Warning : Facebook Fan Page Disabled

Facebook Change Their Terms Of Use For Fan Pages

If you are the administrator of a Facebo0ok Fan page and you recently got a message like this from Facebook then you are probably a little upset to say the least.

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Most people who receive this kind of warning have no idea that they have violated any of Facebooks’ terms and conditions and feel somewhat victimized, especially if they have spent a lot of time and effort building up their Facebook community only to have their publishing rights taken away.

Jane Savoie Gets Her Fan Page Disabled

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This exact thing happened to Jane Savoie, an Olympic horseback riding champion who had her publishing rights removed by Facebook because they deem her page to “represent generic concepts” I can only assume that they looked at the name of her fan page and decided that it did not clearly represent her business.

“Solve Horseback Riding Fears” has become a thriving community of horse owners and people interested in horseback riding and Jane has been the driving force behind this community. I have suggested to Jane that she contact Facebook directly (disabled@facebook.com)  to request that they reinstate her publishing rights and that they change the name slightly to reflect that it represents her business more clearly to “Jane Savoie : Solve Horse Back Riding Fears

Facebook Change Their Terms Of Service

Facebook restricts the publishing rights of Pages that impersonate other entities, represent generic concepts, spam users, or otherwise violate our Terms of Use. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit the Terms applicable to Facebook Pages at http://www.facebook.com/terms_pages.php

Facebook Pages Terms : Date of Last Revision: March  26, 2010
1.   Pages are special profiles that may only be used to promote a business or other commercial, political, or charitable organization or endeavor (including non-profit organizations, political campaigns, bands, and celebrities).

2. You may only administer a Facebook Page if you are an authorized representative of the subject of the Page.

3. Pages can only post content and information under the “everyone” setting.

4. When you publish content or information to your Page we have no obligation to distribute your content or information to users.

5. If you use a Fan Box widget off of our site to promote your Page, others will be able to copy and place the widget elsewhere.

6. You may not place a Fan Box widget in an advertisement.

7. If you collect user information on your Page, Section 9 of this Statement also applies to you.

8. If you display advertising on your Page, Section 11 of this Statement also applies to you.

9. You may not establish terms beyond those set forth in this Statement to govern the posting of content by users on a Page you administer, except you may disclose they types of content you will remove from your Page and grounds for which you may ban a user from accessing the Page.

10. You will restrict access to your Page in order to comply with all applicable laws.  For example, if your Page includes content not suitable for minors, you will use your Page to block minors from accessing your Page.

Why Did Facebook Make These Changes

The reason Facebook made these changes is to stop people using Fan pages to spam the news feed of their Fans. A recent trend has emerged due to the immense power of Facebook fan pages to host what would normally be considered a Group on a Facebook fan page, and while most of these pages are harmless a small minority are used by professional marketers and spammers to hijack the Facebook newsfeed and inundate people with offers and promotional stuff.

Since Facebook are sworn to protect the user experience they have modified their terms and conditions so they can shut these pages down or at least take away the power from the administrators. Unfortunatly a few legitimate businesses and Fan Pages will get punished under these new rules, Jane Savoie is obviously one of them

Be Careful What You Name Your Fan Page

If you set up a new Facebook Page you need to be very careful how you name your Fan page to make it clear to Facebook that you are a business. While you should ensure that your fan page name clearly states benefits you will provide to your fans and includes your main keywords (preferably at the beginning) you need to clearly state that you are a business or you will fall into the catch all category of representing “Genric concepts”

Solve Horseback Riding Fears

Jane started her fan page back in October of 2009 and it has rapidly grown to over 10,000 members. Its probably one of the most engaged niche communities that I have seen on Facebook and it will be a terrible blow to the community if Jane is not quickly reinstated with full control of her fan page again.

Help Jane Get Her Fan Page Back

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If you want to help Jane get her fan page back you can send an email to facebook at disabled@facebook.com asking them to reinstate her publishing rights. This is especially important if you are also a Fan of her fan page. If enough people express their concerns Facbook will  change their minds and make an exception.

You can also help by leaving a comment, pressing the share button or tweeting about this post to your followers on Twitter.
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How To Block Facebook Applications From Posting On Your Wall

Since the recent changes in Facebooks privacy settings they have inadvertently removed your ability to control how applications can post to your wall. If you have a lot of friends on Facebook then I suspect that your wall is probably starting to look like mine and getting overloaded with spam. There is a solution but it means manually blocking each offending application. This quick tutorial will show you how to get your wall back to the way it used to be so you can actually see things that are more relevant

Is Your Facebook Wall Becoming Cluttered With Spammy Apps?

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You Have To Block Each Facebook Application Individually

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Click on the link that takes you to the Facebook Application that made the post on your wall

You Need To Go To The Applications Profile Page

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When you are asked to allow access to the Application DO NOT click on the “Allow” button. Instead click on the hyperlink for the actual application.
This will now take you to the applications main profile page

You Can Now Block The Facebook Application

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Click Again On The “Block” Button To Confirm Your Choice

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When you block the Application it will no longer be able to post on your Facebook wall. You now have to repeat this process for all the offending applications. Once this is done you will soon see that the amount of spam on your wall is greatly reduced.

Another Way To Block Applications

Another way to prevent applications from sending you invites it to block the application and to also ignore all further invitations from the person who sent them to you. To do this you need to go to your Requests found on the top right of your Facebook homepage

Go To Your Facebook Home Page

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Select the “home” link when you are logged into Facebook. This should take you to your main Facebook home page. Your requests are located on the right hand side of the page

Select “Other Requests”

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When you select “Other Requests” you can scroll down to the very bottom to see any unwanted application invites that you have received

You Can Now Block This Application

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Select “Okay”

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Just Click on the “Okay” button and the application will no longer be able to send you invitations or post to your wall

You Can Also Ignore All Invites From This Friend

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If a particular person is sending you a lot of invitations for Facebook applications and you don’t want to remove them as a friend you can just choose to “Ignore All Invites From This Friend” the person will not know you have blocked them.

Privacy Settings

I hope that in the future Facebook will give a simpler one click option for managing how Applications can interact with your profile instead of having to do it in this more tedious way. I spent a while trying to discover if there was an easier way. I hope this blog post will helped to improve your overall Facebook experience so you can focus on what your real friends are actually doing.

Facebook Pages – How To Add A Facebook Fan Box To Your WordPress Blog

Get More Fans For Your Facebook Fan Page

Yesterday Facebook released a new application that allows you to place a Facebook Connect widget on your website that links directly to your Facebook fan page

This article will show you how easy it is to add a Facebook Fan box to your blog or website. What this means is that you will be able to attract more Fans to your Facebook page and your prospective fans will instantly see your stream and your other Fans and get some idea about what type of content you will be sharing

Set Up A Facebook Page

You need to have a Facebook Fan page in order to use this application, just scroll to the bottom of your facebook profile and click on “advertising” and then select the “pages” tab and then select “Create A Page”, for more information on how to create a Facebook Page check out this blog post on AllFacebook  – “how to create a Facebook fan page to attract millions of fans” check out Mari Smiths blog post “how  to create and promote a Facebook fan page”

Once you have your fan page set up you can create your fan widget by going to your admin panel, from your page you just click the link Edit Page link that is below your Fan Page Image/Logo

Select “Add Fan Box” Box from your Admin Panel

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Now select your Fan page from the drop down menu and facebook will show you a preview of what your Fan Box will look like. If you want to make it smaller just uncheck the boxes that say “include stream” and “include fans” (this might be necessary if you want to improve the load time of your blog or website or if you are limited for space)

Copy  The Java Script Code

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Now select all the code by highlighting it (CTRL A, CTRL C (pc) CMD A, CMD C (mac)) and copy it to your clip board. If you are a techie and want to find out a bit more about customizing your widget click on “advanced options” and you will be taken to Facebook developers where they have detailed instructions on how to add a fan box

Go to your blog and log into the admin section, for this example I am using wordpress but the technique should be similar on any other platform

Add A New Text Widget

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From your dashboard , select appearance and then select  “Widgets”

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Now create a new text widget.

Depending on which version of WordPress you are using this will be slightly different, if wordpress 2.8  just drag and drop a text widget to one of your sidebars and place it where you want it to appear. If your blog theme is enabled with footer widgets you might want to place it there as Javascript and Facebook connect are notorious for slowing down your blog load times

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Paste The Code Into Your Widget

Now paste the code from Facebook into your text widget and remeber to click Save

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Now Go And See What It Looks Like!

That’s it all done, wasn’t too painful was it?  All you have to do now is go to your site and see what it looks like

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Advantage Of having A Facebook Fan Box

The main advantage of having a Facebook fan box is that your visitors can become Fans immediatly as long as they are already signed into Facebook. Before this it was a two step process where you had to take people to your Fan page and then convice them to click on the “become a fan” button

What I like even more is that I can see immediatly what content is being shared on a Fan page and who the other members are. All the links are clickable so some marketers might say this is  leak away from having visitors staying on your blog. I personally disagree. I think people are more likely to come back to your blog, engage with your content  and be able to quickly scan your fanpage stream without having to visit Facebook.  If they do decide to leave you have some control over the links that they will visit.

Getting Your Community Connected

The advantages of having your community connected with each other are immense. The more networked your Fans are the more effect any fan interactions will have on facebooks newsfeed. More people will see if their friends are commenting or liking the content that you publish in your stream. Your aim is to create and own an  integrated network of Fans where information and news spreads rapidly and your fan page is the centre and hub  that this revolves around.

If your blog is hosted on WordPress.com

A number of readers have discovered that it’s not possible to add this widget to free wordpress.com blogs. This is mainly due to  a restriction on allowing Javascript code to be placed on their servers. If this is the case the only solution I can suggest  if you want to have your own Facebook Fan Box is to move your blog over to WordPress.org and purchase your own domain name and hosting. You can buy a domain name for $10 from Godaddy and get cheap hosting from Hostgator

Share This Post

If you have enjoyed this post, please do me a favor and share it on Facebook with all your friends, they will definitely thank you for it. Please leave any comments or questions below, I would love to hear your feedback.

My Fan Page : http://www.facebook.com/idchapman

My Facebook Profile : http://www.facebook.com/iandavidchapman

Follow Me On Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/iandavidchapman

My Blog : http://www.iandavidchapman.com

Facebook Fundamentals : What’s The Difference Between A Personal Profile, A Group And A Business Page

Confused

One of the main problems I face when teaching clients  about Facebook is explaining the differences between A Personal Profile, a Facebook Group and a Facebook Page. I’m also often asked which is better, a Group or a Page. In this article I hope to address this and end any potential confusion

Friend, Fan or Member?

To begin with lets just define the terms before we proceed, a Personal Profile  has Friends, a Group has Members and a Business Page has Fans.  As long as you  stick to this terminology you should not  go wrong. The confusion starts if you begin referring to your personal profile as your Facebook page or your Fans as the members of your Group

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Size Restrictions and Messaging Ability

A Personal Profile is currently restricted to a maximum of 5000 friends, you can only direct message your friends in groups of 20 people. A Facebook Group can have an unlimited amount of members and you can send direct messages to your Group until it reaches 5000 members. A Facebook Business Page can have an unlimited number of Fans but has no direct messaging ability. You can only send messages to your Fans as notifications. Unfortunately most Facebook users never check their notifications

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News Feed Access

Your Facebook Profile has direct access to the newsfeed, though status updates, sharing links,  posting photos and videos and importing notes. A Facebook group now has restricted access to the newsfeed. Activities will only show up under the highlights on the right hand side of your home page and not in the main stream. A Facebook Business Page has direct access to the newsfeed in  much the same way a Personal Profile does. One of the reasons Facebook Pages are becoming so popular right now is because of the viral effects that this produces

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Commercial Activity

Facebooks terms of service directly stipulate that you are prohibited from engaging in commercial activity for your Personal Profile

You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications to users

This restriction also applies to groups and they seem to be continually increasing their vigilance with regards to unwitting users who break these rules.

Facebook want all commercial activity to take place from Business Pages and they want you to pay them for the rights to advertise to their users. This doesn’t mean you can’t engage in indirect marketing from your profile or group, it just means you need to be much more careful and adopt conversational marketing tactics rather than direct sales pitches.

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Which Is Better:  A Facebook Page or a  Facebook Group?

There is no easy answer to this question, Groups and Pages have different functions and it totally depends on what you want to achieve. For a good overview check out John Haydens recent article – Facebook Groups and Pages – Features, Benefits And Killer Tips

In my personal opinion the recent updates and changes in Facebooks site design has made Business Pages by far the best option for any business or brand wanting to increase their exposure

a study by the search engine journal came to this conclusion

  • Pages are generally better for a long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers;
  • Groups are generally better for hosting a (quick) active discussion and attracting quick attention.

The fact that Facebook has restricted a  Groups ability to access the newsfeed means they have much less viral potential now.  The main benefit  of  a group is your ability to direct message your members  and the ability to create closed and secret groups. Mari Smith wrote a comprehensive article on this subject last November – Facebook Groups vs Facebook Pages – which is best? –  that still has some excellent information although since the recent changes in Facebook her conclusions need some revision. Jessica Lee from Inside Facebook also gave 4 reasons why marketers should choose Facebook pages over Facebook groups. Also worth reading is Howard Greensteins article on Mashable  – Facebook Pages vs Group

I hope this article has cleared up some of the confusion concerning Facebook profiles, Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages, if you enjoyed this post please retweet on Twitter or Share on Facebook by pressing one of the buttons below

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Facebook-Twitter Syndication – Are You Over Exposed And Getting Ignored?

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Automating Your Status

Are you one of those people who has migrated to twitter after being active on Facebook? If you are then there is a strong possibility that you have automated your Twitter account to update your Facebook profile.

Before the recent Facebook changes this was a powerful strategy to use, It gave you an active presence on two social media platforms. In the old Facebook design the newsfeed was filtered and your status updates were kept in a separate tabs and were visible to those who were looking for them

A Change In Strategy Is Needed

The new site design means that the rules have fundamentally changed. I want to highlight the dangers for those twitter users who are either high volume tweeters or who are using RSS feeds or automated services  to populate their twitter stream and syndicate it to Facebook

Twitter Syndication

I have many friends who now spend all their time on Twitter and send  their twitter feed direct to their Facebook Profile.   In the old Facebook design the newsfeed was filtered and your status updates were kept in a separate tab. Now everything is merged and shared in real time to everyone in your network

Has Facebook  Given You Total Control?

By using friend lists to filter your feed you can tailor your news  quite precisely. The newsfeed is both personal and public.  Your status updates and Facebook activties are broadcast to your whole network

The danger comes when you overexpose yourself. By this I mean publishing too many updates so you dominate the real estate on your friends profiles.

Overwhelmed By Links

A few days ago I was observing this phenomenon from several people in my network. My page was overwhelmed by the sheer number of links they were posting. I realized that they probably didn’t even know this was occurring; It looked like they had set their accounts  to run on autopilot.

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Are You Shooting Yourself In The Foot?

This is almost certainly  damaging to their reputation.  Personally I would hate to be thought of as a  spammer, it’s frightening to think that such a simple change in design can have such huge immplications

What is even more relevant is that Facebook now gives every user the option to hide someone who become annoying. They make it very easy. One click and you are gone, banished to the little box at the bottom of the newsfeed

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The people I observed are all social media marketers. Their business depends on people listening to their messages. If the message is not getting through because they have alienated their audience then they are effectively shooting themselves in the foot. They are burning out their friends much the same way email marketers can burn out their lists by constant messaging.

Possible Solutions

I would like to offer a few suggestions to this situation and urge you to rethink your strategy if you find that you are seeing yourself in the mirror.

Ask yourself  how your status updates  will look from your friends perspectives, do you really want to look like an automated robot?

Take a few minutes to examine your own Facebook newsfeed; Can you see other friends making this same mistake?

If you overexpose yourself people will hide you from their newsfeed and you will never even know

How can you strike a delicate balance between keeping visible and annoying people?

If you are syndicating your status updates from Twitter to Facebook consider using Twirl and PingFM, you can carefully select which tweets to send to your Facebook Status and then turn syndication on and off as needed.

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A River Or A Flood

With great power comes great responsibility. Facebook and Twitter are not the same and while on Twitter your tweets might be flowing into a great river of mass communication , over on Facebook you a sending them down lots of narrow pipes and some people don’t like to get their houses flooded.

There are obviosusly some people who this doesn’t apply to, some high volume tweeters send a constant stream of gold. Even If they  get to be too imposing on your newsfeed you can always bunch a few together in their own special list.

Feedback and Discussion

I would love to hear your feedback on this issue. I have Facebook Connect installed so if you are reading this on my blog you can sign in  and leave a comment,  it will automatically post a link to your profile so  your friends can read this article too.

If you are reading this on Facebook let me know what your experience has been. A change in design will always take some adjusting to and only through discussion can we define possible solutions and best practices.

Ian David Chapman

http://www.iandavidchapman.com

How To Add Facebook Connect To Your Blog

The Easy Way To Integrate The Viral Power Of Facebook Into Your Blog

This blog post will show you how you can integrate the viral power of Facebook Connect  with your  wordpress blog without touching a single bit of code. Its done by using a neat plugin created by Spanish blogger Javier Reyes

Most people get put off by mentions of API keys and messing with the code on their webpages. Luckily I stumbled upon this cool plugin that does all the work for you. If you follow each step carefully you will be up and running in no time

Even if you don’t have a wordpress blog, make sure you scroll to the bottom of this post where I will be explaining exactly how I will be using Facebook connect to initiate social activity and get immense viral exposure.

Click here to download the Facebook Connect WordPress plugin

http://www.sociable.es/facebook-connect/

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Take a few minutes to watch the tutorial video that explains the features of this plugin

The next video gives an explanation of how to install this plugin and set up your API code

After you have downloaded the plugin to your computer you need to go to your blog and upload the file into your wp-content/plugins/ folder, you can do this by FTP or by going into the backend of your website if you have CPanel hosting.

Now login to the admin panel of your wordpress blog, I am using Wordpess 2.7  in this example, your screen might look slightly different if you are using earlier versions. Go to your plugins and activate the Facebook connector plugin

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Now in your settings menu open Facebook connector you should have this screen visible

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Get Your Facebook API Code

This plugin is an easy way for you to create your own Facebook application unique to your  blog. In order for it to function you will need a Facebook developers account and obtain your Facebbook API key and Facebook API secret. These are just codes so Facebook can give you access to the user data that will be transferred to your blog. In a new browser window login to your Facebook account and scroll down to the very bottom of your profile page.

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Now enter the name of your new application, agree  to the terms of service and click save.

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Now you have been given your API Key and API Secret, you need to copy and paste these numbers into your wordpress plugin settings

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Now open the Connect tab and enter the URL of your blog.

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Scroll to the bottom of the page and click save

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In another browser window,  copy and paste your API key and API secret into your Facebook Connector Options; check the boxes to allow full functionality on your blog

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Scroll down to create the message template; if you want to customize the messages you can  edit the text in the boxes

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After you have clicked create template the plugin should have two yellow boxes at the top indicating that everything is now functioning

You can now place a widget on your sidebar so your blog visitors can login and interact with your blog. Any comments they make will be posted directly to their Facebook profile

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drag and drop the widget to your required position and adjust its settings

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Your Facebook connect plugin should now be fully functioning. Go to your blogs homepage and check everything is working

The sidebar widget  should look something like this

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Click on the Connect with Facebook  button and start interacting

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Now you can invite all your friends to come and visit your blog and more importantly all your visitors can  invite all their friends too

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Social Interaction Goes Viral

What does all this social activity mean,  and how is it going to help you? As an example I am going to see how much activity I can generate from this blog post using a variety of means.  Immediately after I publish this post I am going to go to go and invite 16 of my friends to come and visit my blog post using the friend connect widget.

I am going to ask those 16 people to  invite 16 of their friends to come and see this post too. I hope to start a viral chain reaction that will impact into Facebooks newsfeed.

Syndication

My blog is syndicated to my Twitter account and to my Facebook profile so as soon as it gets published a tweet will get sent and the full RSS feed will be imported as a Facebook note. The next day I am going to go to my Facebook note and tag a further 30 people in this note. I am going to ask people to give it a thumbs up or to press the share button

It’s a fine balance when doing this kind of thing, Only people who have wordpress blogs will be  really interested in this post, but I hope other people will want to see the real viral power of Friend Connect in action

Using Groups

Once  I have some impact in Facebooks newsfeed I am going to send a message to my Facebooks groups, inviting them to learn about Facebook Connect. I hope that some of my other friends who have big groups will do same.

Become An Early Adopter

There is a huge advantage to becoming an early adopter of the community building tools like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. You have the potential to take your friends with you wherever you go on the web. So if you see a great blog post you can leave a comment  and it will go straight into your newsfeed for your friends to see. Bloggers can expect more traffic to be circulating back and forth from social sites like Facebook opening up a huge potential of viral social interaction.

How Viral Is Facebook?

With your help we can find out; only by testing new strategies can we discover what their limitations are and how much exposure they bring. I will be tracking the results and monitoring the newsfeed and comments on this blog. Of course I am taking a big risk because I might end up  annoying some people,  I am willing to do this because I see there is a huge potential available and I love sharing with my online community

What  You Can Do Now

1.    If you are on my blog http://www.iandavidchapman.com you can sign in to Facebook Connect and leave a comment
2.    If you are on Facebook reading this you can leave a comment either in the newsfeed or at the bottom of this note. If you like the post click the share button at the top. or give it a thumbs up.  You can visit my blog to see the plugin in action by
clicking on this link http://www.iandavidchapman.com

3.    If you have a wordpress blog you can follow this tutorial and get started right away. For those who are technically challenged and don’t know how to add new plugins  get your webmaster to do all this for you. Implementation is the key.  Come back and leave a comment in this thread so other people reading this post can visit your blog and share it with their friends.

4.    If you have any friends who have a wordpress blog  or might be interested in Facebook Connect you can invite them to come and see this post, by clicking on the Invite Your Friends button on the Connect Widget

5.    If you are Google Friend Connect user why not join my site at the same time. Feel free to leave a comment in the social bar at the bottom of the page.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article, I hope you got some benefit from it and choose to help me in my experiment to prove that Facebook Connect is worth taking seriously. If you experience any problems with this plugin please contact the developers and read all the comment threads carefully,  making sure you have completed all the requires steps.

Ian David Chapman

Facebook Pages Change The Face Of Business

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The Facebook Bombshell

Yesterday Facebook rolled out their new look Facebook pages; They’ve made business pages become  more like personal profiles allowing more  interactivity and are set to open a doorway for  businesses and brands to gain deep penetration into the mainstream market of  Facebook users.  The people who understand these implications are rubbing their hands with glee at this new announcement.

Are Pages Hard To Find?

Facebook still make pages difficult to find, I have no idea why this is but in order to create a page you have to scroll down to the bottom of your facebook profile and click on the advertising tab, then click on pages and then click on create a page.

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Public Profiles

What used to be termed Fan Pages are now being called Public Profiles. From what I have read it seems that Facebook are intent on introducing Public Profiles into the news feed. Facebook explain it like this

By leveraging the real connections between friends on Facebook, a public profile lets users connect to the entities they care about and allows you to join the conversation. Posts by the public profile will soon start to appear in News Feed, giving you a more dynamic relationship with the public figures and organizations you are interested in.

Become Viral And Interactive

What this means from a business perspective is that your Public Profile activities can now be seen by many more people as friends of friends interact with these pages. This means they are truly becoming viral in the same way Facebook groups have been for a long time.

Whether this also reflects Googles recent algorithm change that also favors known brands is debatable but it now places companies much more in the public eye than ever before, and gives them penetration into markets that were previously restricted.

Positive And Negative Response

Its difficult to asses the public reaction, from reading the comments on the Facebook blog the majority were somewhat negative, mainly from the fact that they hadn’t taken the time to discover how the new look Facebook Pages can be configured, I suspect that given time most people will begin to appreciate the changes. Personally I think it is a move in the right direction

Reputation Management

Reputation management will have to be taken more seriously with this added user interaction. But don’t get too worried because Facebook have installed a feature that allows you to control who can post to your page. In a crisis you can kill your comments and limit the viral word of mouth damage until you are ready to face the public and present your side of the story. This of course also works in your favor when you want your evangelists to tell the world how great you are.

Application Development

The new design also creates huge potential for 3rd party application developers as Fan page apps can now be placed front and center for the world to see. The best apps will spread virally  in the same way they used to before the new profile was rolled out.

You can use HTML on your page and also FBML (facebook markup language)

You control what page a user lands on and also what page a Fan lands on by adjusting the settings on your wall page. I am hoping that Facebook will extend this same privilege to normal users in the future, it is clear that they have all the coding in place, its just a matter of flicking the switch.

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I am still exploring the new look pages but one of the coolest new features is the ability to demographically target your updates and messages. So if you want to test a marketing campaign in a certain city before you roll it out to the rest of the country you can select a certain test group and see their response. This is huge for any major organization or brand who want to do market research

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From an SEO perspective Facebook pages are a great way to get indexed and ranked by google and this latest development only emphasizes this importance.

Find Out More From Ed Dale

Ed Dale was so excited about this new development that he will be hosting a live Ustream Broadcast this evening to discuss these momentous changes. Be sure to tune in or at least go and watch the replay on the 30 day challenge tv

I am sure that those who already understand how Facebook works can see the future potential and are already positioning themselves to take advantage of it.

I hope you enjoyed this post, I look forward to your comments, either on Facebook or on my blog

http://www.iandavidchapman.com.

For more updates and links to cutting edge information make sure you follow me on twitter – @iandavidchapman

How To Manage Your Personal Friends And Business Contacts On Facebook

If Your Facebook Friends Are In A Mess What Should You Do?

Two weeks ago  top Internet Marketer Ed Dale decided to Boot all of his Facebook friends by deleting his Facebook account and starting again from scratch. He raised the question in many people’s minds of whether they should do the same. Ed is kicking out the dead weight from his Facebook profile but its a laborious task.

One of Ed Dales buddies Ryan Deiss has asked the question Should I “Unfriend” All My Facebook Friends Like Ed Dale?

I would like to offer some alternative solutions that can help you manage your Personal and Business profiles under a single Facebook account.

The Root Of The Problem

The root of Ed Dale’s problem lies in the fact that he is not a normal Facebook user. Facebook will only let you operate a single account that has to be in your own name.This means that your personal and business life has to be all lumped together.

Being a famous Internet Marketing Guru means that you get a lot of people wanting to be your friend. John Reese maxed out his Facebook profile in under a week last April reaching the 5000 friend limit.

A Sticky Mess

If your network grows so rapidly it’s next to impossible to organize it in any structured way so that it can benefit you. For those who are using Facebook for business purposes there are some lessons to be learned here. Without quality control, structuring and proper organization your network could turn into a sticky mess.

Facebook are considering raising this limit but the question is, how can you manage a huge network of friends and still be able to use Facebook like a normal user?

Dealing With Background Noise

It’s understandable that if you have 5000 people who you don’t really know add you as a friend and then spam the hell out of your Facebook wall in a bid to attract your attention or to hijack the viral power of your network you might get a bit upset. And by closing down your Facebook wall you kill one of the most popular features and your profile just becomes a one-way interaction

Ed has been missing out on the way most normal people use Facebook and because the intensity of the background noise gets too much to cope with he opted for the drastic approach….Starting Again!!

Getting Used To The New Design

The new look Facebook is still a mystery to many people, even though we have now had 6 months to get used to it. Most people never fully benefit from its real power.  It’s obvious to me that Ed never took the time to learn all its subtleties when they rolled out the new design, preferring to focus on the aspects of Facebook that actually make you money like Facebook Ads and Pages

It’s hardly surprising really when they keep adding new functions and moving things around. I am often amazed when I discover some of the treasures that lie buried in the Facebook Maze

Adjust Your Privacy Settings

One thing you can do to manage your profile is to adjust your privacy settings effectively, Nick O Neil shows exactly how to do this in his excellent post “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

There are also several things you can do to ensure that you don’t end up like Ed and have to start over again

Segregate Your Friends Into Lists

This is one of the most powerful and under used functions on Facebook that you need to get into the habit of using. By creating segregated lists you can keep track of specific groups of friends and keep all your business contacts in one place. The best way to implement this strategy is to build it into your regular routine when you send or receive friend requests.

Go to the FRIENDS tab on your Facebook profile

friends

Choose Logical Categories For Your Friend Lists

If you scroll down  will see a button that allows you to create a new list.  Think carefully how you want to group your friends, you can segregate them however you like

Choosing logical categories will help you find them later and make you more likely to use this function on a regular basis.   Your friends can  belong to multiple lists but don’t add too many categories as it defeats the purpose of the exercise.

makeanewlist

Speed Things Up By Selecting Multiple Friends

You now get the option to start typing in the names of the friends that you want to include in your list. Often its difficult to remember everyone’s name and its very easy to forget people once they become buried in your contacts list.  You have a second option and that is to click on SELECT MULTIPLE FRIENDS, this will pull in the photographs of your friends. If you have a big network this might take a while to load so be patient.

Filter Friends By Region

Another very powerful option is to filter your friends by region, when the MULTIPLE FRIENDS option is open, just click on the FILTER FRIENDS tab and select who you want to include. Of course you will only be able to find your friends who have entered all their details correctly.

filter-by-region-copy

Don’t Forget To Save Your List

After you have selected everyone to include on your list make sure you don’t forget to save it, scroll to the bottom of the page and click SAVE LIST

saveyourlist

Get Into Good Organizational Habits

Now when you make a friend request or add a new friend you will have the option to place that person into one or several of your chosen categories, Just click on the small triangle in the corner and your lists will be shown in a drop down menu.  Get into the habit of doing this and you will build a much more powerful and easy to manage contacts list than the jumbled mess you might find yourself in otherwise. It becomes more important the larger your network grows; once you get over 500 friends it starts to become an issue and the job of segregation becomes harder and harder. It’s never too late to start, so take my advice and keep organized.

friendrequest

Messaging Your Lists

If you are planning on sending messages to a list you need to keep it below 19 members. Remember to warn people that if they respond, their reply will be sent to everyone in the group. This type of messaging is best done with the permission of your friends, as it can be very annoying if a recipient isn’t interested in the message and they get bombarded with all your personal replies in their email inbox.

Form A Secret Group

If you want to message more than 19 people at a time consider making multiple lists or try starting your own Facebook group. For personal friends you can keep this group secret and it will be invisible to other Facebook users. You can adjust a group’s privacy settings when you create the group.

secretgroup

To View A Segregated List Newsfeed

Facebook give you the option of viewing each of your friend’s lists as a separate newsfeed. It would be a useful function to be able to choose which newsfeed gets show as default. I am sure that at a future date this kind of customization will become available. For now to get to a specific newsfeed you will have to go to the   hassle of clicking a few times

Facebook-homepage

First click on the HOME tab on your profile page this will take you to your usual newsfeed page, there are 6 tabs for you to select what type of news you want to see.

To view the newsfeed of one of your segregated friend lists click on the TRIANGLE tab that says MORE FEEDS and scroll down the drop down menu and select the one you want.

Spy On Your Competition Or Keep Track Of Your Family

For those of you who like to spy on your competition this is a great way to track other peoples Facebook activities and see what they are up to. If like Ed dale you want to keep track of your friends and family then this would be the best way to go about it.

morenewsfeeds

Adding People Quickly To Your Lists

Another way you can add people to your lists is by clicking on the EDIT button in the MORE FEEDS tab and then entering names in the box provided. When you  click BROWSE  you have a rapidly scrolling list of your friends. You don’t get any photos when you do it this way so it loads a lot faster than the other options that you can use. You can populate a list quickly and easily if you know who you are looking for, the list is presented in alphabetical order.

editfriendslists

Adjusting Your Newsfeed Settings

For those people who want to choose who they hear news about  you also have the option of customizing your newsfeed. This is another of those hidden functions that most users rarely find. To get to it you have to scroll down to the very bottom of your HOME page and click on OPTIONS FOR NEWS FEED

newsfeedoptions

You are then faced with a set of sliders, much like you would find on a graphic equalizer. Just adjust them to the type of news you want to receive and add the names of all the people you would like to hear more about. If there is a particular person who shows up constantly in your newsfeed with news that doesn’t interest you and you don’t want to remove them as a friend you can place their name in the second box on the right and hopefully they will become less visible in your newsfeed.

Adjust Your Newsfeed Settings

newsfeedsliders2

White Listing Who You Allow To See Your Wall

Facebook have a function, hidden deep in the privacy settings that allows you to choose who  has access to your wall and who you will allow to see what others have posted. By using your friends lists you can keep your personal friends or business contacts in their own little bubble depending on which way you choose to adjust your settings.

profile-settings

From your profile page, first click on SETTINGS and then click on PROFILE, this will take you to the privacy>profile settings, scroll down and select the box that allows friends to post to your wall. If you are suffering from a lot of wall spam or you don’t feel comfortable with others posting on your wall keep it turned off.

friendswallposts

If you want to customize who can interact with your wall then you can use your lists and only allow certain groups of friends access. click on the triangle and select CUSTOMIZE from the drop down menu. A new pop up screen will now appear.

customize

Select SOME FRIENDS

somefriends

And now click on the small FRIENDS LIST icon to the right of the box

somefriendlist

You can now select which friends you want to include on your white list by selecting the appropriate groups

Now you need to select which networks you want to be able to see your wall. If you select NONE OF MY NETWORKS then only those on your white list will be able to see your wall.

Get A Friend To Check Your Settings

It’s a good idea when experimenting with these settings to have a friend on another computer check how your settings affect them.

Another way to organize your friends would be to exclude certain people,
You might not want your boss or work colleagues seeing every aspect of your social and family life.

Deciding whether to White list or Black list is entirely up to you it depends on which types of Friends are in the majority

After you have made your selections and clicked OK make sure your REMEMBER TO SAVE YOUR SETTINGS when you return to the PROFILE SETTINGS page
whitelist

Further Assistance

The bottom line whether you are using  Facebook for personal or  professional  interactions is the more you understand how the platform works and the more organized and disciplined you are regarding how you separate your personal and private life. The more pleasure you will gain from using it. In my opinion it’s the most powerfull social networking platform ever created, if you have any further suggestions or ideas about how to integrate your personal and business contacts please feel free to leave a comment.

You can also follow me on Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/iandavidchapman

Facebook Stategies Guide

For a free 60 page guide that will help you get started on Facebook the right way and explains the Unwritten Rules of Facebook.  just  sign up to my mailing list http://www.iandavidchapman.com (you can unsubscribe at any time)

Facebook Spam – The Human Face Behind The Menace

Raising The Bar

Spamming seems to becoming a hot topic again. Not the type
of Spam you get in your inbox asking you to buy Viagra or
letters from an African Lawyer who wants you to share the
inheritance of a milionare client. What I want to talk
about today concerns ordinary well meaning people who
though ignorance or lack of awareness end up becoming
perpetrators of this social menace and end up damaging
their reputation at the same time

I Don’t Like Spam

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE[/youtube]

Most people don’t like to eat Spam all the time so make
sure this isn’t what you are serving to all your friends.

Do You Want To Make The Right Impression?

Part of this blog post was written in the summer but I
thought I would re-edit it and include some recent
conversations and share it with a whole new audience.

My latest book, The Facebook Strategies Guide addresses
these sames issues and from my own observation. 95% of the
people using Facebook for Business are needlessly making
themselves look like spammers.

Attention Grabbers

If a complete stranger came and knocked on your front door
and demanded that you go with them to look at their new
car or dragged you out of your house and forced you to go
inside their new shop, don’t you think you might get a bit
upset. Why is it then that so many people act that way on
Facebook

Why Should I Give You My Attention?

How many times have you had someone send you a friend
request on Facebook and then straight away before you’ve
had time to take a second breath they have asked you for
something, demanding your attention, whether its to check
out their group, look at their website, join their MLM
program or Get Rich Quick scheme.

What these people maybe fail to realize is their approach
is getting them entirely the opposite results than they
might expect. The reason being is they fail to see the
message they are sending from the other side or think a
little bit about who they are sending to. Without having
this view you assume that the whole world will naturally
be interested in everything you are doing and you demand
that they give you attention.

Relationships First – Deals Second

Trying to sell yourself or your products without first
taking the time to build some sort of relationship is not
going to be the most effective strategy in today’s web 2.0
world. In a world where word of mouth is the new marketing
force to reckon with. Adopting this aproach is effectively
shooting yourself in the foot.

Serve Others First And You Will Be Rewarded

When you friend someone don’t ask them for something
straight away, take the time to send a personal message
and ask what you can do to help them. If you want to get
your self really noticed then you are going to have to
learn to give before you receive.

This will instantly set you apart from everyone else and
will show that you are actually interested in them and not
just in serving yourself or your business. Serving others
is one of the highest virtues you can adopt and is one of
the quickest ways to have your own needs met as well.

People will always remember you in a positive light and
that is what can influence them to open your emails,
listen to your sales messages and buy your products or
services in the future. Attention is one of the most
valuable commodities that all businesses are competing for.

Don’t Be Too Aggressive

Once you have their attention and you have started a
conversation you can decide if you want to mention what It
is you are promoting. If you are too aggressive in your
marketing or sales approach you can turn people off very
quickly.

It’s easy to spot people who are not genuine so be very
careful here and make sure you do this in a skillful way,
a casual mention of what you have to offer can be much
more powerful than the direct approach.

People hate being sold to but they do like to buy. If you
position yourself in the right way, you can be the person
they choose to go to when they are ready.

Consider Starting Your Own Group

If you want to get a targeted group of people all in one
place then consider forming your own group, you can invite
all your friends and in this way, only the people who are
interested will be subjected to your marketing messages
and they have the option of leaving the group at any time.

Selling directly to new friends via their profile, instant
messenger or wall is one of the quickest ways to start
losing friends and as spam becomes more widespread more
people are becoming less tolerant of unsolicited messages
in their inbox.

I join a lot of groups to see what they have to offer, one
thing I have noticed is the difference between how some of
the group leaders treat their members.

The Trusted Friend

Some Facebook groups send me a continual stream of
messages promoting this product or that service, I have to
admit that I tend to ignore most of them, Its like I
almost don’t see or hear anything of what they are
communicating, I filter it out and it just goes in the
noise and distraction file.

There are however a few group leaders who have adopted a
different strategy, they keep sending me useful
information and good links to things I am interested in,
and they have a totally different way of communicating.

It’s not that they never try and sell me something its
just they do it in a different way so I don’t mind because
I have placed them in a different file,that of the trusted
friend.

If you are networking, planning on using Facebook to promote
your business or you would like to start your own Facebook
group in the future,I think there is an important lesson
to learn here. Becoming the trusted friend gives you great
power and influence. It is a position that is  earned
through service and through consistency and congruency in
your message.

A Real Life Example And Lesson

Tim Somers one of the members of our Social Traffic group
talks about his own experiences in his recent blog post

“I’ve been in the promotional product business for 19 yrs.
and networking has been one of the keys to the success
I’ve had. Being fairly new to the whole Social Networking
gig I had been crossing the spam line and did not realize
it at all.

Seems I was putting the “cart before the horse” if you
will, jamming me and what I do down the throats of
everyone and anyone I’d connected with online via
Facebook, LinkedIn as various other networks.

I guess I was really excited about all the people I’d been
connecting with and lost focus on all the successful
networking I’d accomplished over the years at local
chamber events, BNI meetings and such. Where I listened,
and didn’t really give to much information on me or my
company – and focused on building a relationship first and
letting the natural transition of getting business and
referrals grow an flourish with time.

I didn’t know I was borderline spamming online because
know one was honest with me, I kept doing it until someone
finally brought it to my attention…and I “got it”.

It was Simon Ford that put me on the straight and narrow.
His words of wisdom could have been taken the wrong way,
but the message he sent me was crystal clear and I took it
to heart and have and will be working on becoming a better
Social Networker for sure.”

Simon Ford’s Message To Tim

Tim,

Please take this message as feedback, not criticism…

There are over 500 million pages indexed in Google for the
word cards, each page means nothing to me. Why do you
think your pages are any different? Is it because we are
members of the same Facebook group?

When I need a solution for cards, I will turn to my
network of people that I like and trust to find it.

Likewise, I listen to people who I like and trust. Only
they could ever convince me I may need a {offenders key
word} solution, when I didn’t otherwise know it…I could
only ever consider doing business with someone I really
liked and trusted..

That said, if the desired outcome of you introducing
yourself to me was to have me buy from you, do business
with you, or in fact collaborate with you on any level,
from where I sit, as your target, your strategy is counter
productive.

I will never listen to anyone who tells me they are
interested in building a relationship with me followed by
shoving a self serving link in my face. The approach
instills distrust in fact, making it even harder for you
to become someone I like or trust beyond such an
introduction.

This is not social networking, It’s spamming Tim.

To think that the caliber of people who have all
congregated in our social traffic group see your approach
other way is miss-guided.

I have done you a favor and deleted your wall post off the
group wall and from my personal feed so not that many
people have seen them. This provides you another
opportunity to introduce yourself with a mind set of being
“Interested”, not “interesting”.

I am confident if you make the most of the opportunity you
will be enlightened by the results. I would love to hear
about your journey of discovery when you have arrived…

That’s when I can see us building a genuine relationship
that will deliver your desired outcome and a hell of a lot
more.

I look forward to that day.

With respect,
Simon Ford

Education Is The Only Viable Long Term Solution.

As an individual you have a responsibility to your wider
network to educate all its members. If you see  a person
doing something that is damaging their reputation take the
time to let them know.

Do it in a way that encourages them to change without
being too critical, give people the benefit of the doubt,
especially those who are new to Social Media and are only
just getting started, you can point them to relevant notes
and blog posts and show them by example how you would like
to be treated as a friend and business contact.

Be Respectful

It’s clear from most discussions that talk about Spam that
each person has their own personal definition. You might
be the type who gets outraged and angry when someone
abuses your trust.

Publicly humiliating someone who transgresses your social
code might feel good momentarily, but it’s not the best
long term solution. Instead of creating an enemy why not
do what Simon did an tell them how you feel.  Treat them
in a respectful way even if you feel like you are the one
who is the victim. This kind of pro-active approach will
win you loyal friends and the respect of all those who you
communicate with.

Want To Learn More

For those who would like to learn more about using
Facebook  in the right way you can check out  my new book
The Facebook Strategies Guide. It’s a valuable resource
packed full of information that will take your social
networking to a whole new level

http://www.thefacebookguide.com

I hope you have enjoyed this post, If it’s been of some
value to you please share it with your network, send it to
your Tweeps on Twitter or press the share button on
Facebook.

you can also follow me on Twitter

http://www.twitter.com/iandavidchapman

Facebook Groups – 10 Steps To Make Your Facebook Group Go Viral

Are You A Lion Or A Sheep?
A Facebook group needs strong leadership and clear direction if you want it to succeed. If you act like a sheep, the herd might follow you for a moment  and then lose interest or move in a different  direction.

Launching a successful Facebook group is a definite art. If you are thinking of starting a new group or already have an existing group, here are a few essential pointers to get you going viral and  effortlessly  attract new members.


1) Choose a Killer Title For Your Group Name

Without a memorable name that is both colorful and sticky your group will fail right from the beginning. It has to be compelling and dynamic and press peoples emotional hot buttons. For Ideas look at the groups that have grown to over 1000 members and compare the names  to those that that are still stuck  at around 150 members.  If your name is boring  most people automatically assume your group will be too.

2) Pick  A Graphic That Captures The Essence Of  Your Group
A picture speaks a thousand words, does the image you choose convey the essence of your group. Get a striking image and then use photo shop to add some text on top of the picture. Make sure it can still be read when it is reduced in size. Many groups make their Logo much  longer than its wide it then becomes a full banner advertisement and   takes up more space when its listed on the group page giving it more prominence.

3) Leverage Your Friends
You can’t grow a group huge without the help of other people. Groups go viral because people invite their friends to join. If your initial network hasn’t reach 500 people you will have a hard time getting enough momentum for your group to take off. In that case find another friend and launch together. Make them a group admin too. Its much more fun launching a group with several people than having to do all the work on your own.

4) Target Your Initial Members
Having  powerful  and influential friends as core members of the group is vital. Hand select the people who you want to be there and send them personal invitations. Make them feel special.  You need to choose people who are dynamic on Facebook or Twitter, people who are famous, people who have huge followings,  people who have large networks and people who are already experts and leaders  within your niche.  Having these people as initial members instantly gives your group credibility.   Honor those who first join by making them officers and ask  them what  title they would like under their name.

5) Create A Whisper Campaign
Tell your friends about the group in an indirect way long before you are going to launch, hint about it in blog posts, in teleseminars and in  wall posts and in all your communications with your potential core members. Get them excited and they will start to talk about your new group even before you open the doors. Get your favorite bloggers to write an article about your group. Start a discussion using Facebook Notes  and make your group the logical solution to a problem that people might face. Create  the content for your group before you launch and tell people what you are doing.

6) Turn Your Group Launch Into An Event
By  turning your group launch into an event you automatically stand out and get noticed. Plan it the same way you would a big party,  You want all your guests to arrive at the same time so that the dance floor is packed. People won’t join if they turn up to your group page and find a cold empty room with no music and no  refreshments.

Use Facebook Events and hold a teleseminar to publicize it and/or write  Facebook notes and tag all your initial members, get them interacting with each other and keep sending them back to the group page to post on the wall and participate  in the discussions.

Groups are not just confined to  a single location, they spill out all over the place. Like a crowded house party that ends up  with  lots of people milling about on the front lawn. Anyone who drives down the street will always know which house to go to.

7) Include An Irresistible Offer
Offer an incentive for people to join,  give away a free ebook, mp3 recording or video straight away.

Promise to supply more exclusive content in the future for those who join the group early and become active participants. Identify those special  members by signing them  up to your optin list or joining your Fan page.

Focus on adding value and encourage your group members to share their own talents.   Your group will become  a valuable resource instead of  a derelict notice board for spammers

8)Aim For Viral Visibility
The more activity you generate the bigger your viral foot print will be in Facebook’s newsfeed.

You want to get your group to 500 members as quickly as possible so that it maintains its growth  velocity.  After this point it will hit critical mass and continue to grow on its own.

Stimulate activity on the group wall and discussion board, ask questions and continue to  supply fresh content on a regular basis. You want you members to keep returning and posting within the group.

9)Advertise Your Group
If you are holding a party you need to put up some posters and give out flyers. Use your status updates wisely; be creative, use humor,  and learn about  link baiting.   Attract members  from a whole range of social media  platforms, like Twitter, YouTube, Ustream, Friend Feed, Ning. Advertise in other similar groups and online forums. Get your group members to help you and  reward those who put in the most effort by helping them to promote themselves using your group as a platform. Self promotion before contributing value should be discouraged.

10) Launch Strategically  And In Several Stages
Have a clearly defined and mapped out strategy.  Create a revolving door  Pre launch, launch, post launch,  relaunch. Sequence.  After initial  activity your group may need restimulating. By holding regular events you keep your group in the public eye and your members will continue to feel connected. Get your active members to participate in your relaunch process, and make it  a win win situation for all involved

 

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Are You Getting The Most Out Of Your Facebook Applications?

For those people who mourned  having their  favourite applications relegated to the boxes tab when Facebook switched to the new design they can now access them even quicker regardless of where they are on the page because they are now built into the bottom  tool bar.

Facebook Shortcuts Are Back

Yesterday I noticed a new little box appear in the bottom left of my Facebook profile page and also that a few other things had be rearranged. Facebook’s design team must have been hard at work responding to the feedback from their users and thankfully they seemed to have listened.

My Prayers Were Answered

I wrote a long letter to Facebook pleading with them to bring this feature back and they seem to have answered my prayers. My own reasons were because without an easy way to get to functions that I use regularly I tended not to go there very much. I had stopped using a lot of my Facebook applications and no longer visited my group pages because it tool about 3 clicks and  2 scrolls  to get anywhere.

If You Can’t See It You Wont Use It

I had observed  a decline in group activity over the last 2 months  that had concerned me. Some of the best strategies for using   Facebook have involved  groups and they are one of the fastest and most effective ways to build a presence for yourself or your business on facebook.  Now I can have my groups button visible all the time.

Developers Are Still Suffering

For the thousands of Facebook developers who had their businesses wiped out overnight this might come as some consolation so long as users become educated about using this new function. They still suffer from the fact that they no longer get exposure on profile pages so the viral potentials are drastically restricted. How many will bother to update their old applications to conform to the new profile is still debatable. Inside Facebook writer Adam Lovallo wrote about some of these issues in a recent article about this   new bookmarking facilty

Welcome To The New Applications Menu

The applications menu is easy to configure just click on it and all the icons can be  dragged into the order you want them to show. Facebook have limited this to 6 options which is plenty for most users. Remember you can still place four other  applications on the left side of your profile page and also add applications  in their own dedicated tabs (not all applications support this function as third party developers need to redesign and resize their boxes)

Finding New Applications

You can find new applications by clicking on the edit all button, this will take you to a page where you can edit all  the permissions for your applications and if you click the browse more applications button you will be taken to another page where you find all the latest applications neatly divided into categories.

Facebook Users Protest Against Forced Adoption Of New Design

Petition Against The “New Facebook”

Facebook announced the final rollout of their new look design and those who have avoided adopting it  it will now be forced to get used to the changes. Understandably there has been a huge outcry from those who hate the new look and are having their old much loved profiles taken away from them and replaced by Facebooks new cleaner tabbed  profile layout.

One group I looked at, Petition Against the “New Facebook” has nearly half a million members. I suspect that even if they reach their million target Facebook won’t take a blind bit of notice. Its too much work to keep two platforms running side by side forever and it is obvious to me that Facebook have a very clear vision regarding the direction that they want to move in.

The Man Who Is Responsible Speaks Out

Mark Slee the man responsible for the new look Facebook talked to Robert Scoble recently . The interview gives you an inisders perspective as you look behind Facebook’s new design. Mark explains some of the issues involved and the main reasons why these changes are necessary.

Facebook SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

I wrote all about this in my epic  four part series where I made a SWOT analysis of Facebooks new design. Some of my predictions are already coming true. The shift towards monetising Facebook through mass advertising has to be balanced with user requirements. Many people who migrated to Facebook from  Myspace did so because it offered a sanctuary from the constant bombardment of advertising. They might now be faced with a similar dilemma.

Do You Love It or Hate It?

I  have gotten used to the new design, and while I mourn some of the old features and miss having my applications easily accessible and visible I wouldn’t want to switch back. The viral benefits of the merging of the wall and minifeed and the rise in prominence of Facebook Notes has made it a much more powerful tool for building community and developing relationships.

Is There A Conspiracy?

In my research I also stumbled upon an old article “With Friends Like These… “ written by a Guardian reporter that gives another insight into the real people behind Facebook . It gets quite sinister and Big Brother like and shows links to CIA interest and Government control. It reminds me of Noam Chomskys classic documentary, Manufacturing Consent and makes me wonder just who is holding the reigns of this powerhouse and what would happen if they chose to abuse their position or were forced to hand over control due to government intervention.

Democracy or Dictatorship?

I am not the type of person who wants to spread paranoid conspiracy theories or get involved in any politics but I can see a real danger if we all get too dependant on Facebook and there is no way to address these types of issues. Facebook now has as many users as the whole population of The United Kingdom. As citizens in this virtual country are we living in a democratic and free society or an oppressive controlling dictatorship?