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

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

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

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

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

Paste The Code Into Your Widget

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

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

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

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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/

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click save

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

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

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

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

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

Click on the Connect with Facebook  button and start interacting

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

Erased from History

How would you feel if you woke up one morning only to discover that facebook had erased you; Your account disabled and every trace of your social networking activities deleted at the push of the button.

Facebook’s Hit List

Some of the top social networkers are getting very concerned  as their friends are vanishing without warning and they fear that they might be next on Facebook’s hit list.

If you have spent months building your network and establishing your credibility  this might come as a heavy blow, especially if you haven’t taken a back up of your friends list or exported your contacts onto your own autoresponder.

Scott Disappears

Yesterday one of my favourite people on Facebook vanished, Scott Brandon Hoffman, a guy everyone likes and a person who has added huge value to many peoples lives with his inspiring articles and his articulate and amusing replies in the discussion threads.

Where is Scott Brandon Hoffman?

Addy Tseng was quick off the mark to write about what had happened but I am still waiting to discover exactly what he did to get himself booted off Facebook. I sent Scott a message on Twitter but he hasn’t responded yet.

Has Facebook Gone Cuckoo

Meanwhile Jim Turner, one of the pillars of our facebook community has been threatened because he messaged a few people who had requested to become his friend. Jim has been maxed out at 5000 friends and wanted to direct people to his fan page. His excellent post – Has Facebook Gone Cuckoo is getting a lot of interesting comments. Martin Allsop also claims this has happened to him too

I have received messages from several other marketers who have been warned or had their accounts disabled recently but prefer not to be mentioned by name.

New Anti Spam Algorithms

From all the evidence I can only conclude that facebook have changed their Spam Algorithms. These are automated programs that detect suspicious activity on facebook and disables  those who abuse its members. Spam has been a major problem for  the last few months since the influx of the internet marketing crowd, so I suspect that  Facebook are finally  listening to the many complaints  and have started cracking down.

A Heavy Handed Approach

While I support this in principle I feel concerned that they are being  a bit heavy handed and innocent people are suffering and having their businesses and reputations damaged as a result. What makes it worse is that there is no real way to talk to facebook and explain the situation except to write grovelling emails and hope that some anonymous facebook admin feels pity and approves you for reinstatement.

I know of at least 2 people who got banned for posting on a friends wall  and were then reported by that person as spammers.

Share Your Story

Blatant self promotion, signature tags, event and  group invitations  might now be considered capital offences. As more people fall foul of the new rules we can build up a clearer picture of  exactly what you can and can’t do. If you have had your account disabled or received a warning recently please leave a  comment  and tell us exactly what happened.

Don’t Get Banned – A Quick List of the Do’s and Don’ts

Here is my quick list that gives you the main offences that facebook have penalised in the past. For a more detailed explanation you can download my free facebook made easy guide.

Don’t Grow Too Quickly

Restrict How Many Friends You Add Per Day

Don’t Look Like A Spammer

Don’t Join Too Many Groups – Keep it under 200

Never Cut And Paste

Avoid  Aggressive  Marketing

Don’t Spam Facebook Groups

Don’t Create Multiple Accounts

You Have To Be A Real Person

Don’t Invite Too Many People at once To Your Facebook Groups

Don’t Message the Same Group More than Twice In One Day

Don’t Post Offensive Material – Be A Responsible Facebook Citizen

I think we need to add a few more to this list

Don’t write on too many friends walls in any one day (?? )

Don’t invite too many people to someone else’s event

If you have 5000 friends, don’t message anyone who is not your friend (???)

Don’t send affiliate  links in  private messages to people you don’t know

Take Out Insurance

There are a few steps you can take if you want to take out some insurance to protect yourself should the worst happen

Back Up Your List Of Friends

Keep a back up of your friends list in a spreadsheet.  For details on how to do this read this thread in my facebook made easy group where Alberto Escobar and Tony Williams show two different ways to do it.

Own Your Own List

Get all your friends into a group or host an event and then get the members to subscribe to your email list. Having your contacts on an auto responder makes it easy should you ever need to find people again. I use Aweber who are excellent. the other popular service is Get Response, both are paid services and they give you a  free 30 day test drive.

Get your friends to follow you on Twitter, then if Facebook choose to pull the plug you still have a way to communicate.

Share Responsibility

If you have a Facebook Group, Always get a friend to be a joint Admin, That way if you get your account shut down the group will still continue and your friend can then message all the members asking them to re-friend you when you return. You can also spread the risk when inviting friends to join your group and promoting group events.

Join A Private Membership Site

Consider joining a private membership site. I am a member of, Brian Campbell’s  Social Media Marketing  System and Travis Greenlee’s Master Business Builders Club. Travis’s is launching his new site right now and I know a few of my friends have signed up. I believe that in the future more people will want to have the freedom and protection  that a private site brings and we will  be drawn to those that provide the best value and  whave the highest quality of members. Of course you can also start your own free community at a place like Ning, there are good reasons to  belong to both free and paid membership sites and I will discuss this in a later post.

Facebook Notes – A New Strategy To Get Viral Visibility

Many of you have probably observed the increase in the number of Facebook Notes that are floating around these days. This has happened since the introduction of the new look Facebook. More people are becoming aware of the potential to gain massive viral exposure by writing notes and participating in discussions . They have also been responsible for bringing many people much closer together and creating a real sense of community

Build Solid Relationships

These are much more than just social events, or blog posts to get traffic or publicity, most people who are taking part are actively using Facebook for business and by exposing themselves with such honesty and transparency they are building real connections and solid relationships with all the other participants.

What is most interesting is the depth that some of the discussions are reaching and when posed with a stimulating question or issue to address the original post acts as a springboard to dive into and explore each topic.

Increase The Value Of Each Note

The value of the Note increases as more people add their own personal insights.The way Facebook have structured the system it forces the most popular notes to the top of your newsfeed so there is a huge potential to get massive exposure for yourself or your business if you understand some of the basic principles behind writing a good note and spotting the ones that are going to become popular.

1 – Choose A Controversial Topic And Get Personal

Sometimes this is the hardest thing to get right,  follow other notes and see if there is a theme emerging that you can write about. If you are stuck for ideas pick something that is happening in the world and reflect on its impact or the lessons that can be learned or find a quote or article from your favourite author and add your own personal understanding. Getting personal is the key to successful Facebook notes. All the best ones I have read have revealed something interesting about the author, this creates a real bonding and sense of intimacy.

2 – Write A Short Punchy Article That Ends With A Question

This will stimulate people to respond. If your note becomes too long and convoluted you will lose your readers. Consider breaking a long note into a series of shorter ones. Most people don’t have the time to read a 3000 word essay. The Blog Squad talk about the 4 E’s – Engage, Entertain, Educate and Enrich. Make sure your note ticks these 4 boxes.

3 – Keep To The Point, Make It Short And Sweet

Don’t ramble and discuss 2 or 3 different subjects in one note, this will confuse people. Keep it short and sweet. Respect your readers time, edit your note down and only include what is absolutely essential to get your point across. You can always add more later in the comments section

4 – Make Your Note Attractive

this means have good formatting, use subheads and break your note into manageable chunks. Pictures make the note more visually appealing and can give your note a stickiness factor.

5 – Tag People Who Want To Participate

Its no use tagging all your friends who are too shy to write something or are too busy to even read the note. Tag the people who you know like to participate and are regular commentators. Some people also like to tag those people who have big networks or who are centres of influence. This works well as long as what you write is appropriate and as long as you feel you have permission to do this . Not everyone wants you to use their wall and their newsfeed to spread your message so be respectful and consider asking permission first.

6 – Release Your Note At The Optimum Time

I have noticed that for my network, Facebook activity drops over the weekend, and is highest during the weekdays.  Its up to you to know your own network and when the peaks of activity are as it may vary considerably. Get the timing wrong and your note will get pushed down the newsfeed and no one will notice it.

7 – Comment On Your Own Note and Participate

Always get into the habit of commenting on your own notes and refer back to what other people have written. Become a regular participant in other peoples notes. Build a reputation as someone who adds value and always has something interesting to say, if you do this then other people will start to tag you in their notes. Which will increase your viral visibility.

8 – Press The Share Button

Sharing is a way to vote up the best quality discussions and expose them to the widest possible audience. The note will be posted to your profile page and will also be pushed out into all your friends newsfeeds. Pressing the share button because you feel obliged to reciprocate isn’t a good strategy. You will not build a reputation as someone to follow and pay attention to if you spread poor quality articles and information. Press it because it has added some value and you think your friends will appreciate it.

9 – Use Feedback and Build on Success

You know when you have written a good note by how many comments you receive and how many people press the share button. This is important feedback and it’s a valuable exercise to look at your notes and work out what elements made one note more popular than another. This way you can build on your success and continually strive to improve. My article “If Your Headline Sucks No One Will Listen“ was a good example of this process. If you write a note and no one comments go over this checklist and see what areas you could improve upon.

10 – End With A Call To Action

Invite your readers to your Blog or Website, To follow you on Twitter or to check out your latest book. Ask them in a casual conversational manner in the same style as the rest of your note. Suddenly switching to a hard sell might create a disconnect and you might come across as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This is also the case if you have too many outbound links to your own products and services. By all means include them but keep them to a minimum and be subtle about how you present them. If you comment on a note and just promote yourself without really taking part in the discussion you will might get viral visibility but it will be for the wrong reasons.

I  go into much more depth about Facebook notes in my book, The Facebook Strategies Guide available from http://www.thefacebookguide.com

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A  Tribal Society?

We are now at a turning point through the re-tribalisation of society through social media. A reconnecting and re-organisation is taking place and the power structures are rapidly shifting to accommodate these changes .

The internet has brought us a tool to connect people together and allow a very rapid transfer of ideas and information across the network of humanity that makes up the user base.

Turning Points

The major turning points  in the history of information can be tracked  back to

The development of writing, the introduction of the alphabet, the creation of the printing press and the Introduction of the Internet.

Closer To Nature

The majority of tribal societies throughout history have had a   much greater respect and understanding  for the divine feminine, since they were living closer to nature and closer to the earth than we do today.

I see this reflected in the recent rise in awareness about environmental issues and collective responsibility for the pollution that we are poisoning our planet with.

Cyber Interactions

On a more personal level how does this translate when we are making our connections to each other through cyberspace and in an electronic form? Are we interacting in a genuine way and can it really ever replace the closeness that humans have always experienced when they lived together on a physical level.  Will we ever be able to reach out and give our friends a true cyberhug  where they can feel our heart beating next to theirs and hold their bodies in a way that  shows how much we care for them.

Heartfelt Feelings

Recently I have noticed that more people are feeling comfortable enough to express  their beliefs and heartfelt feelings in ways that would have been inappropriate before and had them ridiculed or labelled in a negative way. They are using this honesty and openness to develop trust and attract people to them for business purposes and deepen their relationships. The boundaries that separate business and friendship seem to be getting more blurred , which leads to a need for even greater transparency and honesty

I have always  looked  at the developments in technology and liken them to what is already in place and is our natural birthright as human beings. They seem to mirror our evolution as a species.

Reality Is Only What We See

We are already telepathic and operate from a global group mind its just that most of the world hasn’t consciously realised this yet . We focus most of our awareness on the narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum  that pertains to our physical eyesight  and call that reality.

A New World Opens Up

When a child learns to ride a bike they use training wheels, they wobble and find it difficult to adjust to this new mode of transport. After a while they realise that they don’t need the extra support and can safely ride without them. A whole new world opens up and transport becomes a much faster and interesting experience.

Learning To Fly

The internet is giving us the tools to fly. We are all like children clinging to the engines of a Jet plane like they are  training wheels on a bike,  too scared to flap our own wings in case we crash down to earth.  Only when enough of us are soaring will the majority realise that they can fly too.

This post is a reply I made to a discussion that was taking place on Facebook.

To see the original post made by Michelle Castro and some of the inspiring comments click the following link Predictions for the New Earth and the New Internet

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