Social Media: Facebook Etiquette

Like many people I get a feeling of dread when I begin to look into how social media works and what it is I have to do to use it effectively to grow my Internet presence and my business. I literally get nauseous just thinking about it. It’s worse than drinking cod liver oil. I get this distinct feeling that if I make a misstep,  kaboom! It’ll be all over but the crying and I’ll never, ever do anything on the World Wide Web again. You’ll find me in the classified section of the local newspaper, cowering in the upper right hand corner. Am I being a bit over dramatic? I don’t think so. I am sure I am not alone in feeling totally overwhelmed with how to make my brand, my business known on the Internet. I know if I can slay this dragon I will discover a gold mine just waiting for me without ever having to leave home.

I decided that to face my fears was the best for what ails me so I started a few weeks ago to blog about what I was learning about social media just poking around the Internet. As I wrote I realized this social media stuff is a deep, deep well of knowledge and that in reality the more I learn, the more it’ll help me to discover the gold mine at the bottom of it, that so many Internet marketers are finding. I’m going to from now on (well until I get tired or bored) turn this blog into one about my efforts to understand social media. As I learn, I’ll share with you.

Today, I’ve been reading about Facebook etiquette. People use Facebook for two distinct reasons – staying in touch with friends and staying in touch and building relationships with people who are going to buy whatever it is they are promoting. I use it for both and love being able to reconnect with old pals even if they do remind me that it’s been 25 years since we last saw each other or they ask questions like – is that a recent photo of you??? Still love you guys but it brings me to my first rule of etiquette:

1 Don’t come across as surprised if someone looks young and certainly don’t say how long its been since we’ve seen each other with numerical references. I immediately looked older in the mirror and for a brief moment consider Botox.

2. Poking? I have never figured this one out so my rule…no poking anyone you wouldn’t poke in person. Oh, that does sound rude…Well thank Facebook for that.  Ask yourself what your Mother would think and I bet a Facebook poke won’t be something your friends will ever get from you.

3. Make it marginally hard on identity thieves to steal your identity. Remove the year of your birth. Your friends know how old you are if you’ve been truthful and people you do business with don’t need to know and as long as you keep the pacifier or your dentures out of sight in meetings they don’t care.

4. Is it all about you? My sister gave me a keychain once that I still use. It states that it’s all about ME, ME, ME! Well, yes that maybe true but on Facebook try to curb the selfishness and really make an attempt to care what other people are doing. So many people post but you never see them engaging in conversations through comments on other people’s posts. It’s not only selfish but you are missing the boat and passing up an opportunity to meet new people who might get into the conversation with you. If when I had asked for help on a project one day last August  and my Broke Wives Club partner, Donna, ignored that request and passed me by she’d still be crying in her spilled milk. Instead, she’s creating the most amazing club for women the world will ever know.

5. Show yourself. My new rule – Let me see the whites of your eyes. Post a photo – a recent one!  I’m going to go to my page and ask people to do this who I’ve let connect with me without one and say – Face up to it, you need a photo?

6. Take time to say hello. A new Facebook friend of mine, Joanna Ellis (http://www.facebook.com/joannalellis) who by the way will be on a panel of business experts on The Attitude Shift in June sent me this great advice. Yes, because she and I introduced ourselves on Facebook, she’ll get exposure on an over the top, fun, entertaining ( am I going overboard?)  podcast and I’ll get to interview a great guest on the show.

“One thing that bothers me is when a person sends me a friend request without a note or message. I mean you just don’t walk up to people on the streets and yell “FRIEND.” You give them a compliment or you introduce yourself and start a conversation. So why would it be any different on a social media site. Most of the time those friend requests get ignored because they’re so impersonal. If you really want to be someone’s friend on a social media site. Start off on the right foot by making a personal connection. That’s how I like to be treated : )

Joanna is right. I haven’t always done that but I plan on starting. So if you get a request from me and I haven’t added a note ignore me. Sometimes the message comes right after so watch for it. Life may never be the same for you without my connection but I need to learn.

This could turn into a book if I’m not careful so for today that’s all on Facebook etiquette. If you’ve got some rules you’d like to see on Facebook, leave a comment.

Being Hypnotized for Real – How to Embed a Video on Your Blog

This week we had a podcast where Donna volunteered to be hypnotized by comedy hypnotist, Micheal Grady. Halfway through the broadcast he began the session. Donna set up a camera to catch the session on video. It was so wild – she actually was hypnotized despite her protests all the week before that there was no way Micheal would be able to hypnotize her especially over the radio. I’m glad she taped it. If she hadn’t had the video people may have been skeptical. You can see for you own eyes – it worked.

She posted it on our You Tube Channel. Overnight we had already had 181 views. By the end of the day when I looked at the stats and data link on the channel the video had ranked in the top 100 most viewed videos of the day under Science and Technology. Today it had moved up to number 60. All without us doing anything but posting it on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

I wanted to know who to increase the number of views to move it up even farther so I stumbled upon a great series of teaching videos by a guy named Brian Blue – check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDzthXfbFJ0

He showed how to embed the video into my wordpress blog so that’s why I’m writing this today; to practice. You will see the hypnosis video right here.He says this is a great way to increase traffic to your video.

BTW – we only got 10 minutes of the session on camera the rest is on the podcast so if you’re wondering what happened listen in. We’ve already booked Micheal Grady back on the show on April 7 so if you want to be hypnotized and are willing to video tape the session let me know. We’ll be choosing a few people to make that happen.

Comments: Social Media Tip of the Day

As I’ve been poking around today to find a new tip for this post I noticed that a ton of people on my Facebook page are connecting with my friends and other people. I mean a whole lot of people are busy finding people to connect with and groups and fan pages to join. That seems to be where it stops though. What?… is there a prize being given out for having the most friends on Face book? Not likely.

Sure Facebook like other social media sites is excellent for getting your product promoted, and connecting with old pals that you may never find the time to stay connected to otherwise but I realized today that all these people are missing  a great opportunity to reach other new people that may want what they have to offer.

Comments! It’s so simple. You comment on someone’s post and all their friends see it. That may mean they click through and look at your info and fan pages and want to get involved, do business with you or maybe you will just make a new friend. I don’t feel you have to be in the same vicinity with someone to get to know them. Just look at my Broke Wives Club partner and I as an example. We have never met in person. We live on opposite ends of the country but we are creating a pretty amazing club and it all came about from a connection we made on a social media site.

I don’t see enough people commenting on other people’s post. I’m not saying make comments on every post – be choosy – if you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say it for the sake of saying it but do pause for a second and say to yourself… do I have a valid, funny or interesting comment to make?

Another great place to leave comments is You Tube. Check this channel out – http://www.youtube.com/user/thebrokewivesclub .  Someone left a video comment on one of the videos here.  You can even do video responses on other peoples videos and that means that you’re now connected to those videos. It goes viral and like a fly that gets stuck in the car, you go along for the ride. Great exposure for you for a few words or a short video clip that you can do in a flash.

You could also take the time and see who is making the other comments both on You Tube and Facebook. It may surprise you and you stumble upon somebody who will rock your world or some cool fan page they belong to.

I find it incredible who I meet through this medium, so by making some comments I may just find myself connected to The Dali Lama, the owners of Twitter or Beyonce. It could happen.

Quick Social Media Tips

This week I’m doing one off social media tips I discover just poking around. These posts will be short and sweet but maybe something valuable for you. Today counts for yesterday and today since I missed Monday.

Tip #1: I was poking around Facebook today trying to figure out  how to increase the number of people coming to our fan page  – fan page widget for our web site! Great.

Tip #2: Then I had been wondering how to invite certain people to certain fan pages, events and that kind of thing without having to click through all 525 friends I have right now. Voila! I can create lists and choose who I want to be on that list. Tonight I did a list for my film contacts and one for our radio show guests who have either been on the show or are booked to come on. Simple. Check and make sure I have you on there if you belong in one of those lists and let me know if I oops passed you over. Tomorrow I’ll play and have fun creating other lists like self improvement friends, broke wives club friends, friends who knew me back in the day… or on second thought not them…..

Hey, come be my Facebook pal and from there join my fan pages. It’ll be fun. http://www.facebook.com/siobhan.shaw

Social Media Lesson Day 5

I’m once again taking a look at Marketwire’s social media workout they have put out for free this week . I’m interested in how to make the most of Facebook and although I do feel I’ve got it down pat, I perhaps am missing a few things that may help.

If you have a FB fan page on the left side there is something called Insights which gives you some idea of who is interacting with you. You can discover how old they are, their sex, whether they post comments, links, or simply click ‘like’. We just started our fan page for The Broke Wives Club this week so we don’t have many stats but what was interesting is that the people who did come were women over 45 years of age. Something to keep in mind and check against say the stats for the radio show or if we can the You Tube channel to see if that is just a quirky thing or reality. Are our fans over 45?

Another things I wanted to check out today was how to get more exposure for my blog and The Broke Wives Club blog. I found a number of articles and blogs about just that. One suggested sites like Digg. You join and fill out a profile. Check! You can invite friends. I asked Donna, my partner at The Broke Wives Club to join. I’ll have to spend more time finding others to invite. I don’t have a gmail or yahoo account with all my contacts in it so I have to do something different which will take some time.

Then I submitted a video and a blog post from the Broke Wives Club. Wrote a few comments about each and chose a category. Now self improvement or womens empowerment aren’t options so I tried ‘people’ and ‘offbeat’. Let’s see how that all plays out. I am thinking that the videos will be something that Traffic Geyser handles and submits to Digg automatically. We’ll see next week. I’ll blog more about that next week. What I’ve found is that by committing myself to learning more about social media this week I did! I’ve decided to keep this going. At least for another week or so. So stay with me – subscribe to my blog and follow along so together we can be welcome social media-ers.

Social Media Lesson Day 4

I know it’s just such an exciting title I’ve chosen – not -  but I wanted  you to quickly catch on that there were corresponding posts that came before and come after this one. However in the world of social media, content and the titles of the content matter. It’s like me when I go out to grab a coffee in my sweats, no make-up and really bad hair versus the day I’ve got it all going on and looking like I’m a lady who lunches. I get more attention when I’m gussied up.

That brings me to keywords. I need to learn more about how to figure out this keyword stuff. Ok, so I get that keywords are crucial to generating traffic to your site but how do you know what keywords work? Let’s investigate. I’ll be right back….

I had to look up a page from a course I’m taking with Mike Michalowicz – who happens to be, get this … The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. A resounding no to my pal Crystal who asked me if he was a bathroom tissue rep , he doesn’t sell TP – he teaches business people to create revenue generating companies using the power of the Internet.He is also been a guest on our show and is returning March 3-2010.

The one trick he showed me was to use Google Analytics, which I never did really spend any time figuring out so here goes. This is what I learned so far.

1. There’s a tool that gives you keyword ideas. You can chose a couple of options. I chose to enter www.thebrokewivesclub.com. It takes a minute or so as they analyze the site.

2. What does it really do? It analyzes what keywords people are using to find your site. That gives you a leg up because you can write content that reflects those keywords. In essence you can give the reader what they are looking for.

3. Now it’s time to analyze… I’m looking at it and there are no instructions on how to use it on the site. Each phrase has a box next to it – some all green, some green and white. Those boxes show you the phrases that have high advertiser competition. An example for our site is : how to make money. It gets over 800000 searches  but everybody and their brother is using that phrase so chances of you being seen is less than slight.

I do remember Mike saying you want to look for keyword phrases that actually have some white space in the little boxes next to them. Why? Because they have less competition. So it’s more likely your site may be seen when someone searched those keywords.

What I need to do is see what ones have some white space and high traffic. The best choice would be motivational sayings. Now I know I may be able to fight my way to the front page of the Google search engine if I have some blogs or pages on my site with that phrase. I know Mike puts together blogs using the phrase as his title. He always seems to get on Googles front page with it.

That’s pretty cool. Enough for today. There looks to be a whole lot more you can do with this process but this is a short blog.

Social Media Lesson Day 3.

Yesterday I left off saying I would tackle Traffic Geyser. Not today. TG! ( that’s not short for Traffic Geyser in case you were confused) One of the companies I work with wants me to have a lesson with the people at Traffic Geyser next week so I’ll hold off.

I was actually afraid to tackle that one. That’s funny because the show I’m doing tonight is with Dr. TC North and it’s about fear. Well now I’ve got a question for him. I love how that works out.

Ok, back to learning. Today I followed the tips from a free course put out by Marketwire called SM 10X30. It’s a fun concept as they take you through what they call a work out and today’s lesson was to strengthen your core.

They first suggested to update my profile on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin – already done… that was easy .. next? Next, they said I should create a google public profile - huh? a what? Calm down there’s a link.

It was actually entertaining to create it. One question it asks is what is your super power? You’ll have to read my profile to find out mine. I like sites with a sense of humor. We need more of that. That took about 20 minutes to play around. I did have to go and look at it and revise it so it looked like an intelligent person created it. I had posted that the school I go to nowadays was the ’school of get a life’ and when I looked at my profile  that was front and center under my name. So just a suggestion, double check what your profile looks like when it’s done. Of course, some people could leave it under their name but perhaps not if they want to come across as a professional. I’m all for being authentic however I’m also brighter than a burnt out light bulb and know what I can and cannot post.

One of the other social media core strengthening exercises was to make sure you joined Twellow.  Again -huh? It’s the Twitter Yellow Pages and if you already have a Twitter account you should be on there – it’s a confusing site but I did manage to pretty up my profile and add a few things like the link to this blog. It says they have over 2 Billion, yes that’s a ‘B’ followers.

That’s day 2 and what I’m seeing is that I need to have a file with all the sites I have, my user names and passwords otherwise what’s the use? I’m sure to forget they even exist if I don’t do that. Setting a schedule to update the profiles on all of them would be a bright idea as well.

Day 4 tomorrow – wow this is going fast.. I may have to consider a 2nd week.

Social Media Lesson Day 2

We have a goal to encourage 10000 people to become fans of The Broke Wives Club by March 15 – yes that’s 2010! (Dream big or not at all.) Well one way to do that is to have our videos go ‘viral’ where people who see them can’t wait to share them with their friends and well you get the picture. The end result is that potentially millions of people see them. Not too shabby.

OK,  so we created a series of videos, no not just one.. again dream big….and tomorrow I’ll learn to use Traffic Geyser to get them out to several sites that help them go viral. In studying up on Traffic Geyser in preparation to do this I learned that on these videos there is room for comments – written and video.

Written I assumed but had never heard of doing a video response so I asked one of our mentors to leave one. He did! … and it was amazing!  What now happens is that video response with his name, message and web site goes with our video where ever it gets spread to. It didn’t cost him a dime and if our video goes viral he gets to go along for the ride and get the exposure.  What a marketing tool and so simple.

Tomorrow, I learn to drive people to our site with Traffic Geyser….

Learning More about Social Media

I saw a link last night on my Facebook page – http://tinyurl.com/ygdaot4 – which got me to thinking about learning more about social media. Like so many people I haven’t taken a course and mostly fly by the seat of my pants learning little bits here and there; trying stuff out and seeing what works and what doesn’t. I know that I’ve only scratched the surface and although people ask me to help them and I can do the basics, I wanted to learn even more and really feel like I know my way around this social media circus.

Here goes… for the next 5 days , I’ll investigate new ways of using social media and blog about it.

Today I’m learning how to make the most of my blog and the blog we have for The Broke Wives Club.

I use WordPress for my blog which has been set up for several months and the experts say you should blog daily or a least 2-3 times a week on a schedule. Well, I’m a bit slack on that but my Broke Wives Club partner, Donna Butler is fairly decent with posting her blog regularly.

So my first question is, can I link our blogs? Can’t find that answer, next…
Next I wanted to find out if I could link videos and in my quest to find that out I stumbled upon how to post my Twitter page on the sidebar of my blog. Now that was easy. Word press gives you a video tutorial which was easy to take notes on and then follow through. You simply click on appearence on the left sidebar, then widgets, then drag the twitter widget over to the left side and drop it onto the space called the sidebar, give it a title, add your twitter user name. Done.  It says you can do multiple twitter names but I added The Broke Wives Club and then neither showed up. So I just left it with the one. If anyone knows how to get two or more twitter links to stay let me know.

I did kill two birds with one stone though. Since I always post the links to The Broke Wives Club You Tube Channel on my Twitter account and I now have my Twitter posts showing up on my sidebar I don’t figure I need to learn how to post a video. I did see that you could upgrade and pay money to post video on your blog but that won’t be something I’ll be doing.

That took me about half an hour to figure out so I’m off until tomorrow.

Reset the Spam in your Life

I haven’t been writing much lately so found that I had a lot of spam in my comment box. WordPress is amazing at determining what are real comments and what aren’t but as I was cleaning them out I noticed that there was a spam reset button. Interesting, as today I also saw a video contest asking what would you do if you had your life to live over. A reset of sorts.

What would you do? Tough question. Should I even tackle that today??? Aren’t I just setting myself up to feel miserable as I start to consider all the regrets I’ve had in my life , all the wrong turns I’ve taken, all the mistakes I’ve made or the poor judgment I’ve had? Sure if I let my thoughts go there. I could just have fun wondering what life might have been like if I chose a different school to go to or picked a different spouse or simply made bacon and eggs for breakfast on Monday instead of oatmeal.

Then the question comes up, well what about fate? Was I not destined to be writing this blog at this time in this place? Is there not some greater reason why I am who I am and where I am right now?

Well that’ll have to wait for another post… ’cause the doorbell just rang and dinner is here. I have to run and set the table or is that reset the table???

Merry Christmas!

What’s in a Name?

I’ve been busy the last few months working on building our club, The Broke Wives Club with my partner, Donna Butler and haven’t written anything on this blog but today I’ve got something to say that I feel matters. The Broke Wives Club has developed quite a following through our radio show, The Attitude Shift, and so much of it has been amazingly positive but we do get comments from people saying the name invites negativity and bad vibes and therefore success will not find us or our members. I strongly disagree. First, that doesn’t seem to be the case with our club. We are developing a strong following and good things are occurring in our lives and those of our members. As I say to friends, the club has legs… more than any other group I’ve been involved in. It’s incredible to watch.

One world renown motivational speaker I was talking to recently said that the unconscious mind doesn’t have a  sense of humor and that if you are a member of The Broke Wives Club your mind will keep you in that broken mindset and you will remain broken. He feels that you will never break free of that thought pattern. I say, tell that theory to creators of The Biggest Loser which is a huge success. What about  TV shows like, Lost and Fear Factor? They have built successful franchises on negative names but it is the positive vibes from the people involved, the passion they have for what they are promoting, and the positive actions they take that create their reality. If the mind doesn’t have a sense of humor tell me why comedians like Robin Williams, Whoppi Goldberg and Jim Carrey are all incredibly successful? They all have self-deprecating humor but it doesn’t negatively affect their lives as it is what they truly believe about themselves that matters. Their humor is entertaining and the mind can tell the difference between entertainment and truth, don’t you think?

The name means nothing in my estimation but what matters is the message and the intention behind the organization. The  Broke Wives Club was created with the intention of helping women from around the world go from broke to STOKED! It is being driven toward success by the passion of it’s founders and mentors.

You may be attracted to the club by the name because you’re feeling low, you’re feeling broken, you’re looking for a place to hang your hat where there are others in similar difficult situations to you right now that understand where you’re coming from. That’s what attracts you. The marketers of Burger King’s, Angry burger are expecting you to be attracted to their new burger because you’re angry, frustrated with the way things are going in the economy right now. Same concept.

What matters is that when you get involved in the club and begin to listen to the show and hear the inspirational messages and positive steps you can take to create a more successful existence for yourself , the name pales in comparison to the energy that is a result of the changes to how you think.

Donna shares in her blog, http://blog.thebrokewivesclub.com ,  her day to day struggles but what she also shares with her readers are the things she does to overcome these negative twists and turns in her life by changing her attitude, her thoughts , the beliefs and patterns that have become commonplace in her life. As you follow her blog you will see that she is learning new ways of thinking and being to break out of the dire straights that come her way and instead of getting mired down in misery she diligently works towards a better life.

We can all work toward a better life, we just need to become aware that we have the power to make that happen. Take action .