Facebook Tricks and Hacks for Ning Community Managers

posted Aug 20, 2014, 4:21 PM by Jaybird Farrow [ updated Feb 26, 2015, 7:56 PM ]

Handy Facebook Tips and Tricks for Ning Managers

For my fellow creators who use facebook to drive traffic to their networks, there are plenty of tactics that work and many that simply do not. A good while back I showed you a hack to embed facebook videos into your site, but the three tricks I am about to show you happen ON facebook and if used correctly, could result in some great boosts in traffic to your network. Overall, you may not use these tricks everyday, but it is always good to know what is possible.

Facebook Trick #1

Download Facebook Videos Quickly for Reuse on Youtube or Ning

The trick mentioned above-although it still works- is steadily becoming more of a time-suck than anything, but that doesn't mean you can't use Facebook videos to illuminate your network. There's an app for that. Facebookvideoz will help you download the videos you need to make the magic happen!

Facebook Trick #2

How to Invite All Friends to a Facebook Event

Setting up an event on Facebook is one thing, but using an event to drive targeted traffic is another. You may set up an event for the launch of your 3.0 network or simply an online community event or gathering. If you wanna invite all of your friends to it- thus bringing attention to your network- here is how you do it:

Go to your Event Facebook page and click on Invite friends.
Scroll down your friend list until the end to ensure you have loaded all the friends you want to invite.
On Chrome, press CTRL + SHIFT + J (Windows) or CMD + Opt + J (Mac).
Copy and paste this javascript:elms=document.getElementsByName("checkableitems[]");for (i=0;i<elms.length;i++){if (elms[i].type="checkbox" )elms[i].click()} followed by an Enter in the console space. You will then see all your friends name automatically ticked.

By making sure that you mention and point to your network in the event description, you can draw much needed attention to your site

Facebook Trick #3

Hide Your Last Name on a Facebook Profile

You may not want to showcase your birth name or surname as leader of your community for various reasons. Facebook needs you to declare your first and last name, that’s two names, but if you want to have your account bear only one name (or just your first name), you can. Indonesians can register an account with only one name since many of them actually go with just one name. So for you to have a single name like single named Neo here, check out the instructions below.

Login to your Facebook account.
Grab any Indonesian proxy from this list here then change your proxy on your browser.
On Chrome for PC head to Settings > Show advanced settings > under Network, click on Change proxy settings > click on Lan Settings and tick "Use Proxy Server for your LAN".
Fill in the address box with the proxy, and the port box accordingly. For example, if your proxy is 180.250.160.58:8080, "180.250.160.58" goes into the address box and "8080" is the port.
Tick on Bypass Proxy Server For Local Addresses. Press OK.
Now, go to your Facebook Account settings page, change the language to "Bahasa Indonesia" and save changes.
Remove your Facebook last name and save changes again.
Once you have complete everything, revert to your original language.

As always, if you need my help, just let me know. Enjoy!

Embed Facebook Videos Into Your Ning with this Hack

As we all know, ning has made It quite simple to embed Youtube videos, but how (you might ask yourself) can you embed Facebook videos on your ning network. Facebook videos have links to share the Facebook video on your wall or to your friends wall, but does not provide an embed code. Well, today I'm going to show you how to hack a facebook video url and embed facebook videos into your ning network using either the video embed option or the inline video embed feature within a text box. Here is how to do it.

*additional hack to shortcut much of this at bottom of this post (for slow internet connections)

1. Find a Facebook Video which is relevant to your ning...go to its page.

When you are viewing a Facebook video in your news feed / profile and reach the end, these are the options offered.

Click on the “Go to Video” link and you are directed to the Facebook video page.

2. Find and Edit Facebook Video Url

Now look at the long url address in the browser location bar. It will look something like this

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=123456789012345 (not a real video)

This is what the url of the Facebook video page looks like and cannot be embedded. We have to edit and shorten this url to get the actual Facebook video url to embed. So this is the shorter url we need (note the changes, number stays same)

http://www.facebook.com/v/123456789012345

2. Make the Facebook Video Embed Code

If you look at the old style embed code for any Youtube video, you find it looks like this

<object width="500" height="314"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kdjuyfQijs0?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kdjuyfQijs0?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="314" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed> </object>

This is a standard embed code for shockwave flash video. I have highlighted the embedded youtube urls. Now replace those youtube urls with the Facebook urls.

<object width="500" height="314"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/123456789012345"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/123456789012345" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="314" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed> </object>

Paste in html mode in your post, and your Facebook video is embedded! Enjoy!

You can see a live example working on my land surveyors network here:

It even retains the cook facebook overlay...remember to copy the title and description of the video from the facebook page to paste in the fields on your ning.

Enjoy!

now for the additional hack...

some people just do not watch videos all the way through....so here's how you get the url without having to watch the video:...if you are looking at a facebook video inline (on your wall feed), simplyright click on the textlinked title of the video and copy URL. paste it into a text file, delete all the unnecesssary characters in that url as explained above...paste that URL into the embed code you're making and get the same result...

now for the obvious....

IMPORTANT NOTE: All Facebook videos are NOT in the public domain. Videos posted by Facebook users maybe copyrighted, personal, private, and may NOT be permitted for distribution or illegal to use without permission. So before you go ahead and embed any Facebook video, ALWAYS seek permission from the video owner / creator.