Christian Karasiewicz, Author at Christiankonline.com

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.

How to end the relationship and block an overly aggressive Facebook Page forever!

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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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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

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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.

Facebook bans like-gating. Try these 5 alternatives instead!

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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

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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.

Save time on Facebook. This Facebook news feed organization tip can help.

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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.

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.

Google reader alternatives

Hyper Alerts 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, Hootsuite, Buffer 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 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 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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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 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.

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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3 Hyper Alerts alternatives to keep tabs on your Facebook Pages

Do you wish you could get better Facebook notifications?

What if that tool could also notify you about Facebook posts from competitors? How about tweets as well?

Today I am going to teach you about three Hyper Alerts alternatives.

These social media tools can help you see notifications from Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts.

Hyper Alerts is going away. Try these 3 alternatives for managing Facebook notifications to replace it.

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What I love about Hyper Alerts

For those of you who read my blog, I’ve written quite a lot about my love for Hyper Alerts here and here.

Because Facebook notifications are not always reliable, you could spend a lot of time going back to Facebook Pages you manage to see if you missed anything throughout the day.

Where Hyper Alerts really helped, you could be notified by email when new updates were made to your pages.

This could be sent each time a new notification was made to a page or you could choose to receive one email per day or one per week.

This way you don’t miss updates on Facebook.

Watching competitors with Hyper Alerts

Besides being able to see notifications about your own pages as well as tweets you sent.

Hyper Alerts can also help businesses in other ways.

See what your competitors are doing
Identify new content to share
Identify gaps in your social media strategy

Why look for Hyper Alerts alternatives?

While Hyper Alerts sounds like an amazing tool, they recently announced they were shutting down. Bummer!

While they also mentioned they would be making Hyper Alerts open source, not everyone has the time or skill to build their own social media tool.

A lot of community managers want something they can use out of the box.

Hyperalerts was one of those tools.

Because of this change, I spent some time looking for Hyper Alerts alternatives and put together a list for you.

3 Hyper Alerts alternatives

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5 Ways marketers can use Facebook hashtags

Do you include Facebook hashtags in your Facebook Page posts?

With 1.15 billion users, Facebook is an attractive place for businesses to market to customers.

Today I’m going to cover Facebook hashtag usage and how your brand can benefit from using Facebook hashtags.

The role of Facebook hashtags in marketing

While Facebook hashtags don’t seem as popular as on Twitter or Instagram, they can still help your brand.

With 1.15 billion users, Facebook is a great place to put your marketing efforts for your business.

When compared to other social networks, no other network comes close when in terms of active users.

Facebook usage stats — Facebook has 1.15 billion active users.

Facebook hashtag usage

Don’t overdo Facebook hashtags

While users are encouraged to use on average 11 Instagram hashtags, Facebook hashtag usage is much lower.

For example, you don’t want to use them in every post.

You also don’t want to use too many. 2-3 hashtags typically work best for Facebook hashtag usage.

Hashtags must be one word

I often get asked what is a hashtag.

Capitalization isn’t important

When looking at Facebook hashtag usage, remember, capitalization isn’t important.

For example, using #Facebookmarketing instead of #FacebookMarketing will take users to the same hashtag.

Personally, I like to capitalize the second word. This way it is a little easier to read the hashtag.

Don’t blindly pick a hashtag – research it first

When choosing a hashtag, be sure you’ve done some research.

If you’re not sure where to look, try these hashtag tracking tools.

Not only can they save you a lot of time, but you can also see how popular a hashtag is before beginning your Facebook marketing campaign.

PiJnz has put together a great infographic on Facebook hashtag usage.

Be sure to read through these tips on how Facebook hashtags can help your brand.

5 Ways marketers can use Facebook hashtags

Continue reading 5 Ways marketers can use Facebook hashtags

Why block a Facebook Page

What gets blocked on a Facebook Page

How to block Facebook Pages

Canva vs. Adobe Photoshop

Canva keyboard shortcuts

Moving away from like-gating

Why like-gating isn’t a big deal

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

What is like-gating or fan-gating?

Examples of like-gating

Why Facebook banned like-gating

Why like-gates don’t matter

5 Facebook like-gate alternatives

An unorganized news feed

Organizing Facebook using add interest lists

Tools to help create a Facebook news feed organizer

How to organize your Facebook news feed using Feedly

What is save on Facebook?

What can you save on Facebook?

What cannot be saved on Facebook?

Save once, view anywhere!

How to use save on Facebook

Benefits of a good cover photo

Examples of Facebook Group cover photos

Facebook Group cover photo template sizes

Getting started with Google Helpouts

Marketing Google Helpouts

Benefits of a custom URL

How to create a Google Helpouts custom URL

What I love about Hyper Alerts

Watching competitors with Hyper Alerts

Why look for Hyper Alerts alternatives?

3 Hyper Alerts alternatives

The role of Facebook hashtags in marketing

Facebook hashtag usage

Don’t overdo Facebook hashtags

Hashtags must be one word

Capitalization isn’t important

Don’t blindly pick a hashtag – research it first

5 Ways marketers can use Facebook hashtags