10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

Originally Posted by Nick O’Neill on http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/facebook-privacy-new/

Last December Facebook rolled out a new version of their privacy settings to all users. Privacy settings are something that many Facebook users are regularly confused about. That’s why we published our original Facebook privacy guide back in February. After millions of people visited our privacy guide, we realized how important privacy is to Facebook users. With the new settings rolled out, we thought that now would be a great time to update the guide with the latest changes.

In this guide we present a thorough overview of the most important privacy settings which includes previous settings that are still relevant as well as new privacy settings that have been added by Facebook. The majority of the old privacy settings are still relevant, however there’s a chance that you may now be sharing much more information with the whole world. Make it through our new Facebook privacy guide and you’re guaranteed to be safe.

1. Understand Your Friend Lists

As we described in our previous Facebook Privacy guide, Facebook friend lists are the cornerstone of privacy on Facebook. While you don’t need to take advantage of friend lists, understanding this feature will instantly turn you into a “Facebook power user”. Understand that friend lists can take time to configure so don’t expect to breeze through this step. The concept behind friend lists is simple: it’s a way of organizing your friends into various affiliation groups. If you aren’t clear with our explanation, here’s how Facebook describes friend lists:

Friend Lists provide organized groupings of your friends on Facebook. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can filter your view of each list’s stream of activity separately on the home page. Friend Lists are easy to manage and allow you to send messages and invites to these groups of people all at once.

As I previously wrote, there are a few key things to understand about friend lists:

• You can add each friend to more than one Friend List
• Friend Lists should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
• Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them

The most common lists that many privacy experts will refer to are “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional” however there’s a limitless combination of lists that you can create. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter how many friend lists you create, although I prefer to simplify things as much as possible. The key thing to understand is that your friends’ privacy settings will always default to the most restrictive friend list they’ve been placed in.

For example, let’s say your friend John is someone you met at work but continue to hang out with outside of work. You may have placed them in your “Work Contacts” Friend List and your “Local Friends” Friend List. If your “Work Contacts” cannot see photos you’ve been tagged in and your “Local Friends” can, John will not be able to see photos you’ve been tagged in.

You can configure your Friend Lists by visiting the friends area of your Facebook.

2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results

My mom is a teacher and one of the first things she asked me when she joined Facebook is how she could make sure her students couldn’t see that she was on the site. Understandably my mom doesn’t want her middle school students to know what she’s up to in her personal life. There are numerous reasons that individuals don’t want their information to show up in search results on Facebook, and it’s simple to turn off your public visibility.

Within the new search privacy settings page, Facebook has made things extremely straight forward. There are now two settings: one for those people who can find you when searching on Facebook, and one for those searching within search engines (which the next section describes). In order to prevent others from finding you in Facebook’s search results, it’s two quick steps:

1. Visit your search privacy settings page.
2. Click on “Edit Settings” and enter your password.
3. Next to “Facebook Search Results” select the “Only Friends” privacy setting.

Strangely enough, Facebook doesn’t require you to click on “Save Changes” anymore, however these new settings should now be set.

3. Remove Yourself From Google

Facebook continues to receive A TON of traffic from displaying user profiles in search engines. Not all of your profile is displayed though. As was the case in our previous Facebook Privacy guide, the information displayed in the search profile is limited to: your profile picture, a list of your friends, and a list of up to approximately 20 Facebook Pages that you have become a fan of.

As many users have found out, your friend information is available in your public listings. To block that information from being publicly accessible you can remove yourself from Google’s index and other search engines. Some people enjoy having their information displayed in search engines, as it makes them easy to find. For those that prefer to err on the side of privacy though, it’s often a good idea to remove yourself from the search engines.

To remove yourself from the search engines, visit the search privacy settings page and simply uncheck the box next to “Public Search Results” which says “Allow Indexing”. You’ll need to wait for Google and other search engines to remove your information from their cache, so don’t be surprised if you still show up in the search engines for a few weeks.

4. Avoid The Infamous Photo Tag Mistake

Many users are getting smarter about their privacy settings, however I continue to hear horror stories of users who have their relationships damaged as a result of photos they’ve been tagged in. More than just having their relationships damaged, some users get fired as a result of photos they’ve been tagged in. There are a number of ways to work around this problem. One of the ways is described later in this guide, however there is an extremely easy way to avoid having compromising photos show up to friends.

Head over to the profile privacy settings page and go to the section which says “Photos and Videos of Me”. Then click on the drop down selector, and click on the “Custom” option. You can then select “Only Me” as displayed in the image below. Keep in mind that this will block all people from seeing any images or videos that you’ve been tagged in. Many users want their friends to see photos they’ve been tagged in though.

So how do you work around this issue without putting your job or relationships at risk? The best way is to take advantage of the friend lists that you previously created (in the first setting) and limit specific people from seeing the images and videos you’ve been tagged in. For example, it’s probably not the best idea to have your professional contacts see the images you’ve been tagged in. If you have a professional list, you can simply enter that friend list under “Hide this from” in the custom privacy dialog box which is shown below.

5. Protect Your Albums

As I mentioned in the previous privacy guide, one of the greatest risks on Facebook is that you get tagged in a compromising photo. However it’s important to consider who you really want to have viewing your photo albums. Given Facebook’s custom privacy settings you are able to get as granular as you’d like with the visibility of each album. Thanks to the new publisher privacy settings, you can even get granular with every photo that you post if you really want to have complete control.

What privacy settings you choose for your albums is completely up to you, but if you do want to limit access to your albums, I recommend visiting the photos privacy settings page and limiting the access of each of your albums to “Only Friends” at the least. Unless you are a professional photographer, there probably isn’t much of a reason for making your albums visible so that the whole world can see them.

6. Avoid The Post-Breakup Facebook Effect

I’m seriously sorry to hear that you that you just broke up with your boyfriend. Do all of your contacts really need to hear about that though? Since posting our last Facebook privacy guide, I’ve seen countless people publicly update their relationship status as though everybody needs to hear about it. Relationship status changes have become such a large component of my Facebook news feed that I recently decided to write an entire post on The Post-Breakup Facebook Effect.

Strangely enough, there is a new mating ritual which has evolved on Facebook and often relationship status changes are part of that process. Often times after a female changes her relationship status to “Single”, a whole slew of new “potential suitors” start commenting on the relationship status change and write posts on her wall. Honestly, I see nothing wrong with this process and find it quite entertaining, however it probably is something that you don’t want all of your contacts to know about, especially your professional contacts.

While I’ve chosen to avoid relationship statuses altogether, some users still want to have them displayed. While many people like to let the world know that they are in a relationship, you can avoid having a relationship status change becoming the talk of the town. While Facebook has now removed the feature which lets users control which actions generate news feed stories, you can still protect the visibility of your relationship status.

Simply go to your profile privacy settings page and change the “Family and Relationship” setting to “Only Me”. While it would be great to make that information public, it’s currently impossible to control whether or not a relationship status change creates a news feed story. As such, I believe it’s better to play things safe and block users from seeing your relationship status.

7. Control What Information Applications Can Access

The risk of having applications publish stories without your approval, which we covered in the last Facebook privacy guide, is being eliminated completely. However it’s important to understand what information applications can access. As Facebook writes, when you visit applications, they “may access any information you have made visible to Everyone as well as your publicly available information.” Publicly available information “includes your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages.”

The more restrictive you make your profile settings, the less information that’s available to applications. While applications must follow your existing privacy settings, your friends can also share information about you within applications. An example would be a greeting card application which uses your birthday to prompt your friend to send a card. Facebook allows users to control the types of information that applications can access when your friends use an application that you have not previously installed.

You can control that information (as pictured to the right) by visiting this page.

8. Make Contact Information Private

I personally use Facebook for professional and personal use and it can frequently become overwhelming. That’s why I’ve taken the time to outline these ten privacy protection steps. Once I began approving friend requests from people that I hadn’t built strong relationships with, I immediately limited the visibility of my contact information so that only close friends could view things like my email and phone number.

If you post any of your personally identifiable information (phone number, email, or address) on your profile, it makes sense to limit who can see it. There are two ways to limit who can see your contact information. The first is to visit the contact privacy settings page. From there you can customize the contact settings as much as you’d like. As I previously wrote, for each contact item that you have in your profile, you should set custom privacy settings so that contacts who you aren’t close to don’t have access to your email and phone number.

The second way to customize your contact privacy settings is directly from your profile. Click on the “Info” tab in your profile and scroll down to the contact information section. Once you mouse over the contact area, you’ll have the option of editing the content. If you click on “Edit” you will notice little lock icons next to each piece of information (as pictured below). If you click on the lock you will be prompted with a box which says “Who can see this?” from which you can completely customize who your information is visible to.

9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts

While you may have enjoyed getting wasted with your friends at the holiday party last night, it’s probably not something that you want everybody to know about. Your friends may not use Facebook for connecting with professional contacts, and as a result they don’t think twice about casually posting something that should be kept more private. As such, it makes sense to control what’s visible to others. There are two places where you can configure your wall privacy settings: directly from your profile page and from the profile privacy page.

In order to edit the privacy settings from your profile page, click on the “Options” link directly under the publisher. The image below shows how to control your settings in three easy steps. The most dramatic modification that you can make is unchecking the box which says “Friends may post to my wall”. Most users want to be able to communicate via the wall so disabling this functionality will prevent anyone from communicating publicly with you.

If you don’t want to take the most extreme step by blocking users from writing on your wall, you can customize who can view wall posts made by your friends by clicking on the drop down directly next to “Who can see posts made by my friends?” I recommend preventing all professional contacts from being able to view posts made by your friends.

10. Keep Friendships Private

Yes, I understand that you want the whole world to know that you are popular and have lots of friends! However, not all users want everybody knowing who their friends are and there are clear justifications for blocking others from seeing your Facebook friends. I’ve had a number of individuals visit my profile and then selectively pick off friends that are relevant to them for marketing purposes, or other reasons.

Voyeurism is a key component of Facebook and one of the most frequent activities of users is to browse through other users’ friends. Whatever the reason is, just know that users are doing it. While your friendships can show up in search engines, we’ve already highlighted how to make your profile invisible to search engines in number 3 above. If you want to take things one step further and prevent others from viewing your friends, you can follow these steps:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of your “Friends” box
3. Uncheck the box which says “Show my friends on my profile”

Now you’ve successfully hidden others from viewing your friends. Keep in mind that your friends list is accessible to any Facebook applications you use. It’s also possible for users to view your friends list if they have access to your username (Mark Zuckerberg’s friends list for example). My guess is that Facebook will eventually provide functionality to block users from seeing your friends completely.

Understand The New Privacy Settings

The New Publisher Settings

Yes, last night’s holiday party was a lot of fun but when you post on your friends walls (or your own) you can limit the visibility to just your friends. Configuring your privacy settings effectively is important, but even more important is the ability to use Facebook’s features in a way which avoids any negative repercussions. One of the most important features to roll out with the new privacy settings is the ability to publish content which is only visible to specific friends.

Rather than posting a status update that everybody can view, limit those friends who can access your information. The new content visibility settings are as follows: Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, and Customize. Understanding the new publisher settings is key to protecting your privacy on Facebook.

Note that the image below doesn’t include “Friends and Networks” as not all users have this option. You must be a member of a university or professional network in order to see the “Friends and Networks” setting.

Everyone Literally Means Everyone In The World

Yes, when you select “Everyone” on content that you publish, anybody on the internet will be able to view that content. When Facebook released the new privacy transition tool, the purpose was to get you to share more information with Facebook users, primarily the status updates and links that you are posting. If you are like most users, then you probably just accepted Facebook’s recommendations without thinking about it (if you didn’t accept, congratulations as you clearly understand Facebook privacy). The result of blindly going through the new privacy transition tool is that your status updates and other information is now publicly accessible by everyone on the internet.

If you don’t mind having your content published to everyone in the world by default, then you don’t need to worry about changing anything. I have a feeling that most users don’t prefer to have all their information publicly shared by default however. Instead, users want complete control over their privacy and they want to start their Facebook experience in a protected environment. While it’s possible to debate Facebook’s privacy philosophy, reading through this guide should help ensure that you continue to feel protected while using Facebook.

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A Success Architects $189 website is a “business start-up” resource site system created by Internet Guru Paul Bonnallie to help individuals earn money online with their own lucrative website. Whether you’re just thinking about the opportunity, ready to get started or trying to grow your existing business, Paul’s teaching resources and business expertise will show you how you can easily gain exposure on the Internet. Success Architects services, software, and personal training programs follow a proven system that has helped thousands start and build online business exposure that consistently earn significant income.

Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com, http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

1 : the quality or state of being reciprocal : mutual dependence, action, or influence 2 : a mutual exchange of privileges; specifically : a recognition by one of two countries or institutions of the validity of licenses or privileges granted by the other The Karma concept is simple, you have to first help others to help yourself … Who have you helped today?

www.OperationPromisedland.com — www.opl.Bring2Help2.com — Groups are forming now.

———— A Success Architects $189 website is a “business start-up” resource site system created by Internet Guru Paul Bonnallie to help individuals earn money online with their own lucrative website. Whether you’re just thinking about the opportunity, ready to get started or trying to grow your existing business, Paul’s teaching resources and business expertise will show you how you can easily gain exposure on the Internet. Success Architects services, software, and personal training programs follow a proven system that has helped thousands start and build online business exposure that consistently earn significant income. Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com, http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

Engage the person you are speaking with, Find out why the program will work for them, Let the other person talk — Paul Bonnallie

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A Success Architects $189 website is a “business start-up” resource site system created by Internet Guru Paul Bonnallie to help individuals earn money online with their own lucrative website. Whether you’re just thinking about the opportunity, ready to get started or trying to grow your existing business, Paul’s teaching resources and business expertise will show you how you can easily gain exposure on the Internet. Success Architects services, software, and personal training programs follow a proven system that has helped thousands start and build online business exposure that consistently earn significant income.

Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com, http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

The 5 Phases Of The Facebook Sales Funnel by Nick O’Neill  article http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/06/facebook-sales-funnel/

You run the marketing for a business of any size and you’re trying to figure out how to leverage Facebook to increase your reach and generate more sales. With so much buzz, Facebook is hard to ignore but many people have yet to figure out the most effective way for using the site to generate sales. After studying the ecosystem over the past two years, we’ve generated a few models that we think are most effective to marketing on the site. The model I’ll present today should assist in increasing sales no matter the resources.

The first question to ask is “What is the goal of being on Facebook?” Hopefully you already know what purpose Facebook serves for your company. If your goal happens to be “obtaining new customers and engaging existing ones” then this article is for you. What I’m going to describe in this post are the 5 different phases of what I call the “Facebook sales funnel”.

This is not a perfected concept but the point is simple: marketing through Facebook does not mimic the standard three step online sales funnel: click, read (learn about the product or service), purchase.

Phase 1: Awareness

Phase one of the Facebook sales funnel requires the greatest time investment of all the phases. As a brand manger or person responsible for the company’s Facebook marketing, your job is to build brand awareness. In the Facebook sales funnel there are two things you want to make users aware of: your service and your presence on Facebook. Once you’ve made them aware, you can drive them to your Facebook Page. They may not know who you are or what you do, but you’ve at least generated enough intrigue for the user to visit your page.

So how do you build awareness of your Facebook presence? There are three primary ways (if you have others feel to add them in the comments):

Targeted Ads

Taking advantage of the Facebook advertising platform is extremely important. The standard cost of a new fan of a Facebook Page is approximately $0.50. While you can use the Facebook ads to promote off-site landing pages, traditional online advertising is not the purpose of this article. You want to promote your page if you are going to extract the greatest benefit from Facebook and that the primary promotional channel on Facebook is Facebook Ads.

Social Graph Distribution

One of the best parts of Facebook is the ability for information to spread virally. I remember when the Facebook platform launched; many brand managers were asking, “How do I create a viral application?” By now that question has evolved a bit but the primary response I have for generating the greatest organic growth is to create good content. You may be thinking to yourself “No shit Sherlock!” If you are one of those individuals thinking this to yourself, you may just be a step ahead of the rest.

The golden rule of viral (and organic) growth online is: create great content that people will share. It’s honestly as simple as that. If you want to know what’s good content and what isn’t feel free to ask me!

Cross-Promotion

If you have a site that’s already generating traffic you should be taking advantage of it! You’d be surprised how many people do not take advantage of their existing web properties to promote their Facebook Page. Are you concerned that sending people away from your site means they’ll never come back? Don’t worry! They will return as long as you give them a reason to. Cross-promotion goes both ways and once you get people to become a fan of your Facebook Page, you can then direct them back to your website (as I’ll discuss later in this article).

Phase 2: Education

For those visitors that already know your product or service, you may not need to do much education. For the more inquisitive user who has never heard of you or your company, you’ll need to educate them. The education process entails answering the following questions:

Who are you?
When I say “Who are you” I’m not just referencing your company or organization. As I tell people on a regular basis, you need to humanize your organization. By connecting with individuals on a personal level and letting them know that there’s another person behind the computer on the other end, you’ll build a strong connection that will help the individual associate positive feelings with your organization. Yes, you also need to let them know what your organization is, but I would argue that the personal touch is much more important.

What do you sell?
If the customer doesn’t know that you are selling something, you are going to be screwed in the long-run. Take for example the Facebook Privacy guide that I announced earlier this week. The response was a mix of positive and negative. Some users weren’t happy because I had never sold anything on this site before (aside from promoting my conference). While there will always be unhappy people, the more up front you are about the fact that you are selling something, the more accepting the customer will be when it comes time to purchasing something.

This could be as simple as something within the information tab in your Facebook Page that describes what your company offers. You could also create an entire tab dedicated to describing your sales proposition but I’ll leave that for another article.

Who’s in your community?
When a new visitor lands on your Facebook Page, one of the first things they’ll look at is the number of fans you have. You’ll notice that as Facebook Pages grow in size, they also tend to increase in the volume of new fans per day. This is because having a large number of fans turns you into a trusted authority. While there are exceptions to this rule (joke pages that are targeted at topics such as “pillow fighting”), the average individual or company who has a large number of fans is assumed to be an authority within their industry.

Users will also browse through the members of your Facebook Page to see who else is part of the community. They’ll also view the comments people are posting to see if this is something they are interested in hearing about. Do you have brand advocates that are speaking up for you when you aren’t around? Do you have people that have something valuable to add to the conversation?

They say that you are who your friends are and on Facebook, you are who your community is. Foster a valuable community and there’s a greater chance you’ll convert new visitors into fans.

Why do I want to join?
Finally, before becoming a fan the user will try to figure what benefit they are going to get from becoming a fan of your Facebook Page. The benefit could simply be an opportunity to express their affiliation with your brand. Another benefit could be ongoing access to valuable content. If your Facebook Page has nothing to offer the user, the only people that will become a fan are those that are already your fans or those that are interested in existing community members.

The goal is to reach new customers though so you’ll need to present at least a minimal value through your Facebook Page.

Phase 3: Engagement

“Enagement” has become the cornerstone of social network marketing. Even Facebook has named their primary advertising product (”Engagement Ads”) after it. While many marketers criticize engagement for the inability to quantify it, every online marketer knows that engaging your customers is the new form of marketing. Rather than speaking at your customers, marketing has now become a two-way dialogue, leaving many traditional advertisers and marketers feeling powerless.

You aren’t completely powerless though since you can control the environment in which much of the conversation takes place. While there are many other platforms for engaging your customer base, Facebook Pages are a great environment for engaging a large portion of your customers and fans directly. With an estimated 250 million users and growing, there’s a good chance that a large percentage of your fans are on Facebook.

The engagement process is also critical to building a relationship with your fans and to strengthen their personal brand affiliation. One thing to keep in mind is the impact that various forms of engagement have on the relationship with your customer:

• Low Impact Activities – There are a lot of low impact activities that a consumer can engage in. One example would be “liking” a status update in Facebook. While the user read the status, it was a quick action in a number of activities they were involved in. (For those that may be confused, “liking” is the feature in Facebook that lets you click “Like” under a feed story.)
• Medium Impact Activities – Commenting on a status could be one example of a medium impact activity. An individual or brand could turn it into a high-impact experience by providing one-on-one dialogue to turn the experience from a single comment to an ongoing conversation.
• High Impact Activities – As I mentioned in the previous example, ongoing conversations are a high impact activity. An additional form of high engagement activity would be a branded game (such as the Bacardi Mojito application).

Granted, it’s not clear where each activity falls within the “engagement impact spectrum” because each experience differs from user to user. For example there may be a video or a game that resonates deeply with a user, and for others, a direct conversation may not have as deep of an impact as you’d hope for. In the list above, I arbitrarily assigned activities based on their impact level according to my own personal experience.

For different brands and different people, the impact will differ which is why it’s best to provide as many engagement opportunities as possible. As many industry experts know it’s also extremely difficult to measure engagement currently as there are no standards but it’s no excuse not to try as many forms of engagement as possible.

Phase 4: Action

In contrast to search engine advertising, which involves clicking an ad and then taking some sort of action (e.g. filling out a form or purchasing a product), the Facebook sales funnel involves building a relationship and presenting multiple opportunities to take an action. At this point you’ve already converted new visitors and in the engagement phase you built the relationship. Now it’s time to present opportunities to make a purchase, to join a site, or to take some other form of measurable action.

Most Facebook users are not ready to buy (or to join a site, etc) when they become a fan which is why you need to present calls to action on a regular basis. One example would be instant discounts. For example you may want to provide a 2-hour long 50 percent off discount of a given product. There are other examples like entering their name and email into a newsletter list. While there are different strategies for optimizing your calls to action, it’s important to produce calls to action on an ongoing basis.

There is one exception to this rule and that’s companies that are strictly focused on brand building. This article is focused on those companies that want to generate measurable results which is why we are now presenting a call to action.

Phase 5: Repeat Engagement

Now that you’ve presented a call to action and some of your users have taken that action, you need to continue to engage them. If you use the relationship marketing model on Facebook, you’ll end up a winner. For those unaware of what relationship marketing is, Wikipedia states:

Relationship marketing differs from other forms of marketing in that it recognizes the long term value to the firm of keeping customers, as opposed to direct or “Intrusion” marketing, which focuses upon acquisition of new clients by targeting majority demographics based upon prospective client lists.

You’ve already subtly introduced calls to action and now that some users have taken those calls to action, you need to keep doing what you did in phase 3: engage them. As the Wikipedia definition of relationship marketing highlights, it’s not about a one-time sale or action. Instead, we are in the business of building relationships and Facebook provides an optimal environment for doing just that.

Conclusion

The Facebook sales funnel can differ from one business to another. Some people would like to use Facebook as a model for filtering users into their standard sales funnel (such as get users to register for the company’s e-mail newsletter). Those individuals are not taking advantage of Facebook’s full marketing potential. The Facebook sales process is an elongated one which entails engaging the user throughout the entire sales process (starting with their pre-purchase experience).

Ultimately each business needs to determine what the best strategy is for them based on the resources available but the Facebook sales process will help you to generate valuable customer relationships, not just one-time customers.

A Success Architects $189 website is a “business start-up” resource site system created by Internet Guru Paul Bonnallie to help individuals earn money online with their own lucrative website.  Whether you’re just thinking about the opportunity, ready to get started or trying to grow your existing business, Paul’s teaching resources and business expertise  will show you how you can easily gain exposure on the Internet.  Success Architects services,  software, and personal training programs follow a proven system that has helped thousands start and build online business exposure that consistently earn significant income.

Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com,   http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

Presidents’ Day is celebrated on the third Monday in February Full article  on http://www.fireworks.com/holidays/presidents-day.asp

So when did Americans first acknowledge our Presidents with their own day?

Presidents’ Day dates back to our founding father and first President, George Washington. Washington was born on February 22, 1732. On his birthday in 1796, when Washington was in his last full year as president, the day became the holiday known as Washington’s Birthday. However, Americans didn’t observe this holiday until 1832, 100 years after his birth.

Abraham Lincoln was the next President to gain reverence similar to Washington. Born on February 12, 1809, Lincoln’s birthday was first celebrated in 1865, the year after he was assassinated. Although his birthday was not honored as a federal holiday like Washington’s, many states adopted it as a legal holiday.

In 1968, Congress passed legislation placing any federal holiday on a Monday, including Washington’s birthday, to create a three-day weekend. In 1971, President Richard Nixon combined Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays into Presidents’ Day. It would be celebrated on the third Monday in February, regardless of which day it fell on. Presidents’ Day is now viewed as a holiday that pays tribute to both Washington and Lincoln, as well as all those who have served as president.

Interesting Presidential Facts

• Only five presidents have ever worn facial hair when they sought the office. The last was over a century ago, in 1889; Benjamin Harrison.
• There have been seven left-handed presidents, including three of the last four (Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan).
• The first president to smoke a cigar in office was James Madison. In fact, Madison regularly smoked cigars until his death in 1836 at the age of 85. Madison was also the shortest president at five-feet four-inches tall.
• George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, and his wife Laura got married just three months after meeting each other.
• 40th president of the United States Ronald Reagan broke the so-called “20-year curse,” in which every president elected in a year ending in 0 died in office.
• Military leader and 34th president of the U.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower loved to cook; he developed a recipe for vegetable soup that is 894 words long and includes the stems of nasturtium flowers as one of the ingredients.
• The letter “S” comprises the full middle name of the 33rd president, Harry S. Truman. It represents two of his grandfathers, whose names both had “S” in them.
• 32nd president of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt was related, either by blood or by marriage, to 11 former presidents.
• Herbert Hoover, 31st U.S. president, published more than 16 books, including one called Fishing for Fun-And to Wash Your Soul.
• Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States, had chronic stomach pain and required 10 to 11 hours of sleep and an afternoon nap every day.
• Warren Harding, 29th U.S. president, played poker at least twice a week, and once gambled away an entire set of White House china. His advisors were nicknamed the “Poker Cabinet” because they joined the president in his poker games.
• William Taft, 27th president of the United States, weighed more than 300 pounds and had a special oversized bathtub installed in the White House.
• The teddy bear derived from 26th U.S. president Theodore (“Teddy”) Roosevelt’s refusal to shoot a bear with her cub while on a hunting trip in Mississippi.
• Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the United States, underwent a secret operation aboard a yacht to remove his cancerous upper jaw in 1893.
• Both ambidextrous and multilingual, 20th president of the United States James Garfield could write Greek with one hand while writing Latin with the other.
• Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States, died of throat cancer. During his life, Grant had smoked about 20 cigars per day.
• 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson never attended school. His future wife, Eliza McCardle, taught him to write at the age of 17. (Bonus fact about Andrew Johnson: He only wore suits that he custom-tailored himself.)
• Often depicted wearing a tall black stovepipe hat, 16th president of the United States Abraham Lincoln carried letters, bills, and notes in his hat.
• 15th U.S. president James Buchanan is the only unmarried man ever to be elected president. Buchanan was engaged to be married once; however, his fiancée died suddenly after breaking off the engagement, and he remained a bachelor all his life.
• Sedated only by brandy, 11th president of the United States James Polk survived gall bladder surgery at the age of 17.
• John Tyler, 10th U.S. president, fathered 15 children (more than any other president)–8 by his first wife, and 7 by his second wife. Tyler was past his seventieth birthday when his 15th child was born.
• 9th U.S. president William Henry Harrison was inaugurated on a bitterly cold day and gave the longest inauguration speech ever. The new president promptly caught a cold that soon developed into pneumonia. Harrison died exactly one month into his presidential term, the shortest in U.S. history.
• In warm weather, 6th president of the United States John Quincy Adams customarily went skinny-dipping in the Potomac River before dawn.

______________

A Success Architects $189 website is a “business start-up” resource site system created by Internet Guru Paul Bonnallie to help individuals earn money online with their own lucrative website.  Whether you’re just thinking about the opportunity, ready to get started or trying to grow your existing business, Paul’s teaching resources and business expertise  will show you how you can easily gain exposure on the Internet.  Success Architects services,  software, and personal training programs follow a proven system that has helped thousands start and build online business exposure that consistently earn significant income.

·         Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com,   http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

That’s right, everyone’s favorite holiday to hate has arrived. Valentine’s Day: it’s the day guys are constantly confused, girls are annually disappointed and singles are drunk. But why do we celebrate this so called “Hallmark Holiday”?

According to the History Channel web site, the world owes the season of love to St. Valentine. The legend of St. Valentine has been changed throughout the years and according to the Catholic Church there are three different saints sharing the name. One legend claims that after the Roman Emperor Claudius II banned young men from marrying, the priest Valentine performed marriages in secret, was caught and put to death. Another legend on the History Channel web site said while Valentine was in prison he fell in love with the jailor’s daughter. Before he was put to death he wrote her a letter signed ‘from your Valentine.’

The idea of Valentine’s Day caught on after the Saint’s death. It became publicly celebrated in Great Britain around the seventeenth century and the tradition spread throughout the world.

Whoever he is and whatever he did, Valentine is responsible for the emotionally controversial holiday. So congrats to the loved ones and cheers to the singles.

According to http://tnjn.com/2010/feb/13/valentines-day-history-is-conf/

While the history of Valentine’s Day is sometimes debated, it clearly links back to a Catholic saint named St. Valentine.

The problem is there are actually three St. Valentine’s — one a priest, one a bishop, and little is known about the third. All were martyrs.

In 469 A.D., Pope Gelasius declared Feb. 14 a day to honor St. Valentine, one of these three men.

One legend says that a Roman emperor banned soldiers from marrying in the third century, but St. Valentine took issue with this. He became an advocate for soldiers and was executed as a result of his outspokenness.

Another legend says St. Valentine was executed for his beliefs in Christianity and just before he died, he left a farewell note for a loved one and signed it “From Your Valentine.”

A conventional and widely accepted belief about the holiday itself is that Valentine’s Day grew out of a Middle Ages tradition of celebrating Feb. 14 as the day “the birds began to pair.”

History.com notes that February has long been associated with being a month of love, and Feb. 15 was celebrated in ancient times as a fertility festival.

Whatever its origin, it took off, and the U.S. Greeting Cards Association estimates Valentine’s Day is the second-most popular card-giving day of the year, only to Christmas.

Reported by http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/12/valentines-day-history-le_n_460139.html

Valentine’s Day History: Roman Roots as stated on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100210-valentines-day-gifts-cards-history-facts/

More than a Hallmark holiday, Valentine’s Day, like Halloween, is rooted in pagan partying. (See “Halloween Facts: Costumes, History, Urban Legends, More.”)

The lovers’ holiday traces its roots to raucous annual Roman festivals where men stripped naked, grabbed goat- or dog-skin whips, and spanked young maidens in hopes of increasing their fertility, said classics professor Noel Lenski of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The annual pagan celebration, called Lupercalia, was held every year on February 15 and remained wildly popular well into the fifth century A.D.—at least 150 years after Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

“It is clearly a very popular thing, even in an environment where the [ancient] Christians are trying to close it down,” Lenski said. “So there’s reason to think that the Christians might instead have said, OK, we’ll just call this a Christian festival.”

The church pegged the festival to the legend of St. Valentine.

According to the story, in the third century A.D. Roman Emperor Claudius II, seeking to bolster his army, forbade young men to marry. Valentine, it is said, flouted the ban, performing marriages in secret.

For his defiance, Valentine was executed in A.D. 270—on February 14, the story goes.

While it’s not known whether the legend is true, Lenski said, “it may be a convenient explanation for a Christian version of what happened at Lupercalia.”

Valentine’s Day 2010: Spending Takes a Holiday?

Even in the doldrums of a down economy, today’s relatively tame Valentine’s Day celebration is big business—the 2010 holiday is expected to generate $14.1 billion in retail sales in the United States. But that number’s down from last year’s $14.7 billion, because a number of consumers are simply choosing to sit this year’s Valentine’s Day out, according to an annual survey by the U.S. National Retail Federation (NRF).

Among those who are celebrating in 2010, the average U.S. consumer is expected to spend $103 on Valentine’s Day gifts, meals, and entertainment, according to the survey—about 50 cents more per person than in 2009.

But spouses are apparently feeling frugal toward one another, and plan to invest just $63.34 on Valentine’s Day gifts for their significant other—down from last year’s $67.22 average.

Friends, co-workers, and even family pets will feel the love instead. Americans plan to spend significantly more on each of these groups than they did last year.

“It’s something we saw periodically throughout 2009,” said NRF spokesperson Kathy Grannis. “The most important thing about the holiday for some [couples] isn’t giving to each other. It’s providing another way to make somebody else happy and show others your appreciation instead.”

Valentine’s Day Gifts Go Back to Basics

Which Valentine’s Day gifts are in vogue? Recession economics appear to have spurred a shift.

Practical gifts like winter clothing and accessories are way up, while just 35.6 percent of NRF survey respondents plan an evening out—way down from last year’s 47 percent.

“With people cutting back on discretionary items that difference in spending between couples really lies with focusing on making a meal at home instead of going out,” Grannis said.

“In this economy a new sweater on Valentine’s Day really goes a long way. Somebody may not have bought one for themselves during the last three months, because they were trying to cut back on expenses or pay down debt.”

Economy notwithstanding, one Valentine’s Day spending statistic remains constant year in and year out—U.S. men spend nearly twice as much on the holiday as U.S. women. In 2010 the average man will spend $135.35 on Valentine’s Day gifts, while a typical woman will part with only $72.28

Valentine’s Day Cards

Greeting cards, as usual, will be the most common Valentine’s Day gifts. Fifty-five percent of U.S. consumers plan to send at least one, according to the survey.

The Greeting Card Association, an industry trade group, says about 190 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year. And that figure does not include the hundreds of millions of cards schoolchildren exchange.

“Giving your sweetheart or someone [else] a Valentine’s Day card is a deep-seated cultural tradition in the United States,” said association spokesperson Barbara Miller. “We don’t see that changing.”

The first Valentine’s Day card was sent in 1415 from France’s Duke of Orléans to his wife when he was a prisoner in the Tower of London following the Battle of Agincourt, according to the association.

Valentine’s Day cards—mostly handwritten notes—gained popularity in the U.S. during the Revolutionary War. Mass production started in the early 1900s.

Hallmark got in the game in 1913, according to spokesperson Sarah Kolell. Since then—perhaps not coincidentally—the market for Valentine’s Day cards has blossomed beyond lovers to include parents, children, siblings, and friends.

Valentine’s Day Candy: Cash Cow

An estimated 47 percent of U.S. consumers will exchange Valentine’s Day candy, according to the retail federation survey—adding up to a sweet billion dollars in sales, the National Confectioners Association says.

About 75 percent of that billion is from sales of chocolate, which has been associated with romance at least since Mexico’s 15th- and 16th-century Aztec Empire, according to Susan Fussell, a spokesperson with the association.

Fifteenth-century Aztec emperor Moctezuma I believed “eating chocolate on a regular basis made him more virile and better able to serve his harem,” she said.

(Related: secrets of ancient candy.)

But there’s nothing chocolaty about Valentine’s Day’s most iconic candy: those demanding, chalky little hearts emblazoned “BE MINE,” “KISS ME,” “CALL ME.”

About eight billion candy hearts were made last year, the association says—enough to stretch from Rome, Italy, to Valentine, Arizona, and back again 20 times.

What Is Love? Evolution and Infatuation

Valentine’s Day is all about love. But what, exactly, is that?

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey and author of several books on love, including Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.

Fisher breaks love into three distinct brain systems that enable mating and reproduction:

• Sex drive
• Romantic love (obsession, passion, infatuation)
• Attachment (calmness and security with a long-term partner)

These are brain systems, not phases, Fisher emphasized, and all three play a role in love. They can operate independently, but people crave all three for an ideal relationship.

“I think the sex drive evolved to get you out there looking for a range of partners,” she said.

“I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one at a time, and attachment evolved to tolerate that person at least long enough to raise a child together as a team.”

Valentine’s Day, Fisher added, used to encompass only two of these three brain systems: sex drive and romantic love.

But “once you start giving the dog a valentine, you are talking about a real expression of attachment as well as romantic love.”

Gentlemen, no matter what the origin,  it is always good business NOT to forget valentines day!

_________________________

Success Architects $189 website is a “business start-up” resource site system created by Internet Guru Paul Bonnallie to help individuals earn money online with their own lucrative website.  Whether you’re just thinking about the opportunity, ready to get started or trying to grow your existing business, Paul’s teaching resources and business expertise  will show you how you can easily gain exposure on the Internet.  Success Architects services,  software, and personal training programs follow a proven system that has helped thousands start and build online business exposure that consistently earn significant income.

Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com,   http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

____________________________

Today we’re going to tell you about 8 free sites that’ll help you explode your traffic…  AND get a better search engine ranking…  AND help spread your message…  AND maintain better customer relations…  AND get new ideas for growing your business!

The sites we’re talking about are the ‘Net’s most popular social media sites. They’re online gathering places where people meet to share information and build relationships with each other. They’re also great places to meet potential customers and business partners. … Plus, you can also build up a huge network of loyal customers who will do a lot of your advertising for you simply by raving about your product to all their friends and family. (And as you probably know, word-of-mouth advertising from a trusted source is the most effective kind of advertising you can get.)

And if some of these loyal customers start linking to your site from their sites, that can help you get a serious boost in the search engine rankings.

Here are the top 8 social media sites you need to know about:

• Facebook: The world’s biggest social networking site. Members go to find other people who share the same interests or activities. You can build your own online profile and share different types of information with each other, such as pictures, videos, blog entries, links to other sites, and music clips.

  A good marketing strategy is to create a Facebook “Fan Page” for your business and encourage your customers to join. Then you can easily alert them whenever you have updates to share about your business.

• Twitter: A “micro-blogging” social network site. Members send each other short text-based posts of up to 140 characters. When you find members whose “tweets” you like, you can subscribe to their feed and be updated whenever they send a new message.
• YouTube: The ‘Net’s number one video-sharing site. Members share and comment on each other’s videos. You can post a link on your profile page can direct other people to your site. Also, the videos you share can help establish your reputation as an expert in your industry. For example, you could share a “how-to” video that shows your market how to solve a common problem.

  If you’re not the next Stephen Spielberg, don’t worry — your videos don’t have to be super professional. In many cases, a video shot with a regular digital camera will work just fine.

• LinkedIn: The most popular business-oriented social networking site on the Web. As of May 2009, it had more than 400,000 registered users. It’s a great place to find potential business partners as well as people who may be interested in your products or services.
• Digg: One of the ‘Net’s most popular news-sharing websites. Members post links to their favorite news articles and then comment and vote on the ones they like best. If you get a good rating on an article that includes a link to your site, you could see a huge rush of traffic overnight.
• Stumbleupon: Wikipedia calls this social networking site a “personalized recommendation engine.” Members can explore and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. When they hit the “Stumble!” button on the site’s toolbar, the results displayed are ranked based on your previous ratings as well as the ratings of friends and of members with similar interests.

  If Stumbleupon members give your site or blog a good ranking, your site will be showed in their results more often, which could lead to a surge of traffic to your site.

• Yelp: A popular review site where members write reviews about local businesses. If you own a local business, this one’s for you!
• Delicious: A popular bookmarking site. Members save links to their favorite websites or articles — just like the bookmarks in your browser — and share those links with other people. Members can comment on each other’s links. Every comment you write links to your personal profile where you can include a link to your site. The more comments you make, the more people you encourage to visit your profile page — and the more traffic you’ll end up directing to your site.

By participating on sites like these you can meet your future customers and learn how to give them what they’re looking for. In exchange, they will be happy to spread the word about your site all over the Internet!

Today we’re going to tell you about 8 free sites that’ll help you explode your traffic…

AND get a better search engine ranking…

AND build a name for yourself as an expert in your field…

AND maintain better customer relations…

AND get new ideas for growing your business!

The sites we’re talking about are the ‘Net’s most popular social media sites. They’re online gathering places where people meet to share information and build relationships with each other. They’re also great places to meet potential customers and business partners.

… Plus, you can also build up a huge network of loyal customers who will do a lot of your advertising for you simply by raving about your product to all their friends and family. (And as you probably know, word-of-mouth advertising from a trusted source is the most effective kind of advertising you can get.)

And if some of these loyal customers start linking to your site from their sites, that can help you get a serious boost in the search engine rankings.

Success Architects $189 website is a “business start-up” resource site system created by Internet Guru Paul Bonnallie to help individuals earn money online with their own lucrative website.  Whether you’re just thinking about the opportunity, ready to get started or trying to grow your existing business, Paul’s teaching resources and business expertise  will show you how you can easily gain exposure on the Internet.  Success Architects services,  software, and personal training programs follow a proven system that has helped thousands start and build online business exposure that consistently earn significant income.

____________________________

Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com,   http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

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Dreams. Goals. Drive. These attributes are shared by all of us. Even though we all may have a strong drive, we can’t always obtain those dreams and goals, unless we are given the opportunity. For Earth offers you the opportunity to take your motivation, drive and efforts and use it toward your dreams and goals. Not only will your efforts be awarded with potentially unlimited income, your efforts will help to make the Earth a better place to live and breathe. Are you willing to accept this opportunity?

Thousands of people from all over the world have already taken advantage of the For Earth Opportunity. Motivating, caring and thoughtful individuals dedicate as little or as much time and energy as they want to achieve the success that they have always desired. Whether they have been looking for a lifestyle change or just a few extra bucks a week, For Earth Distributors make their own schedules and experience freedom by taking control of their lives and this opportunity. Take control of your life, build your future the way that you have always dreamt it to be, and help make a difference in the lives of others. Remember, you will not just be doing this for yourself, you’re also doing it For Earth.

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Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com, http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

Regards,

Paul Bonnallie

Success Architects League

9 Rules of Facebook Promotion Every Small Business Should Know

Posted by Nick O’Neill on July 23rd, 2009 10:14 AM on http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/facebook-small-business/

You’re the owner of a local small business and you are trying to figure out the best steps to get on to Facebook to drive new customers. It can be a daunting task and with little extra time in the day, how can you be expected to spend time promoting your business on Facebook? I completely understand the challenges of running a small business and after speaking with lawyers, florists, dentists, and many other small businesses, I’ve compiled the following list of strategies that should help ease the process.

1. Go Slow And Steady, Don’t Overdo It

Any form of promotion is like compound interest. It takes time to build up the residual returns but if you stick with it, the pay off can be substantial. Many people hear that Facebook is a great way to promote their business but after trying it out for a few days or even a couple weeks, they don’t see significant effects so they give up and decide to keep paying for Yellow page advertisements. Who knows how well Yellow Page ads pay off but that monthly check must be going towards something, right?

The difference between Facebook and more traditional promotional channels is that the small business owner needs to invest a little bit of their time. The extra effort can go a long way and can even provide a rewarding experience as customers begin to provide feedback and communicate directly with you. So how much time do you need to be spending? Not hours a day! While promoting via Facebook can become an addictive process, you can allocate little more than an hour a week to your promotional activities.

While it’s never bad to start off enthusiastically, you don’t want to waste all of your efforts in the first few days. Build up your fan base steadily and you’ll begin to see the benefits.

2. Contact Your Fans Directly

While digital media companies and large brands may have thousands upon thousands of fans, most small businesses don’t end up with as many fans, especially if they are local. When you first start growing, it’s a good idea to interact with each new fan on an individual basis. Send users a message after they’ve become a fan of your Facebook page. Build a relationship with each fan and they’ll become a fan and a customer forever.

Once you build a connection there’s a good chance the user will tell their friends. I’ll be discussing that strategy further in an upcoming guide. The main point here is that each new fan can be considered a new lead for a small business. Selling on Facebook though is subtle and should not be done in an overly aggressive way. Just because someone became a fan does not mean you should send them a message saying “Buy my stuff today!!!”

Instead, reach out to each new fan individually to welcome them to your Facebook Page and begin a dialogue. In many times these initial conversations will lead to lasting business relationships.

3. Don’t Spam

I’ve written about this before and it never gets old: don’t spam your users. As the owner of a blog, I get countless people who try to spam the comments and I’ve seen the same thing take place on Facebook. Spamming your users with too many links or trying “black hat” tactics to rapidly drive up your Facebook Page fan base is not worth it. Facebook is aggressive at stopping spam and there is a good chance that they’ll stop you somewhere along the way, and it can potentially cost a lot.

4. Consider It An Educational Experience

Rather than looking for an instantaneous return, look at it as a long-term educational experience. As you improve your strategy, you’ll attract more fans. It takes time to master Facebook promotion and time to reap the rewards but the payoff can be significant. The main point of this rule is clear: stick with it for the long haul. As I outlined in last week’s Facebook advertising guide for marketers, it’s important to plan for the long-term.

If you blow out your budget in the first few days and expect to have a massive response, you will be seriously disappointed. Learn from the experience, take notes, and improve your strategy over time. It may sound like a lot of time but you can do much of this in as little as 15 minutes a day. One other benefit of considering it an educational experience is that the whole process is deductible in your taxes.

You can write off the expenditure ad advertising or as education (you need to speak to your accountant to determine the best way to file an entry for this).

5. Limit Your Advertising Budget

As I just mentioned, more dollars on advertising does not always mean more revenue. Start off with a few dollars a day to test out Facebook’s advertising system. You can create your first ad here to test out all of Facebook’s targeting capabilities. Make sure that if you are spending money that you’re investing in some long-term goal, otherwise you’ll end up spending a lot of money aimlessly. Trust me, I know from experience! As your performance improves and you figure out which ads work most effectively you can begin to steadily increase your ad spend.

Figure that you’d spend a few hundred dollars on a Yellow Pages advertisement so be willing to test out a similar budget on Facebook. If all goes well and your business starts to increase, you can always invest in more advertising as necessary. As I mentioned earlier, this is an educational process and with so many resources on the internet, learning has never been cheaper. Don’t spend all your money when you don’t have to!

To most effectively manage your budget, start off with one Facebook advertising campaign which has a limited budget (as pictured below). For all of the initial ads use that same campaign rather than creating separate campaigns for each advertisements.

6. Create A Facebook Page, Not New Profiles

A quick way to get banned from Facebook is to set up multiple accounts and multiple profiles. I have multiple friend requests in my inbox currently from people who’ve set up separate accounts to promote their business. Don’t do this! You can go here to set up your own Facebook Page while keeping your existing profile. Under no circumstance should you be creating separate accounts. Not only is it against Facebook’s terms, but it provides no additional value.

I could spend more time explaining why this is flat out a bad idea but I won’t. It’s much better to spend the time focused on the activities you should be doing!

7. Use Coupons And Other Incentives

So now that you’ve got a Facebook Page, some ads running, and a few fans of your Facebook Page, what should you be doing? In addition to engaging users on Facebook, you also want to get them making purchases. Keep in mind, which incentives you use depend on the type of business you are running. For example, a florist may have price sensitive customers, and special deals may be an incentive to make a purchase.

A florist may want to post something like “There’s never a better time to show that special someone that you care. Today only we’re providing a bouquet of _______________, ______________, and _______________ for only $9.99, and we’ll deliver them to your work for free!” However if a dentist posted “50 percent off cavity fillings”, I have a feeling that they wouldn’t get the same response.

There are plenty of other creative incentives to drive people back to your page and to your business so test out different strategies and see which work best.

8. Emphasize Mobile Subscriptions

One of the best components of Facebook Pages is the ability to receive updates via your mobile device. Once updates come to your phone you can also reply to the updates, making it possible for instant two-way communication. It’s a model that’s similar to Twitter except that on Pages you get more features for engaging users. The mobile component adds an additional layer of interaction which can be used to build relationships with your new and existing customers.

As I outlined in the 5 phases of the Facebook sales funnel, Facebook is a relationship marketing platform, not a direct sales channel. That’s why it’s important to build your relationship with others through Facebook. Configure your Facebook Page to function with your current mobile device and communicate with users while on the go. This can make for some great, instantaneous dialogue.

Ultimately most internet based promotions are going the way of mobile, and it is in every business’s best interest to take advantage of that trend including on Facebook.

9. Post Occasional Entertaining Statuses

When was the last time you saw an update from your dentist in your news feed? You probably never have and you may even be weirded out to see one, unless of course it was a funny joke. For example if the dentist posted occasion updates about eating candy and junk food in general, you may get a quick smile and possibly even post a status update. Whatever the response, at least you are getting one, which is one additional level of interaction that you never previously had with your customers.

Keeping your fans engaged is an important component of any good Facebook strategy. How much time does it really take to come up with a clever status update? If you’re like me then catchy ideas occasionally pop into your head (or at least ones that you think are clever) when you are on the go. If you’ve properly configured your Facebook Page to work with your mobile device, you can instantly update your Page’s status while on the go.

It takes very little extra effort to bring a smile to your fans and it’s something that they’ll remember.

Conclusion

Every small business can take advantage of the promotional opportunities that Facebook presents. By using some of the tips listed in this articles, small businesses can get a great start on promoting their company on the site. While there are many other strategies to increasing the number of fans you have on the site as well as driving new business, much of that can be learned through experimentation. The best thing to do is to get started and figure it out from there!

If you would like to learn more about ways that your small business can benefit from Facebook and social media in general, fill out your information in the form below. We promise to not spam you and take your privacy seriously so we won’t give your email to anybody.

____________________

Personal website start at low as just $189-Paul Bonnallie, Success Architects League, paul@corp-success.com,   http://corp-success.com/helpdesk

Regards,

Paul Bonnallie

Success Architects League