Facebook recently made a change allowing you to use Facebook as your business identity rather than your personal identity. To give this a try, log in as your personal self. Go to the business page that you administer and look in the upper right for “Admins.” Under it, you’ll see a link titled, “Use Facebook as…[name of business].” Click it and you’ll now see Facebook through the eyes of your business page.

What does this mean?

You can get notifications about activity on your page, see stories from the pages you like in your news feed, and interact with other pages as your page. – Facebook

Two points here.

1) When logged in as your Page, your news feed is made up of Pages that your Page “likes”. This is a good way to keep an eye on what others are doing as it compiles all of their posts into your stream.

2) You can now post on another Page’s wall as your Business Page. For example, Vista Hills Winery can post on the Dundee Hills Winery Association wall as Vista Hills, instead of as Dave Petterson. This is valuable to share info and post events as the business and not the person.

When you want to stop using Facebook as your business and switch back to your personal profile, simply click the “Account” drop down in the upper right of any page and you’ll be given the option to switch back.

Last August, Facebook unveiled its own “check-in” system called Facebook Places to compete with startups such as FourSquare. What is it?

Places is a Facebook mobile application that allows you to see where your friends are and share your physical location. You can check in to nearby Places to tell your friends where you are, tag your friends in the Places you visit, and view comments your friends have made about the Places you visit. – From Facebook Help

If your business has a big upcoming event, this is the perfect time to set up your Places page and tell all of that foot traffic about it!

Please note, Places pages are different than Business (fan) pages. If you create a Places page it will be in addition to your regular Business page and you will have two pages to administer. There is a way to “merge” the two pages, but there are a number of caveats to consider.

If you would like your customers to be able to check-in to your business, follow the directions below to first create and then claim the page.

To Create a Places Page

1. Download the Facebook App for your smartphone.
2. Go to your business, I mean physically go there in person (make sure you have your smartphone with you).
3. Load up the Facebook App and hit the “Check In” button
4. If the “place” has not yet been created (anybody can create a place, so it may already be there), click “add place” and enter the pertinent info.
5. That’s it, your place is now created and anybody can check-in.

Why claim your Places Page?

As the Places page administrator you can create Facebook Deals, add photo albums, customize the profile picture, post on the wall as the business, view stats, and generally administer the page just as you would your normal Business (fan) page.

To claim your Places Page

1. Go to Facebook on your computer and use the normal search bar to type in your business name.
2. Because you already created it (or it was already there), click on your places page in the results.
3. Once on the page, look in the lower left of the page for a link titled, “Is this your business?” Click it.
4. Follow the verification instructions (the email method can take up to a week, so be patient).
5. Facebook will notify you via email when your Place is verified.

Once your Places Page is all set up, you’ll want to encourage visitors to your business to check-in, so make sure your staff knows to talk it up and you may want to offer a discount or “Places Deal” for those who check-in.

You can also set a username for it (Vanity URL) and promote it in much the same way as you would your normal Business page.

Facebook allows you to claim a username for your business (fan) page. The result is a nice clean URL that you can use to promote your page across all of your marketing efforts, aka, a vanity URL. For example, your facebook address could be: http://www.facebook.com/JohnDoeWinery

This beats the alternative:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Doe-Winery/147863224331?ref=ts

Here’s how to claim your vanity URL:
1. Log in to Facebook with the account you use to administer your Facebook page.
2. Go to: http://www.facebook.com/username
3. Select the page for which you want to create a name
4. Enter the desired username

Note: You need at least 25 fans (likes) to be eligible. Also, names are permanent and non-transferable! You only get one chance at this, so make sure that you spell it correctly and that it’s the name you want.

Once you have your short and happy URL, you can use it on any printed promotional materials, on Twitter and blog postings, in your tasting room, in your email signature, etc. Just think of anywhere you’d want your regular website address and put the Facebook address there, too.