DANNYJJOHNSON.COM

MySpace Activates MS Outlook Social Connector (Beta)

Danny J Johnson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:35:00 GMT

Many may already know that Microsoft has partnered withLinked In, MySpace, and Facebook to allow integration with MS Outlook thatallows you to connect your social accounts all within Outlook. The beta versionhas been out for some time, dubbed MS Outlook 2010 Social Connector, but Imight add that the module also works with Outlook 2003 and 2007 (I have beentesting it with 2007). The Linked In functionality has been up and running forsometime and yesterday, after keeping a watchful eye on the Social ConnectorSite from Microsoft the MySpace connector became available at just follow thislink http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/socialconnector/default.aspx.

The Social Connector‘s intent is to synchronize our socialnetworks with Outlook, SharePoint and Windows Live contacts all within Outlookwhich would make sense with the popularity of Outlooks use in the business environment.I must say from what I have seen thus far it is pretty sweet and think with afew tweaks it may just rank up there with TweetDeck. Among the many features ofthe connector module I really like the additional pane that combines everythingin one place. The Facebook and Windows Live connector is not yet functional andI’m anxiously waiting to get my paws on this function as well. Also, there hasn’tbeen any Buzz about Google Buzz or Twitter, but I imagine that these two willsoon be in the works as well.

To get this bad boy installed you will first need to go toMicrosoft’s download page here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c87e257c-d76f-4785-a09b-af36babd6e32&displaylang=en#instructionsthen just click the download button and install the connector. You will need tomake sure Outlook is shut down when you go to execute the installation. Also afew notes about this. First off, if you’re using SharePoint Services make sureyou follow the instructions on the download page and also remember that this isa Beta and there may be some hiccups with it (my bad experiences so far hasbeen minimal). Next you will just need to go to the connector page and installthe Linked In and MySpace connectors. http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/socialconnector/default.aspx

Once installed just launch Outlook and Go to Tools>SocialNetwork Account Settings and enter your username and password for Linked IN andMySpace. I might mention that I had anissue with adding these accounts since I use the same username and password forboth Linked In and MySpace which generated a error stating that the useraccount has already been established. To work around this I just went into MySpaceand changed my email address and password to differentiate it from Linked Inand I was off and running.

Top Ten Essential Twitter Tools to streamline socializing on the web

Danny J Johnson — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:18:00 GMT

From the Red Cross to Skittles, tweets are everywhere and savvy marketers know the importance of the little 140 character messages coming at us at around 18 per second and over 50 million per day. We have a lot to do to keep up with this pace so let’s get our tweet game on with these top 10 essential tools for streamlining our Twittermonium.

The first thing we will want to do is to sync up our blog and Facebook with Twitter. Of course you will need a Facebook account and a Twitter account up and running. Then log into Facebook and search for Twitter, or go to http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2231777543 Then Click the Go To Application, once here Choose your settings, then Enter your Twitter account information (if you not already logged into Twitter) and then click Allow. One note here, make sure you choose to have Twitter update your Facebook status.

Next let’s have our blog update both Facebook and Twitter with Twitter Feed, http://twitterfeed.com/ which is a more condensed option than my previous posts about feeding you blog into Facebook. Just go to Twitter Feed’s site and follow the very simple instructions and off you go for some very quick and efficient methods for serving up some serious content across multiple platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

The next tool is my absolute favorite and is the most popular tool of choice called TweetDeck at http://www.tweetdeck.com/. Tweet Deck is an Adobe Air application that resides on your desktop and allows you to post and monitor your Facebook personal profile page, multiple Facebook fan pages, multiple Twitter accounts, Linked In and MySpace. Within the application you have the ability to switch on and off your multiple accounts, post, shrink urls, drag in images and such and as you can see it is truly a essential tool for efficient social networking.

The fourth tool I would suggest is located at http://www.socialoomph.com/ which integrates with your Twitter account and with the free version allows you to schedule tweets, automate sending a Direct Message (DM) to new followers, autofollow those that follow you and many other monitoring tools. With the paid version you can schedule Facebook status updates and also utilize other similar tools for blogs. The key tool they offer in my opinion is the Autoreply DM feature.

Although Google is now including Tweets in their search a more specific option when you want to search within the Twitter world try out http://search.twitter.com/ . Just enter your keyword phrase or keyword in the search box and Twitter will return the relative results along with the authors for you to easily add to your following list. Another cool feature here is that you can subscribe to the RSS feed of this query which will allow you to feed in all tweets that are relevant to your desired search criteria.

We Follow http://wefollow.com/ is a Twitter director service that categorizes authors by tags, popularity and also allows you to add yourself to the directory to get you started. This is a great place to look for people to follow, since you can easily identify their interests, tweet frequency and their popularity. We follow is another good place to spot trends as well.

The next tool is a rising Twitter star and provides a similar service to Facebook’s friend finder at mrtweet.com . It only takes a couple of clicks to get registered, then Mr. Tweet will send you a direct message when they are ready for you to get started. Mr. Tweet is a great place to find people to follow and start to grow your network.

The last tool is http://strawpollnow.com/ which is a Twitter polling tool that allows you to get involved or create your own 140 character polls and increase your network outreach.

Facebook: Feed your Blog to the Notes Tab on your Fan Page

Danny J Johnson — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:32:00 GMT

Yesterday, Google announced that it has added Facebook Pages to its real time search which will now show in real time your Facebook Fan Pages feeds right within the Google search results stream. You may have already noticed that Twitter, Blogs, Yahoo Answers and a few more have been showing up since December and rival Bing has been doing this for some time as well. Now that Facebook is on the Google stream bandwagon now is a good time to get you Fan Pages all gussied up for some serious visibility. But don’t get too excited your personal profile page is not included, sorry.

So what this means is that feeding your blog into the notes tab on a Facebook Fan Page now makes it searchable for Google and Bing. Try it out, Google the string “SUP Lessons/Rentals Now Available St. Simons, GA” without quotations and you will see on the very first result a blog entry that was fed into the fan page notes. It even outranked the blog entry itself. This shows you immediately the benefits of having your blog feed into this tab. Also, as mentioned in my previous entry, once your entry is updated Facebook will post a blurb (first 5-6 lines) to your wall as well for additional exposure. Note: If you have a blog with a lot of entries you may want to perform this task late at night so it does not contaminate your wall with all your posts, which may be offensive to your friends and fans. Also, unlike your personal page you cannot disable the Publish to Streams settings in a Facebook fan page.

Before you get started you will need your Blogs RSS url and administrative rights to the fan page (See Facebook: the power of the Notes Tab for details). Then navigate to your fan page and on the tabs section to the right of Info tab click the + sign then select Notes and the Notes tab will be added to your fan page. Now click the Wall tab and the click Edit Page in the left column. Then scroll down to the Notes section can click edit. Then look for the Import a Blog link to the right in the Notes Section. Click the Import Blog link and then paste or type in url of your blog. Then be sure and check the box that you are the owner of the blog and click Start Importing. At this point I have had some problems getting it take the url be a few repeats of clicking the Start Importing button it finally worked. At this point your blog or RSS will start importing and you will then see you feed roll in.

Once your blog is set up don’t expect it to feed in dynamically or in real time. It can take up to 30 hours for the feed to propagate to the notes tab on Facebook so you will have to be patient. Also, remember that the html coming in your with your blog may behave differently when parsed by Facebook so some formatting aesthetics may be affected.

Danny Johnson brings you weekly tips on online marketing as an extension to his Seminar Series. Unraveling the Web: Effective Strategies for Online Marketing. To subscribe to this blog go to Danny's Blog

Facebook: the power of the Notes Tab

Danny J Johnson — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:16:00 GMT

Facebook: the powerof the Notes Tab

The notes tab in both your personal Facebook page and on Fan pages can be a very powerful tool for promoting yourself or your company’s brand, or message. Among many other possibilities for use both personally and for your business (to be discussed later on), the notes section allows you tofeed in your RSS from your blog thus exposing your message to the virility benefitsof Facebook.

First, one important note about notes, lol. What you post in your notes will be posted on your wall as well by default (truncated to about 8 lines of text) so this may become very annoying for your friends if your blog is rolled frequently. Secondly, if you are adding a blog that has a long list of entries (been around for a while) all these will push through to the wall the first time (each entry will create a separate wall post) so do this very late at night when everyone is asleep as to not bombard your friends and fans. Also, your personal profile notes and fan page notes operate a little differently, which I will describe soplease read on.

Adding a RSS feed (blog) to your personal profile page is a little more straightforward than adding one to a fan page; fan page notes has less controls on the redistribution of the contents. Before you begin you will needthe URL to your RSS feed from your blog. You can retrieve this by going to your blog and click on the RSS icon and noting the url. Mine is http://dannyjjohnson.com/rss2.aspx, Note: if you click on this link you will see just a bunch of text all grouped together with no formatting.

With the RSS url in hand go to your personal profile page (profile page not your home page) and then if you do not have the Note tab visible click on the + sign to add a new tab and select notes. Now go back to your wall tab and look for the options link (just under the share button) and click it and then click settings. Under the Available Sites section look for the Blog/RSS link and click on it. Then just copy and paste your blogs RSS url you retrieved earlier into the Public URL box and click Import. Once successful you can now navigate back to your Notes tab on your profile page and your blog should now appear there. One note about the updated of this feed, which will not be immediate, so be patient of your blog takes up to 24 hours to update. If for some reason it does not you can go back to your profile page’s wall tab and look for the options link (just under the share button) and click it and then click settings. Under the Imported Sites section look for the Blog/RSS link and click on Update Now.

At this point you will have noticed that the first 10 or so lines from your blog was posted to your wall which may or may not be desirable depending on how frequently you update your blog. If this is more than a few times a week this may quickly become annoying or seem spammy to your friends.If so here is how you can change it. Navigate back to your profile page, then with the wall tab selected click the Options (look under the share tab) then click Settings, and down at the bottom look for Application Settings, then click there. Next on the Applications Settings page look for the Notes section,then click Edit Settings. Then look for the additional settings tab and uncheck the box that reads Publish to Streams, which will keep your notes from automatically publishing to your streams.

Tips for blogs that feedinto your personal profiles

Here are a few things to consider when creating a blog that will feed into your personal profiles Facebook Notes.
First as a good practice create a short introductory paragraph including a title since this will be shown in your stream for all to see and needs to attract their attention. Remember that they will only see the first 3 or 4 lines of text everything else will be truncated.
Facebook will not handle the html from your blog entirely the same so it will not appear the same when it is pushed through the Notes tab. This is because there are some html tags that are not supported and the css that is attached to your blog feeds. As a side note I plan to test podcasting into notes, but at this time I’m not sure if it will work.
Again be reminded that all your entries will be posted into your stream on your wall so if you have an old blog this may create some problems with your friends when you first add it. Like I said before do it late at night so no one will notice and hopefully it will all have been pushed out of the way when everyone is awake and back on Facebook. One trick to avoid this is to add the notes tab first then go to Options>Settings>Application Settings>Notes>Edit Settings>Additional Permissions and uncheck Publish to Streams as described earlier. Then you can add your RSS/Blog which will not post to your wall with your entire list of blog entries.
Sometimes when you manually update your blog you may get a NO entries found, just keep hitting the update button and it will pick it up.

Setting up a blog or RSS feed into your note tab on your Facebook personal page is a powerful tool as we have seen. In the next post I will share how to set up a RSS/Blog feed to a fan page and also elaborate a little more asto how this can be advantageous to your marketing strategy.

Adding YouTube Video to Your Facebook Fan Page Part II

Danny J Johnson — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:48:00 GMT

Aside from using third party application providers like myself and Involver used in the previous example to add YouTube to your Facebook Fan page, you can also embed the video in its own tab using Facebook Mark Up Language (FBML). Before I get started on this topic if you do not know html or you are not interested in working under the hood there is no sense to even attempt this and you can easily hire someone like me to develop your Facebook applications for you.

Here are some things you will need to proceed. First you will need access to a web server since you will need to reference files from your own severs to place on Facebook, although I should mention it s possible to use Facebook, YouTube, Flickr Picasso etc for these purposes. You will also need a good html editor such as Dreamweaver (my personal choice). Lastly you will need the FBML Static page application to build all this with.

FBML is a markup language similar to HTML used in web page design check out this link for a good example http://www.facebook.com/pages/Whitecap-Stand-Up-Paddleboarding/139837049542?v=app_7146470109 or http://www.facebook.com/redbull?ref=search&sid=657977681.1311036517..1#!/redbull?v=app_123793864961&ref=search. Although similar to HTML, FBML has a series of custom tags (you can even create some of your own) that will only work in the Facebook environment and there are HTML tags that will not work in the Facebook environment. A complete list of FBML tags can be found at http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/FBML . Although similar to HTML, FBML does not allow certain tags such as object embedding; which would seem like the first choice for embedding a YouTube video in your Facebook Fan Page. With that said let’s get started.

The first step in all this is to install the FBML application to make it available to you Facebook Fan Page. At this point I should mention that FBML only works on Fan Pages and will not work on personal profile pages. So navigate to you fan page and in the Facebook search box on top of the page type in FBML. Then look for the Static FBML application and click on the link. Once on the application page look for the link on the left hand side that reads add to my page and click it. Then if you have more than one page you will need to select which page to install the app to and just click add to page and the app will be added. Then naviage back to your fan page and click edit page.

At this point you will see the FBML application and just click edit. Now you are in the FBML application for your fan page and in the title enter YouTube. By the way the title will be the name of your tab in this case will be YouTube. Now comes the HTML/FBML part. Open your HTML editor and eneter the following code which I will explain in further detail.

<fb:swf

swfbgcolor="000000" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:white;"

swfsrc='http://www.youtube.com/v/xxxxxxxxxxx'

imgsrc='http://img.youtube.com/vi/xxxxxxxxxx/2.jpg' width='400' height='256' />

First the <fb:swf is the flash player object and is necessary to embed the video player in the Facebook page. The swfbgcolor is the background color and the other attributes here are pretty self explanatory. The swfsrc is the video source which is a absolute reference to your YouTube video. You will need to replace the xxxxxx with your url id which can be found by going to your YouTube account and copying the url of your video. Once doing so you will need to remove everything after the & so your swfsrc reference should look like ‘http://www.youtube.com/v/JOt2Qp0H9G8’ . Note that FBML uses (‘) instead of (“) without the parentheses which is common for HTML. Then the imgsrc is your thumbnail image for your video and in this case you would just repalce the xxxxxxx with your YouTube id and include the /2.jpg or you can reference another image to be used as the thumbnail located somewhere else such as Flickr or even on Facebook itself. Then the width='400' height=‘256’ specifies the width and height of the thumbnail which can also be applied to your video. Then the only thing left to do is to close the <fb:swf with </ Then if you like you can add a caption below the video by using <h1> This is my YouTube Video </h1> and add a description within the <p> </p> tags. You can also add Twitter links and basically the list here is endless.

When you have all your code ready for testing you can go here http://developers.facebook.com/tools.php?fbml and paste you code into the left box and preview the results in the right box and when you have it the way you want it just go back to the FBML and click save changes. Now navigate back to your Fan Page and click the + sign and look for your YouTube App and select it and it will be placed on your tabs. To move it just drag it to where you want it to go and you are done. If you have a lot of tabs it may be necessary to go to the >> to find the tab you just created and drag it over from there.

As you can see I have used the fb:swf here http://www.facebook.com/pages/Whitecap-Stand-Up-Paddleboarding/139837049542?v=app_7146470109 to actually embed a Facebook video instead of YouTube for an example and named the tab Contest Giveaway. This is a great example of why you may need to embed a video rather than using the Involver app or just using the Facebook vide upload.

The uses of Static FBML application is endless as you can easily see and that using this application you can build all kinds of rich content right within Facebook. We all know why this is a good idea as over half of the 400 million users and going here every day. In my next post I will show you how to feed your blog into the Notes section of your Facebook page.

Adding YouTube Video to Your Facebook Fan Page

Danny J Johnson — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:35:00 GMT

A lot can be said as to why video should be used in promoting your brand, product, or yourself for that matter, so at this point we will not go into to details concerning that topic and reserve that for a later in-depth discussion. Another topic for detailed discussion is the use of YouTube for promoting your company and brand, which I will also hold for later on. So for now we will jump straight into adding YouTube video to your Facebook Fan Page.

In this discussion I will look at two different methods for adding YouTube to your fan page all of which require two different levels of complexity.

The first question you are probably asking yourself is why use YouTube and why not just upload the video straight into Facebook and be done with it. The short answer is searchabilty. YouTube is a product of Google and Google owns the search market. Therefore, establishing your own channel on YouTube is bound to help you get discovered. Then adding this highly discoverable media to an additional potential of 400 million viewers even improves your opportunity to get your message out there. As I said we won’t go into details about creating good video, the importance of it ect and at this point and assume you already have a YouTube video ready to go.

The fastest and easiest way to put YouTube Video on your fan page is to use the Involver Application designed specifically for this purpose. First, I must tell you the downside of using Involver is that they have a big old ad on your video page and also you are not allowed any customization for the tab. Oh, by the way tabs can be rearranged by dragging them around so you have them in the order you want them, so drag the YouTube tab over closer to the Fan page wall when you are done with adding the tab to your page.

Ok, first thing to do after logging into Facebook and navigating to your Fan Page and in the search box type, Involver. Then look for the company Involver (usually at the top of the page) or just click this link http://www.involver.com/pages/gallery.html which will take you to their application page. To make things simple just go to http://www.involver.com/pages/gallery.html and make sure you are also logged into Facebook on another tab of your browser. On Involver’s Gallery page look for the YouTube Channel and click the install button. You will quickly notice that Involver has several applications that work with Facebook and although you can apply these techniques to installing all these apps on your page you are limited to two of these unless you buy a paid subscription for the rest. After clicking the install button if you have multiple fan pages select the page you wish to install the YouTube Channel to or select you page and click the “Add YouTube for Page” Then you will be taken to the Involver fan page applications page where you just enter your name, email, phone number and YouTube channel name, and then just decide to Import Uploads, Include Favorites (which will be other videos that you have chosen on your YouTube Channel) and also select which video to be featured and select save and continue. Don’t forget to accept the terms and conditions. Once clicking the save and continue button you will be taken to the Involver Last Step page where you will click the Continue to Fan Page. This will take you back to your fan page. Once here go up to the tabs section, Click on the + sign and select YouTube and your done. Then you may notice that none of your video’s have an image thumbnail.

To fix this log back into YouTube and Sign into your YouTube account. Hover / mouse over your username (in the top right-hand corner of the screen). A drop-down menu will appear. Click "My Videos". Find the video for which you'd like to pick the thumbnail and click its "Edit" button. On the following page, under the heading, "Video Thumbnail", click on one of three thumbnails to use as a picture to represent your video. Once you've chosen your preferred still, the border around it will become highlighted. Finally, click the "Update Video Info" button at the bottom of the page. As with all site changes, it may take a short while for the new thumbnail to appear. Once this is completed be sure and allow a little time for the changes to make their way back to Facebook.

Go back to your page and you may have to refresh your browser a few times to flush out the cache and see the final results with the video thumbnails. Here is what your final result will resemble http://www.facebook.com/pages/Therapeutic-BioSystems/290220729364?v=app_57675755167 This was just stuck on one of my pages so don’t get bent out of shape trying to relate the videos to the actual fan page it is just there for a example. As you can see the Involver app picks up the entire YouTube channel and also has all the necessary features for easy sharing and forwarding to fans and friends which is a great feature to take advantage of. Again make sure if your video is an ad to exercise discretion before blasting it out to all your friends and fans they probably will not like it. At this point I have discussed one way to get a YouTube Video on your Facebook Fan Page, and since this is already running long I will address additional methods for adding YouTube to your Fan Page tomorrow.

Facebook: Company Fan Page Etiquette

Danny J Johnson — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:56:00 GMT

Now that the personal page etiquette is out of the way, we can now look into Company or Brand Fan Page etiquette. Since I used the analogy of establishing Facebook friends is like meeting them at an event, your Company Fan Page is like a corporate outing where you invited all your clients and business associates to the gathering and your fans should be treated the same as you would in person at this gathering. A Company Fan Page is the opportunity for you clients and fan base to better get to know your company, see behind the scenes, and should be a much more informal experience for them than you own hosting site offers.

I know what you are thinking at this point, you are concerned about the competition peeking in aren’t you. Well they are and regardless of what you put up on Facebook most of what they need to know about you, they already have it. Of course you wouldn’t share any proprietary information, costing, trade secrets and such, so again discretion here is the key. With that said it remains to be said that the person providing the content for your Facebook Company Fan Page, or Twitter for that matter, must be competent and accountable for what they produce. As a rule of thumb someone with authority should be monitoring all the activities and content posted on the page.

The first golden rule of Facebook for companies is don’t use it to constantly blurt out ads, specials, and annoying advertising. Nobody wants to subscribe to a stream of advertising and if they are your fan when they get ready to buy, they will find you. Instead offer them something of value, a tip or something useful they can use that is associated with your company

Don’t bash the competition period. Just leave them alone as far as comments go, take the high road and all the while still keep your eye on them. Don’t copy them either and be creative in your efforts, use their ideas and make enough changes to show your not just following their actions.

Watch out for who has access to publicizing information about your company, i.e. disgruntle employees, ex’s etc. This is where the benefit of attaching your company page to your personal page in that you can assign and remove administrators, oh yeah, don’t give out your personal password and use the administrator tool.

Don’t whine and complain about the economy or bad times enough of that can be found in the news.

Don’t quote company policy or pass the buck off to customer service when someone complains about your company. Use this opportunity to get personally involved and to make things right. Also keep in the back of your mind at all times that this is public information and one should consider the legal ramifications of your discussion. This is not to say that you have to sound and act like an attorney, but just remember that all that information is available for all to see.

Actually, use Facebook to be proactive when a problem occurs and get the word out to your fan base that you are taking action and for them to stay in touch with you as you work through the problem. For example Toyota in this screenshot chose to pass their fans off to the recall site. If it were me I would have set up a mechanism for dealing with the entire fan base right hear instead of asking to go off to another site. There page was buzzing with folks that are upset and I didn’t see anyone from the company responding. To me this is an opportunity for them to retain their customers that may now jump ship since no one is communication with them and addressing their concerns directly. This page has 75, 378 fans.

Lastly, is do not create a page and then abandon it, his will get you de-fanned in a heartbeat. The level of participation on Facebook will return the level of success you have with the page. Post photo’s frequently and the Holy Grail of course is video. A double whammy in this regard would to be to use Flickr for images and YouTube for video embedded in your Facebook Fan Page which will be the next topic for discussion tomorrow.

Facebook: Personal Page Etiquette

Danny J Johnson — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:49:00 GMT

Just when you figured out which fork to use with your salad and you are just now comfortable eating dinner at a nice restaurant, now you have to worry about how to socialize on Facebook, will it ever end, no I think not. Aside from online netiquette Facebook with its ability to take public just about anything in an millisecond requires some forethought and planning before blurting out your life story or posting your company’s plan to take over the world.

Since it is best practice to attach a Company Fan Page toyour own personal Facebook page, it is a good idea to first understand the rules of the road for your personal page. Since you are representing not only yourself but your company as well it is a good idea to show some discretion in what you post to your page. Also remember that your personal page will be not only accessed by friends and family it will also be seen by potential clients, employers (yes that is the first thing to do when hiring someone), and business associates.

First thing is to do is to make sure and include your personal photo, preferable a recent one (that is really you not a model) and a good one. Secondly, (this is going to sting a little for some) but make sure the photo is just of you, not you and your spouse, child, dog etc. If you are married or in a relationship,Facebook has a place in your profile for communicating your relationship status with ample space to include pictures of your children, friends and family. If you use a picture of your child as your profile picture and a classmate from 30 years ago searches Facebook for you, they will have a hard time matching your name with your photo and may not find you. Also another reason for not using acouple in the picture is that some employers and clients see a Facebook profile picture of a couple and interpret it as a sign of instability in the relationship. If you are a dog lover sign him/her up on Dogbook or dedicate a whole page to them, see http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=1125126793 for example. Also use your full name (including your maiden name) to help in the search to find you.

Remember that Facebook news travels globally (real time) faster than any other news media onthe planet so don’t post a relationship status change until you are ready for the world to discuss that change with you immediately. In other words it is best to let the other party know first before announcing your singletude.

Friend requests are like meeting someone at an event, which you wouldn’t just run up to everyone there and ask them to be your friend, so I guess I’m saying don’t go too friend happy. This is also known as friend poaching where you go to all your friends and the friend request their friends and so on. Start with your best friends, family, old classmates, and community groups,like interests, and take time look for folks that you share common interests in, read their profiles.

Watch out for tooting your own horn too often. It’s ok to share the good stuff more than occasionally, but life is about ups and downs use a little of both so that your friends have a good insight on your activities. Also remember everyone is listening even your boss, especially if you are bragging about that long weekend you took to the mountains, but actually called in sick on Friday

Watch out for befriending ex’s or a friends ex as this can get you into a frenzy of detrimental remarks for the whole world to share. On this same topic don’t post pictures, video,comments etc about your own soured relationship as there could be someliability issues for trying to destroy someone’s character and also trigger an earthquake of posts from others that may not share the same feelings you have of what went down as the relationship crumbled.

Avoid political, religious, and ethical discussions because when it comes time to create your Company Fan Page you may polarize your personal beliefs with your company, which in turn is sure to not agree with your clients and customers. So in essence whatever platform you stand on personally will be directly associated with the company you have attached.

Too much information can be fatal, so use discretion, but all the while realizing that Facebook is a personable social environment and your friends expect some level of letting your hair down.

THIS IS IMPORTANT! Know the difference between a personal message (private) to someone and posting on the wall (public for the world tosee). I’m not shouting at you but just trying to emphasize the distinction betweenthe two and you can easily see what harm this could have.

Lastly be yourself and by all means do not create a fake page in someone else’s name, this is against Facebook rules, could have some legal liabilities, and is a good way in general to get you in trouble.

Facebook: Goldmine for Businesses, Part I

Danny J Johnson — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:19:00 GMT

Back in January of 2009, Facebook’s 35-54 year old demographic grew 276% and the over 55 year old not far behind at 194%. If your market is younger adults don’t despair their stats were doubling every 6 months at that time. Here are some more staggering stats for you. Today Google has over 860,000,000 pages indexed and Yahoo shows over 54,000,000 back links from Facebook. Today (according to Facebook Statistics) Facebook has over 400 million active users and over half of those users log onto Facebook every day.

So what does this mean to brands, business owners, managers,and so forth? This means everyone has a free shot at tapping into this goldmineof opportunity; which is essentially boils down to the opportunity to establishinga social relationship with your audience. It is very important to mention that there is an underlying code (a whole new etiquette to abide) in which one should clearly understand before establishing a company or branded Facebook Fan page. Before the etiquette lesson comes design, so let’s explore some good design practices.

For starters, it is important to customize your company Facebook Fan page to match your own website for continuity and just a plain old good branding strategy. Some tabs on the fan page allow for a lot of customization as shown on this page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Whitecap-Stand-Up-Paddleboarding/139837049542?v=app_4949752878 and also integration with other essential tools such as Constant Contact as shown in this example.

One word of advice is to not even consider launching a fan page until you have thoroughly investigated the necessary time it takes to devote to the page; the worst thing you can do is build a page and not monitor it. This is a quick turn off for your customers and once abandoned they are very reluctant to come back. Another consideration is whether to start a standalone company or brand page, or a Fan page attached to your personal profile page. My suggestion is to add your company fan page to your personal FB page to allow a direct connection with your fan base and makes the fan page itself more personable. Often Facebook fans enjoy peeking into the actual personalities behind the brand or company represented on the fan page.

After setting up your page be sure and complete the profile in its entirety including links back to your own hosted web site. Then upload your logo or brand image. This image will need to be 200 x 200 pixels wide total and remember that the thumbnail produced will be truncated so the actual inset of the image needs to be 176 by 176 pixels with a 24 pixel perimeter of whitespace. This image can only be a gif or jpeg and unfortunately png and swf’s are not supported. Although later on in later my posts I will share with you how to embed a swf or flash video in your FB fan page. Tomorrow I will dive into some etiquette considerations since it makes sense to know what to share and what not to share before your content can be added.

Introduction

Danny J Johnson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:29:00 GMT

If you are a small business owner, manager, or an entrepreneur like me your struggle with promoting your organization in the vast world ofonline media is one that is shared by millions just like yourself seeking smart and simple solutions for promoting their company’s online presence. Understanding what content to put up for the world to see and how to get that content seen by the right individuals isn’t as easy and one would like to expect. This blog is devoted to helping others unravel this web of information and helpingto guide you on your quest to successful and effective strategies for improvingyour online web presence.

Based on my seminar series “Unraveling the Web: Effective Strategies for improving your online presence” I invite you to join me as we explore effective techniques for utilizing the entire gamut of online marketing tools and site design strategies. Our focus will be on the tools that are available for little or no cost and also include pay per click campaigns, press releases, site content development, search engines, SEO, social networking, analytics and the list goes on, so let’s get this ball rolling.

Welcome

Danny J Johnson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:53:29 GMT

Welcome to my blog. I started this blog to help me save time in explaining to my clients the do’s and don’ts of marketing on the web and since this is such a vast topic to cover each time with each one it made sense to produce this information in a blog. My seminar normally does not start off with Facebook or Twitter but since they are such a hot topic here lately, I decided to go ahead and publish this information first.