Social Media Advisors

We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

Jeremy Blanton

WordPress Plugins – Why the Facebook “Share” Button is Critical

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Social Media Advisors, WordPress Tutorials

Currently, it’s hard to think of a site more influential than Facebook.  Google, Twitter, and YouTube are all in the mix, to be sure, but Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla of social media.  As such, it seems more important than ever to have a presence there, both personal and professional.

One additional tool in your arsenal is one that you can place on your WordPress blog (and probably elsewhere, too, but since I’m familiar with WordPress, I’ll stick to what I know).

I’m referring to the “Share” button that you see on many WordPress posts these days.  If you aren’t using it, you’re simply cheating yourself out of some potentially valuable exposure.  Why not allow your readers to share your content with their friends?  In the old days (read: pre-social media days), business owners would die for this kind of word-of-mouth advertising!  Now it can be accomplished with a single click, along with a description (e.g. “Check out this interesting article I just found about nose hair!”).

The only equivalent that I can think of in the analog world would be for someone to call all of his/her friends to mention your post.  Once the info is shared, it appears on the user’s wall as an endorsement that your post was worth reading.

The plugin itself is extremely easy to install in mere seconds.  You can customize the location within your posts, too.  On our blog here, you can see this button above the post and to the right.  Feel free to use it liberally anytime you come here to read.  🙂  Along with the TweetMeme button, which is basically a “Share” for Twitter users, the Facebook Share feature is a must-have for bloggers.

But what about the “Like” button, Jason?  Well, I think it’s handy, too, but I appreciate the “Share” feature even more, since it provides a deeper level of detail about the post, rather than just a link.

If you have any questions about the Facebook Share button or any other WordPress plugin which you’ve heard about or seen, we would love the opportunity to help.  Ask away!

Thanks for reading!

Facebook Page of 47,000 Gets Reinstated After Facebook Shut It Down for Trademark Violation

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Social Media Advisors

It appears that the Facebook page that used the trademarked term REALTORS® in it’s vanity URL and was shut down yesterday has been reinstated.  As of tonight, the page called The Official Real Estate Referral Group has had their vanity URL changed from http://facebook.com/socialrealtors to http://www.facebook.com/RealEstateReferralGroup. I know that both Jonathan Rivera & the members are very happy to have the group back up & running.  His status update stating: “We’re Back” has been welcomed openly with over 75 comments at this time.

If you are wondering why the page was shut down, read here as we helped break the news yesterday.  I personally am very suprised about this, and wonder if this just opens a can of worms for Facebook and pages & profiles in the future.  Imagine if only 3% of the 400+ million pages on Facebook want/need to change usernames.   That is 12 Million changes that someone at facebook would have to do basically manually.  I understand their rule of not changing the usernames clearly.  They set this so that someone with a large group isn’t able to just sell it off to someone else, and also keep them from having to deal with a lot of extra work on the platforms.

I will be interested to see what this does as we move forward.  Will this become a trend at Facebook? Or is this just an exception to the rule?  What do you think?

Facebook Shuts Down Page with over 47,000 Fans over Vanity URL

Facebook, Social Media Advisors

A Facebook Page, run by Jonathan Rivera was recently shut down by Facebook due to a complaint of the use of the vanity URL and the use of the trademarked term REALTOR®.  He had been made aware of the violation after selecting his vanity URL, but as Facebook’s guidelines state: “You will not be able to edit or transfer this username once you set it.” The irony of this story is that when Jonathan was made aware of the violation he tried to reach out & contact Facebook to correct it, but was unable to do so. He tried desperately to be in compliance with NAR rules & regulations.  Instead of Facebook allowing him to fix the username, they instead shut down the Real Estate Referral Page completely leaving a network of over 47,000 fans without a home.

This network was not only another fun page on Facebook, but also as he stated in the interview I recently heard, a good source of referrals having delivered over 1,400 referrals around the country to agents for free.

This is just once again another reason why it is important to know what laws & trademarks exist before picking a username, a web address or anything.  It will be interesting to see what happens with this as things move forward.  Jonathan has been working diligently to get the page reinstated, and from his interview with Techsavvy Agent, NAR was being agreeable in him keeping the page as long as the username gets changed.

Only time will tell what happens with this.  One thing I surely learned from this is that I will definitely think twice before selecting the next vanity URL for a Facebook Page.