I am slow to adopt change sometimes. Especially when I don't see a need for it.
I've been on Facebook for years and even though so many photographers were starting business pages, I didn't feel the need for one. I don't have near the 5,000 friend limit on my personal page and as you can tell from reading my blog, I don't feel a need to separate my personal life from my business life much at all. I'm a believer (at least so far in my life as a single person without kids) that sharing about myself personally really only helps my business flourish. It helps clients, vendors and other photographers connect with me on a human level. So to me, having a business page AND a personal page just seemed redundant.
BUT.
I am open to change. And social media gurus and friends that I trust told me I should start a business page. They scared me by telling me that Facebook can shut down my personal page if I share too much about my business on there. And it's true. I've heard it happen to people.
They convinced me with other arguments too, none of which I can remember right now. I'm still not sure if it's a huge benefit to have a business page separate from my personal page but I'm diving in.
Melissa Jill Photography now has a business page on Facebook and I would love it if you "liked" me. From this point forward, I will be sharing business-related updates and tips through this page so if you're interested in those, it would behoove you to do so.
I decided that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right so I designed a schnazzy and fun welcome page:
I've been on Facebook for years and even though so many photographers were starting business pages, I didn't feel the need for one. I don't have near the 5,000 friend limit on my personal page and as you can tell from reading my blog, I don't feel a need to separate my personal life from my business life much at all. I'm a believer (at least so far in my life as a single person without kids) that sharing about myself personally really only helps my business flourish. It helps clients, vendors and other photographers connect with me on a human level. So to me, having a business page AND a personal page just seemed redundant.
BUT.
I am open to change. And social media gurus and friends that I trust told me I should start a business page. They scared me by telling me that Facebook can shut down my personal page if I share too much about my business on there. And it's true. I've heard it happen to people.
They convinced me with other arguments too, none of which I can remember right now. I'm still not sure if it's a huge benefit to have a business page separate from my personal page but I'm diving in.
Melissa Jill Photography now has a business page on Facebook and I would love it if you "liked" me. From this point forward, I will be sharing business-related updates and tips through this page so if you're interested in those, it would behoove you to do so.
I decided that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right so I designed a schnazzy and fun welcome page:
I've already had a few questions about how I made it clickable so I thought I'd share my sources here.
A few weeks back as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my page, I tweeted asking if anyone would share pages they especially liked. A generous twitter follower - Melissa Copeland - shared her own page and, agreeing with her that it was pretty cool, I asked how she did it. Here's the scoop:
1. Follow this super-helpful tutorial by UK designer Melissa Love (Lots of Melissas seem to be super-helpful I've noted.)
That will help you create a FB welcome page and make it linkable to one website. But if you want to have different parts of your welcome page link to different sites, you'll have to insert a step into the above tutorial before the section "Adding Content to Your Facebook Page."
2. Crop your image into sections based on which areas you want to function as different buttons. Save them all in order of how you will need to insert them. Here's my cropping and sequence:
A few weeks back as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my page, I tweeted asking if anyone would share pages they especially liked. A generous twitter follower - Melissa Copeland - shared her own page and, agreeing with her that it was pretty cool, I asked how she did it. Here's the scoop:
1. Follow this super-helpful tutorial by UK designer Melissa Love (Lots of Melissas seem to be super-helpful I've noted.)
That will help you create a FB welcome page and make it linkable to one website. But if you want to have different parts of your welcome page link to different sites, you'll have to insert a step into the above tutorial before the section "Adding Content to Your Facebook Page."
2. Crop your image into sections based on which areas you want to function as different buttons. Save them all in order of how you will need to insert them. Here's my cropping and sequence:
3. Save them online, like the tutorial says, somewhere besides Facebook - like on your server.
4. Follow the tutorial but when you put the html code into the FBML app, you will have to do multiple images with multiple links, like this:
4. Follow the tutorial but when you put the html code into the FBML app, you will have to do multiple images with multiple links, like this:
That should do it! See you all on Facebook :).
P.S. Thanks to a commentor I was informed that as of TOMORROW - March 11th, you will no longer be able to make new FBML pages on Facebook. Can't believe my timing! Facebook is changing to an iFrames platform. Of course, I have no idea how to make a welcome page using iFrames, but click here for an online tutorial. Again, not sure how great the tutorial is, but it is somewhere to start! I guess if you already have an FBML page in place, it will continue to function on Facebook but you won't be able to edit it going forward.
P.P.S. Creating a business Facebook page means I get to check another goal off my 101 in 1001 list! Yay!
P.S. Thanks to a commentor I was informed that as of TOMORROW - March 11th, you will no longer be able to make new FBML pages on Facebook. Can't believe my timing! Facebook is changing to an iFrames platform. Of course, I have no idea how to make a welcome page using iFrames, but click here for an online tutorial. Again, not sure how great the tutorial is, but it is somewhere to start! I guess if you already have an FBML page in place, it will continue to function on Facebook but you won't be able to edit it going forward.
P.P.S. Creating a business Facebook page means I get to check another goal off my 101 in 1001 list! Yay!
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