How to post articles to the MSU News Service page on Facebook

Now that we have a page on Facebook for the News Service, it's time to learn how to post news stories to it. Since everybody already has a Facebook profile, this should be a cakewalk. Still, I'll go through the steps to make sure we're all doing it the same way -- that way, our page looks consistent.

(By the way, this tutorial only deals with posting articles to the page. It does not cover posting photos from our stories to the photo album on our Facebook fan page. That will come later.)

The first thing to know is that we are posting our articles as "links" on the Facebook page, not as "notes." When our visitors click on our "links," it takes them back to our actual montana.edu pages. If we had done this with notes, posting would be more complicated. Simplicity is, in fact, why we're doing this as links.

Without further ado, here are the steps:

Browse our Web site (http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news) to find a News Service story you'd like to post on the Facebook page. When you've got one, go up the address bar in your Web browser, select the entire address, and copy it.
Next, you'll go to the MSU News Service page on Facebook. (If you're not already logged in to Facebook, log in now.) All of the writers and Kelly have been added to the page as administrators, meaning that you have permission to post items to the page under the "MSU News Service" identity.
At the top of the News Service page on Facebook, you'll see Facebook's little share window. We're interested in the "attach" area's "link" button. In this picture, it's third from the left, but I've noticed that it moves around from time to time. Just hover your mouse over it for a few seconds until the little label appears to double-check that you've got the right button. When you're ready, click on it.
When you click on the "link" button, it will open up another entry field. You want to paste our copied Web address into this newly opened field. Then click the "attach" button.
After you've clicked the "attach" button, your story will appear in the preview area. It will look something like this:

Facebook automatically pulls the thumbnail image, title and summary of your story. You can click on the title and summary to edit them as needed. You can choose to omit the thumbnail image using the little checkbox near the bottom (though I'm not sure why you'd omit it).
When everything is ready, click on the "share" button. The story is then posted to the Facebook wall for the MSU News Service. It's also automatically posted to the home feeds of all our "fans" so they can see our work.
Last thing: If you mess up, there's a little X in the top-right corner of the link box. Click that, and it all goes away.
Last, last thing: If you accidentally post something you don't mean to, go down to where you see it in the News Service's Facebook wall. If you hover your mouse over the item, you should see a "remove" button appear in the top-right corner of that item. Click it and the item disappears. All is forgiven.