Yesterday Facebook released a new application that allows you to place a Facebook Connect widget on your website that links directly to your Facebook fan page

This article will show you how easy it is to add a Facebook Fan box to your blog or website. What this means is that you will be able to attract more Fans to your Facebook page and your prospective fans will instantly see your stream and your other Fans and get some idea about what type of content you will be sharing

Set Up A Facebook Page

You need to have a Facebook Fan page in order to use this application, just scroll to the bottom of your facebook profile and click on “advertising” and then select the “pages” tab and then select “Create A Page”, for more information on how to create a Facebook Page check out this blog post on AllFacebook  – “how to create a Facebook fan page to attract millions of fans” check out Mari Smiths blog post “how  to create and promote a Facebook fan page”

Once you have your fan page set up you can create your fan widget by going to your admin panel, from your page you just click the link Edit Page link that is below your Fan Page Image/Logo

Select “Add Fan Box” Box from your Admin Panel

Now select your Fan page from the drop down menu and facebook will show you a preview of what your Fan Box will look like. If you want to make it smaller just uncheck the boxes that say “include stream” and “include fans” (this might be necessary if you want to improve the load time of your blog or website or if you are limited for space)

Copy  The Java Script Code

Now select all the code by highlighting it (CTRL A, CTRL C (pc) CMD A, CMD C (mac)) and copy it to your clip board. If you are a techie and want to find out a bit more about customizing your widget click on “advanced options” and you will be taken to Facebook developers where they have detailed instructions on how to add a fan box

Go to your blog and log into the admin section, for this example I am using wordpress but the technique should be similar on any other platform

Add A New Text Widget

From your dashboard , select appearance and then select  “Widgets”

Now create a new text widget.

Depending on which version of Wordpress you are using this will be slightly different, if wordpress 2.8  just drag and drop a text widget to one of your sidebars and place it where you want it to appear. If your blog theme is enabled with footer widgets you might want to place it there as Javascript and Facebook connect are notorious for slowing down your blog load times

Paste The Code Into Your Widget

Now paste the code from Facebook into your text widget and remeber to click Save

Now Go And See What It Looks Like!

That’s it all done, wasn’t too painful was it?  All you have to do now is go to your site and see what it looks like

Advantage Of having A Facebook Fan Box

The main advantage of having a Facebook fan box is that your visitors can become Fans immediatly as long as they are already signed into Facebook. Before this it was a two step process where you had to take people to your Fan page and then convice them to click on the “become a fan” button

What I like even more is that I can see immediatly what content is being shared on a Fan page and who the other members are. All the links are clickable so some marketers might say this is  leak away from having visitors staying on your blog. I personally disagree. I think people are more likely to come back to your blog, engage with your content  and be able to quickly scan your fanpage stream without having to visit Facebook.  If they do decide to leave you have some control over the links that they will visit.

Getting Your Community Connected

The advantages of having your community connected with each other are immense. The more networked your Fans are the more effect any fan interactions will have on facebooks newsfeed. More people will see if their friends are commenting or liking the content that you publish in your stream. Your aim is to create and own an  integrated network of Fans where information and news spreads rapidly and your fan page is the centre and hub  that this revolves around.

If your blog is hosted on Wordpress.com

A number of readers have discovered that it’s not possible to add this widget to free wordpress.com blogs. This is mainly due to  a restriction on allowing Javascript code to be placed on their servers. If this is the case the only solution I can suggest  if you want to have your own Facebook Fan Box is to move your blog over to Wordpress.org and purchase your own domain name and hosting. You can buy a domain name for $10 from Godaddy and get cheap hosting from Hostgator

Share This Post

If you have enjoyed this post, please do me a favor and share it on Facebook with all your friends, they will definitely thank you for it. Please leave any comments or questions below, I would love to hear your feedback.

My Fan Page : http://www.facebook.com/idchapman

My Facebook Profile : http://www.facebook.com/iandavidchapman

Follow Me On Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/iandavidchapman

My Blog : http://www.iandavidchapman.com

One of the main problems I face when teaching clients  about Facebook is explaining the differences between A Personal Profile, a Facebook Group and a Facebook Page. I’m also often asked which is better, a Group or a Page. In this article I hope to address this and end any potential confusion

Friend, Fan or Member?

To begin with lets just define the terms before we proceed, a Personal Profile  has Friends, a Group has Members and a Business Page has Fans.  As long as you  stick to this terminology you should not  go wrong. The confusion starts if you begin referring to your personal profile as your Facebook page or your Fans as the members of your Group

Size Restrictions and Messaging Ability

A Personal Profile is currently restricted to a maximum of 5000 friends, you can only direct message your friends in groups of 20 people. A Facebook Group can have an unlimited amount of members and you can send direct messages to your Group until it reaches 5000 members. A Facebook Business Page can have an unlimited number of Fans but has no direct messaging ability. You can only send messages to your Fans as notifications. Unfortunately most Facebook users never check their notifications

News Feed Access

Your Facebook Profile has direct access to the newsfeed, though status updates, sharing links,  posting photos and videos and importing notes. A Facebook group now has restricted access to the newsfeed. Activities will only show up under the highlights on the right hand side of your home page and not in the main stream. A Facebook Business Page has direct access to the newsfeed in  much the same way a Personal Profile does. One of the reasons Facebook Pages are becoming so popular right now is because of the viral effects that this produces

Commercial Activity

Facebooks terms of service directly stipulate that you are prohibited from engaging in commercial activity for your Personal Profile

You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications to users

This restriction also applies to groups and they seem to be continually increasing their vigilance with regards to unwitting users who break these rules.

Facebook want all commercial activity to take place from Business Pages and they want you to pay them for the rights to advertise to their users. This doesn’t mean you can’t engage in indirect marketing from your profile or group, it just means you need to be much more careful and adopt conversational marketing tactics rather than direct sales pitches.

Which Is Better:  A Facebook Page or a  Facebook Group?

There is no easy answer to this question, Groups and Pages have different functions and it totally depends on what you want to achieve. For a good overview check out John Haydens recent article – Facebook Groups and Pages – Features, Benefits And Killer Tips

In my personal opinion the recent updates and changes in Facebooks site design has made Business Pages by far the best option for any business or brand wanting to increase their exposure

a study by the search engine journal came to this conclusion

• Pages are generally better for a long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers;
• Groups are generally better for hosting a (quick) active discussion and attracting quick attention.

The fact that Facebook has restricted a  Groups ability to access the newsfeed means they have much less viral potential now.  The main benefit  of  a group is your ability to direct message your members  and the ability to create closed and secret groups. Mari Smith wrote a comprehensive article on this subject last November – Facebook Groups vs Facebook Pages – which is best? -  that still has some excellent information although since the recent changes in Facebook her conclusions need some revision. Jessica Lee from Inside Facebook also gave 4 reasons why marketers should choose Facebook pages over Facebook groups. Also worth reading is Howard Greensteins article on Mashable  - Facebook Pages vs Group

I hope this article has cleared up some of the confusion concerning Facebook profiles, Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages, if you enjoyed this post please retweet on Twitter or Share on Facebook by pressing one of the buttons below

The Psychological Principles Behind Order Customization

This article will explore the underlying principles behind order customization, more commonly known as upselling and downselling. When a customer has agreed to buy something you have a much higher chance of selling them something else in that moment than you would at a later date. Researchers like Dr Robert Cialdini have shown that there are definite psychological principles that define customer behavior  and how you can influence buying decisions.

Smart marketers are using this to their advantage. The question is,  “Is this unethical manipulation of just good business sense?

The North Wind And The Sun

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.

They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.

Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him;

and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.

And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

Aesops fable about the north wind and the sun illustrates one of the core  principles behind all successful selling. If you make the conditions favorable to your customer then its only a matter of time before they will buy. If on the other hand you attack them with high pressure sales techniques and force them into making a purchase they are going to be very unlikely to continue along the path you have planned for them. In the story, the sun not only got the man to take off his cloak but also prepared the way for him to take off even more clothing.

Don’t Take No For An Answer

When a potential customer decides not to buy your product or service what options do you have available to you. The first thing you must realize is that they have made a decision based on the way you presented your offer.

Leveraged Sales

What psychological researchers like Dr Robert Cialdidi have shown is that even when someone refuses to buy something you can leverage them into buying something as they leave by utilizing one of the variations on Cialdidni’s 1st principle of influence, reciprocity

The Law Of Reciprocity

Reciprocity under normal circumstances can be seen when someone  does a favor  for you.  In almost all circumstances you are  now obliged to do something for them in return.

When applied to negotiation if you appear to give a concession in negotiation your partner is obligated by the rule of reciprocity to give a concession too

So if you want someone to buy something and they initially say no to your first offer , if you now make a concession and offer them something else they are much more likely to agree because of the law of reciprocity. Regardless of whether they even want what you are selling

An Accidental Discovery

Robert discovered this quite by accident while walking through the campus of his university. A boy scout tried to sell him raffle tickets for $5, he declined the offer and as he was leaving the boy said, “Well if you don’t want a raffle ticket maybe you would buy one of these chocolate bars for a dollar”.  Robert instantly reached into his pocket for a dollar and walked away only to be struck moments later by the fact that he doesn’t even like chocolate

He had an epiphany and instantly called his research team to investigate the psychology behind this particular instance of powerful persuasion

The root of it lies in the fact that if you ask someone to comply to an extreme request that they can refuse, they are more likely to accept a lesser request if you ask them immediately afterward

An Extreme Request

Robert and his team took this to the streets to test and began by setting up a fake charity organization and asking complete strangers if they would like to volunteer  to accompany juvenile delinquents on a zoo expedition. Naturally most people declined

They then framed their question in a different way. The first question they asked was. “would you like volunteer to be a buddy and mentor  to a juvenile delinquent and sign up for a 2 year program that involves several  hours commitment each week”

Naturally most people declined this offer. The amazing thing was when they asked their original question to the same people immediately after this extreme request  they got a 75% increased response rate than they did before

Selling at the Exit

Even when a customer is leaving you still have the chance to make them another offer. Lower the price and remove the frills and bonuses and you have a good chance of making the sale.

Launch Tree

Most serious internet marketer are fully utilizing these principles in their efforts to sell more of their products.  Mike Filsaime and Anik Singal recently released their Launch Tree course explaining this whole process and encouraged a movement away from using the terms upsell and downsell in favor of order customization.

A Question Of Ethics

As long as you are selling a quality product or service and you are certain that what you are offering will be of real value to your customer then the question of ethics is not really relevant.

Always have at least two offers prepared so even if your customer refuses initially, you can immediately offer them an alternative

If you pressure someone into buying something they don’t really need at some point they will realize what has happened and start complaining. You might get away with it once but you are potentially ruining the chances of a long term  relationship.

It’s wise to  remember that in today’s social media world,   if  you deliberately take advantage of your customers  your actions will get noticed quickly. Today with 67% of people consulting an online community before they buy anything make sure your company name is on the recommendation list not  the black list.

This week on Twitter Ashton Kutcher reached 1 million followers in a dramatic race to beat CNN to this milestone.  Oprah Winfrey also started tweeting and in her first day amassed over 200,000 followers.

In this article I want to explore the power of influence and ask a question that on the surface seems quite  simple but when you look closer it reflects something deeper and more intriguing.  Your answers can show you your deeper motivations and  reflect  what  you are likely to give and receive from the  world

Imagine if you had the chance to send a message to 1 million people what would you say.Would you be self serving or would you use your message to benefit others

Inspired To Greatness

If I had the ability to message 1 million people I would probably send them a link to something inspirational or to something that would shift their perspective for a few moments,  I would make sure that whatever blog post or video I  sent them to had a way for them to send that same message out to all their friends and I would show people how they could send their own similar message to the world that had the potential to go  viral

The benefit of sharing something valuable and inspiring  rather than asking for something for yourself is that the good feelings that people generate will be associated with your name for  a long time into the future. If you ask for a handout or go begging for clicks like so many people seem to do on Twitter you are just acting in a self serving way. The reason Oprah Winfrey got so huge is because she is authentic and genuine and committed to helping people and serving her community,  people all over the world love her for these very reasons

Judging A Book By Its cover

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is one of those inspirational videos that came to me in the past week, I watched it several times because it reminded me that anyone, no matter who they are or what they look like has the potential to touch the hearts of millions of people around the globe. Susan Boyle has now become the most viral video on the internet with over 40 million views.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf All The Time

On Twitter if you shout into cyberspace  with a self serving attitude some people will certainly hear you and respond. If you continue to shout all the time demanding attention, your response rate will decline and your message will be ignored just like the boy who cried wolf. You can fool people once but you can’t fool people on a long term basis.

Attention Is An Earned Privilege

Only  by building a Twitter following and adding value to your network will you earn the privilege of your followers attention. If everyone else is shouting  how can you cut through the noise. Even if you have  the right tools, you still need loyal followers who will share your message even further

Getting Your Message Out To The World

If you had 1 million Twitter followers and you could send a message to  the world what would you say ? How would you use that power of communication?

Would it be self serving or would it be a message of hope, inspiration and joy? I would love to hear your comments,  send me an @ message  on twitter @iandavidchapman or leave a comment on this blog post or on my Facebook note

Please Share Some of Your  Inspiration

Feel free to share some links to your favorite inspirational  YouTube videos and blog posts  lets make this blog post a cool resource

If you enjoyed this article and want to tweet it to your friends click  on the image below

Automating Your Status

Are you one of those people who has migrated to twitter after being active on Facebook? If you are then there is a strong possibility that you have automated your Twitter account to update your Facebook profile.

Before the recent Facebook changes this was a powerful strategy to use, It gave you an active presence on two social media platforms. In the old Facebook design the newsfeed was filtered and your status updates were kept in a separate tabs and were visible to those who were looking for them

A Change In Strategy Is Needed

The new site design means that the rules have fundamentally changed. I want to highlight the dangers for those twitter users who are either high volume tweeters or who are using RSS feeds or automated services  to populate their twitter stream and syndicate it to Facebook

Twitter Syndication

I have many friends who now spend all their time on Twitter and send  their twitter feed direct to their Facebook Profile.   In the old Facebook design the newsfeed was filtered and your status updates were kept in a separate tab. Now everything is merged and shared in real time to everyone in your network

Has Facebook  Given You Total Control?

By using friend lists to filter your feed you can tailor your news  quite precisely. The newsfeed is both personal and public.  Your status updates and Facebook activties are broadcast to your whole network

The danger comes when you overexpose yourself. By this I mean publishing too many updates so you dominate the real estate on your friends profiles.

Overwhelmed By Links

A few days ago I was observing this phenomenon from several people in my network. My page was overwhelmed by the sheer number of links they were posting. I realized that they probably didn’t even know this was occurring; It looked like they had set their accounts  to run on autopilot.

Are You Shooting Yourself In The Foot?

This is almost certainly  damaging to their reputation.  Personally I would hate to be thought of as a  spammer, it’s frightening to think that such a simple change in design can have such huge immplications

What is even more relevant is that Facebook now gives every user the option to hide someone who become annoying. They make it very easy. One click and you are gone, banished to the little box at the bottom of the newsfeed

The people I observed are all social media marketers. Their business depends on people listening to their messages. If the message is not getting through because they have alienated their audience then they are effectively shooting themselves in the foot. They are burning out their friends much the same way email marketers can burn out their lists by constant messaging.

Possible Solutions

I would like to offer a few suggestions to this situation and urge you to rethink your strategy if you find that you are seeing yourself in the mirror.

Ask yourself  how your status updates  will look from your friends perspectives, do you really want to look like an automated robot?

Take a few minutes to examine your own Facebook newsfeed; Can you see other friends making this same mistake?

If you overexpose yourself people will hide you from their newsfeed and you will never even know

How can you strike a delicate balance between keeping visible and annoying people?

If you are syndicating your status updates from Twitter to Facebook consider using Twirl and PingFM, you can carefully select which tweets to send to your Facebook Status and then turn syndication on and off as needed.

A River Or A Flood

With great power comes great responsibility. Facebook and Twitter are not the same and while on Twitter your tweets might be flowing into a great river of mass communication , over on Facebook you a sending them down lots of narrow pipes and some people don’t like to get their houses flooded.

There are obviosusly some people who this doesn’t apply to, some high volume tweeters send a constant stream of gold. Even If they  get to be too imposing on your newsfeed you can always bunch a few together in their own special list.

Feedback and Discussion

I would love to hear your feedback on this issue. I have Facebook Connect installed so if you are reading this on my blog you can sign in  and leave a comment,  it will automatically post a link to your profile so  your friends can read this article too.

If you are reading this on Facebook let me know what your experience has been. A change in design will always take some adjusting to and only through discussion can we define possible solutions and best practices.

Ian David Chapman

http://www.iandavidchapman.com

Is your blog taking ages to load, is it weighed down by too many plugins and widgets? If it is then maybe its time you gave your website a spring clean and got rid of some of the dead weight.

Waiting Time

Recently I had some feedback from a visitor to my blog, he commented how much he liked my site but that the load time was pretty slow. His observations were true, it had become similar to those old Facebook profiles that would take 5 minutes to load.

I wondered how many visitors I had lost because they were too impatient to wait. No one wants to sit watching a frozen screen

I know from my own experience that when I hit a site that takes forever to load I often get frustrated and leave.

This motivated me to take some drastic action…..

6 Tips To Speed Up Your Blog And Move You Into The Fast lane

After doing a bit of googling and experimentation this is what I managed to implement.  Some of these steps might be beyond most peoples comfort zone. If you fall into this category then get an expert to help you. It’s definitely worth the effort and your visitors will thank you.

1 – Reduce the number of posts that  are displayed

If you are using Wordpress, go to the SETTINGS menu and select READING now adjust the number of blog posts to display per page. I reduced mine down from 10 to 3. Because many of my posts are quite long I could also adjust my settings so the blog only loads a summary of each post. I could also reduce the number of images that are include in each blog post.

2- Delete any widgets that you no longer use

I’m one of those people who likes to  try everything once; the result of my curiosity is that after months of  adding new buttons, plugins and widgets, I often forget to deactivate them and they start to accumulate. Go through all your widgets and delete all those experiments. Only keep things that have been proven to truly add value to your site

3 -  Install a Caching Plugin

This neat little trick can really speed up the load time for your blogs pages

It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and the building the page from the database.

The one I chose was WP-Cache. you can down load it by clicking on the link

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cache/

4 – Inspect your code with Yslow

Yslow is a firefox browser plugin that you can use to analyse where your blog is getting stuck

http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

It works in conjunction with firebug which is a really powerful tool for inspecting the code on a website

http://getfirebug.com/

It gives you a breakdown of ways to speed up your site and offers great tips and suggestions.

5 – Reduce Java Script

Too much java script on a page will really slow down your load time, it basically blocks the ability for parallel downloads and this is often where the main problem is located. Any non essential code can be placed in the footer of your blog this way the rest of your blog can load without getting stuck.
Yslow told me that 5 Java script applications were in operation when my pages were loading.

I deactivated 2 of the plugins that were responsible and then set to work hacking up a “View my profile”  widget and was left with the bare bones html code that just displayed my links to my social media profiles and cut out all the extra weight

6 – Clean Up Your Theme

Check out  http://yoast.com/speed-up-and-clean-up-your-wordpress/ he gives some great advice for those who want to get into more in depth details. This stuff is a bit more advanced and only for those who really know what they are doing. Remember, if you start hacking into your wordpress theme to take a backup before you start. That way if things go horribly wrong you can still put things back to how they were before. Another great resource that I found was on graphicrating.com it shows you how to speed up your wordpress blog

The Result

I was  quite happy with the results of my tweaking, There is more I could do,  but for now that seems to have solved the main issues and my blog has been given a new lease of life. Its still not super fast, but that’s mainly due to installing the Facebook Connect plugin, I am still experimenting with it to see if it is actually worth keeping.

I hope this has helped you in some way, I am always interested in learning from the experience of others. Do you have any  tips for speeding up a blog, or know of any other good resources?

If you are reading this on Facebook you can visit my blog going to http://www.iandavidchapman.com

feel free to test out the Facebook Connect plugin and tell me what you think,

Ian David Chapman

http://www.twitter.com/iandavidchapman

This blog post will show you how you can integrate the viral power of Facebook Connect  with your  wordpress blog without touching a single bit of code. Its done by using a neat plugin created by Spanish blogger Javier Reyes

Most people get put off by mentions of API keys and messing with the code on their webpages. Luckily I stumbled upon this cool plugin that does all the work for you. If you follow each step carefully you will be up and running in no time

Even if you don’t have a wordpress blog, make sure you scroll to the bottom of this post where I will be explaining exactly how I will be using Facebook connect to initiate social activity and get immense viral exposure.

Click here to download the Facebook Connect Wordpress plugin

http://www.sociable.es/facebook-connect/

Take a few minutes to watch the tutorial video that explains the features of this plugin

The next video gives an explanation of how to install this plugin and set up your API code

After you have downloaded the plugin to your computer you need to go to your blog and upload the file into your wp-content/plugins/ folder, you can do this by FTP or by going into the backend of your website if you have CPanel hosting.

Now login to the admin panel of your wordpress blog, I am using Wordpess 2.7  in this example, your screen might look slightly different if you are using earlier versions. Go to your plugins and activate the Facebook connector plugin

Now in your settings menu open Facebook connector you should have this screen visible

Get Your Facebook API Code

This plugin is an easy way for you to create your own Facebook application unique to your  blog. In order for it to function you will need a Facebook developers account and obtain your Facebbook API key and Facebook API secret. These are just codes so Facebook can give you access to the user data that will be transferred to your blog. In a new browser window login to your Facebook account and scroll down to the very bottom of your profile page.

Now enter the name of your new application, agree  to the terms of service and click save.

Now you have been given your API Key and API Secret, you need to copy and paste these numbers into your wordpress plugin settings

Now open the Connect tab and enter the URL of your blog.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click save

In another browser window,  copy and paste your API key and API secret into your Facebook Connector Options; check the boxes to allow full functionality on your blog

Scroll down to create the message template; if you want to customize the messages you can  edit the text in the boxes

After you have clicked create template the plugin should have two yellow boxes at the top indicating that everything is now functioning

You can now place a widget on your sidebar so your blog visitors can login and interact with your blog. Any comments they make will be posted directly to their Facebook profile

drag and drop the widget to your required position and adjust its settings

Your Facebook connect plugin should now be fully functioning. Go to your blogs homepage and check everything is working

The sidebar widget  should look something like this

Click on the Connect with Facebook  button and start interacting

Now you can invite all your friends to come and visit your blog and more importantly all your visitors can  invite all their friends too

Social Interaction Goes Viral

What does all this social activity mean,  and how is it going to help you? As an example I am going to see how much activity I can generate from this blog post using a variety of means.  Immediately after I publish this post I am going to go to go and invite 16 of my friends to come and visit my blog post using the friend connect widget.

I am going to ask those 16 people to  invite 16 of their friends to come and see this post too. I hope to start a viral chain reaction that will impact into Facebooks newsfeed.

Syndication

My blog is syndicated to my Twitter account and to my Facebook profile so as soon as it gets published a tweet will get sent and the full RSS feed will be imported as a Facebook note. The next day I am going to go to my Facebook note and tag a further 30 people in this note. I am going to ask people to give it a thumbs up or to press the share button

It’s a fine balance when doing this kind of thing, Only people who have wordpress blogs will be  really interested in this post, but I hope other people will want to see the real viral power of Friend Connect in action

Using Groups

Once  I have some impact in Facebooks newsfeed I am going to send a message to my Facebooks groups, inviting them to learn about Facebook Connect. I hope that some of my other friends who have big groups will do same.

Become An Early Adopter

There is a huge advantage to becoming an early adopter of the community building tools like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. You have the potential to take your friends with you wherever you go on the web. So if you see a great blog post you can leave a comment  and it will go straight into your newsfeed for your friends to see. Bloggers can expect more traffic to be circulating back and forth from social sites like Facebook opening up a huge potential of viral social interaction.

How Viral Is Facebook?

With your help we can find out; only by testing new strategies can we discover what their limitations are and how much exposure they bring. I will be tracking the results and monitoring the newsfeed and comments on this blog. Of course I am taking a big risk because I might end up  annoying some people,  I am willing to do this because I see there is a huge potential available and I love sharing with my online community

What  You Can Do Now

1.    If you are on my blog http://www.iandavidchapman.com you can sign in to Facebook Connect and leave a comment
2.    If you are on Facebook reading this you can leave a comment either in the newsfeed or at the bottom of this note. If you like the post click the share button at the top. or give it a thumbs up.  You can visit my blog to see the plugin in action by
clicking on this link http://www.iandavidchapman.com

3.    If you have a wordpress blog you can follow this tutorial and get started right away. For those who are technically challenged and don’t know how to add new plugins  get your webmaster to do all this for you. Implementation is the key.  Come back and leave a comment in this thread so other people reading this post can visit your blog and share it with their friends.

4.    If you have any friends who have a wordpress blog  or might be interested in Facebook Connect you can invite them to come and see this post, by clicking on the Invite Your Friends button on the Connect Widget

5.    If you are Google Friend Connect user why not join my site at the same time. Feel free to leave a comment in the social bar at the bottom of the page.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article, I hope you got some benefit from it and choose to help me in my experiment to prove that Facebook Connect is worth taking seriously. If you experience any problems with this plugin please contact the developers and read all the comment threads carefully,  making sure you have completed all the requires steps.

Ian David Chapman

The Facebook Bombshell

Yesterday Facebook rolled out their new look Facebook pages; They’ve made business pages become  more like personal profiles allowing more  interactivity and are set to open a doorway for  businesses and brands to gain deep penetration into the mainstream market of  Facebook users.  The people who understand these implications are rubbing their hands with glee at this new announcement.

Are Pages Hard To Find?

Facebook still make pages difficult to find, I have no idea why this is but in order to create a page you have to scroll down to the bottom of your facebook profile and click on the advertising tab, then click on pages and then click on create a page.

Public Profiles

What used to be termed Fan Pages are now being called Public Profiles. From what I have read it seems that Facebook are intent on introducing Public Profiles into the news feed. Facebook explain it like this

By leveraging the real connections between friends on Facebook, a public profile lets users connect to the entities they care about and allows you to join the conversation. Posts by the public profile will soon start to appear in News Feed, giving you a more dynamic relationship with the public figures and organizations you are interested in.

Become Viral And Interactive

What this means from a business perspective is that your Public Profile activities can now be seen by many more people as friends of friends interact with these pages. This means they are truly becoming viral in the same way Facebook groups have been for a long time.

Whether this also reflects Googles recent algorithm change that also favors known brands is debatable but it now places companies much more in the public eye than ever before, and gives them penetration into markets that were previously restricted.

Positive And Negative Response

Its difficult to asses the public reaction, from reading the comments on the Facebook blog the majority were somewhat negative, mainly from the fact that they hadn’t taken the time to discover how the new look Facebook Pages can be configured, I suspect that given time most people will begin to appreciate the changes. Personally I think it is a move in the right direction

Reputation Management

Reputation management will have to be taken more seriously with this added user interaction. But don’t get too worried because Facebook have installed a feature that allows you to control who can post to your page. In a crisis you can kill your comments and limit the viral word of mouth damage until you are ready to face the public and present your side of the story. This of course also works in your favor when you want your evangelists to tell the world how great you are.

Application Development

The new design also creates huge potential for 3rd party application developers as Fan page apps can now be placed front and center for the world to see. The best apps will spread virally  in the same way they used to before the new profile was rolled out.

You can use HTML on your page and also FBML (facebook markup language)

You control what page a user lands on and also what page a Fan lands on by adjusting the settings on your wall page. I am hoping that Facebook will extend this same privilege to normal users in the future, it is clear that they have all the coding in place, its just a matter of flicking the switch.

I am still exploring the new look pages but one of the coolest new features is the ability to demographically target your updates and messages. So if you want to test a marketing campaign in a certain city before you roll it out to the rest of the country you can select a certain test group and see their response. This is huge for any major organization or brand who want to do market research

From an SEO perspective Facebook pages are a great way to get indexed and ranked by google and this latest development only emphasizes this importance.

Find Out More From Ed Dale

Ed Dale was so excited about this new development that he will be hosting a live Ustream Broadcast this evening to discuss these momentous changes. Be sure to tune in or at least go and watch the replay on the 30 day challenge tv

I am sure that those who already understand how Facebook works can see the future potential and are already positioning themselves to take advantage of it.

I hope you enjoyed this post, I look forward to your comments, either on Facebook or on my blog

http://www.iandavidchapman.com.

For more updates and links to cutting edge information make sure you follow me on twitter – @iandavidchapman

Two weeks ago  top Internet Marketer Ed Dale decided to Boot all of his Facebook friends by deleting his Facebook account and starting again from scratch. He raised the question in many people’s minds of whether they should do the same. Ed is kicking out the dead weight from his Facebook profile but its a laborious task.

One of Ed Dales buddies Ryan Deiss has asked the question Should I “Unfriend” All My Facebook Friends Like Ed Dale?

I would like to offer some alternative solutions that can help you manage your Personal and Business profiles under a single Facebook account.

The Root Of The Problem

The root of Ed Dale’s problem lies in the fact that he is not a normal Facebook user. Facebook will only let you operate a single account that has to be in your own name.This means that your personal and business life has to be all lumped together.

Being a famous Internet Marketing Guru means that you get a lot of people wanting to be your friend. John Reese maxed out his Facebook profile in under a week last April reaching the 5000 friend limit.

A Sticky Mess

If your network grows so rapidly it’s next to impossible to organize it in any structured way so that it can benefit you. For those who are using Facebook for business purposes there are some lessons to be learned here. Without quality control, structuring and proper organization your network could turn into a sticky mess.

Facebook are considering raising this limit but the question is, how can you manage a huge network of friends and still be able to use Facebook like a normal user?

Dealing With Background Noise

It’s understandable that if you have 5000 people who you don’t really know add you as a friend and then spam the hell out of your Facebook wall in a bid to attract your attention or to hijack the viral power of your network you might get a bit upset. And by closing down your Facebook wall you kill one of the most popular features and your profile just becomes a one-way interaction

Ed has been missing out on the way most normal people use Facebook and because the intensity of the background noise gets too much to cope with he opted for the drastic approach….Starting Again!!

Getting Used To The New Design

The new look Facebook is still a mystery to many people, even though we have now had 6 months to get used to it. Most people never fully benefit from its real power.  It’s obvious to me that Ed never took the time to learn all its subtleties when they rolled out the new design, preferring to focus on the aspects of Facebook that actually make you money like Facebook Ads and Pages

It’s hardly surprising really when they keep adding new functions and moving things around. I am often amazed when I discover some of the treasures that lie buried in the Facebook Maze

Adjust Your Privacy Settings

One thing you can do to manage your profile is to adjust your privacy settings effectively, Nick O Neil shows exactly how to do this in his excellent post “10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know”

There are also several things you can do to ensure that you don’t end up like Ed and have to start over again

Segregate Your Friends Into Lists

This is one of the most powerful and under used functions on Facebook that you need to get into the habit of using. By creating segregated lists you can keep track of specific groups of friends and keep all your business contacts in one place. The best way to implement this strategy is to build it into your regular routine when you send or receive friend requests.

Go to the FRIENDS tab on your Facebook profile

Choose Logical Categories For Your Friend Lists

If you scroll down  will see a button that allows you to create a new list.  Think carefully how you want to group your friends, you can segregate them however you like

Choosing logical categories will help you find them later and make you more likely to use this function on a regular basis.   Your friends can  belong to multiple lists but don’t add too many categories as it defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Speed Things Up By Selecting Multiple Friends

You now get the option to start typing in the names of the friends that you want to include in your list. Often its difficult to remember everyone’s name and its very easy to forget people once they become buried in your contacts list.  You have a second option and that is to click on SELECT MULTIPLE FRIENDS, this will pull in the photographs of your friends. If you have a big network this might take a while to load so be patient.

Filter Friends By Region

Another very powerful option is to filter your friends by region, when the MULTIPLE FRIENDS option is open, just click on the FILTER FRIENDS tab and select who you want to include. Of course you will only be able to find your friends who have entered all their details correctly.

Don’t Forget To Save Your List

After you have selected everyone to include on your list make sure you don’t forget to save it, scroll to the bottom of the page and click SAVE LIST

Get Into Good Organizational Habits

Now when you make a friend request or add a new friend you will have the option to place that person into one or several of your chosen categories, Just click on the small triangle in the corner and your lists will be shown in a drop down menu.  Get into the habit of doing this and you will build a much more powerful and easy to manage contacts list than the jumbled mess you might find yourself in otherwise. It becomes more important the larger your network grows; once you get over 500 friends it starts to become an issue and the job of segregation becomes harder and harder. It’s never too late to start, so take my advice and keep organized.

Messaging Your Lists

If you are planning on sending messages to a list you need to keep it below 19 members. Remember to warn people that if they respond, their reply will be sent to everyone in the group. This type of messaging is best done with the permission of your friends, as it can be very annoying if a recipient isn’t interested in the message and they get bombarded with all your personal replies in their email inbox.

Form A Secret Group

If you want to message more than 19 people at a time consider making multiple lists or try starting your own Facebook group. For personal friends you can keep this group secret and it will be invisible to other Facebook users. You can adjust a group’s privacy settings when you create the group.

To View A Segregated List Newsfeed

Facebook give you the option of viewing each of your friend’s lists as a separate newsfeed. It would be a useful function to be able to choose which newsfeed gets show as default. I am sure that at a future date this kind of customization will become available. For now to get to a specific newsfeed you will have to go to the   hassle of clicking a few times

First click on the HOME tab on your profile page this will take you to your usual newsfeed page, there are 6 tabs for you to select what type of news you want to see.

To view the newsfeed of one of your segregated friend lists click on the TRIANGLE tab that says MORE FEEDS and scroll down the drop down menu and select the one you want.

Spy On Your Competition Or Keep Track Of Your Family

For those of you who like to spy on your competition this is a great way to track other peoples Facebook activities and see what they are up to. If like Ed dale you want to keep track of your friends and family then this would be the best way to go about it.

Adding People Quickly To Your Lists

Another way you can add people to your lists is by clicking on the EDIT button in the MORE FEEDS tab and then entering names in the box provided. When you  click BROWSE  you have a rapidly scrolling list of your friends. You don’t get any photos when you do it this way so it loads a lot faster than the other options that you can use. You can populate a list quickly and easily if you know who you are looking for, the list is presented in alphabetical order.

Adjusting Your Newsfeed Settings

For those people who want to choose who they hear news about  you also have the option of customizing your newsfeed. This is another of those hidden functions that most users rarely find. To get to it you have to scroll down to the very bottom of your HOME page and click on OPTIONS FOR NEWS FEED

You are then faced with a set of sliders, much like you would find on a graphic equalizer. Just adjust them to the type of news you want to receive and add the names of all the people you would like to hear more about. If there is a particular person who shows up constantly in your newsfeed with news that doesn’t interest you and you don’t want to remove them as a friend you can place their name in the second box on the right and hopefully they will become less visible in your newsfeed.

Adjust Your Newsfeed Settings

White Listing Who You Allow To See Your Wall

Facebook have a function, hidden deep in the privacy settings that allows you to choose who  has access to your wall and who you will allow to see what others have posted. By using your friends lists you can keep your personal friends or business contacts in their own little bubble depending on which way you choose to adjust your settings.

From your profile page, first click on SETTINGS and then click on PROFILE, this will take you to the privacy>profile settings, scroll down and select the box that allows friends to post to your wall. If you are suffering from a lot of wall spam or you don’t feel comfortable with others posting on your wall keep it turned off.

If you want to customize who can interact with your wall then you can use your lists and only allow certain groups of friends access. click on the triangle and select CUSTOMIZE from the drop down menu. A new pop up screen will now appear.

Select SOME FRIENDS

And now click on the small FRIENDS LIST icon to the right of the box

You can now select which friends you want to include on your white list by selecting the appropriate groups

Now you need to select which networks you want to be able to see your wall. If you select NONE OF MY NETWORKS then only those on your white list will be able to see your wall.

Get A Friend To Check Your Settings

It’s a good idea when experimenting with these settings to have a friend on another computer check how your settings affect them.

Another way to organize your friends would be to exclude certain people,
You might not want your boss or work colleagues seeing every aspect of your social and family life.

Deciding whether to White list or Black list is entirely up to you it depends on which types of Friends are in the majority

After you have made your selections and clicked OK make sure your REMEMBER TO SAVE YOUR SETTINGS when you return to the PROFILE SETTINGS page

Further Assistance

The bottom line whether you are using  Facebook for personal or  professional  interactions is the more you understand how the platform works and the more organized and disciplined you are regarding how you separate your personal and private life. The more pleasure you will gain from using it. In my opinion it’s the most powerfull social networking platform ever created, if you have any further suggestions or ideas about how to integrate your personal and business contacts please feel free to leave a comment.

You can also follow me on Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/iandavidchapman

Facebook Stategies Guide

For a free 60 page guide that will help you get started on Facebook the right way and explains the Unwritten Rules of Facebook.  just  sign up to my mailing list http://www.iandavidchapman.com (you can unsubscribe at any time)

This is a blog post I wrote while traveling in southern India and describes a real situation I encountered in an internet cafe,   it comes in two parts and luckily finishes with a happy ending

A Heated Argument

There was shouting and curses coming from the internet cafe. The owner was in the middle of a heated argument with a customer over the charges for a telephone call.  I wanted to use the wireless internet service and had obviously arrived just at the wrong moment. With a final curse the owner ended the battle with his latest enemy and turned to me.

“What do you want?” he said in an aggressive tone,  continuing  to curse under his breath about the foreigners who were exploiting his country.

Can I Use Your Service?

“Do you have wireless Internet?” I asked; The man nodded and pointed to a plastic garden chair that was sitting in the entrance lobby. I began to set up my computer and plugged into the electricity. The owner grabbed my plug and pulled it out.

“There’s a power cut he said so there is no electricity”, I turned and looked into the room full of computers buzzing quietly in the background  and asked how they could possibly  be running if there was no electricity.

What Is Your Priority?

“I have batteries” he replied, (a lot of places in India have banks of batteries that are used when the normal power fails) “but the power is only for my computers, not for your computer. My business is most important and without electricity how do you think I can make money. My computers have first priority”

I asked if I could pay him for the electricity I was going to use, I thought this was a bit strange since  I was already paying for the use of his Internet facilities.

How Do You Treat Your Customers?

At this point the guy lost it and started screaming at me and repeating  his curses about foreigners, that we all want something for nothing. That all we do is come here and ruin his country and make business. He pointed aggressively to the notice board  full of colorful  posters where Westerners were advertising  their  services.

I listened patiently to his tirade of abuse and then,  asked him if he was having a difficult day?

He continued cursing and shouting but with slightly less vehemence,  my question had struck him somewhere deeply, I wasn’t playing the game that he had intended me  to play.

I  told him it was Ok, I just wanted to use the internet and promised not to  use any of his electricity.

Who Is Being Exploited?

He calmed down even more and his voice was now only slightly raised, as he started listing all the grievances he had about Western spiritual seekers coming to his town, how they are all crazy and have holes in their hearts and how many of them are exploiting his people and making money.

I apologized for any westerners who might have treated him badly in the past and explained how  sorry I was that he feels this way about all the foreign visitors.  I agreed that  he was correct, his town had turned into a spiritual supermarket, but getting angry and upset about it wasn’t really going to help anybody. His town had been a pilgrimage place a long time before all the westerners started showing up

Who Are You Really Dependent On?

I kept silent about the fact that his whole livelihood depended on these foreigners using his internet Cafe. It was obvious he hated all his customers with a passion so I didn’t want to upset him any further.

When it became time to pay I realized that my words had obviously had some impact, without me knowing he had secretly plugged me in and smiled broadly telling me  that he had given  me the electricity for free.

I had  previously decided that I would never return here but this last gesture made me change my mind.

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Do You Love Or Hate Your Customers?

This man is unconsciously ruining his business because of the way he treats his customers, He is caught in a catch 22 situation, he hates the people who he is serving but at the same time is dependent on them for his livelihood.  His anger is damaging his reputation and if he could just learn some way  to come to terms with this he would be a much happier man.

Its a good question to ask yourself whatever business you find yourself in.

If You Hate Your Customers You Only Have A Few Options

1. Get rid of them and find customers that you like

2. Change your attitude towards them

3. Change the business that you are in

4. Be miserable, suffer every day and potentially damage your health and all your relationships

Take Action And Take Responsibility

Personally I think the first three options are better than number four. If you ever feel like you are stuck always know that there are other options.  Of course  you must be  prepared to take action and shoulder the consequences. Most people only  find themselves stuck in number four because they are scared of change.

This is a post I wrote while I was traveling in India, it comes in two parts, you can read part two when I publish it in a few days

If you enjoyed this post please come and visit my blog, http://www.iandavidchapman.com

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