Still hassling with changes to your Facebook timeline cover changes and don’t know how to proceed. Have you put it off hoping that the Facebook bunny with fix in the night!!

Need a graphic artist or just some one to do a quick fix. It’s not too late…

Thanks to Denise Wakeman …..AKA The Blog Squad. 

Just follow this link to find a list of resources that are willing and able to assist you in your project. DO get caught with your pixels dangling!!

Connect with Denise on FB http://facebook.com/BlogSquad

If you feel that your social media marketing efforts could use a HUGE boost, good news! My friend, Mari Smith, has a brand new book out today called The New Relationship Marketing: How To Build A Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web.Mari is one of the foremost leaders in the social media world, with particular expertise in Facebook marketing.

You’ll love this book – it’s as if Mari is sitting by your side gently guiding you through the maze of do’s and don’ts in order to create much better results with your marketing.

Go pick up a copy of Mari’s new book today – available anywhere books are sold, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in Kindle and Nook versions.

PLUS, good news! When you get your copy of the book, you also get to attend Mari’s free four-part webinar miniseries where she’ll walk you through the principles in her book. Find details of how to register here: Relationship Marketing Webinars.

P.S. In true Mari-style, you get to register for the free four-part webinar series on the “honor system!” That is, you do not need to scan/fax/email/snail mail any proof of purchase before you get access to the online classes. Once you order your book, just register here and that’s it!

Last Friday, at 7:30am, I recieved a frantic call from a client. Her Facebook account had been hacked. Talk about a wake up call!

This was and still is really terrible.

The “cyber criminals” had infiltrated her Facebook profile, and then changed the email address on the account and the password. Once they had access to the account, they then sent out emails to everyone asking for money. This is known as phishing and Facebook has named it the “419scam”. First they hack your account and then they disquise themselves as you and chat with your friends and send out the emails. Western Union has posted a warning about the scam on their website, and they continue to educate their employees on this and other scams.

I immediately posted the scam from my personal profile page on Facebook, on Twitter and various other sources.

Once we realized what had happened, I sent Facebook an email regarding her behalf. There are steps that Facebook sent both of us to follow, but since her Facebook account now has a new email address and password, we are not able to access the account to make the changes. It is frustrating, to say the least.

What has happened since last Friday is:
1. The account is now locked and there is no more activity on the account.
2. Contacted Yahoo, but to no avail 
3. Contacted Facebook again on behalf of my client
4. Changed passwords on other accounts and recommend you do the same

If you think your account or a friend’s account had been hacked, go immediately to Facebook’s Help Center.

This is a very easy, but important tool to use when using Facebook as a marketing tool. Not only should you regularily post updates to your fan page, but also send updates to your fans. The updates can be an extended version of your status updates. This has a two-fold outcome.

1. It allows you to keep your fans abreast of news other than through the newsfeed
2. Any unread updates will also show up on their profile on the top right corner

This allows others to see the updates as well and perhaps become a fan of your page.

Here are the easy instructions on how to do this…..

1. Go to your fan page
2. Click on “edit page”
3. On the left-hand side you will see a number of administrative tasks
4. Click on “Marketing”

This will then open another task page in which you can choose to market your page.

5. Click on “Send an Update”.

Once you have done that, it is up to you if you would like to target a specific audience or share it will all of your fans.

The Crossroads: Social or Media?

As social networking has soared to become the largest voluntary behavior this side of teeth brushing, the money guys have shown up on the scene – right on cue. By all accounts, social media is a gold rush, with companies and consultants of all sizes and descriptions jockeying for a piece of a pie estimated to be $1.6 billion in the U.S. alone.

So we’re faced with a dilemma: do we want to focus on the social, or focus on the media? By my reckoning, from a business perspective we’re tilting toward the latter.

Thus, I’ve identified the 5 Dangerous Realities of Social Media for Business.

1. We’re Strategizing Wrong

Every time I hear the words “twitter strategy” I want to smack someone in the head. By definition, Twitter is not a strategy. It is a tactic, to be incorporated into a much broader social media strategy that in turn serves the overall company objectives.

We have to stop wrapping ourselves around the axle about the tools. They will change. They always do. How’s your Second Life Strategy working out?

The key is to develop sound, tools-agnostic programs that focus on how your company can “be” social, not how it should “do” social.

2. We’re Integrating Wrong

Social media is an ingredient, not an entree. Adding social media frosting to the cake you already own should be first objective. And let’s stop putting the cool cart before the uncool horse. Why are you worrying about your Facebook page if your email program is inadequate?

Even in the best case scenario, social media marketing alone isn’t going to create legions of customers out of thin air. Especially because the majority of people that interact with companies on the social Web are already familiar with those companies. Social participation is almost entirely opt-in. Thus, you are mostly preaching to the choir. That doesn’t invalidate social media marketing, it just positions it largely as a loyalty, retention, and lead nurturing vehicle, rather than as a pile of magic beans.

Social media is the great tiebreaker in the sport of modern business.

3. We’re Executing Wrong

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters, but they are incredibly important letters. Recognize that you earn the right to promote in social media by being helpful first.

This necessitates that companies focus less on crafting cheeky and concise outbound bon mots, and focus more on responding to customers and prospects with speed and authenticity. Answer the social telephone first, and then worry about making cold calls.

There’s plenty of business out there on the social Web for companies to capitalize upon. But it doesn’t often come from firing off your 140-character press release every four hours. Instead, business comes from having your antenna up, and finding opportunities to inform, delight, educate, and entertain.

The Opportunity Economy is very real, but you have to embrace the paradoxical notion that social media results are often accrued over the long haul, as you engage with prospects and current customers a few at a time.

4. We’re Staffing Wrong

To have enough antenna up to find and capitalize on all of the real-time opportunities presented by the social Web (see this month’s nominees for NOW Revolutionary of the month for amazing case studies), you need to get many more people in your company involved socially.

It’s not just about marketing. It’s about social business design, baking social elements into the daily life of all corners of your organization. (Great post by Olivier Blanchard on the difference between these approaches).

In most companies today, social is a job. Somebody(ies) is the social media person, centralizing and managing listening, responding, analyzing and other tasks. That will change as companies recognize social’s importance and the need to have more antenna up than one person or a few people can provide.

You know what else used to be a job? Typing. Watch Mad Men. There was a whole room of women that just typed. Every day. But now, typing is a skill. History will repeat. Social media needs to be a skill, not a job.

5. We’re Measuring Wrong

Social is incredibly measurable. We showcase more than 25 viable success metrics in my book The NOW Revolution. But the problem is we’re too often focused on numbers that simply aggregate. They don’t measure behavior, or any type of financial reward.

Why do we do this? Why do we pay attention to things like Facebook fans and Twitter followers when they don’t measure behavior? We need to focus on activating people in social, not just collecting them. That means a newfound emphasis on calls to action, integrated metrics, correlation studies, and smart attribution.

Work Harder

As I look at the 5 Dangerous Realities of Social Media for Business, I see a common thread. All of these contemporary (and hopefully temporary) shortcomings – Strategy, Integration, Execution, Staffing, Measurement all have the same root cause.

Quite simply, we’re just not working hard enough at social. In every respect, doing it well is substantially more involved than doing it poorly. And for now many companies are either unwilling to make that level of commitment, or uncertain as to its payback potential.

Nobody promised social media would be easy, just that it would be awesome.

Are you ready to put the effort into making it about social, not media?

You can read the original post by Jay Baer’s blog Convince and Convert.

Just when you start feeling comfortable with the latest round of changes to Facebook, along comes another series of new features that can throw you into a tailspin. Like me.

For example, I voluntarily converted to the new format rather than waiting until later this month when everyone will be forced to convert. But that places an ugly photo ribbon right at the top of my fan page.

That’s prime real estate, darn it! Most of the photo ribbons I’ve seen on other people’s pages include a series of five unrelated photos that show fan page owners posing with people they’ve met at events. The photos are usually poorly cropped, too dark, or so small that people looking at the page can’t identify who’s in the photo.

Nor do they care.

But I’ve figured out a way to manipulate that photo ribbon so I use it to promote my business and bring visitors to my website, blog, Twitter profile and even product pages–without being obnoxious.

You can check it out by going to http://www.facebook.com/SerenityVAServices

While you’re there, click on the Like button at the top of the page. Then click on each of the five photos and see what happens.

Knowing how to use the photo ribbon to help your visitors and to promote–and understanding what you can do with all the other new Facebook features–will give you incredible power that you never knew you had.

Three years ago, when I was a guest on  the webinar “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook,” with Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound and we  walked participants through Facebook and demonstrated how to use the site to attract friends and fans, join the conversation, find your target audience and make people love you.

But that was three years ago. So much has changed on Facebook that some of the strategies we recommended back then can actually waste hours of your precious time due to the numerous changes on Facebook.

I’ve fielded so many questions about Facebook’s new look and navigation that Joan and I are hosting a webinar at 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 15. It’s called “12 More Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on the New & Improved Facebook.”

If you participated three years ago, or you’re confused by any aspect of Facebook, you owe it to yourself to take this crash course to learn about the new tools and how to use them to promote your expertise.

We’re even going to be sharing a cool new tool I discovered that will help you find other people’s fan pages where you can post helpful content to their walls, talk directly to their thousands of fans, and get a link back to your own fan page–without spamming.

Register here, even if the time is inconvenient for you because I’m recording it, and Joan will send you the replay link and all the handouts.

Privacy Matters

Facebook seems unable to stem the user privacy spill. Matters seemed to grow more serious this week when the WSJ reported that apps (including Farmville) were accessing user data even if the users had requested the strictest privacy settings. Three of the top ten apps were transmitting data on the user’s friends to outside companies. The blog Ars Technica provided a rundown of the latest problems and what they mean. Facebook also had to temporarily disable LOLapps last week, after the apps were found to be sending internal Facebook user IDs to third parties.

Facebook’s privacy situation has reached the point where several blogs are wondering if the current Facebook business model is even compatible with current user privacy expectations. The blog 10 Golden Rules wrote that Facebook privacy is becoming an oxymoron and Mark Evans suggested that Facebook should just give up on privacy altogether; anything that goes onto Facebook should be regarded as fully public. A Google engineer has developed a Chrome plug-in that blocks all 3rd party access to Facebook data but another Google development demonstrated how the privacy line was still being drawn – Google had to discontinue the practice of using StreetView cars to collect Wi-Fi network data.

( This posting was originally done by http://www.whosbloggingwhat.com/ on October 21, 2010.

I can across a business page on Facebook today that is quite nice. Not only aesthetically, but also from a business standpoint.

I get quite a few emails from artist, songwriters and other internet business owners on who to use Facebook to promote their businesses.

The list is too long, but there is a short list of some of many tools on the internet in which to promote you business.

1. Facebook Events
2. Facebook pages
3. Online event calendars
   • Yelp.com, Upcoming.org, gary’s guide.org (just to name a few)
4. Press release services such as ExpertClick.com
5. ArtistData.com

What stood out to me about this page, is that they included their menu. A fantastic idea and a great way in which to promote your restaurant. Chef’s, foodie and others, this is a shining example on how to get it done….brava!

If you are looking for more ways to promote your product or services, look no more.

You can purchase a copy of a webinar that was earlier this week featuring Joan Stewart, 50+ Places Online to Promote Your Live or Virtual Events to Reach Your Target Market & Pull Sell-out Crowds

Social media has become a needed aspect of most marketing plans. However, tracking the Return on Investment, including the time invested, has not been easy. That is until now. On August 25, 2010 SocialEye was launched. Overdrive Interactive has produced a comprehensive social media measurement dashboard. With outlets for marketing, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Buzzup and WordPress, it stands to reasons that a tool to capture the results and analyze them would be needed.

Tracking connections, buzz, site traffic, leads and revenue generated by social media marketing efforts, can now be accomplished from one dashboard. The SocialEye measures the ROI in the same way that a business owner may measure other aspects of the business. During the pilot phase, customers admittedly saw a measurable value when using the dashboard.

What exactly can business owners track and analyze with SocialEye?

1. Social media connections such as Facebook likes and fans, Twitter followers and blog feed subscribers
2. Page views and plays from social profiles and video channels
3. Engagement levels, including comments that show what social actions spark consumer reactions and interaction
4. Media equivalent values showing the worth of social assets, impressions, visits and connections
5. Site visits and actual traffic to a company’s website resulting directly from social media
6. Site conversions and transactions — actual leads and revenue from social media marketing

Visit SocialEye.com to view a video about this new program.

Thanks to Sherrie Giddens of the St. Louis Working Moms Examiner for giving us a heads up on this new valuable tool and
to Overdrive Interactive for developing this new comprehensive tool.

We recently had the honor of participating in the new tips booklet produced by Paulette Ensign of Tips Products International.

This was an esteemed group of social media experts and how they were able to use social media to their advantage. Here are just a few of the tips they shared from “Tips from a Collection of Experts”.

Susan Chodakiewitz of Booksicals. 

• Invite visitors to participate in some aspect of your product. It can be to help name a character in your book or the location for the setting of the book.

Dr. Debra Condren author of Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word

• Take the pressure off. Hire a Virtual Assistant with social media expertise.

JoAnn R. Corley-Speaker, Author, Coach

• Use a company Facebook page to indirectly advertise. Have the page show pictures, videos, and audios of customers talking about and/or using your products or services.

Jan Wallen-Selling Your Expertise LLC

• Differentiate yourself. Write your profile like a story. Tell people why you and your company are the best ones to hire so they contact you.

These are just a few excepts from the booklet. To download your free copy, you can go to http://www.serenityva.com/tipsbooklet.htm