This week I have decided to do something a little different. Every week or so one of our members posts a great question in our Q & A Forum. Unfortunately many people don’t think to look in the Q&A forum for the answer to their question, so I have decided to bring some of the best questions to you. In no particular order, here are the best questions so far…

I accidentally changed my personal Facebook username (URL) to be my business name and I cannot fathom how to undo it – please help!

Please could you help – I was inspired by the workshop to claim our username and place on facebook – however, somehow my personal page is now named mycompanyname and I cannot fathom how to undo it – any ideas – I have abandoned trying to claim facebook place!

I am concerned that when you change your username that name (mycompanysname) is then not available to be reclaimed by my company

Unfortunately you are not alone in this mistake. Never fear though, it is fixable, however you can only make one more change to your username so ensure you are very careful this time.

1. To change your username to an appropriate one for your personal account so your business name can be used for your business page the process is nice and simple.
2. Make sure you are logged in with your account and you are using it as your account not your page
3. Under the accounts dropdown in the top right hand corner click on the “Account Settings” option
4. On the first tab “Settings” in the My Account page you should find the details of your personal account, the second item down will be your Username.
5. Click Change on the right hand side (shown above your current incorrect username)
6. Change the username to one that is suitable for your personal account and check the availability and save your changes

You should now be able to change over to use facebook as your page and claim your page’s username/ alias.

After doing a little searching I have also found a link to this infringement form: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_infringement

Essentially this is saying that the username claimed by your personal account infringes on your business account (this is directly against facebook’s terms of use) and as such you would like the username removed. As you have already removed it (using the information above), this part of the form only has a secondary purpose, the important part of the form is the bottom field where you can mark if you would like the username applied to your page.

Filling this form out should start the wheels in motion and hopefully with a little assessment from Facebook the username will be applied to your page (very much at their discretion however so not entirely guaranteed)

Outcome: Facebook released the re-use of the username and made the changes for the user. Upon providing these details to another user they had a turn around from Facebook within the hour!

Merging Facebook Friends to new business page

we currently have a individual Facebook page that we would like to merge all of our friends to our new business page. can you assist?

We are currently finalising the tutorial on Migrating a personal profile page to a business page, while we are finalising this I thought it best to send you this link with some great details and further instructions on how to work through the migration. Please be sure to follow the steps that have been outlined. As I am sure you understand making a copy of your current content is very important (you definitely don’t want to lose that) and as such I would definitely recommend that you do follow the noted steps to create a backup. Another complication that has been highlighted is the usage of a custom URL or alias on your personal profile, if you already have one assigned it will be redirected to a page not found. This can easily be rectified by submitting a form on Facebook – the one noted above.

There is one downside of merging to a page. As part of doing this your account gets changed over to a Business Account. The problem with Business Accounts is that they have limited access to the content on Facebook – you can’t see any content that you do not ‘own’ yourself. What is recommended is that you merge your page to a NEW page with a business account and then link your personal profile to the page as an Administrator. This way you will still have access to other Facebook users and their content.

If starting from scratch it is always recommended to set up a personal profile and then create a business page using the local business type. Your personal profile will not be shown as linked to the page (only administrators of the page can see who other administrators are).

Find out how to migrate your page here: http://www.michielgaasterland.com/facebook/how-to-easily-and-automatically-convert-your-facebook-friends-from-a-personal-profile-to-a-business-page/

 Outcome: The user was happy with the results and read through the risks to be fully prepared. You must remember that a business account will be created and you need to link your personal account.

Do keywords need to be close together?

When you have a two-word keyword (eg Montville accommodation). Does it matter if the two words are side-by-side in the sentence, meta description or heading or can they can just in the same sentence?

Good question and yes it does matter, this is referred to as Keyword proximity. Keyword proximity measures the closeness between two keywords. In general, the closer the keywords are, the better.

For Search Engine Optimisation,the proximity of the keywords or keywords included in a phrase in relation to each other is very important. The appropriate combination of the words in the page titles,meta descriptions, headers, paragraphs and page content will either help or hinder your rankings.

The following 7min YouTube video does a good job explaining – What is Keyword Proximity and Why is it Important?

Outcome: Keywords are something you need to focus on, ensuring the correct placement is just as important as ensuring you have the right words.

Which email newsletter software should I use?

I am really keen to start an email newsletter on a quarterly basis. I purchased Microsoft 2007 to get the Publisher program, sent off hundreds of emails, and got reports back that a lot went to Spam

I have been looking at all the sites that provide this service, but I am a bit hesitant to commit.

Is it possible for you to tell me what to look for in a company, or even better can you recommend one for me.

Thank you so much for all your support

To get you started I can recommend Mailchimp.com who allow you to send 12,000 emails a month to 2,000 subscribers on their Forever Free Plan. Take a look through their training videos, resources (http://www.mailchimp.com/resources) and free email templates. You should be able to get up and running in no time.

If you need a professional email template to match the design of your website/brand then we can do that for you just drop me an email and we’ll send you out a quote.

Outcome: MailChimp also has a number of plugins or modules that can be used on a range of CMS’s (the ones they provide on WordPress are AWESOME!). They also integrate well with most custom Facebook page developers.

We have received a ton of other great questions on our Q&A forum, you can take a look at them here:  http://www.mywebschool.com/internet-marketing-forum/

If you are a MyWebSchool.com member you are able to ask a question for free at any time as part of your membership. If you aren’t a member and you have a question you would like one of our experts to answer please submit your name and email address below and we will provide some information on how you can ask your questions.