Dear Facebook : Why are you being so difficult?

Facebook November 2, 2009 12 Comments @laurenfisher

I regularly use Facebook pages for clients and also for the Simply Zesty page and I’m increasingly frustrated at how many barriers are put up. These are just a few of the things I notice day to day that get me tearing my hair out and it seems completely illogical to make business pages so hard to use. I’d love to know what else frustrates you about them!

Where is my page?

Firstly, it is incredibly difficult to navigate to your page, at least for the first time. You have to navigate through the (non-obvious) Advertising link at the bottom of the site, then a further 3 clicks to reach the page itself. I’m not sure why they’ve made it so difficult to reach your page and actually update it and I’m always answering questions on this where people are inadvertently updating their profile instead of the business page. Given that you can have your profile and page deleted for doing so, it seems illogical that they make the pages so hidden in the interface.

How do I design the page?

It is notoriously difficult to design Facebook pages. Pages now work in a tab system, but to add a tab to a page you first have to create an fbml box (more on that later) and convert the box to a tab, through the settings on the edit page. The applications/widgets provided by Facebook to enhance your page are difficult to use and it’s hard to create a consistent design them on your page using these. In order to design a good page you need to use an fbml box, where you can design applications or pages using html code. This isn’t something that most people know yet it is the only real option to design a professional looking page. There are also some subtle differences between html and fbml and you might find that certain code isn’t recognised in fbml.

How do I see my fans’ updates?

For some reason, Facebook have split the comments from fans onto two tabs. One for the whole wall, and one for updates from fans. It’s easy to forget to check the second tab and I really have no idea why they decided to split it in this way.

How can I help grow the page organically?

It used to be the case that actions from your fans on a page were automatically published into news feeds. Facebook have now changed this, in a string of recent announcements on changes to Facebook pages. The emphasis is now more on engagement, which is certainly a positive, but it can be hard to grow your page at the start and this communication into newsfeed was a valuable way of doing this. Now, brands will increasingly have to rely on paid-for ads to lead people to your page. See what they did there?

How can I message my fans?

The short answer is, you can’t. Any admin of a Facebook page can send an update to fans, but this is different to a message. A notification won’t appear in your email inbox or news feed, users have to click to see all their updates. I rarely do this (if ever) so it’s not a very attractive option to communicate with your fans. You do of course have the option of manually going to each of your fans and sending them a message, but you wouldn’t get very far without being marked as spam and receiving a warning from Facebook.

How do I add RSS to my page?

Not through a simple rss link, as you might expect. You can add an rss feed (of your blog for example) to your wall feed through the notes settings. Notes? Certainly not the most obvious link and it takes a fair amount of trawling through forums to actually find out how.

Is there anything I’ve missed off?

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Comments

Padraig McKeon

Fair questions.

Devil’s advocate, and I’m not a very active Facebook user, but could one argue that some of the ‘demands’ you making of Facebook are actually a case of trying to get it to do things that other media or apps do [excuse my perhaps having the wrong language or descriptors] that might be possible but that it is not really designed for, whereas other media / apps / tools are.

For example is it intended by most people using it to be pushing out messaging / RSS or is it meant to be a destination for people to visit. Now that I ask that… who gets to say either way?

I guess a better way of saying that is ‘who decides what Facebook should look like’

Sorry – random response

Lauren Fisher

Hi Padraig. It’s a fair point, but I think that given that Facebook provide the option of having a Facebook page, it should be a lot easier and more flexible to use. Otherwise, what’s the point of having it? Simple things such as the fact that you can publish RSS feeds to your wall but that there is no direct way of doing this, shows that a little more thought has to be put in to the usability of the site.

http://Leapfrogg.co.uk Catherine Pryce

Thank you for this post. For a platofrm that is donimating the world I have to agree with Lauren that this process is extremely frustrating, time consuming and not at all straight forward. Trawling through various apps , do we have to wait for API’s to update to know if it has been a success?? There are various wonderful posts from Mashable and ‘how to’ guides on YouTube to point you in the right direction… Then you are on your own. I wonder if Facebook do any lessons/seminars/training….? A tip: RSS Graffiti seemed to be the app to collate RSS feeds onto your PAGE rather than your PROFILE… I wait with baited breath to see if this has worked.

Lauren Fisher

I think the fact that there are so many guides and ‘how-to’ videos demonstrates the point in itself. I’m not sure if there’s any official guides or training from Facebook but a central resource would certainly be helpful.

http://blog.iia.ie Roseanne

Hi Lauren,
Good succinct post and I’m sorry to say I have to agree with all of it. Sorry because I’m the very person who goes around telling people to use Social Media to promote their businesses – it’s easy, it’s designed to be easy to use. My biggest gripe is that even though I worked hard to get the IIA’s page over the 100 fan mark (hard work because you don’t want to be boring and go on and on about something so seemingly trivial) I cannot for the life of me get our vanity URL to display anything other than the standard login page. I’ve asked some FB experts to look at this with me but to no avail. Nothing obvious leps out. Another FB mystery
Talk to you soon!
Roseanne
http://websitedesigncork.com Frank Prendergast

Great post Lauren, agree 100% _ I would add that Facebook really need to communicate better when it is appropriate to set up a group vs a page, and how to figure out what page category is best.
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Johni

Agree with ya Lauren. Sometimes I feel like Facebook is going out of its way to be TOO TECH! It’s as if they want you to use their service but “only so far” before they take joy in Annoyances. The entire site from Profile to PAGES (Pages being my fave) seems to have an air of “use it if you can figure it out”. ALSO, I must add that the HELP section is absolutely the WORST ever feature on any social media resource- its a complete JOKE and down right insulting trying to get help when you make an error that say- crashed your page! (been there done that took 6 weeks to find a HUMAN who could fix it) Literally FUBAR’d on that one. Facebook should listen to end users more, make it more user friendly and go above and beyond what “other networks” did in the past to stay on top. I like Facebook but they could be better instead of “Better than thou” on end user ease.
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hi-tech

FACEBOOK? For years I tried to figure out why the site is so popular given the the fact that it is so difficult to navigate, not to speak about creating a page or something

I have visited the site maybe once or twice a year, within 5 minutes i get out of it, myspace was somewhat easier.

And i am the kind of guy who spend a GREAT deal of time navigati

I got to this site by searching “facebook hard difficult naviagate” and you already know why i did it

Nickr1980

I tried telling people the same thing. Myspace was just copy, or cut and paste and the site did the work for you. But many poo-poo myspace in favour of facebook, but facebook is very plain and boring. Mayspace may have gotten worse through the years since I left but it beats face-bore.

Nickr1980

I hate Face-crap.

How do around half a BILLION people understand how to use it except for me? I feel like an idiot. And when I did use it I was the only one who had friends on there who were “make believe”. They were people I knew from my school days, yet they ignored me, but added me as a friend. Crazy.

The LIKE button is harder to work out than planning a mission to Mars using a drinking straw, a hairdryer and an old paintbrush. The idiot who designed this site must have THE most complexed brain known to mankind. They should freeze him before he dies incase he is needed to save the future from meltdown (which will be a week on Tuesday the way this planet is going).

Nobody knows how to add this “like button”. People SAY they do but they either do not know or it is classified information. What the hell IS Iframes????? What on EARTH is XFBML?????
WHERE DO YOU PASTE THE CODE??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have scoured google and all I see are people that have spouted random jargon which makes as much sense as…

“go to nhcjhjsdgfvuygfjgfj gek, then click onmfjk fger ioer gker ierhgf eg, then add jvfhjjjjj kvj vehkjrs hkh,

then your done!

All these so-called “helpful links” either send you to the same page, don’t work, lead you in a loophole or they give you a virus. Or even worse, open a porthole in time and space where you witness your own death at the hands of Francis the psychotic Penguin!

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT???!!!!!

and I hate those who say… “Oh it’s so easy to use, I am always on it, I have no problems with it. It must be you”

I want to SLAP those people SOOOOOOOOOO hard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!