Online social networking

A New Way To Look At F.A.C.E.B.O.O.K.

The creation of an acronym for the word F.A.C.E.B.O.O.K. was developed to help you look at it through new eyes as a good way to be transparent and successful on Facebook. Share in this article are a few tips to help you in your journey of learning how to use Facebook to grow your business.

One way that you can think of Facebook is as a business component that is an extension of your business. As an extension of your business, Facebook can help you reach others online that you may not have had the opportunity to reach.

Below is the acronym to help you remember how you can use F.A.C.E.B.O.O.K. in unique ways:

  • F: Friendly should always be the way you choose to be positive with others via Facebook. Even if someone doesn’t treat you respectably, you shouldn’t respond negatively. As a business owner, your online presence is very important and how you treat others need to reflect this.
  • A: Access to you is something you clients and business partners like to have when doing business with you. Using some of the communication applications that Facebook provides is a way to build in accessibility. Doing a search in the Application of Facebook will render many helpful application such as Social RSS or Clobby.
  • C: Connecting with your mentors, clients and business partner via Facebook means that you are able to have an open dialog or communication stream with them. This could allow you to attract new clients or business associates.
  • E: Encouraging others is another way to grow your circle of influence on Facebook because being positive draws others to you. As you encourage others in a positive way then you too will receive encourage from those you are connected to via Facebook.
  • B: Building your reputation online in your industry is another good example of how you can use Facebook. As you connect with others and share your information, your reputation with grow.
  • O: Opportunity to network is one of the main reason to use Facebook. As you network, keep in mind that being pushy can be seen as negative. Show respect to others and get their permission before you blast them with information about you and your products.
  • O: Overflowing goodwill is a great thing because you will be given the opportunity to give to others through your overage. Such as giving away freebies to those who “like” your fanpage on Facebook.
  • K: Knowledge-sharing is important to growing your circle of influence online. By sharing your knowledge with others, you can become known as a subject-matter-expert which can help you cultivate a speaking career.

Hopefully, these tips will encourage you to implement Facebook in your business if you haven’t already. If you have implemented it in your business, maybe you learned something new that you can do to use Facebook to grow your business.

5 Tips To Add Facebook Connectivity To Your Website

Growing your business online using Facebook is an important step for business owners. With the growth and changes of the Facebook environment, it can be confusing at times. Well, I want to provide you with a few tips to help you navigate the waters of Facebook.

These tips can help you grow your website traffic along with encouraging people to connect with you Facebook account as a friend or a fan on your Fanpage. As a business owner you can then communicate about your products or services to those you are connected with via Facebook.

Below are a few tips that will help you implement Facebook to grow your business:

  • Connect Facebook Fanpage to Twitter. Allows you to have your fanpage automatically update your Twitter account when it is updated.
  • Add a Like button to your website. The Like button lets a user share your content with friends on Facebook. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to your website.
  • Add recommend option to website. The Recommendations plugin shows personalized recommendations to your users. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the plugin can display personalized recommendations whether or not the user has logged into your site.
  • Add Like Box to your website. The Like Box is a social plugin that enables Facebook Page owners to attract and gain Likes from their own website.
  • Share Live Stream to your website. The Live Stream plugin lets users visiting your site or application share activity and comments in real time. The Live Stream Box works best when you are running a real-time event, like live streaming video for concerts, speeches, or webcasts, live Web chats, webinars, massively multiplayer games.

These are just a few of the ways you can integrate Facebook into your website. Did I miss any? If you know of any other ways to integrate Facebook into a website, please feel free to share.

Converting from Ning to BuddyPress

In case you haven’t heard, the news was just released that Ning is making some major changes. Those changes include no more free network, Oh No! According to Techcrunch’s article entitled, “Ning’s Bubble Bursts: No More Free Networks, Cuts 40% Of Staff“, networks will either have to convert to a paid version or migrate to a different service.

For long-time Ning network owners, this can present a problem, but if you plan well, you can come up with a great solution. One of these solutions is to migrate over to BuddyPress to create your social network. One of the best things about this combination is that it is still free.

BuddyPress uses a combination of WordPress MU and a plugin called BuddyPress to allow you to create a social network very similar to websites such as Facebook, Ning and other networking environments. If you are technically inclined and understand the WordPress MU environment, then this would be a great solution for you. If you find that you are not technically inclined and would like to migrate from Ning to WordPress/BuddyPress, then contact me to discuss your options.

Special Note: Single WordPress can be used with BuddyPress. Just know that your users can’t make individual blogs. To find out more, click here.