Posts Tagged ‘Social Marketing’

I just received an email from a friend who deleted their Facebook account because they were unhappy with the way Facebook may use their personal information.

I completely disagree with this course of action – especially in business.

Instead, simply ASSUME that any information you put online (and not just on Facebook, but ANYWHERE) will find it’s way into hands you never intended.

Use common sense.

If you wouldn’t want your mother, your boss, a prospective employer, a client or your spouse to see it, don’t post it. (ie. embarrassing pictures, vulgar language, personal relationship information, etc.)

If you wouldn’t hand the information over to a stranger, don’t post it. (ie. phone number, address, social insurance number, banking info, passwords, etc.)

The annoying apps and invitations can easily be “hidden” from your feed.

If you are using Facebook primarily for personal use, then restrict access to those who are in your personal circle. Don’t accept friend requests unless you actually know the person.

If you are using Facebook for business, then simply be diligent about pruning your friend requests, “liking” pages and use the network to enhance your communications with people. Keep only public information on Facebook, never private.

ASSUME your information will be made public and act accordingly.

I am often confounded by people who become outraged when they learn the internet isn’t “secure”. And generally the reaction to this outrage is extreme – like deleting a valuable resource like your Facebook account. Cutting off your nose to spite your face isn’t usually the most prudent solution… instead, simply opt for caution in all of your online dealings.

What do YOU think?

Think Facebook is just for goofing around? With these 7 applications, you can accomplish loads of business-related things – without ever logging out of your favourite social site!

Okay… so the average Facebook user is doing nothing productive with their day. More than likely burning hours on end harvesting farms or agonizing over the finer points of a “25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” note. (guilty!)

But it turns out (HOLY COW!!) that this uber-popular social networking site is good for more than just fooling around!!! In fact, many Facebook applications can be so surprisingly productive and useful that you might not ever have to leave your beloved site during your whole day!

Dare I suggest you might be able to get real, honest-to-God work done using Facebook? SuperPoke your boss and make sure he knows! Here are some of my favourite Facebook apps for the truly obsessive entrepreneur.

Zoho Online Office

Zoho Online Office is about as close as you can get to doing actual, honest-to-God work using Facebook.

Zoho has ported a hefty chunk of its popular Web-based Zoho Online Office application suite to work within the Facebook site.

When you sign up, your Facebook account can be linked with an existing Zoho log-in (or you can set one up on the fly), and you’ll find all your saved and shared documents available for browsing–and for sharing with other Facebook+Zoho users. Unlike the other apps on this list, editing documents ultimately opens a new window on the Zoho site, rather than being hosted within the Facebook app directly; but rest assured, you can hustle back to your safe zone once your work is done.

Meetups

What’s going on out there in the real world? So-called “Meetups” are becoming an increasingly popular way for like-minded citizens to get together and expound on their love for beer, board games, Obama, or just about anything else.

Mind you, attending a Meetup does require leaving your house, so if that’s too much trouble, you can get a lot of enjoyment out of just browsing the application to see exactly how far out some of these Meetups can get. Turns out people will meet in real life to talk about anything.

Simplaris Blogcast

Simplaris Blogcast pulls in the most recent headlines from your blog for you, automatically.

What a pain it is to spend all that time writing a blog post…and then have to manually add it as a link in your feed using Facebook‘s “Post Link” feature. Make it simple–or rather, automated–by using Simplaris Blogcast.

With this app, you simply paste in the URL for your blog’s XML or RSS feed, and just like an RSS reader, Simplaris Blogcast pulls in the most recent headlines and a digest (you decide how long) once a day (or immediately, depending on what blogging software you use). And for the truly lazy, it doesn’t even have to be your own blog: Simplaris Blogcast works with any feed you give it; but, alas, you can only bring in one feed at a time.

Picnik

Picnik puts a full-featured photo editor at your disposal so you can turn a lifeless shot into something far more interesting.

Everyone dumps their photo library into Facebook, but then what happens?  Basically nothing. Picnik puts a full-featured photo editor at your disposal so you can turn a lifeless shot into something far more interesting.

All the usual tools are here–a red-eye zapper, color tweaker, exposure adjuster, edge sharpener, and of course resize, crop, and rotate capabilities–then add stickers and speech bubbles if you want to get playful. It’s all designed to let you tweak pics without ever leaving your Facebook profile. A premium version ($25/year) adds extra goodies. “Photo editing awesomeness”–as the app’s tagline goes–just about sums it up.

Calendar

Keeping your schedule together is a critical part of the life any entrepreneur, and the bluntly named Calendar is the best one available for Facebook. Just click the self-explanatory calendar boxes for the upcoming days, and type in what you have to do. The system defaults to “all day” events, but click again and you can set start and end times and invite other people to group meetings (though you’ll need a 30boxes.com account to do the latter).

Super handy, and a digested version can be dropped onto your profile page.

My del.icio.us

What to do about all the bookmarks you’ve archived on del.icio.us? Bring ‘em into Facebook in a box of their own. There are several del.icio.us-oriented apps available, but the one we’ve found that works best is My del.icio.us, which lets you import up to 25 of your most recent del.icio.us bookmarks, complete with notes and/or tags.

You can also limit it to show only the links with a tag you specify. The box automatically updates every half hour to 45 minutes, pulling your latest picks in for all to see.

YouTube+

YouTube+ shrinks down not just YouTube, but Revver and Metacafe too, bringing you just about all of the features of these sites right inside Facebook‘s environment.

Search for clips, watch and rate videos. You can do it all without having to leave your FB session. Whenever you mark a video as one of your favorites, a link to it is automatically added to your profile feed.

Now, naturally these are only a few of the business-related apps that can help you enhance your business online… I myself use several that integrate with other social networks, blogs and websites. But these are a small selection that can get you started in becoming more productive while on your favourite social network.

Do YOU have a favourite Facebook app that should be included? Let me know by commenting below!

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They say that if something can go wrong, it will… and sure enough, the laws of the universe conspired against Hilary Stewardson one more time in her series of twelve expert interviews she is providing free of charge at SeminarsWithTheExperts.com!

If you haven’t yet signed up for this, you’re not too late – although her series is almost at an end, the recordings are available from all previous interviews as well! Don’t waste a minute – go check out the hard work Hilary has put into this great resource.

Today we completed my interview… which was supposed to be done last night. I felt so awful!!

Those of you who have been listening in on this teleseminar series from the start know there have been many problems along the way – twice with the quality of the recordings; one where the interviewee was inexplicably unavailable – only to learn later he was in hospital; the first one was a disaster because Hilary’s long distance provider and Instant Teleseminar were incompatible; and then last week the Instant Teleseminar software went down.

I thought we’d seen it all – but no. Last evening’s interview had to be canceled because 20 minutes into it, my telephone went dead! Battery ran out – can you believe it?  So I scrambled for the other phone tied to a different number… and yep – you guessed it – it went dead too.

I’m only laughing about it now because it all turned out so well in  the end, but at the time I just felt so horrible!! On the positive side, our initial “dress rehearsal” helped up find a good rhythm together, and helped with the general flow of the interview.

I think Hilary did a marvelous job of it – and her series of interviews is an excellent example of what can be accomplished with a little work and a lot of style.

Hilary asked lots of insightful questions about my business, and specifically about how social networking influences my business. I hope she had as much fun as I did!!

Thanks again, Hilary – it was a real pleasure talking to you!!

Go check out my interview - SeminarsWithTheExperts.com – let me know what you think!!