How to unblock Facebook Pages and rebuild the relationship with a brand

Was there a Facebook Page you blocked because they were posting too much?

Maybe they were spamming your Facebook Page with unnecessary comments.

The good news is that if you ever have a change of heart, you can unblock Facebook Pages.

In this article you’ll learn how to unblock Facebook Pages so you can start interacting with a Facebook Page again through the news feed, wall posts, comments, and messages.

Why unblock a Facebook Page?

A lot of times, we block Facebook Pages because we are receiving unwanted comments, messages, or wall posts.

For some pages, you absolutely need to block them because they are out to cause your page harm.

This can include:

  • Spamming your page with unnecessary links
  • Posting inappropriate comments
  • Sending too many messages

Other times, you may come across a situation where you need to temporarily block a Facebook Page.

This typically happens if you have a page that may not understand the rules of engagement on Facebook.

If this happens, you may want to temporarily block them and then reach out to the owner of the page through their Facebook Profile.

This way you can go over the situation with them and in most cases, give them a warning.

A good way to do this is to let them know while you appreciate their interactions on your Facebook Page, you will unblock them if they tone things down.

I recommend setting the expectations for them and provide examples of what you would like them to tone down.

This way you can feel comfortable knowing they know what they need to do in order for you to unblock their Facebook Page.

If you have reached this point with a Facebook Page where you want to unblock them, follow these instructions.

How to unblock Facebook Pages

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How to block Facebook Pages to limit engagement

Is there a Facebook Page you need to block because they post too much?

Maybe they are engaging in a negative manner through comments?

In this article you’ll learn how to block Facebook Pages so that they can’t interact with your Facebook Profile anymore.

Why block a Facebook Page

One of the main reasons to block a page is because the Facebook Page is being abusive with their posting.

This could be due to sharing unwanted posts, posting excessive commenting, and so on.

Sometimes you also come across a Facebook Page that won’t stop messaging you.

Previously, you spent time removing these unnecessary conversations or messages.

While this only took a short amount of time to do, it adds up quickly.

What gets blocked on a Facebook Page

When you block Facebook Pages, the Facebook Page will not be able to:

  • Interact with your posts

  • Like or reply to your comments

  • Send your page messages

It is important to note that when you block a Facebook Page, you will be unable to post to their Facebook Page or message them.

When you block a Facebook Page, you automatically unlike and unfollow their page.

To learn how to block a Facebook Page, follow these instructions.

How to block Facebook Pages

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10+ Canva keyboard shortcuts to help you create images faster!

Would you like a low-cost and quick tool to create graphics for your social media channels or website?

Did you know Canva offers free templates and images for just $1.

Are you aware that there are Canva keyboard shortcuts?

With the shift towards visual marketing for businesses, you can now create graphics for your social networks such as FacebookTwitter or Pinterest using Canva and save a lot of time (and money).

In this article you’ll find 10+ Canva keyboard shortcuts to help you create graphics faster.

Canva vs. Adobe Photoshop

Do you remember when you needed Adobe Photoshop if you wanted to create graphics for your business? Not only was it expensive, but it had a very steep learning curve. With new tools like Canva, you can create graphics for:

  • Social networks
  • Facebook news feed images
  • Facebook Ads
  • Twitter Ads
  • Blog
  • Custom dimensions
  • And more

The difference is that with Canva, it doesn’t take much time or cost very much – most images are free.

Canva also doesn’t have a steep learning curve and has become a tool I use regularly for projects.

They also include a lot of pre-built templates you can work from or create your own in just a few minutes.

Besides making it easy to create graphics, Canva also includes a number of hidden keyboard shortcuts.

These shortcuts combined with a drag-and-drop interface make Canva a tool you want in your toolbox.

Canva keyboard shortcuts

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3 CEOs share their best alternative to using a Facebook like-gate

Facebook recently announced they were banning the use of like-gating on Facebook Pages starting November 5, 2014.

This was a shock for a lot of businesses that have a Facebook Page because it meant they needed to make changes to their Facebook marketing strategy and find new ways to get people to like their Facebook Page.

While this affected businesses that manage a Facebook Page, how did it affect companies that specialize in tools to help you create Facebook landing pages?

I put together a list of alternatives to using a like-gate to attract new likes on your Facebook Page.

But I wanted to hear from the companies that create Facebook landing page tools to find out what changes they would make to help attract new likes or fans to their Facebook Pages.

To help you understand their approach to like-gating on Facebook, I gathered three of the top companies and asked them what they would do differently now that you won’t be allowed to use like-gating on Facebook landing pages.

Moving away from like-gating

While the announcement that like-gating was dead may come as a bit of a shock to businesses, this didn’t come as a surprise to many of the landing page companies.

Many of them were already moving beyond just offering tools to create Facebook landing pages.

For example, Shortstack recently launched a new campaign builder to help you go beyond just creating landing pages on Facebook.

They now allow you to build campaigns to use anywhere that can help you grow your fanbase.

Why like-gating isn’t a big deal

Earlier this year, Facebook launched a redesign of Facebook Pages.

When this initially launched, Facebook landing pages were initially removed from the new redesign and re-added later.

This was a clear indicator that Facebook might be making further changes to landing pages.

Couple that with the fact that Facebook has been making subtle changes such as removing the ability to set a default landing page over the past few years and you can clearly see that like-gating was bound to go away sooner or later.

So what are the CEO’s who create social media tools to help you create Facebook landing pages, contests, and promotions doing instead of using a like-gate? Let’s find out.

3 CEO’s share their best Facebook like-gate advice

Continue reading 3 CEOs share their best alternative to using a Facebook like-gate

Facebook bans like-gating – Try these 5 Facebook like-gate alternatives instead

Have you heard the news? As of November 5, 2014, Facebook like-gates are dead. If you blinked, you probably missed it because it was buried at the bottom of their latest list of changes to their API and SDKs. The statement went something like this:

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

Because the changes made to like-gates affects your Facebook marketing, I put together a list of Facebook like-gate alternatives to help you continue to grow your Facebook Page likes without like-gates.

What is like-gating or fan-gating?

If you use tools like Shortstack, Tabsite, or Heyo or other landing page alternatives to show different types of content to fans and non-fans on your Facebook Page, you were using a feature known as a like-gate (or a fan-gate).

Examples of like-gating

Some examples of like-gates include:

  • Liking a Facebook Page to enter a contest
  • Providing coupons or promo codes once someone likes your Facebook Page
  • Liking a Facebook Page in order to watch a video
  • Liking a Facebook Page to download a PDF or eBook

If you currently use like-gates on your Facebook Page, they will continue to work until November 5. After that date, if you still have them on your Facebook Page, people will be able to access the content without liking your page. No new landing pages will be allowed to use the like-gate feature.

Why Facebook banned like-gating

So why did Facebook ban like-gating? They explained their reasoning further down the article.

To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

When you think about it, like-gating on Facebook Pages has been slowly dying. They were popular back in 2010, but we have gotten a lot smarter as marketers. When Facebook launched a Facebook Page redesign earlier this year, landing page tabs were also removed and then re-added at the last minute. For me, this signaled that Facebook was putting less of an emphasis on landing pages.

Why like-gates don’t matter

While like-gates helped grow your Facebook Page likes, they really didn’t matter. This was because a lot of Facebook Pages were not growing them the right way. Previously, when you used a like-gate to have someone like your Facebook Page to enter a contest, a lot of times you were not bringing in the right types of fans on your page. In most cases, people liked your page just so they could enter a contest or win a prize. They were not interested in the content your page was going to share. By eliminating these gimmicks, this should help improve your Facebook experience in the following ways:

  • Users will see more of the content they want to see in their news feed
  • Advertisers can use Facebook Ads to improve their targeting
  • Businesses can improve the focus of their Facebook Pages

Now that you know about changes to like-gates and how they will affect your Facebook marketing tactics, I wanted to share a list of Facebook like-gate alternatives to help you bring in more quality Facebook Page likes.

5 Facebook like-gate alternatives

Continue reading Facebook bans like-gating – Try these 5 Facebook like-gate alternatives instead

How Feedly can help create a better Facebook news feed organizer

[Update: As of June 23, 2015 Facebook has deprecated its RSS service. For the time being, there is no available RSS feed from Facebook. If anything changes, I’ll be sure to update this blog post with any new developments.]

Do you find yourself missing updates in your Facebook news feed?

Instead of a limited view, how would you like to organize your news feed and have convenient sharing options for other social networks?

Did you know you can create a Facebook news feed organizer using Feedly to help organize your news feed better.

An unorganized news feed

One of the biggest complaints about using Facebook is that you don’t always see all of the updates from friends or Facebook Pages you like.

How many times have you missed out on a conversation on Facebook because you didn’t see it until a few days later?

This can make using Facebook unreliable not to mention frustrating.

While it isn’t a perfect system, there are steps you can take to organize your news feed.

Organizing Facebook using add interest lists

One of the easiest ways to organize your news feed is to use Facebook add interest lists.

This let’s you create customized lists for friends and pages.

Here is an example of add interest lists on a mobile device.

Facebook add interest lists - mobile
Organize your Facebook news feed using add interest lists

While I’m a fan of add interest lists because you can combine profiles and pages and share them publicly, you can’t combine them with other websites you read.

This means you have to manage two different sites to see updates.

Tools to help create a Facebook news feed organizer

Some of my favorite tools for organizing my Facebook news feed used to be Google Reader and Hyper Alerts.

Unfortunately, Google Reader shut down and so did Hyper Alerts.

This meant I needed to find alternative tools to organize my news feed better.

I wrote about some alternatives.

Out of these alternatives, one of the tools I find myself using the most is Feedly.

Here are some of the things Feedly does well:

  • Create a Facebook news feed organizer
  • Pull in content from your favorite websites
  • Feedly for iOS and Android
  • Make it easy to share with other services like Evernote, Pocket, HootsuiteBuffer and more

Today I’m going to show you how you can use your Facebook RSS feed to organize your Facebook news feed with Feedly.

How to organize your Facebook news feed using Feedly

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The Definitive guide on using save on Facebook

Have you ever found something you wanted to save on Facebook?

A lot of times when I have items I want to save, I use a combination of Evernote and Skitch.

This allows me to save text updates or if I want to save an entire Facebook post, I can easily take a photo and save the post.

While I love this combination, it doesn’t always work well on mobile devices.

When Facebook announced save on Facebook, a bookmarking tool for Facebook posts, I was eager to give this new feature a try.

Let’s take a look at the new save on Facebook feature and how it works.

What is save on Facebook?

Save on Facebook is a new way to be able to save items you find on Facebook so that you can read and respond to them later on.

This includes items such as links, places, movies, TV and music.

Items that you save on Facebook are only visible to you – unless you share them with friends.

What can you save on Facebook?

For now, these are the types of items you can save.

  • Links
  • Places
  • Music
  • Books
  • Movies
  • TV Shows
  • Events

When you save items on Facebook, you can only save them from  your news feed.

This mean you cannot go to a Facebook Page to save an item.

You also cannot use save on Facebook in add interest lists either.

What cannot be saved on Facebook?

Right now you cannot save the following items on Facebook.

  • Text updates
  • Photos
  • Videos

Save once, view anywhere!

One great thing about save on Facebook is that it works everywhere!

For example, you can save something on your desktop and then view saved items on your mobile device or even your tablet.

This feature also works on iOS and Android devices and the functionality is the same.

This is great news because now you don’t have to come up with a work-around depending on the device you are using to save items you find on Facebook!

Save on Facebook on mobile
To access save on Facebook on a mobile device, look for the saved section.

Now that you know about save on Facebook, how do you use it?

Follow these instructions to learn how to save items from your Facebook news feed.

How to use save on Facebook

Continue reading The Definitive guide on using save on Facebook

Download: Facebook Group cover photo template

Do you need help with your Facebook Group cover photo?

How would you like a free Facebook Group cover photo template?

I’m going to show you a few ideas to help you create amazing looking Facebook Group cover photos and provide a Facebook Group cover photo template to help you get started.

Benefits of a good cover photo

Facebook Group cover photos are important for the following reasons:

  • Help your Facebook Group standout
  • Build your brand
  • Promote a group hashtag
  • Advertise products you offer in conjunction with your Facebook Group

Examples of Facebook Group cover photos

Here are a few examples of Facebook Group cover photos.

When creating your cover photo, be sure you let group members know what your Facebook Group is about.

This way it is easy for them to see if they want to join your Facebook Group.

All about WordPress
All about WordPress is a Facebook Group to get help with WordPress.

 

Inbound Marketers
Inbound marketers is a Facebook Group to discuss topics related to inbound marketing.

 

Social Chefs
Social Chefs is a Private Facebook Group for social media training.

So how do you create your own Facebook Group cover photo?

To create your own cover photo for your Facebook Group, download your own Facebook Group cover photo template below.

Facebook Group cover photo template sizes

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The Ultimate social video starter guide – Infographic

The dawn of video sharing sites introduced the world to a series of potentials that it had previously never experienced. Millions of hours of video are uploaded to sites like YouTube and Vimeo on a monthly basis, and YouTube receives well over a billion unique visits per month. The videos provide visitors with virtually anything that they need to look for, and have become resources that are growing as their users’ demands shift.

With the popularity of video sharing sites comes the potential for monetization of the process. Brands, small businesses, even people realized that they could be using the popularity of videos to create like-minded content, content that would be shared widely and enjoyed by the maximum number of eyes. It was realizations like this that led to the rise in a new brand of marketing that focused on harnessing the power of video sharing, while integrating it with a concerted social media strategy. Thus, social video marketing was born.

This social video starter guide infographic, provided by TollFreeForwarding.com, provides a how-to guide for exploiting the wild popularity of social video sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Google Hangouts, Instagram, and Vine. It explores how social video sites have become a major component of the online marketing medium, and why so many are succeeding because of it.

Let’s take a look at this social video starter guide  and how you can leverage these social video sites to help grow your business.

The social video starter guide Continue reading The Ultimate social video starter guide – Infographic

Promoting your service using a Google Helpouts custom URL

One of my favorite tools I use to help grow my business is Google Helpouts.

If you are new to Google Helpouts, it is an amazing tool where you can give live help over video.

Getting started with Google Helpouts

I have been offering Helpouts since they began in November and it has been an extremely valuable part of my business.

So far, I’ve been using Google Helpouts for my Facebook one-on-one coaching sessions.

Facebook coaching on Google Helpouts
Facebook One-on-One coaching with Google Helpouts.

If you want to give your own Google Helpouts, you can get started here.

Marketing Google Helpouts

Once you have signed up and have a listing, your listing is available on Google Helpouts.

This is a good way to generate helpout sessions from people searching on the helpouts site.

What if you want to make it easy for people to remember your URL and do your own marketing?

For example, through your social media channels or to your email list?

This is where creating a Google Helpouts custom URL comes in handy.

Benefits of a custom URL

The main reason to create a Google Helpouts custom URL is so that it is easier to promote your helpout.

Google Helpouts custom URL
Example of a Google Helpouts custom URL.

Remember, you want to make it as easy as possible for consumers (people interested in your product) to become customers (people ready to buy your product).

This is where having a custom URL can help you out.

Instead of sending someone a URL that isn’t easy to remember, you can send them your Google Helpouts custom URL – or even add them on your business cards.

Here’s how to create a Google Helpouts custom URL in just a few easy steps.

How to create a Google Helpouts custom URL

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