Remember MySpace in it’s heyday? I was spreading the word about how MySpace was going to reinvent the industry. “You can reach out to anyone and open up a world of possible contacts!” I would tell people. And this is exactly what killed MySpace.

Everything started off great. I remember I got my MySpace profile set up all slick like. I had a real estate plat as my background, cheesy Realtor photo in the upper left corner, all the bio filled out to tell you how great I was, and my favorite song playing as soon as you landed on the page (yeah I can’t believe I did something so jackass either). I set out to make friends with everyone and become a millionaire in a year. Then something happened. I would friend someone and next thing I know I’ve got some super sparkley animated thank you on my wall. Then it’s Christmas and my wall fills up with what feels like greeting cards with pasties. It felt like Geocities and Comet cursors all over again. MySpace spam had taken over.

This is about the time Facebook opened up to the public. Facebook wasn’t designed for businesses in the beginning. In order to create a layer of privacy Facebook Pages were created specifically for businesses. This created a ton of confusion because pages were similar yet different. Most small business owners didn’t understand the difference in pages and profiles or that you have to have a profile to create a page. So they were still creating profiles for their business. Or they understood the difficulties of engaging with a page on a personal level and chose to use a profile instead. Besides being annoying and technically spam under Facebook’s design these profiles for businesses get deleted if found by Facebook.

Recent changes to pages allow them to engage more like a person because you can reach out to other pages. Your page can like and comment on other pages but this still doesn’t satisfy some businesses because they want to reach out to individuals, not businesses. However, if Facebook Pages could interact on profiles it could expose Facebook to becoming MySpaced.

If you like a Page with your personal profile its posts get mixed in with your activity stream. There is an art and science to getting posts to all into the “Most Popular” stream because if your post isn’t there it’s likely to get overlooked. It would be much easier to engage if pages could comment on fans walls. But would this be engagement or an intrusion? Post something like, “Thanks for being a fan, you rock” and other worthless comments and watch people block and unfan like crazy. Even if your an individual professional such as a Realtor taking your business to your clients profiles is not a good idea. Can you imagine waking up to find your personal profile wall has tons of “Great new house you’ll love,” “Don’t forget I’m your neighborhood Realtor,” or “Here’s a list of great things to do in our town” like you don’t already know what there is to do in your town.

So I for one am happy that Pages can’t engage on my profile wall. As a private consultant it makes it more difficult for me as well but I understand the benefits it has on my profile. Instead I focus on making friends with other professionals that are in similar situations. We engage each others pages with our own. This creates activity which makes your posts more important and it allows you to expose your page.

image credit

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

That’s correct. You can actually backup everything you have uploaded or posted to Facebook. Follow this quick guide and sleep better knowing you won’t lose anything if something happens to your Facebook account.

First click your account tab.

Next click “Account Settings”.

On your Facebook account settings page you will see a line that says “Download your information” with a link to the right that says “learn more”.

After you click learn more you will see a page telling you about security that has a download button at the bottom.

After clicking that Facebook will let you know that it will take a while to gather all your photos, posts, messages, etc. from Facebook. Click the download button once again.

You’ll then be presented with a message telling you to expect an email. The email can take a while depending on how much stuff you have on Facebook. Mine took about an hour to arrive.

You will get an email from Facebook with a link to the download page.

You will be taken back to the download backup page you saw before except this time there will be a box to verify your email address.

You’ll once again see a download button. This time when you click it your Facebook information backup will be downloaded. It will be a .zip file that has the following Facebook information backed up in it:

• Photos (.jpeg format)
• Videos (MP4 format)
• List of your events
• List of every friends name
• List of every private message conversation (this is a really long one)
• Notes
• All of your personal profile information
• Everything on your wall (mine goes back a couple years, it’s extremely long)
• A lot of technical files like CSS and HTML that won’t be very useful to most people

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

I present Empire Avenue. Empire avenue is essentially a basic stock trading game but it stands out by making you the stock, and so anyone else that plays the game.

Your stock price is based on activity in your social networks. Facebook, Twitter, Facebook pages, YouTube, Flickr, your blogs, and last but not least: Empire avenue itself. That’s correct, Empire Avenue is a game based on your social networks, and is a social network itself. The first day I joined I met someone that lived not far from me. He promoted my account and got me into Team Zen which is an active community on EA. I had a noticeable bump in blog traffic and people started actually following my YouTube channel.

The more activity you do on your social networks the larger your stock dividend payouts are. Dividends go to your share holders so the larger your dividend the more people will buy you. The more people that buy you the more your stock price goes up, just like real life stock!

As you earn more ea (the currency in Empire Avenue) you have the option to buy upgrades that allow you to purchase more stock in people, join more communities, or advertise yourself. These upgrades can also be purchased outright with cash. What makes this setup awesome is that you can play the entire game with EA’s. Most games like this tend to put a curtain over cool things to entice you to pay $ for it but Empire Avenue gives you the opportunity to enjoy everything without putting a single $ into it.

At first it seemed like a fun gimicky concept that would keep me entertained for a week. But then I realized something: I had a burning desire to increase my stock price. I looked at the scores for each of my networks and focused on what I needed to do.

My Twitter score was the highest of the bunch so I continued to do what I do there. My Facebook score was lower than I thought it would be so I knew I needed to pick up slack there. Since then I have increased my Facebook score to be larger than my Twitter score. I also started uploading vids to YouTube and pics to Flickr for that little extra oomph. I found I am more dedicated to blogging because it has a significant impact on dividends, and a good post can reverberate into your other networks.

So what I started with is a fun game that depends on actual people. What I ended with is a light weight social media analytics service, with a built in social network, that also has a fun element to help push me along. I definitely recommend giving Empire Avenue a shot. What’s your social media stock worth?

Sign up with this link and we both get 2,000 extra EA.

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

While the new Facebook pages model might create more confusion, it also adds a lot of benefits. One struggle for small businesses is engaging customers through their pages instead of their profile. Small businesses tend to be personal by nature. They depend on repeat clients, friends, family, referrals, and other personal social elements. Since profiles are intended to be personal some businesses have opted to use these instead of a pages (if they are aware of the difference). The biggest problem with this is Facebook will have no qualms about deleting your profile if they come across and find it’s used for a business.

Two other problems face small businesses and individual service professionals when it comes to marketing on Facebook:

• Business owners may have no intention or desire to use Facebook as a personal tool.
• They use their Facebook profile to network proffesionaly while they also use it to keep up with personal matters.

The biggest problem with these scenarios is people that know you personally post on your profile you’re using for your business like it is actually your personal profile.  This can end in a tangled mess of clients asking real questions and getting answers from your friends, photos your clients don’t need to see getting posted, and a whole mess of other embarrassing situations that make your business look less professional.

Facebook business page changes allow your business to act more like a person while maintaining the benefits of a business page.

A lot of changes you will recognize from the changes to personal profiles. Pictures are displayed at the top of the page along with basic info, tabs have been eliminated in favor of a left column navigation, and other cosmetic changes have been made.

The most exciting changes to Facebook pages:

• You can use Facebook “as a page”. You can now comment on pages and profiles with your business instead of your personal account. This allows professionals to interact with fans without exposing their personal profile.
• Expose and promote your personal profile. Some people, like myself, want people to they own the page. There is a new option that allows you to promote any page admin you wish. This is great for Realtors, insurance agents, and other service professionals that depend on their reputation for their business success.
• Promote other pages that your page likes. You have already been able to create favorite pages to display on your business page, but now you have control over them. You may choose which businesses get rotated in the display.

There is also a slew of changes to the back end and other minor settings that are very helpful. What changes are you most excited about, or are these changes unwelcomed?

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

Go to one of your pages and make a comment. It will make the post as with your personal profile. This doesn’t work with the mobile Facebook site or if you upload a picture. I have not tried it with any other applications. Let me know if another application works for you.

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

People posting inches and colors as their Facebook status participating in what is called an Internet meme. A meme is basically a trend or fad on the Internet. If you see inches followed by a sad face that represents the girls shoe size. If you see a color than that is the color of the bra she’s wearing. These two specific memes are spreading to raise awareness for breast cancer…kind of. Here’s one of the letters that tells people to type their shoe size into their status update.

Hello Girlies… day 3 of the ‘breast cancer game’ thanx to those who have played along.

Today all day I want you to put the size of your feet and the word inches and a sad face after for example.. 6 inches :( …. we’ll wind the men up with this one for sure haha..
Send to all females in your list…. and please remember not to let slip to any men what the status relates to (and don’t explain on your wall), the colour status’ for colour of your bra actually made the news!

Raise Breast Cancer Awareness and keep this going…..

I never said anything. SHH .

How exactly does getting people to post the inches of their feet or colors of their bras help raise awareness for breast cancer? You are reading this, consider yourself aware. Since it’s so simple to participate anyone can jump on board. Even if they don’t know it’s for breast cancer they are still raising awareness by spreading the meme.

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

The most searched topic in America for 2009 & 2010 is Facebook according to Google Insights. Lyrics are the 2nd most searched and it doesn’t even come close. That is not surprising given how much time people spend logged into Facebook and it’s explosion of members the past few years.

What is surprising is what most people are looking for when they search: Facebook Login. Why on earth would anyone search Google for the Facebok login page? To login you type in facebook.com and put your email and password where it says “email” and “password”.

The average age of a Facebook user is 38 and 61% are over 35. Most of these people didn’t grow up with a computer. They learned things as needed to get things done but they don’t have a grasp on how all this technology works together. The perfect example is when someone comes to a website via Google and the search term they used was www.yourwebsite.com. If you put that in the address bar it takes you straight to the site, yet there are plenty of people content with typing it in then clicking a link. People do this because the first time they got on the Internet and opened their browser there was a nice white bar in the middle of the screen begging to be typed in. They put a web address in that got them to a link that got them to the site and it’s been working so why change?

I’ve seen several clients do this during one on one social media coaching sessions. Some were thankful when I showed them how to get to a website without clicking a link but some had no intentions of learning a new way. They were comfortable searching the Internet that way and were ready to get their social marketing on. If something is working that my clients are comfortable and satisfied with who am I to judge?

When you’re setting up your blog, tricking out your Facebook, and syndicating your Twitter feed across the galaxy remember this: There are a lot of people out there that can’t even find the Facebook login page.  If your social networks are over engineered can these Facebook Login Googlers find you?

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

• How the hell do I make Farmville go away?
• Where do I find the direct link to a status update?
• I want to keep my privacy, how do I turn off Facebook places?

Then every few months Facebook moves everything around and we have to learn how to find things all over again. People whine,”I want the old Facebook”, and I always ask, “Which one?” Facebook has the same motive as every other site on the web, make us hang out on it. The difference is if normal websites moved everything around it can have a noticeably negative affect. I’m not going to get into the privacy issue…

Every time Facebook makes a change the wave of iMagonnaquiters storms the scene promising to denounce Facebook forever. People do quit and there are plenty of disgruntled people but in the end Facebook is fine. People even use the service religiously while constantly complaining about it, I know I have at times. The the growth rate of  Facebook has been crazy and they claim to have over 500 million users.

What is it about Facebook that allows them to frequently aggravate users while growing at an incredible rate? At what point will the growth slow down enough for it to have a visible negative affect?

photo by naughty architect

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

Facebook updates can be a lot longer than 140 characters.

If your facebook status update goes to Twitter and it’s more than 140 characters the whole thing won’t show up. Instead there will be a link that goes to the rest of the comment on Facebook.

If you are using a business page anyone can see the update, even if they don’t have Facebook. But if they don’t have Facebook they can’t interact with you there and might not go back to Twitter and interact.

Another reason you might want your tweets going to Facebook is not everyone will click on the link to go to Facebook. This means fewer people are likely to see your entire message which makes it less effective.

[button style="note" link="http://penguinspark.com/2010/how-to/how-to-make-tweets-facebook-status-updates/"]How to connect Twitter to Facebook[/button]

Originally posted on PenguinSpark

Go to the status update you want to link to. Then click the time the status update was sent.

The page that comes up is only for that status update.

Copy the address in your web browser and paste it in an email, tweet, status update of your own, or anywhere else that can use links.

Originally posted on PenguinSpark