Notes are a great tool in your Social Media and Facebook marketing arsenal. They are easy to use, especially now with the new Facebook note editor. However, for whatever reason, in all their wisdom, Facebook didn’t add the hyperlink tool to the editor’s tool bar. This is unfortunate as a Facebook note is a great way to create teaser posts or mini-blogs that contain a link to your main blog or website.
You can, however, add links to external pages. There are two ways. The first is the easiest, but not necessarily the best for raising your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). To add a link, say you are linking to the Mashable website, you simply type in the full url to the site, http://www. mashable.com. Facebook notes automatically converts it to a working hyperlink.
The preferred way uses what is called anchor text. Say you were selling beans and you wanted to link to a page about your delicious and healthy beans. “Delicious and Healthy Beans” could be your anchor text. By using an anchor text, search engines associate the words in your anchor text as keywords on your site. So, when someone puts in the search term “delicious and healthy beans” your site is more likely to show up higher in the search engine rankings.
So how do you use anchor text in Facebook notes? If you know html, you already know the answer to this question. If not, you need to know a little piece of html code that Facebook notes understands.
The code is as follows: <a href = “http://www.mywebsite.com”>Delicious and Healthy Beans</a>.
This may look complicated, but once you are used to it, it is really quite simple. All you need to do is to substitute your full website address for http://www.mywebsite.com between the quotes. Then substitute your anchor text in place of Delicious and Healthy Beans. Everything else remains the same.
Add notes to your Facebook pages. They are a great way to engage your fans and readers.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
The worst mistake you can make is to market from your main Facebook page. Develop a fan page to make offers to your friends. You can make a page for each product or just one for your entire brand. Marketing from your Facebook main page will get you banned with no second chances.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-5-Mistakes-Rookie-Network-Marketers-Make-on-Facebook&id=5283995
Just wanted to add to the conversation,
Lanette
It’s very useful to be able to add hyperlinks to Facebook. It is particularly useful since Facebook is highly regarded by search engines such as Google. You links add “juice” to your placements. Good tip. Follow me on Twitter @ptaylor98. I have an intersting SEO tip at my blog
Facebook no longer converts the text of a Link in this format http://www.mashable.com
Facebook also CENSORS Apple Symbol ? ( if you type Shift-Option-K on Mac )! Twitter doesn’t! Thus on Twitter you can see ??????? but when that Twitt appears on Facebook this Apple Symbol ? character gets Deleted!!! I asked Facebook about it, and they never replied! I strongly suspect that Facebook is doing that DELIBERATELY!!!
I’ve reported this to the mainstream media, and I didn’t hear back! My guess is that they, like many, are intimidated by Facebook!!!
Google+ is going to try to take on Facebook. I don’t know anything about it, except, I’d like to see Facebook being called out on this kind of CENSORSHIP!!!
This disabling of Links is likely not a bug, but anti-social strong arming!!! So, as of now, if you type http://www. mashable.com in your Facebook Note, it’s no longer clickable, hyperlinked text!!!
Hopefully this post of mine will generate a reply and Comments!!! I have no idea how to force Facebook into Undoing this Hostile Move!!! It looks like their success went to their head!!!
Thus All Links in my old Notes are no longer clickable!!! Converting all of them into ANCHOR TEXT like this, Delicious and Healthy Beans will be too time consuming!!! I just tested that ANCHOR TEXT, and it does work! Thanks A LOT!!! Hopefully Facebook doesn’t disable it!!!
Another WORKAROUND is to Paste the Note Text into 1st COMMENT, where the Links in this format http://www.mashable.com are CLICKABLE! But then, unlike is the case with Notes, one can’t go back and Edit Comment! The reason I chose Notes on Facebook vs. Discussions is that, after 15 minutes, the Discussion Post is Frozen, and it can’t be Edited!!! But, I can come back anytime to Facebook Notes and Edit them!!!
Thank You for this Page!!!
Nice ideas, but both don’t work. Neither does the Facebook Notes text entering field recognize web addresses as such and automatically converts them into active links, not does it seem to know any bit of html codes. Sorry! The only way to add an active link to the Notes is to write a comment right below the Note.
The Comment right below the Note does convert Links, but the Text of that Comment can’t be Edited, unlike the Note itself, which one can come back to for Edits. Similarly to Comments, Discussions Posts can’t be Edited after 15 minutes from the moment they were created. They get “frozen”, i.e. become Uneditable! That’s why I’ve used Notes for Discussions instead of the Discussions Application.
How can we making Facebook fix this Links Issue? They haven’t replied to my contacting them! Thus it’s hard to know for sure if it’s a glitch with the Links being no longer clickable, or if it’s a deliberate discontinuation of a feature! What do you think?
My instinct is to make lots of noise about this! If you agree on that, what do you think would be the best way to get this topic noticed?
Thanks for your replies!!!
Hmmm….I’m thinking perhaps you didn’t insert the html info into your Note quite right (or maybe FB has made some changes??).
I just used it today and it shows up as a hyperlink. I haven’t yet published it yet (it’s still in my Drafts) to verify the link, but it definitely shows up as a clickable link…
It’s 12/20/11, and I just saw Shannon’s 11/14/11 Comment. So I checked my Facebook Note again, and this problem still exists. As I’ve done for years, I’ve pasted a Link in this format http://www.apple.com/ which used to work, even without www. and it still doesn’t show up Hyperlinked! So….
Facebook definitely made some changes! Unlike Mac OS, that makes it easy to use Links in such format, if one checks off Smart Links under Edit/Substitutions, Facebook is forcing the user to use the actual HTML Code, which most users would not be familiar with! People would simply Copy the Links they see, and Paste it, assuming that those Links would become Clickable! But, that’s not how Facebook works anymore!
My Conclusion is that Facebook simply wants to discourage people from Pasting Links, cause it wants to keep our Eyeballs “glued” to its Pages, so that we don’t wander off outside Facebook! They longer we stay on Facebook, the more $$ Facebook can charge for their ads!
Can I prove that Conclusion? No… But, I doubt that it’s some kind of a glitch! I strongly feel that it’s part of Facebook Strategy!
I also don’t think that this Apple Symbol: ??????? = Shift-Option-K not being displayed on Facebook is a glitch either!!! I strongly feel that it’s also part of Facebook Strategy! And I find that particularly STRANGE since Steve Jobs’ passing… Why? Cause Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was all over TV and media praising Steve Jobs, calling him a Mentor!!! And with this Ban on Apple Symbol: ??????? = Shift-Option-K one can only wonder:
Hey, what a Homage, Payback for all that “Mentoring”!!!!
Now, I’d LOVE to apologize and retract all these suspicions, if someone could kindly explain these Two Mysteries away – The Un-clickable Links, and this Apple Symbol: ??????? = Shift-Option-K Ban on Facebook! But, I am not holding my breath!!! I doubt that many people care about such topics. It took me effort to even find this Page! But, at least I have a place to went these frustrations!!!!
Thanks in advance for any help! Happy 2012!!!