I have been a fan of  Hootsuite for the past 9 months.  Prior to the recent upgrade if you wanted to schedule updates to all your social networks you would simply click your twitter account and it would not only go to twitter but to every account you have linked to ping.fm. The most recent update to Hootsuite changes that game slightly but gives great flexibility I’ve been yearning for. You may notice that there is now a ping.fm account icon in addition to your other accounts. This feature now allows you to update a single twitter account or everything via ping.fm. In the past, I had no way to simply tweet.

Now we can do all of the following with Hootsuite:

• Schedule status updates for any one or any combination of your twitter accounts, facebook and/or LinkedIn account
• Schedule updates for everything via ping.fm

Yay Hootsuite!

One important thing I need to mention is that if you had any prior tweets set up to go via ping.fm prior to the Hootsuite upgrade, it will now only go to the twitter account. If you want them to go via ping.fm, you’ll need to redo them.

Also, I found out that if you want to change the time of a pending update, edit the time and date and then click “Send Now.” That doesn’t really send it now… it just SAVES your new time.  If you don’t click the “Send Now” button and you just close the popup window after changing the date and time, the date and time remains the same as before you adjusted it.

Hootsuite does one other amazing thing I thought I’d mention… AUTOmatically import your blog posts. Can it get any better?

Please share your secrets to using Hootsuite. We can all learn from each other.

Woot Woot to Hootsuite!

1. Start typing your message, when you get to the place you want to insert your friend’s name type the @ symbol followed by the person’s name. IMPORTANT: you can only tag people you are friends with.
2. When you start typing that person’s name (as long as there is NO space after the @ symbol (example @Laura Rubinstein) you will see your friends appear.
3. CLICK on that person’s name in order to activate the link. Note: if you do not click on the name in the list, the person’s name will NOT become a linked tag.
4. Then continue typing your update.

You may be wondering, WHY would you want to tag someone on facebook. Well, one of the nicest things you can do for someone is to acknowledge them. And one of the best ways to use facebook and other social media sites is to share positive comments about other people.  Tagging provides an means for introducing your tagged friend to others (your friends) as well since the tag is clickable it is easy for others to check out the profile of your friend.

WHEN to tag and when NOT to tag? That is the question! It is important to note that when you tag someone, your update (with the tag) shows up on their profile wall.

So when it comes to re-posting a friend’s posting, this is where the use of tagging differs on facebook from twitter.  On twitter people love to see their posts retweeted. On facebook if a bunch of people tagged your posts, you would see your post repeated everytime someone tagged you on your wall. That could be a bit cumbersome for the you as the tagged person. All tags show up in your News Feed as well as the tagged person’s feed.

Tag when you want the tagged person to know you’re “talking” about them. Otherwise, they may miss it.  Your other option is to go directly to their wall and write to them. They will definitely see it then and a note will show up on your wall too that you commented on their wall.  When you write on another’s wall you do have the option to set your privacy settings up so that does not appear on other’s News Feeds (Settings, Privacy, News Feed and Wall).

As always, I recommend keeping your postings positive and edifying of the people you are writing about. It’s a great way to share about your friend and his/her talents as well as any benefits you’ve received from connecting with others. You know what they say what you sow, you reap.  Happy Tagging.

Your fan page reveals a certain style, attitude and value that you offer your market. I believe in making it as easy and obvious for your clientele to know how to connect with you and your offerings on your fan page.

Part of making a fan page clientele friendly is providing links to your other social media sites and your website.

There are several ways to accent your fan page with images.

First, is the fan page wall picture. This image can be as large as 200 pixels by 600 pixels. That’s much longer than the average photo that gets imported. You can have any graphic designer create an image this size that portrays your brand. Some examples of this include:

• http://www.facebook.com/BrandNewBrandYou
• http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=chocolate&init=quick#/pages/CHOCOLATE/68149076917?ref=search&sid=757621179.645624620..1

The next option for adding icons to your fan page wall is by utilizing the Static FBML application.

To add a badge to your fan page wall, there are two requirements before moving forward:
1. Make sure you’ve installed the FBML application
2. Make sure your image is the right size (no more than 160 pixels wide)
3. Load your image into a photo album on facebook or somewhere else online (like your web server).
4. Obtain the link (URL) of the image online. If you’ve loaded it into facebook, you can obtain the right URL by doing the following:
a. view the image and right click on it,
b. select Copy Link Location
c. paste this link into a web browser
d. copy the new URL in the web page that displays the image.

To make the image appear on your fan page wall, follow these steps:

1. Go to your fan page and click Edit Page (just below your fan page picture)
2. Click the pencil icon on the right of the FBML application in your list of applications.
3. Add the Title you want displayed above your image/icon/logo
4. In the FBML area, paste the following code, replacing the items in between the ” to reflect your image. Note you can change or delete the width and height information.

<img src=”http://www.YOUR-IMAGE-URL.com/IMAGE-NAME.jpg&#8221; title=”YOUR IMAGE TITLE/NAME” width=”130″ height=”130″><br>

EXAMPLE:  Here is an actual example you can use to test that this works if you can’t make the above work on your own.

BOX TITLE: ISMA Certified Social Media Consultant/Strategist

FBML – static badge – Strategist
<img src=”http://www.ismaconnects.org/resource/resmgr/images/isma_cs.jpg&#8221; title=”Certified Social Media Strategist” width=”126″ height=”126″><br>

-OR-

FBML – Consultant with hyperlink to the International Social Media Association
<a href=”http://www.ismaconnects.org&#8221; target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.ismaconnects.org/resource/resmgr/images/isma_cc.jpg&#8221; title=”Certified Social Media Consultant” width=”126″ height=”126″ /></a><br >

Finally, You can also add icons to your regular facebook profile by following the same instructions and utilizing the Profile HTML or Extended Info (preferred) application for your profile.

Good luck and Good branding.

Coach Laura