Facebook – Page 2

Are Quoted Graphics Turning Facebook Into MySpace?

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Social Media Advisors

I am as much a Facebook Junkie as the next, but over the past few months I have found myself spending less and less time in the actual stream and more in private Facebook groups. This is because I have found specific private groups to be much more valuable to my business than just my public news stream. Last night however, I took some time to read through the stream of my friends and when I did, I kept coming across quoted images or graphics similar to the one above.

Now, I understand why people make these, but I really don’t see any value in them for a person sharing it. The reason people create these is due to the fact that Facebook’s edgerank algorithm places more emphasis on photos as that is overwhelmingly the most popular thing for people to view, comment & share on Facebook. This was made obvious to me by the incredible popularity a photo of my daughter received the other day. (97 likes & 43 comments & growing) So, marketers learned that if they create quotes into an image instead of just plain text update it is more likely to be viewed by people and receive interactions and popularity they want.

But, what I have noticed lately that these quoted images are taking over the Facebook stream. They get thousands of shares, comments, & likes. But, they go against everything that Facebook was designed to do. Facebook was created to give people a place to share images of each other & connect with people you know. Unfortunately marketers have come in and are ruining this concept with these images.

I may be alone on this, but I feel like this new trend is making Facebook feel a little bit like MySpace where people spammed your comments with stupid images and shared things they found on another profile and thought was cute or funny. Luckily, Facebook doesn’t allow animated GIF’s (yet) so we don’t have to worry about the sparkling princess fairy just yet.

What do you think? Do you feel these new quotes are junking up the Facebook stream and making it feel a little bit like MySpace?

Better Happy Birthdays

Facebook

I love it when a birthday comes up for one of my online friends. It gives me the opportunity to make their day special AND have a little fun in the process. Sometimes for birthdays I might hack an image together…

Other times I may do a quick video…

My online friend is going to feel great when they see what I did for them. Truth be told, it doesn’t take long to create something that will be special and meaningful.

Sometimes Birthdays pop up unexpected leaving you little time to plan or prepare. The new Facebook doesn’t make it easier to see who’s day is coming up. Like many things that are important to me, I have bookmarked exactly what I want to see. Want to know a secret? It’s now hidden but here’s the upcoming birthdays for your friends http://www.facebook.com/events/birthdays/ click on that, bookmark it and you won’t get surprised again, right?

The Dark Side

I understand the dynamics of social media marketing. I understand by wishing someone “Happy Birthday” you are putting your smiling face in front of all their friends. But birthdays are special to me, they are probably special to them too. That’s why I don’t understand the people who “phone in” their well wishes.

Want Examples?

Posting the exact same status update for every in your sphere’s birthday. I’m not talking about the drive by greeting “Happy Birthday Buddy!” – (everyone who sees that knows just how much effort it took). More like the creative sounding “I hope you enjoy your day! I hope this is the best birthday ever – make it a great one!” which might sound great to them and look great as a stand alone, but anyone who happens by your wall will see you said the exact same thing to the 20 other people. How special does that Birthday Boy feel now? Can you say marketing backfire?

There’s also the video version of this same tactic. While it may be popular to post a YouTube video of the Beatles singing Happy Birthday. That’s fine, but to every single person? Would it kill you to toss in a little Jimmy Buffett every now and then?

Let’s do this better

For your the next friends birthday try this instead. Take a moment and reflect on what that person means to you. Is there an inside joke between the two of you? How about something meaningful that has happened in the past? Need a little help? Go to their wall. On the top right you’ll see a gear. Click on the gear and the dropdown will show you “See Friendship”. Facebook will create a page that shows you exactly the ‘what’ and ‘how’ the two of you have interacted over time. You might even be surprised to see the last time you interacted was a year ago on their birthday!

How easy is that? So now that you have all the tools you need to wish that someone a Better Happy Birthday the question is – will you do it?

Using Automatic Sync Programs to Post Across Multiple Social Networks

Facebook For Business, How to Use Twitter, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

As many of you probably know, in addition to presenting at conferences as a social media speaker, that I also do a good amount of social media consulting with individuals and small businesses. As we begin discussing how to use Facebook for business, the ins and outs of Twitter, how YouTube can grow their business, and several other platforms, I almost always get asked the question of how can they automate this content so that they can write it once and have it syndicated to all platforms.

I understand the thought that by using a syndicator, it will spread your message across all the platforms quickly and make life easier for you. But, what you are missing is that this is probably one of the most ineffective ways to try and build your business online.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Each social network operates slightly different than all the others out there. For example, Twitter gives you 140 characters and you must include the @ symbol if you want to have it mention someone specifically. When this publishes over to Facebook for example, your friends see messages like this: “That was very funny @jb140 @210consulting.” which makes no sense to them if they are not using Twitter. Also, the frequency you tweet is more than likely going to be more often than you would update your Facebook status. In my case, I might tweet 25-30 times a day. I don’t want all 25-30 of those showing up in my Facebook stream.

Also, Twitter limits the length of your update to 140 characters, so you may be abbreviating words or using online jargon to make your update. Do I really want that going over to a platform like LinkedIn in which it’s main purpose is a social network for business professionals? Needless to say, updates on LinkedIn that say “Way to go, @JB140, that is a definite #fail. I prefer cheddar cheese #FTW” does not always portray the image we would want on certain networks.

Because I See It On 4 Places Doesn’t Mean I’ll Read

One of the reasons I am writing this post is because of a post I recently saw on Google+: The person wrote: Sync Google+ to Twitter, Itenti.ca, & Facebook. I started reading the comments below and asked why would you want to do this though? And needless to say I then saw them along with many of their other friends that I follow had already set this up. So, when I went to their Twitter account, Facebook Profile, or Google+ account I saw the exact same status update. For those of us who have connected with someone on multiple platforms, I see this becoming a problem. You can actually annoy people by putting the same stuff all over the place all the time.

Take the Time, Post Individually

If you want to say the same sort of message on all the various networks, that is perfectly fine, simply copy/paste the message across and customize it to fit the platform. For example, as I mentioned the other day for my Facebook Page, I try to ask questions more than making statements. I found this to be more beneficial. So, I take that same statement I might have just made on Twitter, paste it to my Facebook Page and alter the text to turn it into more of a question. If I want to post it to LinkedIn, I would do the same type of thing customizing it to the audience on that network.

To do this literally takes you an additional 18 seconds or so and will increase your interactions immensely. I tested syndicating my content across all networks for a three month period of time and had almost no business come from it. When I changed things to manually update I almost instantly saw an increase in all aspects of traffic, interactions, and engagement from my online community. For me, I’ll spend an additional 3-4 minutes doing this to see improved results. Also, not everything I share on one network is necessarily worth of being posted to 4 other platforms.

So, before you set up your account to share your content across multiple platforms consider whether it is a help or a hindrance to your business. If you don’t agree with me, I’d love to hear why in the comments below!

How To Effectively Spam a Facebook Event To Your Friends

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Online Consulting

Over the past few days I’ve noticed more an more issues on Facebook with those I am connected to. For the longest of time things seemed to be going well. Then all of a sudden there seemed to be another mental lapse on how to use Facebook for business properly. I wrote yesterday about how to successfully tick off your fans on a Facebook Business Page. Well, this morning another common issue I have noticed on Facebook started running rampant again… people spamming you with events.

We have all had the invitations to a friends event on Facebook at sometime. I’ve heard that there are roughly 3.5 million events created on Facebook each month. If you are like me, you probably feel like you get invited to half of them. In my case though, I seem to be constantly invited to events that are nowhere near applicable to me. For example, today I was invited to an auction in San Clemente, CA. Curiosity got me, so I checked Google Maps, it’s only a mere 2,549 miles from where I live in South Carolina. No matter how amazing and awesome that house may be, the likelihood of me coming across the country to attend this event is almost zero. The same holds true for many more of the 1,300 other people invited to this event.

In fact, many wrote on the event wall complaining about being invited to an event they had no interest in attending or zero chance of traveling across the country to attend. I explain this whole situation a little better here:

So, before you invite everyone you know to your next Facebook Event, take a little bit of time to sort through those you are about to invite. Ask yourself this question: Will this person I invite be glad I sent the invitation or annoyed that I am sending them spam. If the answer is the latter, maybe you should refrain from sending it to them. Just because you invite over 1,000 doesn’t make your event more successful. Instead, inviting those who are likely to attend is a much better strategy to help you use Facebook for Business more effectively.

3 Ways to Tick Off Your Facebook Fans

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Online Consulting

One of the top questions I always receive when I am presenting as a social media speaker, is how to get more “likes” to your Facebook page. In fact, over the past few weeks I have seen many blog posts with ideas on how you can do this.

As I was reading through more and more blogs addressing this topic, the more frustrated I became by some really bad advice from these bloggers. Joining Facebook like groups where if I like your page you will like mine? Commenting on popular pages as your business with a link back to your page? C’mon, those are some of the worst options out there. To save you from reading a 3,000+ word novel if I wrote out all my thoughts in a blog post, I decided I would take the time to simply put it all on video for you:

Here’s the thing with the number of people who “like” your Facebook page. Does it really matter if you have 4,000 fans if nobody ever takes the time to comment or interact on the page? Not a bit. If nobody is reading your content on your business page, it provides zero value to your business. Bigger numbers do not equate to better. Your page will have a greater return to your business with 200 fans that actually participate and pay attention to it than one with 20,000 that ignores everything.

Also, with the dynamics of Facebook and how it is set up, your business page cannot help but to grow if you have active fans there. Every time they comment, their friends (which they say on average everyone now has anywhere from 130-150) see a link posted on their profile. If you get someone commenting 3 times a day on your business page, the natural reaction is for their friends to get nosy and check it out as well. When they see the good content, they “like” the page & join in as well.

So, don’t despise small beginnings on a group, and whatever you do, please do not try the spammy ways to grow your Facebook page. Bogus fans and spammy connections are nothing but a bad formula to create a Facebook Page with zero value.

Protecting Your Facebook Account from Scams & Viruses.

Facebook, Facebook For Business

Have you ever received a popup message like the one to the right? Yeah, if you keep your chat box open I am sure you have. Yesterday I received 5 of them all within a 3 minute time period. I had turned away from my screen to watch some of a baseball game and when I came back my screen was filled with the spam messages.

So, here’s the real question: Can you really spy on who is viewing your Facebook profile? In very simple terms let me give you an answer. NO!

So what happens when I click on those links to see who is viewing my profile on Facebook?

Answer is pretty simple. Most of them make you go to a Facebook connect page of some sort. When you allow the application permission you basically open up your entire world inside Facebook to the program. They normally take that information and go on to phish all your friends and see how many they can get. There are a few instances where it will open up your inbox and send out phishing scams to your email contacts as well. Once these get access there is no telling what the predators might do with the information.

How to Prevent Facebook Phishing Scams

It’s actually a pretty simple thing that needs to be done to prevent these scams from infecting your accounts and possibly your computer. Simply do not add any applications on Facebook that seem shady. Also, I will let you in on a little secret. There are not real programs that allow you to see who’s viewing your profile. Also, when you see the ones that say “OMG! What were you doing in this picture!” don’t click on them. Simply delete the post from your wall and email the person it came from to notify them that they have been scammed. Another newer scam I’ve seen on Facebook are ones with photos of an older man saying this is what I’ll look like in 20 years, check your self. I knew this one was a scam when I got 7 of them posted to my wall in under 10 minutes. Four of them were from females.

The best rule of thumb is to just leave these things alone. Besides, does it really matter who views your profile? Facebook gives you filters and security settings to protect your info from those you don’t want seeing it.

How to fix your Facebook Profile if it has been infected.

If you have have clicked on one of these scams by mistake, do not fear. Normally you can fix them by doing a few simple things:

Change your password- A lot of these programs can only access your account by using your password. If you change it, they are finished.
Remove unwanted Facebook Applications- This one is a little more tricky, but my friend Mike Mueller gives shows you how to kill a bad Facebook App.

I hope this helps and remember, if the app is not from a trusted source, don’t allow it permission. If a link comes through that looks weird, don’t click it!