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Maximizing Your Facebook Timeline

Terri — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:26:24 +0000

Several of my clients had questions about the new Facebook Timeline. They were worried about “getting it right.” Well, there is no right or wrong, but there are several things you can do to maximize your Timeline to work for you in building more friends on Facebook and to even build more business connections.

I recently hosted a webinar where I shared my personal Timeline and went over the essentials to max-out your own Timeline. It’s free and you can watch the webinar here – Timeline is coming…Are You Ready? I do ask for your name and email, which will add you to my newsletter mailing. But you can opt-out at anytime. OK?

Go watch the video recording of my webinar and let me know what you learned on my Facebook Page.

How to Restrict Posts and Comments on Facebook Timeline

Terri — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:29:33 +0000

I have gotten several people who ask me how to restrict or block people from posting or commenting on status updates on the new Facebook Timeline. I have done a short video to show you who you can accomplish this.

Take a look and leave a comment if you found it helpful.

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Thanks

Staying Engaged with Social Media

Terri — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:58:39 +0000

It’s funny how certain words have taken on new meanings in our new social media world. If someone told me they were engaged, I would ask – When is the Wedding? With the emergence of social media the word engage has become something totally different.

To engage on sites like Facebook and Twitter is to connect, talk and share. I hear people say they need more engagement on their Fan Pages, so here are just a few ways to increase your engagement on these platforms.

Post Pictures – If you are making a presentation or speaking to a group, always take photos with the attendees and post them on your Facebook and Twitter. You can even “tag” them within Facebook and the photo will show up on the other person’s Timeline. If you are not able to take the pictures yourself, ask your host or bring along someone to snap those pictures for you. You will be amazed at what this one simple act will do for your engagement.
Ask Questions – Ask relevant questions on your social media sites. If you are involved in Groups, whether it be Facebook or LinkedIn groups, pose questions to them that will create interactivity and ask them to share other questions on your Facebook Page.
Do a Video – This is a biggie! Because video is so huge for driving traffic and for search engine optimization, it’s a great idea to get into a habit of posting at least 1 video each week. It can be as simple as a few PowerPoint slides that you set to music or screen capture of a new tool that you found to help with your business, or you can get real fancy and have them professionally done. Either way – do them (and I’m preaching to the choir here…I need to do more!) .

Social Media engagement is becoming more important as the algorithms of these sites change. They determine for us what comes through our News Feed and how relevant the information is to us. (I would like to make my own decisions, but unfortunately, we can’t at this point) However, we can look for creative ways to connect with our online friends, clients and prospects. By doing a few strategic things with your social media sites, you will see the engagement begin to increase.

These are just a few examples, I would love to hear what you have done to increase your social media engagement. Please post them below.

Social Media Birthdays

Terri — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:43:20 +0000

My birthday is the 23rd of December. It’s always been a very hectic time, just before Christmas (not to mention my Mother’s birthday is Christmas Eve!) and my birthday has sort of been lumped into the Christmas holiday.

Presents were wrapped in Christmas paper and I even had a Christmas Cake one year! (What’s up with that!)

But since social media has blasted into my life, my birthday’s are made so special by the hundreds of people who wish me Happy Birthday on my different sites. I had more than 225 birthday wishes this year on Facebook alone! Boy, does that make a girl feel special.

If you are not taking advantage of the birthday feature on Facebook, I highly recommend that you do. And if you are not wishing others a Happy Birthday on their special day, make that a goal for 2012. You might be pleasantly surprised with the friendships that can come out of a simple birthday wish.

I know it sure made mine special! Thanks everyone.

The New Facebook Timeline – An Online Scrapbook

Terri — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:20:34 +0000

As I sat in my office watching the Live Feed from Facebook’s F8 Conference last week, I quickly saw the new Timeline being much like an online scrapbook. I love to scrapbook and have gotten together with friends to share stamps, templates and other embellishments for by books. But the one thing I don’t do with my scrap-booking is to…Keep It Up To Date! I’m terrible about this. I have really good intentions, but I put it off and put it off until my children are grown and all the wonderful events of their life are outdated, so why put that book together now?

Well, with the new Facebook Timeline, (and everyone should remember this, you don’t HAVE to put your life out there, it’s your choice) I can can go all the way back to my birth and start building my life online. I’m not so sure that I want everything out there or if I even want to go back that far. But I have that option now.

And there are Apps that will make the Facebook experience more like a community. We can share music, movies, books and videos with each other and even watch them together and chat about them, all from within Facebook. Be careful, not to make yourself a hermit with this feature and never go out to a real theater or bookstore. You still need human touchy-feely relationships.

Here is a run down (as I noted it) of the new Timeline and it’s accompanying features:

The heart of the Facebook experience is your Profile
The Story of your Life will be represented in Timeline
Timeline will be a lot more visual
On the right of the Timeline will be the years and you can click it to see what you posted for that year
A large area for a Cover Photo at the top of your Timeline. Can be changed daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
Visual Tiles for the Apps you use
Works on Mobile Devices
You can go to the beginning of your life and build your Timeline, or just start where you are
Apps express who you are by highlighting and curating all your stories and giving you complete control over everything and everyone that sees it
A new Report feature to allow you to see quickly a summary of your Apps, like what you ate, what movies you watched, where you have been, etc.
Ticker (which a lot of people find annoying) is a lightweight stream of information. It moves quickly and shares posts from your friends so you can jump into a conversation with them
Open Graph – a new class of Apps will cover four areas, Communication, Games, Media and Lifestyle
Through Open Graph you will discover new things from your friends – Frictionless experiences and Realtime Serendipity (this is the music, movie sharing feature I mentioned above)
Open Graph is the biggest change on Facebook since the 1st F8 conference

The beta period for Timeline began last week for developers. But many people have declared themselves developers so they can begin building their Timeline. Myself…I’ll just wait until all the bugs and kinks are worked out and build mine. Which will only be a couple of weeks.

After everyone has gotten to learn and use Timeline, the Open Graph will be rolled out.

So you have lots of decisions and choices to make. Do you want to have your entire life online for everyone to read? Do you want to share just the highlights of your life? Do you want to build relationships with your friends over a song, book or movie? You can (or cannot) do it all with the new Facebook Timeline and Open Graph.

How do you feel about these features? Will you use them? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Changes to Facebook News Feed…again

Terri — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:56:01 +0000

Just when you think it’s safe to read your news feed on Facebook…they have changed it again. But it has strange similarities to the original news feed of long, long ago.

Basically, they have done away with the Most Recent tab and have combined those updates with the Top Stories. But, so we don’t miss anything while we are away from our beloved Facebook, the Top Stories are being highlighted that Facebook believes might be important to us. These appear at the top of your page and are marked with a Blue corner in the upper left.

The criteria for pulling Top Stories is based on the relationship you have to the person, how many people are commenting on the post, how many “likes” it received and what kind of story it is. If you find stories that you really don’t care to read as Top Stories, you can hover over the right side of the post and click the down arrow to remove it from your Top Stories.

So basically you might see Recent Stories, then Top Stories and more Recent Stories while viewing your News Feed. But when you log in after being away for a while, the Top Stories should pop to the top of the News Feed.

Also, you can once again view updates based on your Friends List. To do this, from your Home page, click “More” on the left side bar at LISTS, and select which friends list you would like to view.

I’m happy about the news feed changes, because it makes it easier to keep up with those friends and pages that are most important to me and my business.

What about you? Do you like the changes?

Behind the Scenes at Summer Skill Camp 2011

Terri — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:39:45 +0000

This year’s Summer Skill Camp 2011 has a great lineup of eight 90-minute clinics including:

Success Strategies for Creating a Social Media Monitoring System
Creating and Promoting a Compelling Facebook Contest
Tips and Tactics for Building an Effective Social Media Measurement System
Discovering the Fine Art of Setting Rates and Building Packages for Your Services
Creating an Effective Mobile Marketing Campaign for Local Businesses
Setting up an Ecommerce Platform with 1ShoppingCart
Mastering New Tactics for Increasing Your Search Engine Listings
Maximizing Productivity and Enhancing Communications using Google Tools.

Watch this video for a more in-depth view of what to expect.

Sneak Preview of VAClassroom Summer Skill Camp 2011

To gain more information about the Summer Skill Camp visit:

Summer Skill Camp

How to Tag Photos on Fan Pages

Terri — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:12:53 +0000

Most of us are familiar with tagging on Facebook. You can tag someone by using the “@” symbol and then typing their name or page name, which will create a link back to them. You can also tag photos of people and the photo will appear on their page. They can then share it with all their friends.

You can also use the tagging feature on your Fan Page. It works the same way, but there’s a setting that you should be aware of to make the photo tagging feature active. From your Fan Page, go to Edit Page/Apps/Photos/Go to App. Once you get here, you need to check the setting to “Allow all fans to tag photos.”

This is the screenshot.

So start tagging and allow others to tag on your page for that “viral” effect!

You Never Know What Will Drive Business Your Way

Terri — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:14:59 +0000

I was speaking with a friend today about our businesses. We chatted for a while about groups we belonged to and acquaintances and how we loved to help others succeed in life and in business. Toward the end of our conversation, we moved more toward what drives business to us. And I wanted to share her story.

She admittedly is not a social media butterfly. She use to get on Facebook, maybe once a month to just check in and see what was going on. During one of those once-a-month visits she saw a post from someone she had met at a conference earlier in the year. They had gotten to know each other and “friended” one another on Facebook. And that was the end of the story.

However, on this day my friend noticed a comment from one of her Facebook friends and it really resonated with her. She felt a strong connection to the post and the person. So she began to communicate with her and learned more about her business and the services she offered. Which eventually turned into a working relationship between the two of them.

My friend now has a support person that she get’s along great with and can bounce ideas off of, but also someone that will help her to grow her business in the way she visions.

This little story is just a great example of how social media should work. You post things on your Fan Page or your personal Wall and people read them and hopefully share them with their friends. You just never know what post might bring you the next big customer or client. So post great information, thoughtful comments and encouraging words, it will boost your business!

Are you Checking your Facebook Updates?

Terri — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:41:21 +0000

Well, are you? I have to confess, I wasn’t. And I didn’t even realize it! I was checking my Facebook messages, but failed to look further down to see that I had a ton of Facebook Updates in my Inbox.

An update is a message that is sent by a Fan Page Administrator to communicate what’s going on with the page. This is sent to all the Fans and is distributed through the updates feature.

Since I totally missed it I thought I would do a short little video to show you where to find your updates on Facebook.

You might want to check your updates now and clean out if you are like me and hadn’t checked them…ever! Yikes!

If you liked, “Are you Checking your Facebook Updates?” please share it by clicking the social media icons below. I’d really appreciate it.