Full functionality came back at 10:15 am PT. We apologize for the delay. Feel free to contact us at help@fanminder.com is you have any questions.

Late Friday night (2/25) we migrated our servers on Amazon to new bigger and better servers so we can keep up with the increase in volume we’re seeing. Everything went very smoothly except it can take a while for all the changes to propagate across the world. We had approximately 90% functionality at midnight PT and this morning we’re at about 95%. The last thing we’re waiting for is our Incoming SMS feature. Currently fans are unable to join mobile lists from their phones and are unable to redeem coupons. Argh! The waiting game continues. If you are running lunch specials, please notify your managers that redemptions may not work for a few more hours. We apologize for this inconvenience and hope to be back to 100% shortly.

Ok, you got this far. Stay with us for just a little bit more, o’ fearless marketer, and ye shall be publishing to Facebook in a jiffy.

<you can always pick up the phone, too: 800-335-0520>

Now publish your first coupon or special to Facebook:

1. When logged in to Fanminder, click the “Grow Fanbase” tab and link your Facebook Business Page to Fanminder.
2. Click “My Profile” in the upper right hand corner of the page, then click “edit” Social Branding. Upload your logo, photo and finish this form to dynamically create your Promo Page that fans will visit.
3. On the Overview tab, click “Send an offer or coupon” in the Quick Links panel on the right hand side of the page. Now create your coupon or special and be sure to send it “via Facebook”.

Go check it out on your Facebook Page’s Wall! It should show up at the same time in your fans’ newsfeeds. You can now publish as many specials or coupons as you’d like and track all clicks, grabs, and redeems.

Ok, so you got this far. Stay with us for just a little bit more, o’ fearless marketer, and ye shall be publishing to Facebook in a jiffy.

<you can always pick up the phone, too: 800-335-0520>

First, create your Fanminder Trial Account:

1. Visit www.lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/playbook
2. If you don’t see your business on the screen, then enter your email address in the “How’s Your Business Doing?” field in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
3. Now click the blue Text2Vote link on the left hand side of the screen.
4. When Fanminder opens, click “Grow more with Fanminder” in the bottom right corner.
5. Finish creating your Fanminder account.

Now publish your first coupon or special to Facebook:

1. When logged in to Fanminder, click the “Grow Fanbase” tab and link your Facebook Business Page to Fanminder.
2. Click “My Profile” in the upper right hand corner of the page, then click “edit” Social Branding. Upload your logo, photo and finish this form to dynamically create your Promo Page that fans will visit.
3. On the Overview tab, click “Send an offer or coupon” in the Quick Links panel on the right hand side of the page. Now create your coupon or special and be sure to send it “via Facebook”.

Go check it out on your Facebook Page’s Wall! It should show up at the same time in your fans’ newsfeeds. You can now publish as many specials or coupons as you’d like and track all clicks, grabs, and redeems.

Unfortunately, the answer is “Both”.

With the Facebook changes baking in, and lots of people weighing in on what it means, I’ll attempt to briefly provide the Pros and Cons. Overall, the changes reflect Facebook’s desire to make Business Pages operate more similarly to Personal Profiles – and that’s a good thing. There’s also more flexibility for app developers and a better way for companies to join conversations across Facebook. On the downside, Facebook just eliminated some tried and true elements of the Business Page, notably the Tabs at the top of the page (moved) and the profile info box (eliminated).

Note: Do not switch over your Facebook Page until the changes are forced into effect on March 10. There are still bugs being worked out by Facebook. You also can’t switch back once you make the switch.

Pros

1. Addition of Photo Strip to top of Page – Photos are now more important for businesses given their increased visibility. This is a big positive as long as you add photos to your Page.
2. Admins of Pages can get notifications by email when people post or comment to your wall. Huge positive.
3. Admins can now surf around Facebook posing as the “Page” or in other words, as the Business. This is a big positive because it means wherever you go on Facebook, you can do all the things that a person can do – like, comment, post, etc on business’ or people’s profiles or Pages as your business.
4. Pages can also feature other Pages now.
5. There is a new Category description placed underneath your company’s name.

Cons

1. Easily the worst aspect of the changes is that your Wall Posts aren’t in chronological order any longer. Facebook uses a secret algorithm to determine which posts show up where. This can cause havoc for you as you search for posts and try to keep track of what people are writing and when, so keep a close eye out for the dates of posts.
2. Tabs are moved from the top of the page to the left side. This will make them much less visible to fans and less clicked on. On the other hand, you can have longer titles.
3. Because of #1, the Profile Pic shouldn’t be too lengthy, vertical-wise, or else your navigation links (formerly: tabs) will get lost below the fold. The profile pic has been reduced from 200 X 600 pixels to 180 X 540 pixels.
4. Company Info box formerly beneath the Profile Pic is now moved to the Info Tab. The info will still be available to the search engines. However, don’t count on any fans seeing this good synopsis of your company any longer.

As you can see, a mixed bag for small businesses.