A few days ago, I shared the story of a recent visit to Marlow’s Tavern.  In that post, I referenced a post from Scott Stratten where a simple apology from a hotel made a big difference in how he felt about things.  It reminded me of a recent stay I had in a hotel, and how a simple blame shift made the hotel look really bad.

On the way to Michigan for my grandmother’s funeral, we stopped at a Country Inn & Suites, where we’ve had enjoyable visits in the past. It was really just a minor issue at the hotel, too; the tub was full of water when we arrived, and apparently had been for days, because the shower floor was really slick when you stood up in it. We didn’t complain or anything, but I mentioned it in the email survey they sent a few days later.

Their response?

Wow!  It wasn’t a big issue before, but now they made me feel pretty stupid.  Did I imagine the problem?  I replied back that I was pleased to have received a response at all, but to belittle my issue was a pretty insensitive move.  If they had simply apologized for the issue I would have been good with it, but their questioning whether or not it was even a problem was pretty weak.

Applebee’s

It reminds me of a visit my wife and I made to Applebee’s years ago when we lived in Dothan, AL.  We tried to go there one night for dinner, but the place was full of smoke.  It was awful.  We emailed them to let them know about it.  A few days later, a manager called.  Which of the following did he say?

A – Sorry about that, one of our waitresses just had a baby and we all lit up cigars to celebrate.
B – Sorry about that, our ventilation system was having issues and the air in the smoking section wasn’t getting refreshed properly.
C – No it wasn’t.

It wasn’t a long phone call, but he insisted repeatedly that it wasn’t smoky in there.  Period.  Very odd.  Had he apologized and explained the situation, perhaps we would have tried going there again in the future.  With his actual response, we never went in the doors again.

You’re a human, and that’s ok

Your business is run by humans.  We know that.  When mistakes occur, which will certainly happen, how will you respond?  Will you respond like Chrylser did when a bad Tweet went out, and fire everyone in sight?  Or respond like the Red Cross did when a similar bad tweet went out, by apologizing and turning it into a win-win for everyone?

MythBusters

Another good example of a solid apology is with the MythBusters cannonball incident.  If you haven’t seen it yet, the MythBusters had a cannonball go way off course, through a neighborhood, through a house (!), across a six-lane road, and then end up inside of a minivan.  It was very fortunate that no one was hurt.

How did they respond to it?  The hosts of the show, Jamie and Adam, went to the neighborhood and held a brief press conference.  No lawyers making sure they said the “right thing”, just them giving a sincere statement.  Then they met the homeowners to see the damage, and will be paying to repair all of the damage (include hotel stays, if necessary).  In addition, they’ve vowed to investigate to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.  It’s exactly how they should handle it, but so many companies don’t.

When you’ve witnessed a company making a mistake, how did they handle it for you?

Your business isn’t perfect, but that’s ok is a post from: MickMel

Last week, I saw a speech that Gary Vaynerchuk gave to a bunch of RE/MAX realtors on the topic of social media engagement and it was quite awesome.  Here’s the video if you care to watch it:

Watching it inspired me to pick up Gary’s latest book, “The Thank You Economy“.  Awesome book, highly recommended. The folks at Marlow’s Tavern really need to read it.

As a general rule, we enjoy Marlow’s.  They have a few locations near us, good food, and solid service.  Tonight we took our babysitter out there for her birthday, but the evening had a few minor issues, and I think they could really benefit from having more of a “Thank You” approach to business.

No birthday desserts

We made sure to mention that today was our babysitter’s birthday, because we knew that Marlow’s did the little free cupcake dessert like most restaurants.  Nope, not anymore.  ”Some people lie about it being their birthday, so we can’t do that anymore.”  Uh-oh.  Really?  Did that surprise them?  Of course some people will lie about it — that’s why you give them a cheap cupcake and not a free steak. We had three adults and two kids, with a total bill of $78, and they’re concerned that they might give away a $3 dessert that isn’t legit?

While you certainly need to watch out for people taking advantage of you, this just seemed really shallow.  Companies that do customer service the right away (like Zappos) just focus on treating their customers like rock stars, and don’t worry so much about potentially giving up $3 every now and then.

My food was SLOW

It was remarkable.  The other four people in our party got their food fairly quickly, but I didn’t.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  We’re guessing it was 10-12 minutes before my food arrived, which is crazy for a place like that, but things happen.  However, I still don’t know what happened.  I got a quick “sorry ’bout that” when they brought it, and that was it.  It was clear they didn’t care about the issue a single bit. A much better approach would have been like what Scott Stratten had happen at a hotel a few years ago; he had a very bad breakfast, but they apologized and explained the problem and he was much happier as a result.  Here’s his full write-up of that experience.

I decided not to press the the issue with them, just to see how they’d handle it.  Simply put, they didn’t.  No apology from anyone, no deduction on our bill.

(Speaking of the bill – $2.50 each for kid’s drinks?  Wow!)

Twitter

With those in mind, I did a little digging when I got home.  They’re pretty solid on Twitter (@MarlowsTavern), so I poked around for a while.  The content they push out is solid, but their conversation skills are weak.  They reply to some comments, but it appears to be at random.  Just in the past week:

• Jennifer asked whether a dish at Marlow’s was gluten free.  A few days later, she got a reply from them — yes!  Excellent.  So she replied back asking if they had a gluten free menu, or how they should request gluten free products.  Crickets…
• Robbie tweeted that he was taking his wife to Marlow’s for her birthday.  A quick “congrats” would have been nice, but they simply let it go without comment…
• Another user tweeted to rave about their Sunday buffet.  Again, no reply.

Seriously, businesses need to build true fans to be successful and here are people actively telling their world about your restaurant — and you ignore them?

Google Place Pages

How about their Google Place pages?  They have a handful of locations, so I just checked out a few of them.  I found these two gems rather quickly:

• “The salmon was tasty, but I won’t be returning“
• “Probably one of the worst meals I have ever had“

The response from Marlow’s, as expected, was silence.

Google+

Needless to say, they’re not on Google+ yet.  Not that I can really fault them for that (it’s new, smaller than Facebook/Twitter, etc), but people are already talking about them on there…

Website

Since they’ll probably be reading this, I’ll toss in a few suggested website tweaks as a bonus.  Their website is really pretty solid (many restaurants have dreadfully awful sites), but it could use some adjustments:

• On your front page, you have a link to your “to-go” menu.  Seems like people might often be in the car when they call for that.  And the menu is a PDF?
• In the footer, “copyright 2007″.
• Also in the footer is the “designed by” garbage.  Don’t leave that on there.
• Your canonicalization is a bit messed up.
• “Follow us on Facebook”.  Don’t you “follow” people on Twitter and “like” them on Facebook?  People get confused enough, so don’t switch them up for no good reason.  I’ve never liked the words “follow us” anyhow, because it implies that “you should follow us and we’ll send you a bunch of crap”.  I’m glad the Twitter widget (which you have on your site) says “Join the conversation” instead, as that sounds much better.
• Your Entertainment page encourages people to visit you on MySpace, which you haven’t updated in about two years.  Can’t blame you for the lack of updates, but you should probably remove that link.

It just takes time

Social media can be difficult for some businesses.  If you sell toilet plungers, it’ll take some work to come up with a creative campaign.  For restaurants, though, it’s dead simple.  Just put in the effort, connect with your patrons, and prove that you really care about them.  I should also mention that their Facebook pages (like this one) seem to be managed quite well, so they’re not totally ignoring everyone.

At the end of the day, these weren’t killer problems for Marlow’s.  We certainly think less of them, no doubt, but we’ll be back eventually — they’ll just be a little bit lower on the list.

Marlow’s Tavern, meet Gary Vaynerchuk is a post from: MickMel

Google has finally launched their business pages feature, and it’s open for everyone to sign up.  You can read more about it on the Google Blog, or watch the video below for a quick overview of how it works.

Business pages work very similarly to personal profiles, with a few notes:

• You cannot create an account for a business page; you create it via your personal profile (similar to Facebook).
• You can create multiple pages from a single profile.
• Each business page can only be managed by the profile that created it, so choose carefully the right person in your organization to create the page.  Support for multiple admins is “coming soon”.
• Pages cannot add users to a circle unless the user adds them first.  This is an awesome anti-spam move by Google.
• There aren’t any vanity URLs yet (like plus.google.com/pepsi), but those are presumably coming in the future.

Direct Connect

Tied to this release is a new feature called “Direct Connect”.  If you begin your Google search with a +, it’ll show brand pages that match the query in the auto-complete results, as shown here:

Over time, it’s possible that this could become a trendy thing to promote.  I can image someone like Pepsi having something like “Google +Pepsi” for more at the end of a TV ad.  If it does take off, it’ll be important to get your page listed there.  But how?

Badges

Today, Google released “badges” for business pages.  These allow you to add nifty widgets to your page, and people can add your brand to their circles directly from your website!  It’s pretty slick.

Even more important is the snippet of code that they have you put in the <head> section of your site.  This is there to prove that the page in question is really yours and will qualify you to show up as a Direct Connect option.  No word on how soon those will start appearing, but it’d be wise to get yours connected so you can show up in Direct Connect as soon as possible.  You can learn more about badges from this Google blog post.

Have you built a page yet?

Have you built a page for your company yet?  Leave a  link to it in the comments and show us your work!

Google+ Business Pages are now live; here’s how to get started is a post from: MickMel

I encourage many of my clients to use video to help show their customers what they have to offer.  Quick, simple videos can be quite helpful and aren’t very difficult to make.  Some examples:

• Car Dealer: Give me a two-minute tour of the latest greatest car on your lot.
• Realtor: Take me on a quick tour of the home and show me why I want to buy it.
• Photographer: Show me around your studio and explain why you chose the equipment you have.

Well-produced videos certainly have their place, but they tend to be slow and expensive to create.  With a Flip camera (or even a decent cell phone) you can grab a quick video and have it on YouTube in a matter of minutes.

What inspired me to write this post was a short video I saw today from Tim Terpening.  He works for Domain Homes in Tampa, FL, and there’s going to be an airshow in town this weekend.  As it happens, one of their neighborhoods is right next to MacDill Air Force Base and has a great view of the action, so they’re encouraging people to come hang out in their neighborhood by offering free parking and free food.  His video is a perfect example of what I’m talking about:

It’s under two minutes, he shows some of the planes doing some practice runs the day before, and then explains the deal they’re offering. Perfect.

If you want to build the killer well-produced video from time to time, go for it, but simply grabbing a camera and talking to your customers can be an amazing way to connect with them.

Simple video can be amazingly effective is a post from: MickMel

No matter what line of business you’re in, you can often get inspiration and ideas by checking out your competition.  You can see what kind of stuff they’re putting on their website, how they’re using social media, what new products they’re stocking, etc.  However, you ultimately need to trust yourself.  Here are a few examples.

Using music to set the tone

I was recently talking to a client about her site, and suggested we take the background music off.  After a brief discussion, she agreed.  When I asked why she put it up there in the first place, she said that a lot of her competition did that and she was trying to match them.  Being a brand-new business, emulating some of the established sites is certainly a great idea.  Now that she’s removed the music and they haven’t, she’s a step ahead!

Facebook “welcome tabs”

I have a lot of clients asking for “welcome tabs” on their Facebook Page.  While it’s certainly appropriate in a few situations, it seems that most people are doing it simply because everyone else is doing it, and no one is really thinking it through.  Most users come to your Facebook page for the content — information, specials, etc.  Why put an extra page in their way?

It feels a lot to me like the “splash pages” everyone had in the late 90′s — simply an unnecessary step between your user and the content they want.  We all eventually realized how stupid those were, so how are Facebook welcome tabs any different? (Honestly — leave a comment and convince me how they’re a good thing for everyone.  I’m certainly open to changing my mind if someone can supply a solid argument.)

Copying the church down the road

One church I worked at was obsessed with the other big church just down the road.  We’d often spend thousands of dollars copying activities that they did, even if we didn’t need them.  It was quite sad.  There were essentially two ways that our leadership viewed things:

• If they’re doing x, and we’re not, we need to start.
• If we’re doing x, and they’re not, we need to stop wasting time on it.

This was especially problematic during the rise of social media, because the “other church” was slow to adopt it.  Therefore, it was tough for us to convince our church leadership that it was worthwhile.  The “other church” is a wonderful place, but they have made some very poor technological choices over the past few years; very dumb things with their website, very little social media, etc.  Copying them in those areas would have been a foolish mistake.

Stylish restaurant websites

Have you ever tried to pull up a restaurant website on your phone?  It’s almost always brutal.  Slate recently had an article about this, and I agree completely.  Not only are they often unusable on a phone (especially an Apple device, with no hope of loading their cute Flash menus), but they’re equally frustrating from a normal browser.

My thought is that it’s the restaurant owners and their desire for a particular ambience that cause most of the issues.  While you certainly want the actual restaurant to have that feel, putting cheesy background music being a painfully “creative” navigation bar isn’t the way to do it on the website.

The University website

(via xkcd.  awesome site)

Part of this comes back to the problem of the University website.  Universities think that we want to read about the school’s philosophy and press releases, and that idea is validated by other universities posting the same junk on their home page.  This is very similar to churches that post a big link to their denomination’s website, rather than providing decent driving directions.

Check them out, but be smart

I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t see what your competition is doing.  As I said at the beginning, you can often get some good ideas from them.  Just be smart, and always view things through the eyes of your customers.  Ask yourself, “if I was a customer, why would I visit the site and what would I be looking for?”  If the answer is “cheesy music and a mission statement”, find someone to help you think through it a bit further.

Your competition isn’t always right is a post from: MickMel

My wife and I are fans of Tim McGraw; we’ve seen him in concert a few times, and we’ll likely see him again in the future.  However, his “fan club” is such a disaster that I had to share this here.

We joined his fan club earlier this year because we knew he was coming to Atlanta and we know that fan clubs get early access to tickets.  I kept an eye on my inbox, and got all kinds of stuff from them — “tickets now available in Nashville!”, and Seattle, and Miami, etc.  I thought it was silly that they were sending me that junk, since they know where I live, but it’s not a big deal.

Later, my wife happened to hear on the radio that the station was having a pre-sale starting the next day.  What about the fan club presale?  Yeah, it started a few days prior.  Of all of the emails I got, that wasn’t one of them…

Waste of Time

So the fan club was a waste of time.  Perhaps the email got lost, marked as spam, etc, but I still wanted to leave the club.  No need for it anymore.  This proved to be interesting.

Contact form?

First I tried their contact form.  You can fill it out, but it doesn’t actually submit properly.  It just takes you to a blank page.

Twitter?

The link on their home page to their Twitter account doesn’t work.  Fortunately, their MySpace account is still humming along…

E-mail?

I tried replying to one of their newsletters, but I never heard back.

Unsubscribe

Ok, since I obviously can’t contact, I figured I’d just use the unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of the email.  Ok.  Click the link, enter my email address in the box, get an “unsubscribe verification” in my email.  I clicked the link in there to verify my unsubscription and got a 404 error.  Wow!

This isn’t new

All of this happened back in early March — more than three months ago — and it’s all still broken.  The contact form is still broken, Twitter link is still broken and I just tried to unsubscribe again and got the same issue.

Tim is a great performer, but his fan club is such a huge mess.

Pay Attention

Always remember to pay close attention to your site.  None of these issues were intentional (except for failing to respond to my email), and they simply became issues over time.  Since the management of the site isn’t likely to be using the contact form or trying to unsubscribe from the emails, they don’t know the problems exist.

I’ve been guilty of this in the past as well; a feature on a site of mine will go down, and I’ll be unaware of it for a  few days until a member lets me know about it.  Now I try to spend more time going through things and making sure everything is running smoothly.

Have you ever been “trapped” by a site like this, with no good way to contact them or unsubscribe?

Don’t run your fan club like Tim McGraw is a post from: MickMel

Late last year I performed a few simply Twitter tests for churches.  I found 36 churches that had their Twitter account listed on their home page, and sent them a simple message to see how many would respond.  Out of the 36, only four of them replied — just 11%.  If you missed those posts, here is the test with the first 11 churches, and here is the test with the other 25.

I recently sent a tweet to my car dealer to see about coming in for an oil change, but they never replied.  Despite the big dollars that car dealerships throw at TV and radio commercials, I began to think that they were likely ignoring Twitter as well.

I did the same kind of test that I did with the churches.  I found 20 local dealerships that promoted their Twitter account on their home page and sent them all a simple tweet — “What time is your showroom open this Sunday?“.  As before, I wanted to keep the question simple as to not waste much of their time.  The tweet was sent around 8:05 on Wednesday evening, giving them plenty of time (and two full business days) to respond.  As with the church example, all 20 tweets were sent from different accounts so we wouldn’t look too obvious.

The results?  Almost identical to the churches, with just 2 out of 20 replying — 10%.

The Good

Two dealerships replied.  @MariettaToyota wrote back to say “Marietta Toyota is open from 1 pm to 6 pm on Sundays! Is there something special you’re looking for?“.  Perfect!  @LandmarkDodge was the other that replied, by saying “11am, hope to see you!“.  Very solid.  They both took about 24 hours to respond which is a bit slow, but certainly acceptable.

The Lazy

Nine dealerships simply haven’t tweeted since we did the test, much less replied to us.  A few notable ones:

• @SandySpgsToyota — Just a dump from their Facebook account, but it’s been over two weeks since they’ve said anything.
• @RickCaseMazda — No updates at all since last November, but they have 252 followers.
• @GeorgiaFord — Just dumping everything via Ping.fm.  Ping is a fine service, but you can’t just post info and never follow up on it.
• @HennessyHonda — No updates in over a year, with the last update saying “The dealership is closed now…“.  Given the context of no updates in a year, I thought perhaps it meant they were closed for good.  That doesn’t seem to be the case, but this stream is quite a mess in a number of ways.
• @CobbCountyKiaGA — Using some service called “ReachCast” for their service, but they haven’t tweeted in a month.  Perhaps someone needs to build “ListenCast” instead?

The Bullhorns

Nine other dealerships posted at least one new update since our inquiry, but (unknowingly, I hope) completely ignored us.  Some highlights from there:

• @EdVoylesCDJ, @GwinnettPlace, @InfinitiGwinnet, @CurryHondaGA and @1AtlantaToyota — Just dumping from Facebook.
• @GPHonda — Everything is either an autopost from Facebook or from their blog.
• @ToyOfMcDonough — Focused almost entirely on driving people from Twitter over to their Facebook page, rather than engaging with them on Twitter.   Oddly enough, they replied to me when I mentioned that to them, but never replied to the test account about their Sunday hours.
• @CherokeeFord — A combination of a Facebook feed and HootSuite, but no listening.

About Facebook

Most of these dealerships do a fine job with Facebook, and that’s certainly a great thing.  Facebook is an excellent tool to help keep your brand front of mind, introduce new products, answer questions, etc. It just seems silly to have Twitter plastered all over the site and then just ignore people when they try to engage with them.

The other thing that I’m seeing more of lately is people simply using their Twitter account to drive people to their Facebook Page.  Someone has chosen to follow you on Twitter and hear what you have to say, and you simply push them to your Facebook Page instead of engaging with them?  That’s so foolish.

What’s the solution?

It’s pretty simple — listen.  Use a tool like TweetDeck or HootSuite and start paying attention.

If you don’t have time to monitor these social outlets yourself, then hire a company to do it for you.  In most cases, it costs far less than even a part-time employee, and you’ll be able to keep things monitored 24/7.  There are tons of companies out there that can help you with it; just be sure to check them out carefully to make sure they really know their stuff.  You can start by asking these five questions, check out their Klout score and find out how long they’ve been on Twitter (“experts” didn’t just join last year).

What do you think?

Is it worth the time/effort for these dealers to get more involved on Twitter?  It looks bad to say things like “socialize with us” (like this one) or “connect” (like this one) when they’re clearly not doing either of those.

Are they dropping the ball, or am I being too critical?

Car dealers don’t listen on Twitter either is a post from: MickMel

While I’m certainly not a big fan of the phone, I still use it quite often.  As you’ve probably noticed, while businesses love their fancy programs and mission statements, their front line workers define who they are.  Here’s two quick examples:

The unhelpful church

A few months back, Ali and I were giving a social media presentation to a group of local businesses.  There was a mix-up about who was bringing the projector, and it looked for a little while that it might be a big problem.  We knew there was a church right next door, and most churches have projectors around.  Being mid-day on Tuesday, it seemed likely to be available.

I know some people that attend there, but had never had any interaction with the church before.  I knew it’d be interesting to see what happened when we called.

We were hoping for the best, but felt it would be understandable if they had said “no”.  We would have been willing to put up collateral, but it’s still a tricky thing to loan out valuable equipment to a stranger.  But we didn’t get a “no” — we basically got a “we don’t care”.  The precise response was something like “no one is here to take care of that now, we can’t call them, they might show up later or they might not.   Good-bye”.  Blech.  Fortunately, we were able to get a projector in time, and I’ve since purchased my own to avoid that kind of problem in the future.

I now have one experience with that church, and it isn’t great.

The awesome dentist

A few weeks back, I had to have my wisdom teeth pulled.  My dentist doesn’t do that kind of work, so he gave me four local oral surgeons to call.  I called them all.

The winner, quiet easily, was East Cobb Oral Surgery.  The other three places sounded very annoyed that I called.  Not downright rude, but you could tell they didn’t want to be on the phone.

When I called ECOS, the woman was very friendly, very polite and very patient.  The call only lasted about 45 seconds, but she was MINE for those 45 seconds.  It made all the difference in the world.  One receptionist spent 45 seconds being helpful, and the company earned $1300.  Not a bad return on the time she invested with me.

ROI?

People often want to know the ROI of being on Twitter or Facebook, and it’s quite difficult to measure.  It’s similar to the ROI of answering the phone, since it’s all about connecting with people.  That receptionist earned ECOS $1300 in 45 seconds, which is on pace for nearly $100,000/hour.  Is that her value?  Obviously not.

For another example, I mentioned a few years ago how a single tweet earned an HVAC company $700.  Is their Twitter account worth $700/tweet? Not so much.

When it comes to social media, don’t worry too much about trying to calculate ROI.  Build relationships and the return will come.

Thanks?

One weird thing, though.  After the surgery, which went very well, I emailed my primary dentist and ECOS to express my thanks for their quality work.  Neither ever replied.  Not a big deal, but kinda weak.

Have you ever had a similar experience, where a single interaction (phone, Twitter, etc) created/lost a lot of income for a business?

Your customer service starts with the person that answers the phone is a post from: MickMel

I’m down in Fort Morgan, AL this week for a little vacation with the family, and I’m shocked at how lazy the realtors are around here.  Like most beachfront communities, most of the homes are either for sale or rent, yet many of the sale/rent signs are broken, every “take info” box is empty, and I’ve only seen one house that has a unique URL on it.  90% have no web link, and the rest simply link back to the main site for that company.  QR codes aren’t even being considered.  If you’re a hard worker and want to live at the beach, move down here — you’d be a hero!

For a wider look at the Real Estate industry, check out the infographic below, created by Mashable. It illustrates some very interesting numbers regarding how the Real Estate industry is using social media.

A few things that jumped out at me:

• 84% of real estate professionals are now using social media.  That’s it? I would have expected that number to be in the mid-90′s.  Granted, many aren’t using it effectively, but that 84% includes those people.  16% apparently aren’t doing anything with social media yet.
• 73% of homeowners are more likely to list with a realtor that is willing to do video, but only 12% of the real estate industry current has a YouTube account.
• The real estate industry uses Facebook more than other small businesses, but they’re way behind in Twitter usage.

Anyhow, check out the infographic below.  Anything else jump out at you?

Great stats on Social Media usage by the Real Estate industry is a post from: MickMel

A while back, I covered the difference between Facebook profiles, pages and groups.  In a nutshell, “profiles” are for people, “pages” are for organizations, and “groups” are for whatever you want.

A few months ago, Facebook updated all of the user profiles to a new design.  They’re now in the process of rolling out those changes to the Pages now, with a few other nice touches.

The New Layout

The new layout is the biggest change, but it will look pretty familiar to most of you.  In their effort to give the site a more consistent look and feel, the Pages now look quite similar to the Profiles you’ve become accustomed to.  Here’s an example:

Switch between Page name and your real name

You now have the option to take any of your pages and “become” that page on the rest of Facebook.  By choosing the option to “Use Facebook as this page“, you can then browse the rest of the site and interact as if you were that page, and not just as yourself.  This gives brands the opportunity to interact across more of the site without having to reveal their personal identity.

Notifications

This has been long overdue; now you can get email notifications when someone posts on the wall of your Page!  I have to keep up with quite a few different pages, and constantly checking them for updates has been a hassle.  This is certainly a very welcome addition.

New Tab Width?

If you have a custom tab on your Facebook Page, like the Mt. Bethel page does, the width of that tab has been changed from 520 pixels to 492 pixels.  However, this is apparently a bug that Facebook will have resolved soon.  Still, you should check your page to make sure your custom tab content fits properly; bug or not, it’ll make you look bad.

What’s missing?

These are certainly some great updates, but I feel that one big piece is still missing — the ability to comment on your own page as yourself.  You can now take your brand out to the rest of Facebook, but you still can’t post comments on your business page using your real name.

For example, I might post an entry on our church site with some news about an upcoming event.  If someone posts a comment with a question, I’d like to be personal and reply as “Mickey” rather than as “Piedmont Church”.  It’s certainly a minor issue, but hopefully something they add at some point in the future.

Update: I was wrong.  As Steve mentioned in the comments below, you can do this now! Edit the page, then navigate to the Your Settings area. There is an option for posting preferences and the default is the old behavior. Just remove the check et voila! You will now post on your page as you.

Upgrade your pages now

To get started, simply visit this page and you can start upgrading your Page(s) as soon as you’re ready.

What do you think of the new Page designs?

Facebook makes some nice upgrades to their Pages is a post from: MickMel