FaceBook - Part 2

Do You Have ‘Subscribe Button’ on Your Facebook Profile ?

Facebook is now allowing you to get updates from others public status updates via Subscribe Button.
For you to subscribe, the person you are interested in must enable this subscribe button

Facebook is now allowing you to get updates from others public status updates via Subscribe Button.

For you to subscribe, the person you are interested in must enable this subscribe button.

If you want to add ‘Subscribe Button’ to your Facebook profile, simple goto http://www.facebook.com/about/subscriptions and click on Allow Subscribers button.

Now you can see, subscription and subscriber info links along with the profile info, wall, photo, friends, Notes links below your Facebook DP.

Hear from interesting people
You’ve always been subscribed to friends. Now you can hear from journalists, celebrities, political figures and other people too. Click the Subscribe button on someone’s profile to get their public updates in your News Feed.

Fine-tune your News Feed
Use the Subscribe button to choose what you see from friends and others in News Feed. For each person, you could hide all game stories, see just photos, limit updates to life events and more.

Why do all my friends have a ‘Subscribed’ button?

You’ve always been subscribed to your friends. With the Subscribe button, you can choose which of their updates you get.
Why don’t all profiles have a Subscribe button?

Only people who allow subscribers will have a Subscribe button on their profile. If you don’t see the button, you can’t subscribe.
How do people subscribe to my updates?

After you allow subscribers, a Subscribe button will show up on your profile. Your public updates will appear in people’s News Feeds once they click this button.
If I allow subscribers, what updates will they see?

Subscribers can see only the things you share publicly. They can also choose how many and what types of these public updates they get.

You can subscribe to my public updates here http://www.facebook.com/technotip 😉

5 Tips to Finally Start with Social Media Marketing

This is a guest post by Amanda. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

The newest addition to any Internet marketer’s arsenal is social media marketing. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn connect people to people and people to brands continuously while allowing constant interaction. Many are weary of Social Media; if worked with unfocused campaigns, it can eat up your time and take you away from other necessary projects. The key to Social Media is to connect your company to consumers, and this can be done in just 10 minutes a day.

Getting Started With Social Media Marketing

1. Take It One Step at a Time
If you only have 10 minutes to spend on your Social Media campaigns you should choose which platform to start with. To have an exceptional social media presence you will eventually need a solid presence on both Twitter and Facebook, but that does not mean that you need to get bogged down with both at once. You should pick one platform and run with it; master either Facebook or Twitter before moving on to the other. If you try to divide your 10 minutes between the two, you will fail at both.

If you start with Facebook, you’ll need to have proper branding and bio. The most important part of your Facebook page is the wall where you can interact with your fans. If you already have both your Facebook and Twitter pages started, rather than dividing your time between the two each day you should spend one day on Facebook and the next on Twitter. Make sure to spend the full 10 minutes each day on one platform in order to get your desired results.

2. Respond to Your Fans
Most people following your Facebook or Twitter pages are not listening to you. You should respond to your fans rather than talking at them or advertising to them. Your social media involvement is an opportunity for you to create an experience for your customer base and add to your company’s narrative.

Responding to your customer base means spending most of your time responding to @’s, messages, & wall posts. You can also utilize your social media position to respond to any negative PR or responses from your customers. To respond effectively, you must listen to your customers and embrace detractors; you do not want your naysayers to have any ammunition.

You should also spend your social media time getting to know your fans and followers. This attention can turn these fans and followers into customers and customers into prospects. You have the power to turn anyone into a brand evangelist if you treat them well by responding and listening to them.

3. Reach Out To People
Find people through searches on your social media network; look for those who have a question about your industry and niche market, or people who just need a little bit of help. Give them the information they’re looking for without asking them to follow you or linking them to a product.

This may lead to an invitation to join you on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog but that should never be your goal. Your goal is get on people’s radar and get them to talk about you. By doing this you will show them who you are and how to find you without being pushy.

4. Choose Your Actions
With limited time, you’ll want to focus on one or two actions per day. You do not need to spend your entire day putting out fires or replying to everything that comes up. Sometimes it’s better to just spend time on your social media sites without sending marketing messages; they usually go unnoticed anyway. Tell the story through your actions and send your message through your interactions.

5. Organize Your Efforts
Although you may think that it is a waste of time to reflect on your social media marketing, you might find some very useful information that can help you improve your marketing efforts. Look back to what efforts were the most successful and try to continue following those. It seems like such an easy task, but you might be amazed by how much time you can spend studying this. However, it can pay off if you can find better, more efficient ways to handle your social medial marketing.

Follow these internet marketing tips and you will rock the social media universe.

Author Bio:
Amanda is a writer and blogger living in San Diego, CA (USA). Visit her internet marketing website for more information.

Sunday Series for Newbie Bloggers and nOobs

Being a blog concentrating on social media, blogging, it would be good to have some resources for newbie bloggers or people who are interested in knowing more about blogging, social media and online money making(basics).

Two years ago, I never knew the difference between a domain and hosting. Twitter and FaceBook were far from my thinking. Blogging was far from imagination. Never knew there will be so many people reading blogs more regularly than News Paper, and Tweet more often than they send a text message(SMS – texting) or Call to anyone!

Looking back those days, feels like great memories of ignorance 🙂 Unfortunately, I have many many and many friends who don’t know about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, web-publishing etc. They still think having a live website requires a great deal of knowledge, money and influence. Actually, a friend of mine asked me – how to get permission from BSNL to launch a website. hmm..I got confused for a while, so as to what he was asking. But soon realized, BSNL being a well known Internet service provider in India, many people think that the whole internet and all the websites and everything is controlled by them. Not a bad logic though. And some still think internet is owned by Google.
When I try to tell about the advantages of Twitter and tell them to start using it to their good – the last question they would ask me is, Is Twitter your website? lol…. how good, if it was 😉

Some years back, most news papers, tv News and some online publications tought us how internet is being used to scam people and for betrayal. It has so stuck in the minds of people that, they never dare to do an online transaction. And some people think Google too as a scam, because of various Google Cash Cow like scams. So I think writing about what to trust and what not to, would surly help many people in making right decision.

Not that I know many things. I am still learning and would love to share whatever I learn with like minded nOob friends!

So without hurting the regular readers, I have thought of writing about very basics of internet tools, blogging, Content Management System, how and why etc on this blog on Sundays.

So you got it — most of you may skip reading Technotip.org on Sunday and Saturday.

This post will be used as a document for later reference. Because I am sure, many people will ask what the hell I am writing on the blog. So I can point to this and can tell them that they can skip reading on Saturday and Sunday.

But it would be great, if you can come and help everyone with your valuable comments. Hope you remember your student days, where we learn a lot of complex things and we will be asked some questions related to basics of the subjects and we sometimes giggle to answer it. No one knows everything. So everyone’s comment will add value, even though its a basic thing.

And feel free to(actually I will be privileged) send any of your nOob friends to our blog.

Digg.com to replace its SHOUT feature

Digg.com has decided to replace its infamous Shout feature with Share the story on Twitter, FaceBook and email. And this feature is expected to be rolled out to all users this weekend.

Its inevitable for Digg to give importance to Twitter and FaceBook which has grown up so fast.

Many bloggers and online marketers feel that this move from Digg will be welcomed happily by its users.

This move has both advantages as well as disadvantages:
Advantages:
1. There will be constant exchange of traffic between twitter, FaceBook and digg. This is advantage for Digg, as people will not forget Digg over time 🙂
2. We feel connecting with people as more fun in Twitter and FaceBook than to be friend in Digg.com, where the main intention to make friendship may be to get more Diggs!
3. This gives more reasons to join Twitter and FaceBook, if you yet don’t have an account.
4. Now we can expect the end of monopoly of Digg power users! Now it may be the turn of Twitter power users 🙂
But we can convince a twitter user to re-tweet our tweets, if the story is really interesting. But in Digg, people will most probably ignore our requests as 90% of them would be spam 🙁
5. Spammers can not easily target Twitter and FaceBook users, as we are more choosy in following someone. And others can’t hurt our privacy.

Disadvantages:
1. We can not connect with like minded people on digg!
2. We need to be popular somewhere else to get our article to the front page of Digg!
3. We may start getting more spam mails than ever before, if not handled properly.
4. Spammers may try more innovative means to spam Twitter and FaceBook.

We can already see the integration of Twitter, FaceBook and EMAIL as means to share the stories in DIGG BAR. But the Digg bar wasn’t received by digg users happily. Only way Digg can improve itself is by constant testing, testing and testing, and implementing things according to user feedback.

What do you feel about this move from DIGG ?.

Facebook Further Explaining Their Policy

A couple of weeks ago, Facebook updated their “Terms“. And there was a lot of discussion about it in the blogosphere, forums and on twitter. According to the new Terms, Facebook now reserves all rights to the “User Content”, means any photos, text, link, audio, video, designs, ads and anything else that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. “Post” means to upload, post, transmit, share, store, link to or otherwise make available on or through the Facebook Service, even if you choose to close your account on the network or if your account gets banned or disabled for some reason.

While its a good practice to read the privacy policy and then signup for any service, but have a look at the lengthy terms on every social networking, social bookmarking, social media sites. If you keep on reading them, you will just have to keep on reading them(as they get updated now and then, making it more complex!).

After reading the changes made by Facebook many people expressed their disappointment. Totally Facebook was in News at many places.

Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg(Founder of Facebook) wrote a blog post to clarify the issue. You can read the entire story, at On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information.
Here is an important excerpt from the post..

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

Another concern was, Facebook reserves all rights to the “User Content”, even after you choose to close your account on the network or if your account gets banned or disabled for some reason. Here is what Mark Zuckerberg has to say

When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work.

Mark Zuckerberg also assures(in the blog post) that they wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want.

One thing to note here is people who want full ownership and control over their information can turn off access to it at any time, by changing things in their settings panel.

Facebook claims that these changes in their Terms will be made simpler and more clear over time.
For now the issue is bit cleared and Facebook got a lot of attention in a short period of time(Kind of viral marketing 🙂 ).

Update: Facebook reverted to its previous terms of service, with this public announcement from Mark Zuckerberg.

In the blog post, he writes, “Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.”

Tips to write “about me” section in Orkut.

I am much used to Orkut, then any other social networking sites and I have reasons for that.

Its nice design, less intrusive ads, useful communities etc.

I always wondered, why people would leave their profile page empty, when they have come to a social networking site. Usually they must be interested in knowing people, to introduce themselves, to interact with others. Now for all these a well written profile will be a compliment.

So I figured out some of the points to write a good profile. I am writing by keeping Orkut in my mind, but it applies to other social networking sites like FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Perfspot, Hi5, Bebo, Friendster, minglebox etc.

1. Write what you feel.

2. Write about how you are(Caution: Care to be taken, because people may use this information to harm you). Write only those things which you don’t mind others knowing about you.

3. Don’t try to pretend over smart.

4 .Don’t try to write something more complex then what you actually are.

5. Don’t just copy and paste some poetry or sayings, unless it relates about you or your character, behavior etc.

6. Make it simple, make it straight forward.

7. Express yourself completely.

8. Don’t use bad words, it will surly harm your reputation. If it is inevitable, then use it like F*CK O*F. This simply shows that, you are forced to use it and are not actually willing to use such words. Use this at extreme cases. And it would be better to completely avoid such things.

9. Use similes, font formatting etc wherever required, to present things more lively.

10. Do not include many external links in About me section. It is better, if no links are placed. Because there is always an option called Webpage and wishlist in your Orkut profile for such things.

It is a very bad and spammy practice to put all your refferal links, affiliate links in your “About me” section.

11. Friends and friends of friends who visit your profile are more tend to read the complete profile, if it contains something real, unique to yourself and something more about what you feel.

12. Using bit of humor is always good.

13. And don’t use more humor, if you are a bit of serious guy/girl. Because it makes your profile look like fake.

15. Professional and personal things sharing in Profile pages depends upon individuals depending upon their purpose of signing up for that particular social networking site.

16. Choose the theme which you feel the best.Because, this also shows about what kind of stuffs(design) you like. And some people can guess about your psychology by seeing your choice of theme.

I personally love the default, clean, classic theme itself.

A month ego I had written “About me” in Orkut using all the above mentioned points in my mind. And I could see drastic changes in my friends(who use Orkut more and who had read my profile) behavior with me.

I could see that, they were more polite and more friendly. Now all of my friends know what makes me happy and what disappoints me. Now a days, life with my friends have become more easy, because by now they know everything about me, that I could never tell them directly. Many things will hurt friends, when told directly.

My profile content is displayed below. If you want to skip, then directly scroll down and continue reading. Lines have been put, to separate my profile content.

Here it goes:-

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about me:

My Parents call me SATISH.
And I am registered in my death certificate as..oh sorry,
in my birth certificate as SATISH.B

And I don’t know what people think of me..So what I can say is only “I DON’T CARE”, would you mind it? ..Again, I Don’t Care!

“I am a harmless Creature, until all my harmones work properly”.

I hate people who act over smart..

I take lot of time to adjust with anybody..might be a drawback of me.
I don’t underestimate anyone.
Misunderstanding has played appreciably great strocks in my life and I am crazier than that, because I enjoy it..
And I can forgive the person who kills me, but not the one who misused me.Now I know, you are thinking, what the hell this person might be of use??
The answer is, I also don’t know.But still I hate people who misuse me..now leave it.

I love to live with my friends and for friendship I don’t consider their any previous achievements. I love all those who feel comfortable with me and who make me feel comfortable with them…
And I never ever go behind any person(irrespective of their SEX) who don’t like my attitude and don’t want to be my friend..
I believe in GOD..I am optimistic.I am Moody.
I always think positive–> Which have never helped me to achieve anything, but still it has become a habit.
I forgive people soon, as I feel this life as too short and have no time to keep on proving others as wrong and we the only perfect!

I love innovative things.
I love to be Honest.

And one thing I have observed about myself is,I don’t go behind famous people, as it would be an extra burden to them. **I don’t like to disturb anybody**
I enjoy the company of people who are FREE.I too love to live freely!

I believe that people wont understand the importance of the other person until that person is found dead.
And I am not an important person,

can you guess Y ?

buddu….

because……………I am still alive.

I respect each and every person on this earth.

I Love each and every person on this earth..and in very rare cases people get confused about the colour of my love Love, Love, Love, Love,Love, Love…owfff I never knew that there are soo many colours to Love, when I was studying in Like(Like -> A place near Manglore,where I studied from 6th to 10th).What..what are you thinking?? — All these lines about Love is just a contribution or just a dedication from me to the upcoming Valentines Day and nothing serious in my life.

For those who doesn’t like me, I don’t have any comments, because its their life and I am no one to poke my nose..
And for those who hate me….hope I am not soooo bad(Anyway, its left to you).
I never think bad for anyone….etc!

One thing which I always want to tell all those people who want to hear from me is…please be original..Be how you are and never try to act as someone else.
Be proud of who you are and try to be yourself in most of the times.Don’t copy things from others.
Write about yourself 4m ur heart 2 ur profile.

I guess, you are my friend..because you read until here, soooo long.Do you know….Friendship isn’t about…whom you have known the Longest….who came 1st or who Cares the Best…Its all about Who came and Never Left.

And I have crises of such friends….but still as I said earlier, I am very much optimistic, and I am still in a hope that I will also get friends who will stay till the end, even when there is no use from me.

Hope this is the 1st time in my life after my 10th standard final exam, I am writing something sooo long.

Some times I feel that I have the ability to change every thing in this world, but luckily soon I realize that I wasn’t able to change myself since past 6 years!

I love animals a lot…..in zoo.But some of my friends prefer to live in Home.hahah..Oops,Sorry.I know, its a bad joke!

For my Orkut profile link click here.

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Please use below comment section to share some of the interesting points that we need to consider to write a good About me page, in any social networking site.

And Don’t forget to write a testimonial to me and increase my fan numbers, in Orkut! 🙂

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