What’s new with Facebook events and how you can make it work for you!

Facebook events have just been updated. But what does that mean for you? How can you change the way you use your event pages to get the most out of them?
In this post, I will give you an overview of what has been updated, and discuss some new strategies you can employ to get more people going to your event.

Updates:

1. Less fields are required to create the event. You only need to enter a name, date and the privacy settings. All other fields are optional
2. You can now put a time zone on your event! – No longer does your international event have to state the time zone in the description!
3. People who have joined the event can update the location at a later date
4. The wall shows when someone joins the event - 
5. Wall posts are ordered by activity, therefore any discussions will stay at the top if they are important
6. The wall will only allow comments from people who are attending, or might do so
7. You can easily turn off notifications for events by clicking the cog in the top right
8. The admin will get notified if someone who you invited has joined the event
9. Multiple friends can invite you to the same event
10. Guest suggestions are also shown on the right when you invite people
11. If someone declines an event, only the people who invited them will get notified
12. If they state why they can’t attend, the message will be filtered out of the wall and into the ‘view declines’ area

How can you use these features for better attendance at your event?

Engage your fans

When you maintain a Facebook page, you create posts that should spark engagement. This should also be taken through to your events page. As the wall now arranges any posts by their activity, you want to keep people engaged in the most important conversations. This keeps them at the top, where you want it to be. Unlike Facebook pages, the posts won’t just drift to the bottom of the timeline, never to be seen again, as long as you keep them alive.
As people that are attending, or might attend can post on the wall, keep an eye out for any support questions people might have.You might have the most complete event description around, with links in all the appropriate places but people will still ask questions, so make sure you are ready to answer them in a timely manor like you would your page.

Invite your friends

Make use of the ability to invite your profiles friends, you still can’t do this as a page, however join the event as your profile and start inviting! People aren’t going to find your event unless you put it in front of them.
While creating engaging content on the wall, remind people that they can bring a friend.
With the new suggestions feature, they will hopefully invite more than they used too as they will be reminded of others.

Thank your attendees

When a new person joins your event, they are now shown on the wall. Make sure you use this as an opportunity to thank them for attending. It takes two seconds of your time, and makes that person feel a little bit happier that they are coming to your event, especially if they had to pay money to attend!

Facebook adverts

This isn’t so much to do with the update, but a means to getting your event in front of your target audience. Facebook ads have always been a very successful way of getting more people to your pages and events, so don’t forget to make use of it.
QUICK TIP:
I have heard people have a lot of success when they put a short time period on their advert, with the same budget as if it was spread over a long period of time. The advert is more likely to be displayed regularly. This is due to Facebook wanting to spend the full budget before the time is up. So if your event is only one or two days away, Facebook ads are still a viable option to increase the people attending your Facebook event.
If you decide to go down this route, make sure you remember to split test your Facebook ads.

How have you found the change to the Facebook Events? What techniques do you find works for you? Let me know in the comments below!

How to turn your Facebook Place into a Facebook Page

When lots of companies and individuals create a Facebook page, Facebook will automatically turn it into a ‘Facebook Place’.
This can be annoying for those companies as it isn’t what they expect when they create their page.
This article will highlight the differences between a Facebook place and a Facebook page, and then tell you how to turn your Facebook place into a page.

What’s the difference between a Facebook page and a place?

Facebook Pages

A Facebook page is the standard business page. It is an area on Facebook where companies can interact with the audience.
The page will allow your audience to ‘like’ you. This means that your updates will appear in their news feeds amongst their friends updates.
Facebook will provide your page with ‘insights’. This is their name for page analytics.
It allows you to see your ‘like’ growth, demographics of your audience, and statistics about your individual posts.

Facebook Places

A Facebook place has the same functionality as the pages; however it is aimed at the companies or organisations that have a physical location.
This is useful if your company is a coffee shop or estate agents where you want people to come into your store.
Additional options are available within the page admin; these allow you to specify your company location and state additional information, such as parking availability.
The most significant difference between a Place and Page is the check in functionality. This allows visitors to your location to say that they have been to your location through a mobile device.
You can use adverts that target people who have checked into your location or give special deals to those visitors.
When a visitor checks in, a message goes out on their news feed that lets their friends know they are at your location, this is a great opportunity to promote your business through the Facebook news feed, for very little cost.
Unfortunately, a place can’t deal with multiple locations.
If your company is spread across different addresses, I would suggest you either create multiple places for each location, or combine all the places into a page (combining is the preferred option here).

How to tell if your Facebook page is a place

There a few ways to determine if whether you have a Facebook place or page:

1. Type the page name into the search bar – You will see either a ‘Pages’ or ‘Places’ title
2. On your page, if there is a ‘were here’ option under the title, you have a place
3. If there is a map on the about page, it’s likely you have a place

Convert your Facebook place to a page

Changing your place to a page is very simple:

Update your Facebook page category:

1. Go to your page
2. Click ‘Edit page’
3. Click ‘Update Info’
4. Select any category other than ‘Local businesses’

Remove your location:

1. Go to your page
2. Click ‘Edit page’
3. Click ‘Update info’
4. Remove your address, City / town and postcode
5. To the right of the ‘Address’ field, there is a dropdown, click the down arrow and then ‘No physical street address’
6. Click ‘Save changes’ at the bottom
7. Go back to the address section, there will now be a yellow box. Click ‘remove this Place’

And that is all there is to it. This change might take up to 24 hours to come into effect, however it is normally changed quicker than that.
If you want to change back to a Facebook place, just add in your address again!

If you found this post useful, I would love to hear from you in the comments below. Similarly, if it hasn’t worked for you then let me know and I will do my best to help.

Facebook page not displaying in the search results

Facebook pages are extremely important to both large and small businesses. They are a great way of interacting with your target audience and making them aware of any new products or services that you offer. The last thing you would want, is your page to not be displaying in the search results on Facebook.
If your Facebook page isn’t showing up in the search results on Facebook, this post is for you.

Identifying the problem

The first thing you need to do is locate your page. This is because your page is most likely showing up, however not in the place you would expect.
1. Go to Facebook
2. Using the search bar, type in the name of your page
3. Click on “See more results for ____” where the blank is your page name
4. Click on ‘Pages’ in the left menu
Your page should be on this list, it might not be the first couple of results so scroll down a little. To get to the first results you need to take a look at what you are posting. Take a look at these Facebook post guidelines to give you some idea of the type of content you need to post.
If your page isn’t in this list:
5. Click on ‘Places’ in the left menu
If you didn’t see your page under ‘Pages’ your Facebook page has most likely been changed to a ‘Place’.
It does this based on the information you have entered before you create your page, and if anyone has ‘checked in’ to the address you entered in your page’s basic information.
Finally, if the page hasn’t shown up when following all the above steps, it is likely a setting within your page is incorrect.

The solution

There are three possible solutions, all of which should be completed:

The first is to claim your Facebook page:

1. Go to your Facebook page
2. Click the ‘Do you know the owner?’ which can be found in the settings (cog at the top right)
This link is only appearing because your Facebook page is displaying as a Place in the search.
3. In the popup, enter the email address, or the Facebook name of the owner of the page
This should send an email to the account, notifying them how they can claim their page.
If you can see the ‘Is this your business?’ link in the same place, I would also recommend verifying that you are the owner.

The second is to change your page category:

1. Go to your Facebook page
2. Click on Manage > ‘Edit page’ 
3. Click on ‘Basic information’
4. In the ‘Category’ selector, choose any other than ‘Local businesses & places’
5. Click ‘Save changes’
This should change your page from a ‘Place’ to a ‘Page’

Finally, you need to check your settings

1. Go to your page
2. Click on ‘Edit page’
3. Click on ‘Manage permissions’
4. Make sure the ‘Country restrictions’ box is empty



If this has a value, you could be hiding your page from a country without meaning to.
The above steps won’t update straight away, however if you check again tomorrow, it should now be displaying in the search results under ‘Pages’.

If you have an alternative method, or if you found any of these techniques worked for you then do let others know by using the comments below.