A Site to Behold

A new entry in the Personal Finance Blog world is Personal Finance Journey. Be sure to check her site out she’s got some great content out there already and the site looks fantastic. I really enjoyed 7 Ways to Prevent Bank Overdraft Fees. Good practical tips.

Carnivals with FiscalGeek Mention

Fun Tax Facts – Carnival of Personal Finance #242 featuring my Post Why a Storage Unit is the Gateway Drug to Financial Ruin.

Some Sweet Posts from Around the Personal Finance Realm

Kyle presents The Risks Of High Yield Municipal Bonds

Kyle presents Set Aside 10% Of Your Work For Retirement, Not 10% Of Your Income

Lucia@moneyStrands presents The Rise of Internet Banking

GoBankingRates presents The Little Things Add Up: The True Cost of Owning a Car

Jason @ Redeeming Riches presents 3 Fun & Geeky Ways to Save With Your Email

Lynnae presents What Should I do if my Toyota has been Recalled?

Generation X Finance presents How to Avoid and Prepare for a Tax Audit by the IRS

Darwin’s Finance presents Winners and Losers Under Obama’s Tax Plan

FFB presents First Time Home Buyers Tax Credit – Who It’s For And What Is Needed To Claim It

Mrs. Micah presents What is the Difference Between Credit Card Fraud and Identity Theft

Frugal Dad presents The Ultimate Frugal Home Office

Patrick presents How Much Money Should You Leave Your Children’s Guardians in Your Will

MD @ Studenomics presents How My Friend Made $2,100 From Tutoring

Patrick presents Which Types of Insurance Do You Need?

B Simple presents Simple Personal Financial Tip: Know your Score

Mike presents 2009 Income Tax Changes

Matt SF presents Personal Finance Equations You Should Know: the Amortization Equation

Ben @ Money Smart Life presents New Roth IRA Rules

Peter presents Financial Considerations Of Selling Your Home: Should You Sell Your House?

Consumer Boomer presents Roth IRA Withdraw Rules, Options, and Penalties

Jeff Rose presents How to choose the best financial/planner for you

Joe Plemon presents Tax Refund? How You Should Use It and Why You Should Lose It

Stay at Home Mom CFO presents I would prefer NOT to have a Uni-brow. Better budget for that.

DR presents 2010 IRA Contribution and Deduction Limits

Elle presents Getting your tax credit with 2009 taxes if you bought a house in 2010

My Dollar Plan presents Throw a 50th Wedding Anniversary on a Budget

Ron presents Now That You’ve Set Up Your Budget

PT from PT Money presents EverBank Review: A Big Rate for Big Funds

Matt Jabs presents Turbotax – Prepare Taxes Online – Free eFile

KNS Financial presents Understanding the Making Work Pay Tax Credit

Early Retirement Extreme presents Cash flow diagrams for the poor, the middle class, and the investor class

What does Hustle Have to Do with Personal Finance?

In a word, everything. If you’re being slowly crushed by a mountain of debt, hustle is going to bring you out of it. Sell all your stuff. Take on additional work. Cut up your credit cards. Find areas to reduce in your budget. Snowflake that five dollar bill you found in the dryer on your Smells Fargo credit card. Don’t settle for a 24 month debut reduction plan when you can buckle down and do it in 12.

If you are looking to change careers try on your new career first as a side hustle. Research the industry. Talk to people in the business. Make your name known among potential employers. Let them know you’ll be seeing them soon. Build a social network to help advise you. Show them what a valuable hire you would be by your extreme efforts.

Hustlers Among Us

I’m surrounded by hustlers and it encourages me every single day. I see them at work. Pradeep I’m talking about you. I see them on the weekends: April and Peter who are working several jobs, going to school so they can meet their goals. I see them on Twitter: @deliverawaydebt. Jeff truly is an inspiration. He’s fed up with his debt so he took a job as a pizza delivery man to hustle himself out all that much quicker. Check out his tweets on Friday night while he’s out delivering pizza’s or read his blog. I see them on the Internet: Matt Jabs at Debt Free Adventure seems to be everywhere. Writing for different sites and nearly every day on his own site so that he can be working for himself by the end of the year. Baker at Man Vs. Debt has many projects rocking all while he’s traveling the world with his family, hustling it all the way. Kelly at The Centsible Life is balancing being a full time mom with writing, and all sorts of media engagements. These people are my heroes and their are millions of them out there.

Hustlers You Know

Think about the people in your life. The businesses you admire. What do they have in common? Are they filled with employees who do the bare minimum? Or do you like to go there because you know they are going to do everything in their power to make you happy? Odds are they aren’t just succeeding based on raw talent, they work at it too. I’d love to hear some stories of people you know, or maybe you personally hustling it.

Photo Courtesy Perfecto Insecto

Book Overview

The book opens with the authors explaining their particular backgrounds and Geoff explains that he is a personal finance writer who had to declare bankruptcy. I very much appreciate the transparency and because of his experience you know that he’s got some real insight to share.

Table of Contents

• Chapter One: Welcome to the Land of Bad Credit
• Chapter Two: Banking with Bad Credit
• Chapter Three: Getting a Good Job with Bad Credit
• Chapter Four: Good Housing with Bad Credit
• Chapter Five: Driving: Bad Credit in the Passenger Seat
• Chapter Six: Starting a Business with Bad Credit
• Chapter Seven: Living Well with Bad Credit
• Chapter Eight: Avoiding Bad Credit Scams
• Chapter Nine: Bad Credit Psychology 101

What I appreciate most about this book is that it’s full of practical tips that are not magical nor do they require you to sign up for some sketchy program. They are legitimate steps you can take with a variety of alternative options to conquer some common problems you’ll encounter with bad credit scores. I especially enjoyed the suggestion to live in a Yurt as an option to purchasing a house. If you don’t know what a Yurt is check out Pacific Yurts and you’ll see how awesome they are. My credit is fine and I’d love to live in a Yurt somewhere beautiful. We stay in them on vacation frequently.

You’ll also fine practical tips on what to do about vehicles, housing, vacation all of those things that you might assume you need a credit card or good credit to participate. In that respect this might be an excellent book for people trying to avoid using credit altogether regardless of credit score.

Who’s it For?

Living Well with Bad Credit is for those dealing with a bankruptcy or a terrible credit score for a variety of reasons. There are plenty of tips for most any situation that you might be coping with. I understand that you might not have much spare cash if you happen to be in that scenario but this might be money well spent to help you plan your way back out.

Who’s it Not For?

If you’ve got no issues with your credit score then you probably should take a pass. This is written for a target audience to be sure. My only real gripe with the book is the somewhat awkward exchanges that occur throughout the book between the two authors. No doubt having two different voices within the same book has to be challenging to merge. The information is solid, the humor is at times painful. Sorry guys.

How Does it Work?

You can search and find different foods and the sale price at your local store. But the bar none the coolest feature is a section called A recipe for Savings where recipe’s supplied by AllRecipes are listed with ingredients and the amount you’ll save. For my case a recipe showed up for Baked Cheesy Veggie Chicken Pasta which would save me $8.17 (41%) off the normal price. Recipe components that are on sale are hyperlinked. Merely click on the item (say 3 1/2 ounces blue cheese, crumbled) and you’ll get the deal below the recipe that you can then add to your Grocery List. It’s helping me in two areas. One we frequently can’t figure out what to have for dinner and two saving me some money at the same time. Best of all it’s totally free.

This is a great tool to add to your arsenal and I’m sure Joe would love to hear your feedback at his contact page.

Picture courtesy liberalmind1012

Before I kick off my slightly more abbreviated round-up I wanted to highlight two sites I’ve been looking at this week.

Drop Ship Maven

I came across the Drop Ship Maven by one of my Twitter friends. It’s a blog about pursing an online business using drop shippers. Effectively you sell products that you never see, the shipping and warehousing are outsourced. Something I’ve explored myself, we’ll see for the future. But a great view into this business from someone who’s making a go of it right now. Check out her post on What is Drop Shipping? for some more info.

Family Budget Bootcamp

Family Budget Bootcamp at the Parenting.com blog is an interesting look at the financial lives of 3 different families as they try and get their affairs in order. It shows in full transparency what money they have, how they are spending it, and 3 different financial advisors are providing guidance. A sort of reality tv blogging experience.

Carnivals

These were two carnivals I participated in last week.
Best of Money Carnival at Studenomics were I was awarded the #1 Spot Yeah!
Carnival of Debt Reduction at Eliminate the Muda!

That’s it for today, didn’t have time to summarize any articles for the week. Hope you have a good one.

How a Storage Unit Defines You as a Person

What does it say about you that you will pay someone 50, 100 or even 250 dollars for the privilege of storing your crap. In fact the amount of storage space in the United States is in the billions of square feet. That’s a staggering number all leading to the same conclusion. We are hiding our problems. Yeah that’s right. I don’t want to deal with the emotional baggage of dealing with crazy Uncle Ivan’s estate so I’ll shove it in a storage unit. I can’t possibly scale down my beanie baby collection so I’ll get a storage unit to preserve them. Oh no I can’t part with my collection of civil war chess sets those will be worth millions some day. No they won’t. They’ll sit there for ever, sucking money from your checking account every month and will be your kids problem someday. This behavior can very easily transition into your personal finances.

The Next Step? A Home Equity Loan

The Home Equity Loan or the more insidious debt consolidation loan are the storage units of the finance world. I can’t deal with all of these various credit cards that I opened and used so I’ll lump them all into this home equity loan which is much more manageable. My crap is safely encapsulated in one monthly payment to be forgotten in a few months as it’s automatically debited from your checking account. Give it a year and you’ll never remember why you have a $35,000 loan in the first place. It’s now part of your “housing.” Better yet, now that you have that taken care of all your credit card balances are reset and you can start over in an infinite cycle.

Decrapify your Life

It’s time to put some labels on things figuratively and literally in the case of a storage unit. Take a moment and think about what lives in your storage unit or your home equity loan. Think about the cost of maintaining that “stuff.” Then get angry and get rid of it. Craigslist, donation, your friends and family are all good recipients of your excess junk. In the case of your second mortgage or loans, attack them with reckless abandon and move on.

But I Need Somewhere to Move My Stuff While I’m Overseas

I’m not applying a global statement here, I’m trying to make a point. There are legitimate uses for storage units no doubt. People need a place to put their stuff when the move, or change jobs, or have short term assignments, I get it. But I’ll wager the overwhelming majority of storage units are filled with the stuff of broken dreams and promises.

What Was in My Storage Unit

As I stated I’m guilty of both transgressions. I have had multiple storage units and several second mortgages. My current second mortgage contains many refinance fees and a whole bunch of consolidation that I can’t even begin to identify. It would require a full time forensic accountant to reverse engineer that train wreck. But to prove my own point here is some of the stuff I’ve had in a storage unit.

• A 4×8 Sheet of Plywood with a half built N gauge model train layout
• 2 broken office chairs
• A mint condition complete set of Topp’s Hockey cards from 1999
• Easter baskets
• 24 boxes of Christmas decorations
• A weight bench
• Several couches
• 2 boxes containing the unfiltered contents of multiple junk drawers
• 10 Hockey Sticks
• Skis
• An Inflatable Raft
• Approximately 8 backpacks
• A motorcycle
• 2 House Refinances
• A patio
• No Clog Gutters
• Most of the restoration of a 1972 Chevelle

I’m as guilty as the next person and this doesn’t even begin to touch the crap I’ve stored. That reminds me I’ve got some stuff to sell. What are you hiding in storage?

Photo courtesy byebyeempire

What is GAP Insurance?

GAP Insurance is to cover your financial misdeed purchasing a vehicle with too little down or rolling negative equity from a previous vehicle into your loan. No I’m not judging because you’ll notice I had GAP insurance because I did both of the for mentioned no-no’s. I like I keep telling you, I’m reformed now! GAP Insurance is to cover the difference between the amount of money you owe on your vehicle and what it’s actually worth. Since a vehicle depreciates so rapidly unless you put a large down payment on the car to combat the nearly 20% drop in value you’ll experience leaving the lot you’ll be underwater immediately on your loan if something happens to your car. Your insurance company will only cover your automobile for it’s actual value. You can get a good idea of your car’s value by going to the Kelley Blue Book Site and finding your car’s retail value. That’s a good estimate for what you’d receive in the event of a vehicle catastrophe.

Do I Have GAP Insurance?

I don’t know do you? Check your policy. If you leased a vehicle with next to nothing down or bought your vehicle through a credit union or other bank they might have required it as a condition of the vehicle purchase. It might not be listed specifically as a GAP rider for instance on my insurance it’s listed as a loan/lease endorsement and will amount to a $30 savings per year. Yes I’m not going to be funding my IRA for the year with that but it’s a completely extraneous charge that a one minute phone call will take remove. If in doubt give your insurance agent or provider a call and get the full picture of what you have setup for your vehicle.

You might have also been sold GAP insurance as part of the financing process from the car dealership. You know when you were being asked about undercoating, clear coating, dash carpeting and snipe detectors? If that’s the case it’s a third party that carry’s that coverage which you may or may not be able to cancel for a refund.

You Might Want to Adjust your Deductible When you Call

While you are talking to your insurance company you might want to consider changing your deductible to lower your rate. If you’ve got a good emergency fund going you can save quite a bit off your yearly premium by bumping it up to say a $1000. Just something to consider moving more towards a self insuring model and keeping more money in your pocket.

Picture Courtesy jonycunha.

First though be sure to head over to My Next Buck where I guest posted in the Friday Financial Foul Up’s series regarding my Chevelle Restoration Project.

I was also honored to be mentioned as One of the 7 Best Blogs We Found in 2009 by Political Calculations.

Carnivals I was a Part Of

The Money Hackers Carnival
The Carnival of Personal Finance: Support Haiti Edition
The Carnival of Personal Finance: Hot Money Trends of 2010 Edition
Money Hacks Carnival: The Holiday Edition

Some Interesting and Useful Personal Finance Reading

Blueprint For How To Make Money With A Blog: Advice From Successful Bloggers Seriously if you are contemplating firing up a blog go check out this series. Pete knows his stuff.

I love this series J Money has another entry in his series: Blogger Showdown #9: Clever Dude vs. Frugal Dad

Fiscal Fizzle asks Should Kids in High School Work? Interesting question it definitely shaped my life for the better. Good comments as well.

Shopping for Self-Employed Health Insurance I hope to be in this category someday, a great post.

What are you doing with your Tax Refund? Brad asks the same question: Tax Refund: Will You Save It, Pay Off Debt, Invest It, Or Waste It?.

Simplifying Simplicity With Five Simple Questions There’s no charge for awesomeness, or attractiveness, gotta love Baker.

Frugal Dad hits home with a great post: Saving With Purpose: Short Term Goals.

How I Love Thee ING Direct, Let Me Count The Ways Some serious love for the very popular ING Direct online savings account at FFB.

Matt writing for Five Cent Nickel reminds us to Celebrate Debt Reduction Milestones

Don’t Buy a House Just for the $8000 Tax Credit! Elle implores you to think before rushing into a home purchase.

Wondering where to stash your cash? Check out Alternatives to Traditional Savings Accounts from Ron at The Wisdom Journal.

2010 Roth IRA contribution limits some pertinent planning data.

A guest post on Poorer than You provides help with 10 Places to Make Money Online

Money Market mutual funds – an explanation.

Bob at ChristianPF talks about New Law on Bank Overdraft Fees & The “Courtesy” Overdraft Protection

How I Bought an 8-Unit Apartment Building with No Money Down and Walked Away with $1000 Cash at Closing – an interesting look at the world of real estate investing by Baker.

Financial Samurai has a guest Post from Flexo, cool topic: Chaos Is an Inspiration For Change, But Don’t Wait

How To Save Money – The 1,001 List Of Money Saving Tips And Ideas — an ultimate list to money saving tips and ideas by Moolanomy

Len shares a funny story, as all of his are about When Pigs Fly: How I Fought My Parking Ticket and Beat City Hall

Easy Strategies To Save Money On Auto Insurance No they don’t all involve calling Geico

An Index Fund Strategy For Early Retirees As an investor probably your best choice is an Index fund or two.

Think Twice Before Doing a Roth IRA Conversion if You Are Using Account Assets to Pay the Taxes Due a lot of hype about converting your traditional IRA to a Roth, Jeremy presents some good info to consider.

Joe asks an interesting question: Is Debt Anti-God?

Investing Your Student Loans– What You Need To Read Good things to think about from Studenomics

Trent is going through a series on Trimming but also Trimming? What About Earning More?

How to Report Tax Fraud & Tax Cheats Your neighbor doing some shady stuff? You might want to report them, Jim tells you how.

Does Getting an Auto Insurance Quote Hurt Your Credit Score? For those who actively manage their credit scores good info.

Using the same method we employed to get out of debt Adam tells you how Even a Small Emergency Fund Can Bail You Out

Think Things Through or it Could Cost YouKyle’s hard earned lesson on investing and getting all your facts ready.

Mr Jabs shares some Tax Credits for Home Buyers and Homeowners.

Jeff shares some investing advice Dollar Cost Average Your Way to a Successful Retirement

Finally since it’s tax time be sure to check out the Mammoth 2009 Tax Credit and Deduction List at Finance for a Freelance Life.

After publishing my story last week on becoming Debt Free I received the following email from a new reader.

Dear Paul,

It was nice going through your blog. I read your Quicken 2010 review. I have been a Quicken user since they first came out with it. I used to listen to Dave Ramsey on the radio all the time and wish we could get out of debt.

Here’s my story and we need help.

My husband and I closed our business 10 years ago. We invested that money heavily into real estate. At that time we had it made for the rest of our lives. We were at peace, made more money than when we were working. But, that did not last. As the commercial real estate market slumped so did our money. WE LOST OVER A MILLION DOLLARS in a 2 year span.

We also invested in residential real estate. My husband became a builder and built a one of a kind house that is now on the market because we can’t afford it.

1 house is under construction (50% complete). Bank reduced our line of credit. Lost our money in stock market. Are unable to complete this house. Since we do not have any income, my husband’s plan was to move from 1 house to another to take advantage of tax benefit on $500,000. I do not like the moving part.

Money in our IRA’s has dwindled. We both are 2.5 yrs away from getting S.S. benefits if we want to apply early.

We are asset rich but cash poor. We are living on borrowed money. My heart cries that yesterday we had to ask our daughter to loan us money for our living expenses and to continue with building the 2nd house so that it will be complete by the time our existing house sells.

Our children are grown up and living 10-15 miles away. We became grandparents last year. My husband wants to move away to a country where there is growth. I know that our retirement dollars will carry us further there but, I want to stay closer to my children and grandchildren.

I don’t like taking risks. I want to settle down into a house where I can spend the rest of my living years. Most of all I want to be debt free so that my husband and I don’t live in constant fear. We came to this country in the seventies with 2 suitcases, worked hard and lived the American Dream. I want my husband to start liking USA and wanting to stay closer to the family. He is so disheartened. Neither of us have a job. I work part time (6hrs/week), not enough to put food on the table and pay necessary expenses.

I do not know why I am telling you my life history, but I feel that there is a connection. Good income, extravagant habits, husband & wife feel differently about money and having different spending habits. Most of all, I liked that your wife said you both are communicating better. That is what I want from our marriage of 30+ years.

In our mind we have gone through all the avenues. Typically, my husband’s word is the last word. Sometimes it helps to talk to a third unbiased party. I hope you can help.

Sylvia

First off Sylvia my heart goes out to you, this has to be a scary time. While I don’t purport to have all the answers I can tell you what has worked for my wife and I. Yes I very easily could be your husband in this scenario.

Bridges not Walls

I think the first step is communicating with your husband. I can only make assumptions about what you have tried, but what got me really talking to Angela was her explaining to me that she was nervous and scared about where we were headed financially. The key is to frame it about how you are feeling but not placing the blame on him. We had many conversations before that turned into small fights because I felt like she was telling me I was doing a bad job. I knew I didn’t have a handle on things but I didn’t want to admit it, and her bringing it up made me immediately throw up the defenses. What eventually worked was her talking about how she was worried about things, and she just gave me a nudge towards taking the Financial Peace University class from Dave Ramsey. That seemed doable to me and I liked that it was like having a third party referee even though it was mostly a video class. Going through the process it almost seemed it was my idea so I forgot all about our initial conversation. There’s no telling if that would work with you and your husband but it’s certainly worth a shot.

Boost Your Income

I think at this point the consideration of taking your social security benefits early is probably the last thing I would be thinking about. If it’s feasible you need to bring some income into this equation from one or both of you at least temporarily until you can work a solution for your real estate plans. I understand this is about the worst time to be selling a home, especially a large one, but it’s a boat anchor around your neck. I don’t know what the financing situation is but getting out of the real estate business might be the best thing for you. This sounds similar to the Rich Dad Poor Dad inspired real estate investing and unfortunately you were caught in the bubble.

Seek Professional Help

This might be a great time to go see a financial planner or counselor of which I am not. You can find a list of fee based planners at The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA). Like you said having a third party to help navigate this rough waters could be one of your best investments. Another possibility is to go to Financial Peace University. You can go to Dave Ramsey’s FPU Locator and find somewhere close that is starting up a new class. If you register through the host you can usually sign up for the 13 week class for only $100 which is money well spent in my opinion. I also want to offer you a complimentary copy of the Total Money Makeover if you don’t have one, as I think that would help frame some of your conversations.

Most importantly, your situation is not hopeless. You have family around you, and however painful that might feel to ask them for money, a good strong support system is critical. If you can involve them in this process you might be stronger for it. I know now that I can have open and honest conversations with my parents about my finances as well as their own and it’s been very helpful for all of us. Hugs to you.

Reader Feedback

Do you have any advice you would share with Sylvia we’d love to hear it?

Photo by Hamed Saber.

Remember these People are Your Friends and Fans

If you’ve used Facebook for any length of time you no doubt have friends that use it in a variety of ways. Some like to use it as their own personal sounding board and podium effectively delivering a daily monologue. Some like to share the intimate minutiae of their lives. And then there’s the middle ground where people like to have some interactions on a wide range of topics. I personally recommend the latter as your small business model. You’re opening up a discussion not blindly throwing advertising at your audience. The more personal the more chance of actual interaction you’ll have. I’m totally guilty of using the FiscalGeek Fan page of just blindly linking to my next post and I aim to be more conversational from here on out.

Fan Page or Separate Business Identity?

You have to make a choice, you can either create a fan page for your Business or you can just orient your identity in Facebook to your business so any interaction with you is Business related. I like the fan page especially if you have a large group of friends you can recommend they be a fan of your business but if you are starting with your own identity they have to actively friend you. It could happen but I’ll think you’ll have an easier go of it with a fan page.

I also recommend you spend some time on Facebook if you haven’t already just getting used to it and finding some long lost friends and family. That way when you launch your Fan Page you’ll have a built in audience and you’ll have a better idea of the things that your friends and family might be interested in.

Give Your Facebook Fan Page a Custom URL or Vanity Name

If you have more than 25 fans of your Page you can go and create a custom URL just like you can for your own username. So if you go to http://www.facebook.com/fiscalgeek you’ve hit my fan page. Be sure and sign up to be a fan while you are there!

This will give you a much easier and more desirable URL to hand out and put on your business cards. Just go to Facebook’s login at http://www.facebook.com/username to make the change. Be careful, if you haven’t set your username already you might want to do that first, and then choose your fan page in the drop down.

How Do I See Notifications for My Fan Page?

In casual Facebooking you pretty much see and are notified about everything. What you don’t get any notification of is comments on your Fan Page wall. It’s definitely a shortcoming but there are hacks to work around the issue. And I highly suggest you implement these hacks. You don’t want your fan base thinking that you ignore them when they ask a question or provide a comment on one of your previous posts. So what’s a person to do?

Like Everything You Post

Yeah it seems a little brash to be “liking” all of your posts but once you do whenever someone comments on that post you’ll get a notification. You have told Facebook that you “like” this post so I want to subscribe to any updates to it from you or anyone. That really is the point of ‘liking” something it’s not to say, yes I’m voting for this topic, it’s a way to subscribe to the comments without actually providing one yourself.

Use a Firefox Plugin: Update Scanner

If you use the Firefox Browser you can install Update Scanner and set it to watch your Fan Page. That way when anything changes you can know about it. Your mileage may vary with this one and I’ve had mixed results myself but at least you aren’t having to like everything you write.

The Case for not Feeding Facebook into Twitter and Vice Versa

If you are a blogger or similar profession and have a variety of updates you want to blast out to the various social media sites it might be tempting to link your Facebook and Twitter streams together so you only have to update in one place. Let me caution you about that idea for several reasons. Twitter and Facebook are not the same thing and the audiences are different. They also have different mechanisms for filtering updates and things you see. Because of that you’re rapid fire 140 character twitter updates showing up in everyone’s Facebook News Feed can quickly become annoying. In Twitter it’s what you expect, but in Facebook the slightly more interactive nature of the environment makes your monologue tweets seem impersonal. To top it off they may not use Twitter at all so when you are throwing around #hashtags and RT’s they’re going to think something is wrong with you. Take the time to link to your own posts and pages in Facebook and add a slightly more personal touch to them with a comment. It takes a little more time, but I know as an avid Facebook user I’m much more likely to go take a look.

Add a Facebook Badge to your Blog or Website

If you are a blogger the Holy Grail of stats is your RSS subscribers. But I would challenge that statistic. You might have a collection of friends and relatives who don’t use RSS at all, give them another opportunity via your Fan Page. So be sure to add a badge to your site so it’s easy to find you. But be careful there are several types and not all are created equal. I recommend you use a badge and not a Fan Box. A Fan Box let’s you show who your friends are and your stream but the disadvantage is that it makes many remote calls to Facebook when your web page loads. Sometimes it can slow down your site and do you think your fans really want you showing their profile pic’s on your website? So go for the badge which is just some more generic HTML. Go to http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/pagebadges.php and you can customize the HTML to show on your site.

Got any of your Own Tips?

Are you an active Facebook user and got some tips you want to share with the rest of us? Love to hear it.