Here’s great news on a Facebook event I’m actually happy to hear about… because it comes from a true leader in the social media space – Mari Smith.

If you’ve been trying to get social media to work for your business, you know that Mari Smith provides some of the best guidance there is for making sense of it all.

And as entrepreneurs and small businesses owners, we are all interested in getting better at Facebook marketing and relationship marketing in a big way!

So, I’m VERY excited to tell you what’s in store for you on Tuesday January 31st. Mari’s going to be leading one of her informative, FREE webinars — The New Relationship Marketing – FREE Webinar Series! — on Facebook Marketing for 2012 — and you’re invited!

This will be a lively and informative webinar about how to grow a raving fanbase on the world’s #1 social network — Facebook.

With all the recent changes over at Facebook, sometimes it’s tough to stay ahead and use the world’s largest social network to guarantee consistent visibility, engagement and growth for your business. That’s why Mari’s offering this free webinar, to get you up to speed on Facebook Marketing right at the start of the year. It’s all about the best ways to develop your Fanbase audience so that they REALLY connect with you. And when they join in and respond, they’re ready to buy from you, too!

Register right away to save your seat on Mari’s first big Facebook event of 2012 before it fills up (because if her previous webinars are any indication, I really think the seats on this one will be overflowing too!) I’ve already signed up, so let’s both start this year off with a big boost to our Facebook marketing for 2012!

The New Relationship Marketing – FREE Webinar Series!

I hope to see you on the webinar!

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Here’s an idea for making this Friday more fun and fruitful.

In addition to doing your own Christmas shopping online, give your Facebook friends and family good reasons to do likewise.

The screenshot below shows a Facebook status update about reading Ken Follett’s “Fall of Giants” on my iPad, and how Ed was enjoying his new Kindle Fire on a rainy afternoon.

That’s a strategy that you can use every day of the year to make extra coin.

Respect your Facebook friends by making recommendations relevant and of interest, i.e. stay on topic on your business profile, and don’t inundate close friends with updates about incredible web hosting deals on your personal profile.

As ever, personal endorsements need to be REAL and honest. Getting stumped by follow-up questions will wreck your credibility and future earnings potential.

It’s also a good idea to add a disclaimer such as “When you buy the book through my link Amazon pays me… about enough to send my mother a Christmas card”.

Happy Turkey Day and best wishes for a prosperous Black Friday!

Good grief. What’s up with the Facebook Stalker app (and all the idiots that are promoting it)?

Folks, it’s just another way that scammers are getting you to give up your Facebook password.

Don’t fall for it!

First of all, if your Facebook security is good (no telephone numbers, addresses or real birth years), then you don’t need to worry about those who will steal your identity.

And if you have played fast and loose with your personal information get LifeLock identity theft protection!!!

Secondly, it’s easy enough to tell if you have a REAL stalker (and I’ve dealt with 2 of them over the years).

They don’t just lurk – they pursue you — relentlessly.

They send you every app in the book, send you loving messages and then express real frustration when you don’t respond. (Have you seen “The Resident“? Watch it.)

Dealing with Facebook stalkers is easy — defriend the creeps.

I have 2 Facebook accounts. One for family and REAL friends (those whom I’ve actually met, spent time with… love). The other is for people with whom I do business. Some folks are on both accounts… but never would I allow a stranger into my ‘friends and family’ account.

Back to the point, as far as an Stalker Trackers application on Facebook — there’s no such thing.
The original stalker app was removed from Facebook very quickly due to security issues. Don’t believe that others will be any different.

So, don’t fall for the bandwagon and promote it. In too many cases, it’s just a front for nefarious programmer/scammers to access your account.

As the year winds down to a close, it’s a perfect time to reflect and start to set goals for the year ahead.

Overall, my goals / resolutions for this year were simple and minimal:

1. Travel more
2. Take more time off
3. Maintain or increase my income
4. Lose 10 pounds.

Well, three out of 4 ain’t bad. (I gained seven pounds – but had a great time doing it! )

As for traveling more… I did that in spades with trips to:

• Hawaii
• Las Vegas (for Affiliate Summit)
• Ontario from British Columbia in the new RV
• Washington, Chilcotin, Oregon Coast and local camping trips
• Boise for a Clickbank Mastermind
• Holland for a family reunion
• Dubai for the UPO conference
• and still to come… South for the winter in the new 5th wheel

As for time off… in reality, I worked only 2 months this year.

I worked most of February to get Rosalind Gardner’s Academy up and running by March. Then in July I put in some time when it was too hot here to be outside during the day.

Interesting, but those 2 months of blogging were enough to help me exceed my previous years’ income.

I think what REALLY helped was the fact that I finally got engaged on Facebook, after I separated my friends and family account from my business account.

Granted, I did this all WRONG, killing an account with almost 5000 friends. Instead of making this the Family account, I should have made it the Business account… but live and learn, i.e. don’t make the same mistake.

The good thing about that error was that it made me aware of the power of Facebook to drive traffic.

The thing that I did most right this year was KILL 2 blogs.

I was trying to maintain and create content for my travel blog (Roamsters.com) and my friend Ed’s blog, MyEnergyPal.com when I finally realize that the travel and energy savings tips would be just as useful on my personal blog at http://RosalindGardner.com

It’s all just part of what I do!

I’m less concerned about keyword strategies than branding — not to mention reducing my workload — so the change works well for me.

Other than that, I’m again paying more attention to my dating service blog, 101Date.com — which is where my affiliate marketing business began, and that blog has over 100,000 subscribers – a WORTHY number to give more of my attention!

So… what and HOW did YOU do this year?

So, you’re touring around the Clickbank Marketplace looking for a good product to promote and you find one that you like.

Before you grab the product hoplink and paste it into your full-scale review of the product, look for the Facebook “Like” button and give it a click as shown in the screenshot below.

When you hit the “Like” button, ClickBank will automatically generate a HopLink to the product and post it to your Facebook profile as shown in the next screenshot.

If any of your friends make a purchase after clicking your link, you earn the affiliate commission!

NOTE: To earn affiliate commissions, you must be logged in to your ClickBank account before clicking the Like button. ClickBank will not retroactively credit any sales resulting from links created when you are not logged in to your ClickBank account.

I messed up my Facebook strategy right from the outset.

I created a profile and let everyone and his brother become my “friend”.

That was all well and good until I had nearly 5,000 friends and realized that was going to be all that Facebook allowed.

Limiting friends?

I have 100′s of thousands of subscribers on my email lists and only a certain percentage buy. I want to GROW my lists, NOT limit their numbers.

Egads.

Hmmm… 5000 friends and there was no way to tell which of them was interested in my personal exploits vs. BUYING products I recommended.

Had I bothered to do some research, I would have learned that profiles were limited in terms of the number of friends you can have — not to mention that things get completely confusing between REAL friends and those folks who wanted to stay in touch for my business acumen… DESPIITE my obvious lack of Facebook expertise.

Argh.

So, what to do?

Consult Facebook experts such as Mari Smith and Learn MORE about Facebook.

It turns out that what I should have done after creating my profile, was create a Facebook PAGE for people who are interested in my affiliate marketing and blogging business teachings to LIKE (or FAN).

Talk about embarrassing.

I had to create a Welcome Page and install Facebook code on each post for folks to ‘Like This’ and get my work recognized.

Then I had to cull all those ‘friends’ from the original profile and try to redirect them to my new pages. That was pretty much a bust.

Talk about a waste of time.

THEN there was the advertising debacle.

I could have accessed Jonathon Volk’s book on Facebook advertising beforehand, but NO…. I thought I knew better.

I blew $100 in the space of 15 minutes on a Facebook ad.

Granted, $100 isn’t a great deal of money to me, but considering it brought me only one “Like”, there’s NO way my short Facebook advertising adventure was worth the trouble considering none of my products sells for more than $47.00.

Stupid, stupid me.

Anyway, please avoid making the same mistakes with Facebook.

Get professional help as suggested above – save your time and do Facebook right the first time.

Get Mari Smith’s Social Marketing Method

Mari Smith’s 240-page digital guidebook is jam-packed with how-to’s, strategies, checklists, templates, screenshots and diagrams from which you’ll learn how to build profitable relationships using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media marketing venues.

Not only that, but you’ll also get Monthly live open Social Media Q&A calls, PLUS, over a dozen archived Facebook & Twitter Q&A calls and webinars!

Very reasonably priced, Mari’s Social Marketing Method is worth it’s weight in Gold!

I love services that simplify my online business.

One of those services is TwitterFeed’s automatic posting of blog entries to my Twitter account — meaning that I rarely have to login to Twitter, unless of course I feel like telling everyone what I’m having for lunch that day — not.

Well, in a similar fashion, YouTube has just made sharing your videos easier too.

You can now connect your YouTube account with your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts — meaning that your followers, friends and shared-item readers will see when you upload a new video to YouTube.

Sweet!

To connect your YouTube account with Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader, simply click on Upload Video and you’ll see the link for AutoShare Options. Choose one or choose all 3 — linking is pretty much instantaneous and painless.

The screenshot below shows my YouTube account and the AutoShare options I chose.

Now I just have to make and upload another video to YouTube… wait for it!

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

In a video post this morning, my good friend Colin “Google” McDougall reveals Google’s plans to eradicate the value of inbound links from social media sites.

Like Colin, I’ve never been an avid user of MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter exactly because it was inevitable that Google would eventually have to turn that traffic off due to abuse by backlink hungry Internet marketers. Most of the ‘content’ is pure time-wasting rubbish anyway. Seriously, who cares if I’m running off to Starbucks to get tall non-fat moccha? Good grief.

Colin also emphasizes that you can still garner benefit from social media sites when used for the purpose of real networking and sharing content of value.

Hmmm… gaining backlinks and therefore site traffic through the sharing of valuable content. What a novel concept!

This is the 6th (bonus) post in 5-part series social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric. You may read his other posts here.

I decided to add this post in response to questions about “where’s the money on Facebook?”. Since you have a decent understanding of Facebook now having read my other posts in this series, I’ll tell you about the 3 basic ways I use Facebook to make money.

Although you could use their PPC system which has profitable possibilities. I know people who are making good money using this but since I’ve not personally tested it I’m not qualified to advise you about it so these are ways to use it without spending money in the process.

• Groups
• Events
• Live FB on-site Chat

Groups

You know about groups already. The benefits (and drawbacks) of setting and having your own group have been discussed. However, when you have a group of 200-300 or more you can get good leverage by sending an email to the entire group. Build the community side of it.

Here’s a picture to show you that there are all kinds of groups on Facebook… there’s even one about rodents.

To make this work, you could develop a 3-6 part email series and a schedule of when you are going to send it out. Start by encouraging conversation on the group’s wall and posting interesting threads on the group bulletin board. This gets people active in your group and further bonded to it.

It’s no longer “just another FB group I’m a part of”. It becomes something they remember and the sense of community is stronger.

Then start asking them questions. Ask them about their concerns and how you can help. The more you engage your members the better.

Finally, you can send out an email inviting them to join you on your webinar/teleseminar or even your ustream.tv channel. The benefit of the ustream is they can see you making the presentation, your body language and gestures. It is almost like being live and face-to-face which is the most powerful communication.

This bonds them to you even further.

You’ll want to use a webinar if you’re doing a highly technical subject where you are going to walk them through how to do it on your computer so they can watch step-by-step what you are doing.

You could compile some of the biggest questions they asked and just do a Q&A call. That’s the easiest way to get your content for the call and it’s most VALUABLE TO YOUR MEMBERS.

This gives you a good running start.

Events

Events can be handled in similar fashion. In fact, I recommend that you combine Events with the Groups strategy. After you’ve finished the mailing series to your group, you invite them to the Events page that you have setup with the details of your call.

The really cool thing about events is that you can invite all your friends. It’s the ONE AND ONLY safe way to invite all your friends without being caught in the facebook spam filters.

Once you have sent out the invites to the friends who’d be interested (or all of them) you have the ability through your events page to follow-up with them. It separates into “attending”, “maybe”, and “not attending”. You can send different messages to each category of friends.

You can see from this image how someone raises their hand to confirm that they’re attending your event. Be sure to send a reminder and bonus info to the “attendees” to further pique their interest and increase your attendance rate.

Include additional reasons explaining why the “maybes” should attend. Make it so desirable that they want to cancel whatever else they had planned because the content of the call will be of such MASSIVE benefit they’d have to be complete fools to miss it.

When you can make it more important than their wedding anniversary you know you have a winner. Okay I’m young so have never been married, and this level may be unattainable but making it really desirable for them is the goal.

To the “not attending” you can send a “hate for you to miss out on this valuable advice, but here’s some bonus info now and maybe I’ll make the recorded version available to you” message. This gets some of them to want your info.

Live Facebook on-site Chat

The chat bar “floats” down below. It’s a standard php bar you’ve seen.

Although I haven’t experimented with this much yet I see the widest potential of this for 1-on-1 client acquisition. For someone like me that does copywriting at $100/hr I can get on here and talk with Facebook friends whom I know are looking for a copywriter. I can see what they are needing done, what they’re looking for, and how I can create a valuable sales piece that will pull high response and ultimately make them more money.

You could be a plumber and contact local people you know are having plumbing issues (no double entendre here). You’d be surprised what people post to twitter and their Facebook status updates.

Also, if you’re an article writer, web designer, seo underground guru, graphic designer, publicist, business coach, or a host of other remote-ready consultant/service based provider the possibilities for this type of 1-on-1 communication on-site are endless.

One piece of advice…make any potential client jump through a few hoops before getting involved in a long-winded conversation with them. This will save you time and eliminate the proverbial “tire-kickers” and “looky lous”.

Nothing fancy just send a couple emails back and forth. Have them send some info to you about what they need from you, and some kind of qualifier that lets you know they’re in a financial position to pay your reasonable fee.

This saves you headache, frustration and ultimately makes you more money because you’re more efficient.

What are you still doing here? Get out there, expand your business and make more money right now!

Special thanks to Ros for her caring commitment and making this series possible. Get more social media facebook tactics here.

This is the fifth in a 5-part series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric. You may read his other posts here.

The news feed is quite probably the most powerful part of Facebook.

The screen capture show here to the left is the news feed that appears on the Facebook home page when you first login. As you can see, some of the activities showing up in the news feed are things your friends have done. In this instance Richard created a group and had added videos to his group, and 41 of my friends are now friends with Sean.

Other items that show up in the news feed include:

• photos
• videos (to your profile or a group)
• wall posts (when you post on your own wall, a friend’s wall, or a group wall)
• sponsored ads
• joining events (when you or friends join an event)
• joining groups (when you or friends join a group)
• posting link (to article or blog post)

It’s very important for you to stay in the news feed of your friends. This shows them you are active on Facebook everyday and keeps your name in front of them.

It keeps you in their “top of the mind consciousness”. When they see you everyday your name becomes more familiar to them, they feel like they know you better because they do, and you’ll find it easier to work with them because they feel closely connected to you.

You want these things working in your favor. Just do a couple of the things I listed everyday to insure you stay active in the news feed. It’ll only take you 2-3 minutes to do 2 of those things and this small time investment can pay big dividends for you.

Mini News Feed

The Mini News Feed displays on your profile when your friends come to check out what you are up to lately. They can see who have formed friendships with, what posting you’ve done, and anything that you Stumble will also show in the news feed once you have the Stumbleupon application installed.

Being active on Facebook will keep your news feed ticking along with new items and help you keep you in front of people… and more exposure means more TRAFFIC!

To learn more about Facebook and claim your free social media marketing bonuses click here.