Pick one person from your Friends list and post a compliment on their Wall. Click on their website. Check out their blog. Post a link from THEIR website onto THEIR Wall and say something nice about it. Resist the all-too-common urge of promoting our own interests and businesses.

http://icare-movement.com/

A dear friend of mine and I were having drinks the other night when the subject of Facebook came up. He was telling me about one of his Facebook friends that posts prolific and annoying status updates.

His biggest concern was that he didn’t want to see all of her updates but didn’t want to unfriend her and risk hurting her feelings.

I explained to him that he could ‘silence’ her from his News Feed without unfriending her.

It’s as simple as this:

When you see the offending person who you would like to silence float by on your News Feed, simply point your mouse over the right-hand upper corner of their status update or post (as shown by the arrow and circle) and an arrow will appear.

Click on that arrow and a drop-down menu with options will appear.

You can ‘unsubscribe’ from all of their updates OR you can simply receive ‘only important’ updates.

Either way, they’ll never know that you’ve adjusted your settings and you don’t have to unfriend them and risk hurting their feelings.

Here’s a quick tip for you. Take a moment to check out your ‘other’ inbox on Facebook. This is where messages go after Facebook deems them ‘spam’. I was surprised to find quite a few emails from legitimate people that weren’t my ‘friends’ on Facebook.

To find this ‘other’ inbox, log onto Facebook. In the top right hand corner, click on HOME.

This will take you to your News Feed. On the left hand side of your screen, you’ll see MESSAGES. Click on the word MESSAGE and ‘OTHER’ will popup just underneath. Click on OTHER and voilà! You’ll see all of those neglected emails that have been filtered out of your inbox.

Your class has finished and one of the things you learned was how to automate your social media accounts. Yet, one quick look at an automated account will tell you that big numbers and auto-posts don’t guarantee social networking success. It just covers up the fact that the lights are on but no one’s home.

As more and more people start using social media for business, they try and find short cuts to make the process easier. That’s one of the reasons why so many people fail to monetize their efforts. Social media is social and requires your time.

Here are four standout reasons why automation doesn’t work: Read the rest of this entry »

I often get asked how to grow numbers – fans and ‘likes’ – on your Facebook Page. There are a slew of techniques you should use on an ongoing basis (for example, well-placed social media icons on your website/blog, in your email signature, and on your marketing materials, to name a few), but one that stands out to me the most is growing your numbers through your personal profile first.

Use your personal Facebook profile as a bridge to your Facebook Page.

I hear a lot of people talk about their hesitation to open up their personal accounts to people they don’t know. Listen, if you’re on Facebook to do business, it’s important to understand that your target market does not want to be approached for business first. In fact, I dare say that no one wants to be approached for business first.

People aren’t coming to Facebook to meet their accountant. They’re coming to Facebook to connect, reconnect, and engage with others. They might meet a person who happens to be an accountant and then decide to do business with them, but most likely, potential clients that find business connections have done so because they connected on a personal level first.

This is the crux of social media – the ability to connect and relate to one another first and foremost. Those similarities and interests bring us together and business leads are developed through this organic process.

There are no shortcuts or ways around it. You can’t automate your presence and drive business leads to your site. You either get it or you don’t, but one of the main reason most corporate brands don’t do well using social media is because they don’t have a personality.

My suggestion: clean up your personal profile. Get rid of anything that you think is too much information: pictures of your kids (if you deem this too much information), negative personal details about your life (going through a divorce, you hate your ex-husband’s new girlfriend, etc.) and include bits and pieces of the real you (not the “you” with your skirt over your head drunk in Barcelona), but the essence of who you are: male or female, books and movies you like, and music you listen to – for starters.

Add people as friends to your personal account first. Get to know them, compliment them on their site, and ask them a question about themselves. Then, once a month send out a blanket invitation to all of your friends to invite them to your Page. Don’t pounce on them when they first become your friends. Give it time. Be patient.

When I’m working with a new client, I explain this slow process to the clients so they understand I am not a fairy godmother with a magic wand. This process takes time.

Before Pages existed, I built up my personal profile to include pictures, videos, and descriptions of my interests and activities – my garden, my dog, my kids, my love of beer, my neighborhood. It’s easy to get a sense of who I am when you take a look at my personal profile.

I make it a point to wish people a happy birthday and comment back when people post to my Wall. This is what I mean by engagement. Social media is not the new fangled way to make money, but rather, a new fangled way to meet people.

When Pages became available and after I created my own, I sent out an invitation to my friends list through my Facebook profile and had 400 fans in one day. That happened because I established a relationship with them first – built up some trust before asking for their click.

Asking people to skip over your personal profile and proceed straight to your Page doesn’t work as well. I’ve seen many folks send out return messages after I’ve sent them a friend request telling me that they have too many friends and can’t take on anymore, but to join them over on their Page.

Uh… I don’t think so.

I want to get to know you as a person before I join you over on your Page. I don’t necessarily want to know about your latest business venture but I would like to know basic personal details about you if I’m friending you on Facebook.

And I realize Facebook has a 5,000 friend limit for personal accounts. The notion is that anything over 5000 should naturally migrate over to your Page. And yet, it doesn’t always work that way. The numbers don’t add up as well when people skip over your personal profile before being introduced to the “business you”.

I’m not suggesting opening up the flood gates and letting any ol’ person in – rather, develop a criterion, a standard of who you want to friend. If you’re a brick and mortar business in New Jersey, find your city’s Facebook Page. Assuming they have one, friend those people on that Page. Most likely, they are New Jersey residents and/or have ties to the community. You can’t add them directly to your Page, but you can request their friendship and add them on through your personal profile. Eventually you can migrate them over to your Page.

Use your personal profile to grow your Page. Look at your personal profile as an addendum to your professional Page. Infuse your online presence with your personality and business leads will be generated through these efforts.

Remember, automation cannot do this for you. There are no shortcuts in social media. Take your time. Social media is a 401k plan and not a lottery ticket.

For more ways to grow your numbers on your Facebook Page check out: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-ways-to-grow-your-facebook-page-following/.

The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

If you’ve ever wanted to invite your Facebook Friends to a Group, Event, or Page – you know that in order to do so, you need to individually click on their avatars to invite them. Well… what if you want to invite ALL of your friends at once?

To date, Facebook hasn’t created a “Select All” button in an effort to make “spamming” your friends less possible – use this technique with caution.

Recently, I found a way to invite ALL of your friends with the help of a some javascript.

1. After you’ve clicked on “I’m Attending” on the Event (or after you’ve ‘liked’ a Page or ‘joined’ a Group – you’ll be given the option to suggest the Event, Page, or Group to your FB friends), you’ll see an option to  “Select Guests to Invite” (slightly different wording for Groups and Pages – hopefully you get the gist).

2. After you click on “Suggest to Friends,” a pop-up window will load and you’ll see a page with all of your friends listed, but they are ‘unselected.’

3. At this point, copy and paste the javascript code below into your Web browser’s address bar, then hit “Enter” – not in the Facebook Search bar – not in the “Find Friends’ search bar – but in your browser search bar (highlighted area).

javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

Once you’ve pasted that link and hit enter, you’ll notice that all of the avatars have been selected.

*Please note that the process can take upwards of two minutes to complete – depending on the size of your list. When I first tried to do this, I thought it didn’t work. What I quickly realized is that it just takes time to process. Be patient.*

It took me a few tries to figure it out, but once I did – the javascript enabled me to ‘Select All’ without the arduous task of clicking each avatar individually.