "Gift Card to the person who answers the following question in the comments below (on the Wall)."
4. “One lucky winner will win XYZ when we reach 500 likes on this page”
5. "Like our page and automatically be entered to win XYZ."
6. "Comment on our Wall and be automatically entered to win."

There are many more rules to promoting your Page if the promotion involves in any way having a "winner." Be careful. I can help you create an "application" (a custom tab) that will be compliant with Facebook's Guidelines. You can run a promotion safely! Contact me through my Facebook Page, Ken Hood Web Design to learn how.

I'm launching a NEW Tab today... it is compliant with Facebook's new iframe requirements. Unlike the "other" custom tabs out there which were built using FBML, this tab won't disappear at the end of the year. Yep... you heard it correctly... any custom tabs you have that have a "gray icon" next to the link... say "bye bye" because Facebook is eliminating them at the end of the year.

If you have "another" vendor who supplied you with a custom tab before March 11, 2011... ask them what they are going to do to update your current tab. Get the details, because they are important.

But we've got your back... so ask how you can get your NEW Agency Profile Tab!

Facebook added two new features overnight:

1. You now have the option to add a small "About" text blurb below your tab link on the left side of your page. On first testing, this does not appear to allow for links or other html. However, it would be an excellent place to put a small legal disclaimer or add a state license number if applicable.
2. You also can now "Use Facebook as Page" using the new selection in the Account drop down in the upper Right hand corner of Facebook. Below is a quote from Facebook's FAQ 19861 discussing this feature:

"All actions that you take while using Facebookok as your Page will appear on Facebook as coming from your Page. For example, if Jane comments on a photo while she’s using Facebook as Jane’s Pet Shop Page, then the comment will appear from Jane’s Pet shop, and not from Jane herself."

OK geeks galore (you know who you are)... this one's for you. Facebook messed up every new iframe app 48 hours ago by implementing something new in ifarme applications... apparantly without telling anyone. And I mean anyone. When I checked out my new iframe apps in HTTPS browsing... they just weren't there. But neither was Best Buy's custom tabs (apps).... nor Mercedes Bnz, nor Hearsay. The list goes on. So misery *does* love company, and we all eventually figured out what happened.

So just now, 48 hours after the "let's wreck everyone's apps and not tell them" debacle... Facebook posts the new iframe app procedure. You just gotta laugh and enjoy it. So here is the "straight scoop" for developers from the horse's mouth: 

We recently introduced the ability for users to browse Facebook over HTTPS. At the same time, we began providing a “Secure Canvas URL” field in the Developer App for developers to serve their apps through an HTTPS connection as well. Now that we added support for iframe Page tabs, we also have added a “Secure Tab URL” field. Please take some time to add a “Secure Tab URL” as if you have not, we will not be able to show your tab to users browsing Facebook over HTTPS.

(Dear Facebook... you know I love you and was just messing with you. You guys have been awesome- really).

Facebook has changed dramatically. There are new and exciting opportunities for your business page! To kick off the NEW Facebook offereings, I've opened up shop at a new virtual office at MyLocalHosting.com. Please come pay me a visit!

FBML dies tomorrow. It will continue to breathe on life support provided by Facebook... but it is effectively dead. Facebook will "pull the plug" sometime in the future. As Allfacebook.com says, most people will ignore this death notification until Facebook actually buries their custom tab.

If you are one of the few who stay on top of all things Facebook, and if you have custom tabs now (my clients have quote tabs and Agency Profile tabs)... please take a minute to read this excellent article: Everything You Need To Know About The Death Of FBML.

And don't worry... I got your back.

On March 11, Facebook will force a change on everyone's page that will eliminate "tabs" at the top and move the custom tabs to become "links" on the left side of your page. The existing quote tabs will remain functional until the end of the year, after which, they will need to be replaced with new quote forms and tabs. We are now ready for that transition... thanks in no small part to our partnership with Mailjol (the Allforms guys).

The guys at Mailjol already host over 400 of our custom insurance agent Facebook forms. We trust them and they have proven themselves over the last 12 months. But the team, led by Akash, really went above and beyond this week. They have built, exclusively for us, a new and unique "custom forms solution" for insurance agents using the new mandated code by Facebook.

You can check out the new forms by visiting my Facebook page, Ken Hood Web Design and looking at the links on the left. If you have set your Facebook account to browse using HTTPS (which is unnecessary), you will not be able to see them yet. Facebook is working on this as a high level bug and should have this corrected by Wednesday of next week. Contact me with any questions. Have a great weekend!

This bug meant that even though I could create a new custom tab for you, it could only be seen *if* you were logged into Facebook. If you were *not* logged into Facebook, you would get a blank page. Not cool. But it's fixed... yeah. So I can get to work on custom Facebook Page solutions again for insurance agents. I'm working on new tabs and forms that are better than ever! So tuned!

The planned Facebook page upgrade may be rolled out to ALL pages tomorrow, Tuesday, March 1. Facebook is not making this "optional" any longer. If you see your page change tomorrow... don't panic. It's all good. Here are some major changes:

1. Your "Edit Page" link moves to the upper right corner of your screen. It's no longer underneath your page's profile picture on the left. And you must be on the Wall to see it.
2. Those wonderful tabs that I built for you are still there. I know.. it looks like they are gone. They are not... they moved over to the left side underneath the page's profile picture. So now I think we can now call them "Links."
3. You can actually arrange the order of those links (tabs), so that they appear in the order you wish underneath the Wall and Info links. But that will be the subject of another post.
4. In place of the "tabs" at the top, we now have "pictures." Five pictures to be exact. And you only see these pictures if you are on the Wall.
5. The "five pictures" at the top of the Wall are the most recently uploaded five pictures. And they are RANDOM. Yep... random. So every time you refresh the Wall... you will see these five pictures displayed in a different order. I am working on a solution for that (if it could be called such) for those who don't want to see "random pictures" displayed at the top of their Wall. Below is one idea that I am beta testing on several pages:

Let's see if this solution works. If I sleep on it, and agents like it, I will figure out a way to bring it to the table. Check it out here.

So again... don't panic. Here are two great reasons why the new page upgrades are awesome...

1. You can now comment on your page as a PERSON instead of only as your PAGE name.
2. You can be easily notified by email of all comments and posts by visitors to your Wall.

These two improvements alone are worth the upgrade. More information coming in later posts... stay tuned!

An era ends. NEW installations of the Static FBML Application will cease on March 11, 2011. And after reading 125 comments on the now famous (or infamous) Post 462 on the Facebook Developer Blog, and comments by Facebook staff, it appears that Facebook is telling FBML to get out of Dodge by the end of the year.

What does this mean to you as a Page Owner?

Most of the tens of thousands of beautiful Facebook Custom Page Tabs that have been built, have been built using the Static FBML Application provided by Facebook. And Facebook is stating that they will continue supporting the software language that makes your custom tabs look pretty, at least until the end of the year. But after this year... all bets are off. Your custom tabs, as they exist now, may no longer work. The good news is that Facebook has replaced the old FBML technology with better technology- IFrames. You can still have custom tabs... and they will be better!

What do you as my client need to do?

Nothing right now (whew). I will outline a path for you over the next few weeks. So as they say on TV... stay tuned.

What will I be doing to chart a new path?

1. Watching and waiting for the new technology, IFrames, to work out all its little bugs.
2. Waiting for Tim Ware at Hyperarts to publish new technical guides on how to make the most out of the new IFrames. No one will do it better.
3. Keep playing with the new technology (even though it is in a buggy state of flux right now). So if you see a tab link on the left side of my page at Ken Hood Web Design that looks like a test... it is. Right now there is a "hello world" IFrame tab. Gotta start somewhere.
4. Once everything looks stable, I will be re engineering all of our current tabs into the new technology so I can start helping customers upgrade before the end of the year.
5. And once everything is stable, I may put my hand to creating even more cool NEW stuff for your Facebook Page.