Archive | February, 2010

Kick The Door Wide Open

by on February 27, 2010 in FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter

Lately, I have been thinking about what you should do when someone shows you where a door is: “Kick that Sh1t Wide Open.” Exactly. If you are the proverbial horse that has been led to water, then drink. There are a lot of companies sitting on the sidelines. Waiting to find out who is making money with their social media marketing efforts before they invest any of their marketing dollars in this area. As my mother always said to me, “do you want to be a leader or a follower?”

To continue with the cliches, “the ship has left the port.” If you want to get on board, you are going to need to row out to the boat. Is it too late? No!!! But if you want to do anything interesting this year, you need to have your FaceBook Fan Page, LinkedIn and Twitter in order. You must cover the basics if you want to do anything interesting. Would you hire an intern to launch your TV commercial? It is 2010, GET REAL!!!

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By Any Means Necessary – Grow Your Social Presence

by on February 21, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook

As I relieved myself at the Pilot Travel Center off of Intersate 80, heading West thru Pennsylvania on a horribly snowy night, I saw the above advertisement on the wall and smiled. It is GREAT to see a company taking an aggressive approach to building their fan page audience and social presence. Look at your business and take a hard look at your social media presence. Have you included your social links on ALL of your printed collateral? If not, figure out where you can add in this information, it is more important than your physical address and/or phone number. Yeah, I would have added a Twitter account and a LinkedIn Group to the above Advertisement, but that is just me…

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FaceBook Rolls out Redesign

by on February 4, 2010 in FaceBook

According to the FaceBook Blog, many of us will be seeing a new design to the front page and navigation of FaceBook. This looks very promising, features buried in the bottom corners will now be available in the sidebar. The BAD news is, you will have to check your privacy settings again. Yeah, again.

Expect a lot of people to complain and request their old FaceBook back. Get over it. Change is good. FaceBook gets that and has continuously evolved their site. Are you using Lists? What about checking your notifications instead of getting emailed every time somebody tags you in a picture or a post? You must start using these networks efficiently, your time is precious.

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FaceBook has 400 Million Users

by on February 4, 2010 in FaceBook

I guess this isn’t really exciting, FaceBook now has 400 Million users. No wonder they are getting 2.5 billion photos a month uploaded. What does that mean to you as a business? There are 50 million new users on FaceBook in the last 2 months. Yeah, FaceBook is still growing.

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Is it time to update your FaceBook profile?

by on February 3, 2010 in Best Practices, FaceBook

How long have you been on FaceBook? Did you join when there were a mere 30 million people or did you join last year when there were 200 million people or sometime in the winter as we eclipsed 350 million people? As I watched people post doppelgangers (Google it if you missed it) on FaceBook last week, I started thinking about profiles. When did you last update your profile? Is it important to update your profile? What about your Settings?

The odds are very good that you are due for a FaceBook tune-up. Set aside 30 minutes and start by clicking on Settings in the upper right corner, then select Applications. On the drop down menu in the top right select Allowed To Post. I do NOT allow most applications to post to my profile. Do I really want those applications spamming my friends? No. Go down the List and select Edit on any suspicious applications. Your friends will appreciate this!

Go back to Settings in the upper right and select Privacy Settings. Check your Profile Information, I leave all of my settings at Friends Only (except for Pictures and Videos that I leave at Friends of Friends – because this is a great way to find missing friends). Go back to your privacy settings (top left) and select Contact Privacy, I leave all of these as Only Friends (except for Send Me A Message and Add Me – these I leave as Everyone so people can contact me). Is this making sense? Now go to Applications and Websites under Privacy settings. This section is Crazy! Why would you want all of this information shared? I unselected all of these except for online presence and status updates.

Go back to Settings in the upper right and select Account Settings. You can select Notifications on the top bar. Do you really need to get emails for everything happening on FaceBook? If you check in on FaceBook regularly, you do not need to get any notifications via email. If you are using Lists (hello organization) and your notifications tab on the bottom right, this is a prime opportunity to remove notifications. Use your time more efficiently! Then select FACEBOOK ADS on the top right of the bar. I select Allow ads on platform pages to show my information to No one. It is kind of annoying that you have to do this. At the bottom of this page I allow Show my social actions in Facebook Ads to Only My Friends. Why? Because I want FaceBook to make money on advertising and I think these Ads are actually interesting (yes, I want to know if you are a fan of whatever local restaurant). This is the system truly working in balance!

Now that you have checked in on your settings and privacy, select your Profile, Info and edit your settings. Add the last few books you have read or movies you have seen. Make sure your education and work history are accurate. This information is critical, share your professional experiences with your community. You can copy and paste from your LinkedIn profile here, but get that information into your profile! Oh yeah, try and enjoy doing all of this. Tuning up your profile is important and strangely comforting. Take control of your FaceBook experience today!

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