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Set up a Bing Page for your public persona or business brand

You can now control how your public persona or brand appears in the Bing search results with Bing Pages (currently in beta). Plus you can promote recent social media posts for free!

While Google may be the dominant search engine, Microsoft's Bing can still bring traffic to your website and eyes on your website and social media posts.

Bing suggests Bing Pages are best suited for "influencers, bloggers, brands, small businesses, musicians, artists, athletes, and websites, among others."

Bing Pages offers several useful features: 
  • All your brand’s social media feeds on your own page that you control. New posts from YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Mixer (and maybe are displayed on your Page and in Search. Your profile also has links to your website and Twitter profile.
  • Promote your social media posts in Bing Search for free. They guarantee at least 10,000 impressions per promoted post.
  • You can manage your brand's "public persona" in Microsoft products like Bing Search and Outlook
If you have a public Twitter account, a public social media profile with at least 100 followers, and have made a post on one of the accounts in the past 30 days, you may apply for a Bing Page.
It does not require a Bing account.

Bing says it usually takes about 3 business days for your application to be reviewed. 

I applied late on Friday, January 10th, and received the approval email today, which I count as 4 business days

You can see My public Bing Page and how "Peggy K" appears in the Bing search results:
A panel appears to the right of the search results with my profile, including links to my website, YouTube channel and Twitter profile. Tweets aren't displayed, but recent YouTube or Mixer videos, and Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook posts may show there. 

I'll be checking my Bing Page Analytics to see if it actually gets any views.

I'm also running a free promotion of one of my YouTube videos. I won't have the final stats from YouTube for several days, so check back for updates.

Apply for a Bing Page

It just takes a few minutes to apply: 

1. Open Bing Pages Signup: www.bing.com/bp/gettingstarted

2. Click Get Started

3. Enter your online details
  • Email (required)
  • Twitter URL (required)
  • Instagram URL
  • Facebook URL 
  • YouTube URL
  • Pinterest URL
  • Mixer URL
  • Official Site
There isn't a specific option to enter a Twitch URL (perhaps because it competes with Microsoft's Mixer directly) or any other social sites. You can enter any URL in the "official site" field. 

Note that there does not appear to be any way to add additional social media profiles once your Bing Page is set up, so be sure to link to all the profiles you want included at this step.

While there aren't any specific instructions, I would think that all the links should be for profiles or pages that represent the same person or brand.  I don't know how they ensure that the person submitting the information is actually the representative of that Brand.

There is also a Comments box, which I left blank.

4. Click Submit

Customize your Bing Page

When your Bing Page is accepted, you will receive a welcome email from bingpages@microsoft.
1. Click the link to view your Bing Page
Note that your Twitter posts don't display. YouTube videos, Instagram and Pinterest posts will show.

2. Click the Sign In button at top right to sign in with your Twitter account. 
You will see your profile information with an Edit option, and tabs for your Page, Promotions and Analytics.

3. Click the Edit Profile button to edit basic information. 

You can set your profile description, either selecting one from your linked social media profiles, or writing a custom profile.
Scroll down to add a contact phone number or email address.
Changes are reviewed by Bing before they go live.

Promote a YouTube video or social media post for free

On the Your Page tab will see your recent social media posts that will appear on your Bing Page.
Under each post is a "Promote this post" button.  You can target the promotion by adding categories or specifying specific regions for the promotion.

Note that this is entirely free. You do not even need to link a payment method to your account.
Click Start promotion  to start the promotion, which will run for 24 hours or up to 10,000 impressions.

I'm trying out a promotion for one of my videos. The promotion looks like this:

 The Promotions tab shows the status of your promotions.

At the top of the page there is a countdown timer that shows the time remaining and number of impressions. The promotion ends after 10,000 impressions or 24 hours. You can also end the promotion manually.
There were 109 views after 16 minutes. It remains to be seen if it actually results in YouTube video views (currently the video has zero views from Bing). 

There are additional stats on the page:
Note that the date and time for the promotion are not correct. I started the promotion on January 15, 11:56 PM PST, not January 16 at 7:56AM. It looks like it might be showing the UTC date and time, rather than PST. 

Bing Page Analytics

The Analytics tab shows stats for your social media profiles and Bing Page. The stats appear to be 48 hours old.
  • Profile discovery on Bing :"How often your social media accounts appeared on Bing"
  • Public interactions on Bing: "The number of clicks to your social media profiles from Bing"
  • Bing Page views
You can view the numbers for the last week or the last month.

Is the post promotion worthwhile? 

My promotion will be running through tomorrow, and I won't have updated YouTube Analytics data for my promoted video for several days.  I'll update here when I have some numbers.

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Spam and personal attacks are not allowed. Any comment may be removed at my own discretion ~ Peggy