WIZARD SPELLS - PART 2

Here are 4 more Wizard Spells you can deploy today:

ADVERTISING: The secret to low cost advertising on Facebook is to use it to drive an audience to your internal Fan Page. This can be extremely effective when trying to build your Fan base. It is not necessary to spend huge amounts of money on Google Adwords etc. A well planned strategy goes a long way in giving you good results. Use Advanced Search Beta to help you establish your demographic and NEVER just run ads that are aimless.

WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME: Once you have created your new Facebook Page you can start to deploy some advertising but the key to success is "INCENTIVE". Why should someone "like" your page? Sure, you provide great content, but so do many other people. What makes you different? Many strategies can be used here like; discount coupons or free reports for opt-in purposes. This is your chance to hook that visitor for life, make it worth their effort and you will certainly attract more fans and therefore, more FREE traffic.

NO SPAMMING: Facebook, and Social Media in general, is a total SPAM FREE zone, or at least should be as far as you are concerned! Do not even be tempted by the false positive that "spamming" could produce.
IT NEVER WORKS! Always deliver VALUE - and if you can't - don't deliver and that filters right down to even a simple post - don't make a post just for the sake of it.

BE ENGAGING: Update your fans with the latest happenings in your business. Make a mention of important announcements by using EVENTS, use NOTES, start DISCUSSIONS, publish your REVIEWS and highlight successes. All these tools will help you establish a good rapport between you and your fans.

How To Create A Killer Facebook Fan Page That Crushes The Competition

You're wondering why that Facebook Fan Page you spent countless hours on just isn't cutting it, right? Why isn't yours working when you see others growing rapidly?

If the above describes where you are right now and you are desperate to take your hard won few hundred fans to the next level, read on. If you apply the following few simple steps, this will make all the difference and you will see your Fan Base start to increase exponentially!
First things first, is your page name the best it can be?

1.) Make Sure You "Name That Page"
Always choose a name with some relevant keywords to your business or product in the title. A great format for this is this - [Business Name - Benefit Your Business Gives the Customer], so for example, Killer Fan Pages - Stand Out From The Crowd And Get More Business. If you have a decent amount of fans I appreciate that you might not want to start completely from scratch, but if not, definitely consider creating a new Fan Page with a better, more relevant name. Hey, it’s free to create a new page, takes about 5 minutes and might just make all the difference.

Next, is your page exciting?

2.) Get A Makeover!
You've heard the expression "first impressions count", right, well your image is the first thing people see when they search for you and when they visit your Fan Page. Your image should portray your business and what you stand for and the clever people can use this image with a "call to action" or two built in. In my opinion, your image is up there as the number one reason for people hitting that "Like" button. Always remember, image is your first weapon in the armoury, use it correctly and it can become your No.1 fan generation tool!

Next, is your Fan Page working at full throttle?

3.) Set It And Forget It!
Always allow users to fully interact with your Fan Page. Ensure you enable your settings to allow the posting of images and videos. I see way too many pages that restrict this in the fear that they will get spammed... well it might happen but you are in control and you can just remove the post if it is not appropriate.

Next, you want customers, right?

4.) Customers = Custom Landing Tab
I should have put this at the top of the list really - this is SO important! If you seriously want your Fan Page to reach the levels I hope you do, you must ensure this does not happen - stop sending your users to the Wall or Details tab! Allowing a visitor to land on either of these tabs accomplishes absolute zero for your business and serves no meaningful purpose. Treat your landing page exactly the same way that you would treat a normal website page. Use this landing page as your revolving cash register. Offer HUGE value to ensure you capture leads and encourage visitors to become raving fans. The results might just leave you breathless!

Finally, get to know your demographic!

5.) Insight Is A Wonderful Thing
Insights is a wonderful Facebook tool that provides basic but necessary analytics for all your Fan Pages and best of all your Fans. See at a glance all the details you really need to know and combine this with the power of Advanced Search Beta and you can learn more about your visitors quickly and easily than with a lifetimes study of Google Analytics... and at a fraction of the hassle.

WIZARD SPELLS - PART 1

As we all know, Facebook has become THE number one social media site today and has the potential to generate HUGE amounts of FREE traffic for you. Facebook has also broken this traffic down very conveniently into almost any NICHE you could imagine.

A clever networking strategy deployed effectively will highlight your products, views, services to literelly millions of potential customers and for FREE or at least very low cost. So how do you achieve this?

Here are 5 Wizard Spells you can deploy today:

DON'T RUSH THINGS: Stop looking for the "golden ticket"! Any promotion you do on Facebook should be done passively and definitely "under the radar"... old school tactics are definitely out - the so called GURUS are still teaching this stuff becasue that's all they know and it's what made them their money - but it's time to move over cause the new boys have just hit town! Take things nice and easy, build rather than conquer. The results may be slow to appear in the beginning but maintain consistency and watch your page bloom.


PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE: In today's world of "instant gratification" we are all guilty of wanting immediate results... this is how we have become conditioned. We want our posts to be answered by hundreds of people, our promotions to get an immediate response with sales. This rarely happens in the social media world and especially Facebook. If the reponse rate to whatever you do is slow, see this as an opportunity to refine, tweak, test and find methods that will make things happen faster.

PROFILE vs PAGE: Creating multiple profiles is totally against Facebooks' terms and conditions and is something that you should avoid no matter who tells you otherwise. Unless you are extremely experienced with things like proxy services, you will be discovered and this can, and almost certainly will, lead to your account being banned. Always create a new Facebook Page to promote your different products. My advice is Profile, Personal Brand[Page], Product [Page] etc.

TIME = MONEY: Like any business, the more time and effort you put in, the more rewarding it will become - there is no "fast track" it's all about the effort! I'm not saying that you have to spend every waking hour in front of your computer, in fact the more you can get done on "auto-pilot" the better. For instance, set up your alerts for notifications to your mobile. Never let any post go unanswered as one Facebook friend can bring many others in his or hers friends list into your friens/fan base. Direct communication is the number one key to Facebook promotion.

BE INTERACTIVE: Now we all have to start somewhere so start well by focussing on YOU, when you have 200 Fans forget the people who have 2000, you will get there eventually. What is important is that even when you have only 2 Fans, both of those people are individuals and are HUGELY important to you because you have THEIR attention. Nurture them, care for them, INTERACT with them and they will tell the world. Do this and in a slow but sure way you will see your Fan base grow exponentially.

Why Understanding the Evolving Psychology of Facebook is Imperative

Facebook has changed radically over the last 18 months. A minor tweak here, a minor tweak there and before long you have a platform that, though it looks much the same to the user, operates in a vastly different manner. What has changed most about Facebook is the psychology of using the site; how we interact with updates and our motivations in doing so. And page administrators must invest time and energy into getting to grips with these pivotal changes in order for their fan pages to be successful.

Among the many modifications that Facebook has made in the last year or so, there are two that have specific relevance and importance. The first is the ubiquitous Like button. At the time this was introduced, it seemed like tinkering for the sake of tinkering. But changing ‘Become a Fan’ to ‘Like’ was one of the cleverest changes that Facebook has ever made, superb in its subtlety. Overnight, users felt less committed to a page when they clicked the button and it opened up a new world of fans for Facebook pages (even if to this day we still don’t know what to call them!). Along with the ability to embed the Like button into external websites, Facebook further cemented itself as the social web’s focal point.

The second tweak that has massive implications for page administrators goes back further to when Facebook introduced newsfeeds and integrated all content together, merging friends’ and pages’ status updates. In combination with the Like button, this has changed how people use Facebook and understanding how and why is hugely important. Research from BrandGlue estimates that 99.5% of Facebook interactions are generated via the user’s own wall or newsfeed. Which means that virtually no-one revisits your fan page once they’ve ‘Liked’ it. And that, if you stop and think about it, is scary. It’s hardly a hidden secret that getting people to click the ‘Like’ button is important, but this shifts your entire approach to getting that visit/Like conversation rate as high as you can, right?

Well, yes and no. Because more research from BrandGlue (and this one’s really going to screw with you!) estimates that as few as 1% of fan page status updates are read by fans due to the Facebook algorithm that displays ‘popular’ news first in your newsfeed, unless you change the view from ‘Top news’ to ‘Most recent’. And it’s estimated that less than 5% of users do. So where does that leave us? Hardly anyone’s going to come back to our page once they’ve liked it, and hardly anyone’s going to read what we post in their newsfeed unless they start interacting with us. Suddenly Facebook marketing’s not looking so great, is it?!

So, over to you. What do you think is most important in the psychology of Facebook marketing strategy and how you structure your page? Is it getting someone to like the page in the first place – giving them a good reason to do so with, for example, a competition or a custom landing page or unique content? Or is it ensuring that they Like or comment on your updates in their newsfeed as much as possible as early as possible so that Facebook marks your page as relevant to them? Chicken meet egg, egg meet chicken. All thoughts, ideas and opinions very, very welcome...

from an original article by Paul Sutton

Social Media Marketing – Is It Right For You?

What Is Social Media And Why We Have It?

Social media, as the name implies, is a means through which people online can stay in touch with each other. Social media sites are gathering places where you can go, log in and instantly see all the news that happened to your family members. You can go to Facebook and find out your friend Mary’s new baby’s name, you can go to YouTube and actually see Mary’s baby walking around, you can go to twitter and tell all your friends about Mary’s new baby’s new adventure, etc.

Makes sense? Social media sites are there for us to be able to stay in touch with each other.

They Are NOT Intended To Be Marketing Tools!

Although YouTube is a great place to do video marketing as it gives you free tools and virtually unlimitted space to upload as many promotional videos as you want, it's not intended for you to use it to make money. Although Facebook is an awesome place to use for your new product launch as it allows you to get in touch with up to 5000 people all at the same time, it's not intended for you to make money. Both those sites are there to help you stay in touch with your buddies, so...

How Do You Use Social Media Marketing In your Business?

Well, don't get me wrong. People use social media to make tons of cash all the time, but there is one thing to remember: be very careful.

Let me put it this way: imagine that a long lost friend that you haven't seen for ages calls you up and invites you to dinner. You're way excited to meet with him and talk about the good old times. Maybe you'll get to refresh the friendship. You get to the restaurant. You guys sit down and start eating. Finally, half way through the meal, he starts selling you something.

You almost feel your steak lost its flavor, don't you?

You feel cheated. You feel used. If you're tactful, you finish the meal politely, say good bye and never get in touch with the guy again. If you're really upset, you say you don't want to talk to him anymore, get up and leave. In any case, friendship lost.

Do you want that to happen to you online? Do you really want to be seen as the "pushy salesman" type of friend? Not really? Then use social media marketing with caution. The same is true of video marketing of course.

Now, as I said, if you actually know what you're doing, social media marketing is perfect for generating additional income and traffic to your website or business.

The Secret - You just have to know what you're doing. For some valuable insights into how you can make Social Media marketing work for you, why not visit my Facebook page.

Is Your FaceBook Profitable?

Over the past ten years or thereabouts social networking has been one of the most outstanding areas of growth on the internet.

The ability of users to make accounts, invite people, make a contribution to discussions, exchange skills and keep in contact with everyone located anywhere on the planet has made membership in any one of the major social networking sites an absolute must have for today's web user.

When it comes to social networking sites, they don't come any bigger than Facebook. With over 500 million active users internationally. If it was a country, Facebook would be the 3rd biggest in the world only just behind China and India.

But although many people have looked at Facebook as a ‘social' networking platform, the actuality is it's one of the most incredible tools for marketing and business over the internet. The sheer numbers of end users makes Facebook a reasonable alternative for any business whether or not it is promoting the mass market or just a niche.Facebook presents one of the cheapest but effective paths to obtain new clients. Not only is the advertising service offered by the site cheap but there also are a number of ways that you can utilize the power of Facebook for marketing and therefore rope in new clients.

As an example, making a profile, page or group on Facebook is free. You can make a page for your product and use it to update your page's members and fans of new products that your business has to offer . Vs setting up your own business internet site and using SEO strategies for marketing online, Facebook already has a huge and willing audience. All you need to do is develop a page that resonates with your target group and then use that to redirect them to your website and finally make that purchase.

FaceBook is 'crawled ' by almost all of the major search engines. For that reason, there are 2 things you've got to do. First, guarantee your profile page has as much information on your business and products as practicable. But you should do that without making your personal page feel 'crowded ' as this can quickly turn off visitors. Your goal must be to make certain that by the point visitors read the data on your personal page, they know the name of your business, what you sell and where they can get your product.

The second thing you have to to do in order to take advantage of search website ‘crawlers' is by using acceptable keywords. As an example, if you're in the business of selling flowers, then the word 'flowers ' as well as a bunch of 'long tail ' alternatives such as 'buy flowers ', 'flowers for sale ', 'online florist ' or 'quality flowers ', should also be spattered throughout the text of your profile description. That may make it easier for somebody hunting for your kind of products to find you on Facebook.

Marketing is just one part of Facebook's business capacities. Purchaser relationship management is another. Through Facebook, you can keep your clients current on new releases, industry information, and loyalty reward programs. Facebook may also be an avenue of hearing what the market thinks about your product and service and a vital forums to address your customers ' concerns. This may inescapable bolster your relationship with your clients.

Truthfully, 1 of the most profitable ways to utilize Facebook is to simply become friends with potential clients. It is simple to search a certain demographic and find people who would most likely be interested in your opportunity, product, service, and make a connection. You can make that connection by "friending" them and making a simple compliment about them, their Facebook page, their likes and dislikes, or even their friends. Systematically move towards a conversation about your business. I personally know a young lady who is building a salon business and an exercise business exactly this way.

The final point is that with nearly a half billion Facebook users are you using it to your advantage or are you letting opportunity pass you by?

Do You Have The Big 4 Skills?

Today, I want to tell you about something that lots of people completely ignore when they're trying to make an income online.

Listen, I know what it's like when you're trying to start your own online business. There's no shortage of people out there screaming at you to "buy this!" or telling you "here's the HOT thing!" It's very easy to get distracted by all of that, and find yourself chasing after every fad. Here's where you need to use your head as a business owner.

Motivational author Stephen Covey wrote in "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" that winners in life balance production and production capacity. People aren't really factories, but in a way, we are. When you run your own Internet business, you're producing something. Specifically, you're producing the products you sell.

Now, here's the lesson...

If you spend all of your time producing, and none of your time making sure you can KEEP producing, pretty soon you'll grind to a halt. Your production capacity is your ability to do what you need to do keep your business going. To put it more familiar terms, your production capacity boils down to your skills.

If you've been trying to make your income online for a while, you know that it doesn't happen by accident. You DO need some skills. The list of skills you might think you need is huge. I'm talking about everything from making graphics to shooting your own videos. When most people think about how much they need to know how to do, they get overwhelmed.

I've been there, and I know how it feels. So let me simplify things for you. I'll tell you the four major skills you need to be successful. Yes, just four. You might think you need a hundred skills, and I can understand why you think that, but most successful Internet business owners have four big ones that count more than all the others.

Here are the big four:

•  Being able to write, even just a little bit (this means website copy AND things like articles or e-books)
•  Knowing how to set up and use an autoresponder
•  Being able to set up and/or tweak a simple website
•  Being able to keep your business organized

You don't have to be the world's biggest expert at any of those, but you DO need to be good at them. You might call these the 'core skills.' Other things, like making your own graphics or shooting cool videos, might be helpful, but those four I just told you are the big ones that will make or break your business.

Take that first one, being able to write a little bit.

Way back when I was first starting out, I tried to sell an information product online. I had almost no money, and I knew that I needed good sales copy to sell my product. Since I couldn't write sales copy to save my life, I had to hire a copywriter. I was lucky to find a relatively cheap one that only cost me a few hundred bucks.

Fortunately, the copy I got was pretty good, and my product sold well. It was one of my very first successes, and the profits really set me up nicely.

Here's where I could have made a huge mistake.

You see, the money I made gave me a nice budget for creating my next product, including the sales copy. I could have kept up that approach forever, if I had wanted to. But I wrote my next sales letter MYSELF!

You might think that's nuts, but I realized that if I never learned how to write sales copy on my own, at least a

little bit, I would be in a tight spot again if I ever hit hard times and had no money. Hey, life happens, and sometimes things don't go like we want them to. And at that point, I might not be able to afford to hire a copywriter at all, or I might try to hire a cheap one again and end up with awful copy. Then I would be stuck.

If I hadn't written that next sales letter myself, my production capacity wouldn't have gone up at all. That's the key...

My production would have been good, because I could hire somebody to give me what I needed. But my ability to produce would have stayed the same (low) because I hadn't added to my skill set. You don't want to get yourself in a tight spot like that. So you constantly have to focus on growing your skill set, especially when it comes to those four core skills.

That takes some discipline, obviously, and some willingness to put in some extra work when you might just as easily hire somebody to do it. But the payoff can be massive. Not only will you maintain your production capacity, but you'll also be able to save yourself some cash. Think about that copywriting example again. Copywriting is expensive. If you can't write any copy with any confidence at all, you'll have to pay a copywriter for every single little change you need to anything.

That can add up. I've paid over $500 to have somebody write a single paragraph before, just because I didn't have the time to do it myself. Okay, assuming I've convinced you to keep building your four core skills, I bet you're wondering how exactly to do it. This isn't hard, but it does take a little effort. It also (usually) takes a little expense. Here's the simple plan:

1. Read about the skill first. This won't cost you anything. Google the skill you're looking to expand, and read what others say. You might find a blog that offers tips about it, or maybe even a free e-book on the topic.
2. Take a short course about the skill. This might cost you something, but you don't have to pay thousands. I'm talking about a relatively basic course that might cost you tens or hundreds of dollars. There's no substitute for learning from an expert.
3. Use the skill on a real project. Actually DO the skill, and implement what you've learned. For example, if the skill is copy-writing, write some real copy you'll actually use, just like I did.
4. Assess the results. Figure out how well you did! You'll be guessing a little bit, but really critique yourself to see if you did a good job, what you need to improve, and so on.
5. Apply the skill again. This is where you get to actually improve the things you said you needed to improve.

That's not rocket science. I think it's the only way to learn anything, honestly.

Think about when you learned to tie your own shoes. Somebody probably told you how to do it first. Then somebody showed you how to do it, maybe guiding your hands. Then you had to try it yourself. Then...your shoes probably fell off. But you learned from your mistakes, and you tried again. Now you can tie your own shoes like a pro.

The same is true for the core skills you need to succeed online.

When you first start, you don't know anything. That's when learning is hardest. You can feel like you're drowning. Everybody goes through that, and you should expect it. But if you stick with it, you'll end up being pretty decent at it very soon. Then it's just a matter of learning how to do it better.

I hope you've learned something important here.

You don't ever have to be a professional copywriter, or business manager, or website designer. But you do need to have solid skills in those areas so you can be more self-sufficient in your business. That will keep your production capacity high, and set you up for success.

with thanks to Michael Rasmussen

Women and Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: Free But You Have To Know What You Are Doing

Social media is well recognized as a vital marketing platform. The click through rates for Twitter and Facebook are phenomenal; according to Social Twist stats it’s 287% for Facebook and a whopping 1904% for Twitter. 

Social media dominates the top ten strategic technologies in 2011 according to Gartner, so what are the latest trends in the social media ecosphere?

Why has social media become the rage over the past few years? These days it’s not enough for a brand to have a nice website, you’re not recognized by potential generation Y consumers unless you’re proactively participating in social sites. Online marketing of a more traditional nature continues to grow, but networking on social sites is growing at a much faster pace and the numbers of people subscribing is not falling off.

Marketing is a costly business, and online marketing comes cheap, though not as cheap as social networking, which is absolutely free (aside from time). The marketing strategy is to reach out to your clients and be interactive, and social sites are where young potential customers flock to.

Tweeting takes only a few seconds and facebooking, not more than a few minutes, but the returns are rewarding compared to the time spent. What’s more, these networks are accessible through any Internet enabled device such as phones, computers, notebooks and tablets; which means you can grab people’s attention when they’re mobile as well as when they’re at home. 

Social media has been a bastion for sharing but now shopping on social media sites are getting a foot hold. The trend set by social games on Facebook is now on the rise, with shopping websites integrating eCommerce on Facebook pages and micro sites. There are hundreds of brand pages on Facebook. What you could have done earlier was to ‘like’ them, but now you can shop from your social media account and then share your shopping list with friends … share … shop … share … shop. A successful online portal for a business like this relies on “share of click” in lieu of “word of mouth”.

Another trend that is sure to get bigger is to have your micro site on a social media website. This shift is quite evident; a lot of small website owners have moved from micro sites to Facebook pages. The Facebook pages have multiple tabs, notes and links, plus photos, videos and chats with followers. Moving to Facebook provides tools for promotions like the wall where new announcements, offers and messages can be shared; and once someone has been enticed to add the Facebook account as a friend, they get constant re-engagement.

According to Matthew Gain from Edelman Australia, "With a microsite you had to generate media to get people to the site. Then they would arrive, maybe enter a competition, and then disappear. With Facebook, you have an opportunity for an ongoing engagement, because to enter a competition they have to 'like' the page."

Social networking sites are continuing to make their services more useful for users and one feature in particular, location based networking, works really well for small and medium enterprises. By geo-tagging a tweet to cater to local customers, you’re more likely to attract real potential customers. Once more advertisers get on board, more people will search for local tweets advertising specials. This trend is going to become more popular and more specific with branded tweets.

Location based updates will also get a big boost next year with the increasing popularity of apps like Foursquare and forthcoming projects like Facebook places. Foursquare encourages people to explore their local businesses and submit reviews.

Another social media hot cake these days is a suggestion; this is based on what a user is currently doing and following what others are doing. This will help companies in preparing a social graph and target their ads to users accordingly.

"If you are a consumer brand or any major company, there is a whole lot of chatter going on." Nick Holmes from BuzzNumbers says.  "You can just sit back and listen passively to conversations, and determine what people are saying."

Although social media advertising campaigns are now widespread, not all businesses have started using it yet. According to a recent survey done by Optus on 380 Australian small and medium businesses (SMBs), only 28% of businesses actually use social media for networking and most have no immediate plans to start. Whilst they may be free to start, unless you know what you’re doing you’re probably tweeting and posting on walls in a void. According to Michael Said of Brand Strategy,"This is the number one marketing opportunity, but only if it's done properly. The three Rs of social media are regular, relevant and remarkable." Like any advertising medium, an online social media campaign is best conducted by professionals. After all, the type of top notch campaign being run in 2010 will be all but obsolete by 2011.

Cracking the Facebook Code

How does the social media giant decide who and what to put in your feed? Tom Weber conducts a one-month experiment to break the algorithm, discovering 10 of Facebook's biggest secrets.

The more digital our daily lives become, the more perplexing the questions seem. Will the growth of social media destroy our notions of privacy? Is democracy helped or harmed by the cacophony of opinions online? And perhaps most confounding: Why does that guy I barely know from the 10th grade keep showing up in my Facebook feed?

If you've ever spent time on Facebook, you've probably pondered that last one. The social-networking giant promises to keep us connected with our friends in exchange for pumping a steady diet of advertising at us—but the algorithms Facebook uses to decide what news to pass along can seem capricious or altogether impenetrable.

Facebook, much like Google with its search algorithms, consistently refuses to go into details about how it picks and pans content (save a few glancing details this year about the enigmatic engine that powers it, EdgeRank). So, with the mystery of that 10th-grade friend in mind, The Daily Beast set out to crack the code of Facebook's personalized news feed. Why do some friends seem to pop up constantly, while others are seldom seen? How much do the clicks of other friends in your network affect what you're shown? Does Facebook reward some activities with undue exposure? And can you "stalk" your way into a friend's news feed by obsessively viewing their page and photos?

To get the answers, we devised an experiment, creating our own virtual test lab within the confines of Facebook and tracking thousands of news-feed items over a period of several weeks. The focal point of our experiment: Phil Simonetti, a 60-year-old Facebook newcomer who allowed us to dictate and monitor his every move.

Like a half-billion people before him, Simonetti joined Facebook and began typing in his status updates. But in this case, Simonetti's only friends were a hand-picked roster of more than two dozen volunteers who agreed to sift through their news feeds for the duration of our experiment, dutifully recording any Phil sightings.

As our volunteers checked in with their reports, some remarkable findings began to emerge:

1. Facebook's Bias Against Newcomers. If there's one thing our experiment made all too clear, it's that following 500 million people into a party means that a lot of the beer and pretzels are already long gone. Poor Phil spent his first week shouting his updates, posted several times a day, yet most of his ready-made "friends" never noticed a peep on their news feeds. His invisibility was especially acute among those with lengthy, well-established lists of friends. Phil's perpetual conversation with the ether only stopped when we instructed our volunteers to interact with him. A dynamic which leads to…

2. Facebook's Catch-22: To get exposure on Facebook, you need friends to interact with your updates in certain ways (more on that below). But you aren't likely to have friends interacting with your updates if you don't have exposure in the first place. (Memo to Facebook newcomers: Try to get a few friends to click like crazy on your items.)

3. The Velvet Rope: "Top News": The real fun began when we eventually instructed different subgroups of our volunteer-friend force to interact with Phil in a controlled manner.

Suddenly, Phil began popping up on feeds. But which ones? The current news-feed system offers users two options: "Top News," a highly selective feed of updates from friends, and "Most Recent," a "fire hose" that shows updates in reverse chronological order.

A bunch of interactions, however, still do not guarantee that you'll get on anyone's Top News, which is how a vast majority of Facebook users get their information. Some of our volunteers reported frequent sightings of Phil's updates in their Top News feeds, while others saw him rarely—and in some cases, never. Top News will show you hours-old updates from some friends while ignoring newer postings from others.

Facebook has a reason to do this: If users saw all of the posts for all of their friends, they might be overwhelmed (or bored) and tune out—a disaster for Facebook, which needs eyeballs to earn revenue. But in doing so, Facebook's ranking system makes judgments about items it thinks you'll be interested in.

What became clear after two weeks was that it's not the amount of activity you have, but the type (more on that below).

4. "Most Recent" News Is Censored, Too. As veteran Facebook users know, it's a simple matter to switch from the filtered-and-prioritized Top News feed to the "fire hose" of Most Recent. In Most Recent, items are displayed in reverse chronological order. So many users naturally assume that Most Recent contains every update from all of their friends.

Not so, as our experiment showed.

Even with test-subject Simonetti posting updates, links, photos, and videos several times a day, a few of our volunteers found that the items didn't appear in their Most Recent feeds. (At least, not until we took additional steps to up Phil's visibility.) If you've never tinkered with the "Edit Options" button on your Most Recent feed, this underscores why you should check it out—there's a little-used setting that caps the number of friends shown in the feed.

5. "Stalking" Your Friends Won't Get You Noticed. Maybe you've fretted about it while poring over photos of an old flame or estranged friend on Facebook—or maybe you've diligently worked to get on someone's radar by clicking all over their page. Do Facebook's mysterious algorithms factor your stealthy interest in another person into that person's news feed?

To find out, our test subject spent several days obsessively checking out the posts and photos of some volunteers who had yet to spy him in their feeds. The result was clear: The stalking accomplished precisely nothing.

6. Having Friends Who Stalk You WILL Help Your Popularity. Stalking does work in the other direction, we found. After Phil spent days posting updates in vain, with most of our volunteers seeing none of them, we tasked a handful of friends to start showing more interest in Phil. Even though he wasn't showing up in their feeds, they sought out his Facebook page repeatedly, clicking on links he had posted and viewing his photos. This was the point at which Phil finally began to break through. It took a few days of constant clicking, but not only did the friends doing the stalking begin to see Phil in their Top News feeds—others who weren't stalking began noticing him as well.

7. Links Trump Status Updates. We're sure you consider all of your musings fascinating—but Facebook doesn't. At various points in our test, Phil switched between writing plain status updates and posting links to content elsewhere on the Web. Even before some of our friends began stalking Phil, for those who were seeing updates from him, links appeared more frequently than status updates—presumably because links are more effective at driving "user engagement," which translates into people spending more time on Facebook.

8. Photos and Videos Trump Links. Just as links proved more potent than status updates in making it past Facebook's filter, so did photos and videos Phil posted. Here, too, it is likely a matter of engagement. Think about times you've spotted a thumbnail-size photo from a friend in your feed and clicked to see it full-size. Facebook likes clicks, and photos deliver them.

9. The Power of Comments. If items you post attract comments from a few friends, it clearly raises your visibility overall. When our selected volunteers began stalking Phil, he finally appeared to many users for whom he had been a no-show. But when we stopped the stalking and moved on to the next phase of our trial, directing a different group of users to not only look in on Phil but also repeatedly add comments to his items, he surfaced on the feeds of still more friends.

10. Why Facebook Really is Like High School: After weeks of testing and trying everything from having Phil post videos to getting some of his friends to flood him with comments, by the end of our experiment, a few of our volunteers had still literally never seen Phil appear in their feeds, either Top News or Most Recent. These were the "popular kids"—users of Facebook with 600 or more friends. (Conversely, those with only 100 to 200 friends were among the first to spot Phil.) So the key, as you build your coterie of friends, is making sure to include some without huge networks. They'll see more of your feeds, interact in Facebook-approved ways, and up your visibility with all.

Facebook didn't respond to our requests for comment about our findings. To be sure, this experiment wasn't foolproof. Facebook can—and probably does—draw on variables beyond those in our test. And our volunteer force of friends was only human, and may have missed some of Phil's posts.

Still, we were able to observe firsthand how Facebook can elevate or bury the news you want to share with your friends. For average users, cracking the Facebook code is something of a fun puzzle. But for marketers trying to tap Facebook—or individuals who see the service as a way to promote themselves—understanding how content propagates through the system is anything but a game.

But it also means that many users may not be aware of how much power they've put in the hands of this electronic mediator. (The very concept of the news feed was controversial as soon as it was unveiled, as chronicled in David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect).

Can you "stalk" your way into a friend's news feed by obsessively viewing their page and photos?

You might think you've shared those adorable new baby photos or the news of your big promotion with all of your friends. Yet not only does Facebook decide who will and won't see the news, it also keeps the details of its interventions relatively discreet.

All the while, Facebook, like Google, continues to redefine "what's important to you" as "what's important to other people." In that framework, the serendipitous belongs to those who connect directly with their friends in the real world—or at least take the time to skip their news feed and go visit their friends' pages directly once in a while.

from an original report by Tom Weber

Facebook Marketing - Get It Right First Time

Whenever we begin on Facebook we could find ourselves all enthusiastic and lose our emphasis as well as purpose why we're on the Facebook system.

We all set in place a profile devoid of any kind of direction and without taking any kind of marketing skills into consideration.

Some times all of us allow everybody and anybody to join us and we don't categorize those individuals.

We want as many Facebook buddies as quickly and as feasible possible, and if you are like I was, thinking about the short term.

We all overlook that the Facebook profiles are designed to be that personal, not a platform for marketing our own products and services.

Precisely how many occasions are you or have you been offered a product or service by folks who you have never ever had a discussion with.

How many times have you recently been pitched or pitched somebody over the instant Facebook messenger.

At this point I am not proclaiming that we must not market on Facebook but if we keep Facebook as junk mail central then Facebook will probably start to shut accounts on a substantial scale. No person will end up being safe from this.

I have put down a few thing that I have discovered over the last month or two that I hope may assist people any time utilizing Facebook in order to market or even brand oneself.

Building Your Facebook Profile

Your personal user profile is actually a person's personal profile definitely not your business or even product this is there in order to brand you, when you're seeing through the eye balls of a marketer.

Do not have your organization name or even product name within your user profile.

Exactly how might you feel if you built up a solid following simply to end up being closed straight down by Facebook simply because you had put your business name in the actual user profile.

Your personal user profile is about YOU INC.

When establishing your own profile check out your privacy setting and make certain you don't have the year of your birth showing, take care of your Id.

Composing your biography.

The biography field in your settings can be a effective tool so take a little bit of time designing your bio.

Think in mind that you are on Facebook in order to connect with individuals but not necessarily just everybody you want the actual Big Hitters so write a good biography.

Right now a single factor that I over looked when I was with Facebook was I did not place any kind of key phrases inside my Biography therefore individuals which where searching for my services or even product could not find me.

Facebook is a major search engine just like Google is, so any time an individual puts in let's say multi level marketing directly into the actual search bar the Facebook search engine can look through individuals account in order to discover people in Multilevel marketing so when you have a well crafted bio with keywords you will probably appear.

Additionally you want to be able to start getting the right kind of individuals so the real Facebook leaders. These guys will probably read your biography prior to accepting you as a Facebook friend.

A massive turn off is placing links in your bio or links to a squeeze page. We would suggest that you simply write your biography giving enough detail to tempt folks to go and check out your blog/nerve center so leave a website link stating

Something like I would love to interact with you in a far more personal level for more information about me make sure you just follow this link or perhaps you may Skype me on.

I like Skype because a person can have a proper conversation with that individual and knock down all boundaries.

Your user profile picture ought to be a picture of you, people need to look at you and look in your eyes as well as become familiar with you a picture paints a thousand.

What should I look for in a Facebook Buddy?

How many Facebook friends have these people got?

When did they last submit something on their wall?

Is the actual wall full of spam?

Look for people with influence folks that are active, people which you might learn from. Maybe do some investigation on the person, take a look at his/her blog.

Therefore when anyone request the friendship you can easily touch upon their blog, this will set you in addition to the 95% of people who don't make any effort.

Begin considering long term and quality rather than quantity.

Begin to split your own Facebook friends into groups so that you can build more powerful relationships with the front runners and leaders.

Its now time to stand out from everyone else on Facebook

The last idea is begin to develop associations with group administrators.

Search for well run active groups with lots of members and then start to build a long term relationship with all of them regarding potential future JV.

3 Facebook Marketing Suggestions That Can Help

There are increasingly more people vying for high quality traffic which only makes things tougher for everyone else. But all is certainly not lost because there are places like Facebook where you can buy targeted traffic. While Facebook is not free traffic, there’s a tremendous audience there representing a wide range of profitable markets. In this article we shall be looking into a few tips to help you get the most out of your Facebook advertising experience.

The smartest move you can make at Facebook is having a fan page and sending traffic to it as much as possible. While it is understandable about beginners, they still must learn the value of a Fan Page and how to get the most out of them. First of all, when you send the traffic directly to your website the click through rate and the conversion will be lower than when you send it to the fan page. It’s really simple, though, because it’s just like relationship marketing and people develop a better warm fuzzy with your fan page. It’s just numbers and marketing, so the simple strategy is to collect as many fans as possible because then all of those people will see your offer.

Go ahead and test out this strategy and you’ll know for yourself how well it works. Have you made a fan page for yourself or anyone else? Actually, they are pretty simple to make. But you do need to understand that it’s not as easy as just having a page and get fans to join you. You’ll have to make your fan page interactive and make sure you get traffic flowing in to your main website. Just think in terms of relationship marketing, and that is how you deal with your fan page and your fans.

An effective Facebook advertising tip would be to use CPM to test out your ads instead of CPC. Let’s face it, CPC or cost per click isn’t that effective when it comes to testing, because the majority of your testing is done on the landing page. This does not make testing advantageous. However, you can improve testing by putting you ads on CPM or cost per thousand impressions and search for the ads that need the cheapest cost per click. This is where you might get a low CPC as it compares to the CPC bidding model where you tweak it by bidding for clicks. But when you are utilizing a CPM model, it will make you see the ads that give the most positive outcome and lower the entire cost of your campaign. By using CPM you can tell what CPC rate you should be aiming for so that you can see which ads have great results.

Then there are what’s called engagement ads for the homepage. However this strategy is only for those who have that kind of budget available. You can use this space to show your videos, start and conduct polls or get prospects to take some kind of action. But remember, these ads are expensive, so you need to be careful and plan out everything beforehand.

In conclusion, Facebook is changing just like other advertising systems. But the bonus right now is that it is still in the beginning stages which means that it can only get better.

3 Solid, Tried and Tested Facebook Marketing Tips

There’s no secret at all that Facebook is tremendously huge in terms of traffic, and more and more IM marketers are taking advantage of the advertising opportunities there. It’s no wonder at all that online entrepreneurs are scrambling to get a piece of the action at Facebook. In this article we shall be looking into a few tips on how you can leverage Facebook for your own marketing purposes.

One of the reasons why Facebook is working so well for online marketers is because it gives you an opportunity to create your own fan page where you can directly interact with your fans. You will out of necessity have to make your page so it gives you the kind of business results you’re looking for. In order to do this, it has to become popular and spread by word of mouth. What is it about a popular fan page? You want people to see that other people have been there, that plus putting great content on your page frequently.

So it really is important that you encourage interaction and discussion. Dare people to tell you what is on their minds, and you can do standard things like opinion polls and such. Once you communicate enough with your target audience, then you will eventually know them better which will help you enormously. So, in some ways you are doing massive market research as well as building positive relationships. Get into groups that are like your niche. You will discover network groups about a little of everything on Facebook, almost every niche you can ever think about. You will see that many people have their own networks set towards maturing their business. You can literally make hundreds of contacts using these groups, but make sure you don’t go on an adding frenzy because that can get you banned from the site. Just use it wisely and only add those people that will like your niche.

If you are unable to locate a targeted group about your niche, then make one yourself. With this strategy you can control everything when you post new articles, add new people, start new chats and make up new relationships. But even if you do locate groups within your own niche to join, still create your own. You might start your own trend by doing it this way.

Social networking and marketing are definitely entrenched and a part of life, so you would be wise to begin taking advantage of it. Don’t forget the basics such as testing and always looking out for more places to market your products and services.

Effective Facebook Marketing

Contrary to what many may think, effective Facebook marketing does not entail slick advertisements or cheap gimmicks but rather, the three “C”s—Community, Conversation and Content, said Ryan Lim, business director of Blugrapes, a performance driven marketing company which has provided Facebook marketing solutions to brands such as Puma, Microsoft and L’Oreal.

Lim was speaking during a Facebook Marketing 101 workshop organized on Sep. 20 by Mums@Work (Singapore), an online career portal and social enterprise set up to help mothers source for flexible work solutions, among others.

Commencing the half-day workshop with a few key figures, Lim shared that the global Facebook community currently stands at 500 million active users—putting things into perspective, if Facebook were a country, it would have the world’s fourth largest population. And where attention is, there is money to be made.

After covering the basics such as the Facebook anatomy and the functional differences between “groups” and “pages” (the former acts as a platform for a by-invitation-only community of people with similar interests to hold discussions and share content, while the latter is a public entity deployed for broadcasting purposes with no access control), Lim branched into the various aspects of creating and maintaining a strong Facebook presence.

In order to attract fans, a page has to firstly be relevant and credible. A page that is created to attract the right type of audience and not merely to attract a high number of fans will be rewarded at the end of the day as the audience forms a community and generates content on its own.

One of the ways to increase a page’s number of fans is to determine user experience—by creating “fans only” content and thus controlling what a non-fan sees upon first landing on the wall of page, there is an added incentive for viewers to be converted into fans.

Beyond establishing a presence and promoting brand awareness, Facebook allows one to leverage on its analytics to conduct market research and competitive studies, leading to more effective marketing strategies. The availability of analytics offers businesses a detailed insight into how people are engaging with its Facebook presence.

Touching on an area misused by many, Lim also shed light on Facebook’s guidelines and restrictions regarding promotions—defined as sweepstakes, contests or competitions. Unknown to many, conducting contests (usually popularity or looks-based) which require users to vote by clicking on the “like” button are not allowed. In fact, using Facebook to run any contests, including the soliciting of votes, are forbidden. The restrictions are precautionary steps to protect Facebook, a US-entity, from class action lawsuits.

In order to work around the restrictions, users can submit their promotion mechanics to Facebook for approval (which normally takes nothing less than 10 working days), after which the promotion can be run through a third party application housed within the page. Alternatively, users can make use of the Google contest entry form to customize and run their contests. Yet another alternative is to create a microsite to inform fans about a contest, leading them to an external site off Facebook to take part.

However, contests are meant to arrest, not sustain attention. “Your fans should be there for your content, not contest. You don’t want to train your customers wrongly and have them come to you only when you’re having a sale or contest,” says Lim.

Lim also highlighted four key factors in creating search engine friendly pages—the density of keywords, inbound links (the number of “likes” a page garners), the Facebook page name itself, and the “Info” tab, which functions as a descriptor for the services or products provided. The final sections of the workshop covered creating and optimizing Facebook advertisements.

The workshop, the first in a series, was attended by members and affiliate members of Mums@Work who either hold marketing roles in their respective companies or run their own businesses.

Facebook Marketing: How To Use Facebook To Explode Your Traffic And Profits

If you are not already familiar with Facebook marketing and social media networking, you are missing out on a significant amount of highly targeted traffic.

If done correctly, all of this traffic can be yours for free. All that is required is some time invested on your part. Without wasting any more time, let’s get you making some money with this free traffic.

Facebook, The King of Social Networks

Facebook has been gaining market share at an alarming rate; and it is by far the biggest social networking site available. What does this mean for us marketers?

It means there are millions of people within these networks who are potential leads for our business. Can you imagine what a few million people would do for your bottom line?

Don’t get carried away just yet. As with anything worthwhile, successfully tapping into Facebook marketing is quite time-consuming and an elaborate process.  But don’t despair, because people are profiting from Facebook already.

Are you ready to take action to get your share?

Joining Niche-Related Facebook Groups

Facebook has thousands of groups that are free to join and hundreds being created by the hour. You are definitely bound to find some groups that are in your niche.

These groups are gold for any marketer because it literally gives you access to thousands of targeted people who are already interested in some way in what you are trying to sell them.

The key with these Facebook groups is getting members to invite you as friends.

To accomplish this, start posting on the discussion boards, post ideas and tips and answer other’s questions.

Just go in there with the mentality of making friends. Eventually, if done correctly, you will have people inviting you to be their friends and you now have leads for your business targeted to your specific niche.

 Do This With Facebook If You Want To Mess Up

At this point, you should have a few potential leads as part of your friend network on Facebook. Now you need to continue to establish your reputation with them.

It is extremely important you don’t go in and try to sell them immediately. You have to treat these people as your friends. They have to know that you are trying to help them, not trying to pitch them a product.

Imagine how used they will feel if as soon as you add them as a friend, you send them a message trying to sell them something. These people added you because they thought of you as a friend, and more importantly, an authority in your specific niche who is willing to help them. Don’t blow it with a premature sales pitch.

Successfully Engaging Your Facebook Friends

Now that you know what not to do, let’s discuss something that you should do that will eventually net you some sales.

Your status updates are a very powerful feature. Post useful information to your Facebook friends. Let them know some things about your life, engage them with your story, get them posting comments on your profile.

At that point, when you see that your Facebook friends are engaged with you, then you could start hitting them with subtle marketing links. This means directing them to a blog with an affiliate link, NOT directly pitching a product right on your Facebook.

Create a blog post with useful information, and then link your buddies to it while adding a subtle affiliate link in there. That is the best way to get your friends to convert into sales.

If you do this correctly, you should have an ever-growing stream of traffic to your site or blog every time you have something useful to say.

Expanding Your Facebook Empire

Joining groups and posting on discussion boards is great, but why limit yourself to someone else’s group? Facebook allows you to create your own group that you can market to. This is by far the easiest way to get a large list of people interested in your niche, together in one place.

Invite your friends to the group, let other groups in your niche know about the group you just created, and continue to grow your empire.

You have to treat your own group as a list because you can message all of your members at once whenever you like. The key is to grow your list and put in action the tips learned previously in this article.

To recap, do not spam your group. Add real value to your members and they will be much more receptive to your advertising.

Closing Nuggets

When doing Facebook marketing, always remember that people love putting a name to a face. Make sure your profile and your groups both have plenty of pictures and videos.

If possible, get a few of your friends together and hang out, tag people in your pictures and videos if they where there, and continue to grow your business virally.

Remember that successful Facebook marketing and social media networking is not something you can do in a day; it may take weeks or even months to implement everything correctly. But once set up appropriately, you could have thousands of targeted buyers at your disposal.