Category Archives: Social Media

Social Media

Update Your Facebook Privacy Settings for Your Comfort Level

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Facebook with over 8,ooo,oooo users is a place to connect with friends. Facebook privacy setting can be confusing. If you do use Facebook, here are ways you can utilize Facebook privacy settings to restrict who sees the comments, pictures and videos you post.

On the upper right corner of Facebook, select “Privacy Settings” using the drop down arrow next to “Home.” One this page, you can set your Privacy Seeings to your comfort level. To strictly resist your content, choose “Friends” for most of these settings.

Facebook Privacy Settings choices:

  1. “Control Your Default Privacy” which apply to status updates and photos you post to your timeline from a Facebook app that doesn’t have the inline audience selector, like Facebook for Blackberry. Choose: “Public”, “Friends” or “Custom.”
  2. Adjust “How You Connect” to control how you connect with people you know.
  3. Adjust “How Tags Work” to control what happens when friends tag you or your content. “Timeline Review of posts friends tag you in before they go on your Timeline” (note: tags may still appear elsewhere on Facebook)
    *** When disabled, people can tag you in photos or status updates, and those items will automatically go to your Timeline.
    *** When enabled, you will be allowed to review it first. These posts will still exist in the timeline of the friend who created the content just not your Timeline until you approve it.
  4. Adjust Apps and Websites to control what gets shared with apps, games and websites.
  5. Adjust “Limit the Audience for Past Posts” to limit the audience for posts you shared with friends of friends or Public.
  6. Adjust “Blocked People and Apps” to manage the people and apps you’ve blocked.

After adjusting each of these settings, click on “Done” to save your choices.

By customizing your Facebook privacy settings, you control access to who sees the content you choose to share with others.

Social Media

Facebook Privacy Starts With General Internet Best Practices

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Fear of losing privacy on Facebook is one of the most common social networking fears I hear. People are concerned their personal information will become private, that everyone will know what they are doing or their financial data will be at risk.

While internet hacking does occur, your best defense begins with use of good general internet best practices. This is the best protection for your internet privacy.

  1. Never share personal information or anything you are uncomfortable with others seeing. Even with privacy settings, things can get out and become public on any site.This goes for for comments, pictures, video or any other medium. My benchmark is this: Would I feel comfortable with my Mom or Grandmother seeing this remark or picture I posted? If the answer is “no”, I know it is a comment which should not be made public.
  2. Use strong passwords and change them often. Create mnemonics to help remember your passwords. For example: “every good boy deserves fudge”  -> egbdf.
  3. Use a different passwords for each site so if someone gets access, they cannot get into all of your accounts.

This is some risk with any internet site. By using internet best practices, you are more likely to retain your privacy and keep your data secure.

Social Media

Pinterest Invites are the Hottest Commodity on the Internet Today

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Pinterest is the hottest new social networking site and it is taking the country by storm. The site let’s members create a virtual college of internet pictures. Create a board, give it a title and pin virtual internet picture to your collection.

For now, membership is invitation only. Google used this method for rolling out Google Plus.

Here is a picture from Rice Fusion Sushi I pinned to my Pinterest Food board.

 

Visit our McHenry County Pinterest board and please suggest additional pictures to include.

Social Media

Mari Smith Webinar Facebook 2012: What You Need to Know

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Here is great news on a Facebook event I’m excited to share with you because it comes from a true leader in the social media space!

Many of you are trying to get social media to work for your business and are looking for guidance. 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.

I’m VERY excited to share Mari’s Facebook Marketing for 2012 webinar replay with you. You will find it very informative. You’re invited to attend for free!

https://marismith.infusionsoft.com/go/fb2012/aprilmwilliams/

Many of us are overwhelmed 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 a raving fan base so that they REALLY connect with you and love to buy from you.

https://marismith.infusionsoft.com/go/fb2012/aprilmwilliams/

I recommend you register right away for Mari’s first big Facebook event of 2012.  I have already watched this webinar and can tell you it is a great way to start this year off with a big boost to our Facebook marketing for 2012!

https://marismith.infusionsoft.com/go/fb2012/aprilmwilliams/

After the webinar, let me know what you found most beneficial.

Mari Smith webinar

Social Media

What Does Bob Newhart Know about Social Media and Websites?

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What does Bob Newhart know about social media and websites? And what can we learn from his example? Do you really need a website?

When I visited Bob Newhart’s website I was greeted with a huge photo of Bob Newhart smiling back at me from my computer screen. I admit being taken aback. The only other items on the page are a small Facebook and Twitter icons. Now, Bob is 82 years young and many of his fans are his generation. Bob uses social media to reach out and touch is fans because it is an effective form of communication.

He’s still got his famous brand of humor. Here is one of Bob’s recent tweets:

“Look at this @PerezHilton, I’m 82 & being hounded by the paparazzi! http://perezhilton.com/2012-01-05-bob-newhart-beverly-hills#.Tweal0r5Zg8“

Do you need a website or is a social media page enough? Let me know how you weigh in on the topic.

Bob Newhart in Chicago
Bob Newhart in Chicago. Photo credit Bob Newhart
Social Media

Google Search Plus Your World Joins with Google Plus Search

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Google begins rolling out “Google Search Plus Your World” on 1/10/12 which incorporates posts, comments and pictures from those you are connect with through Google Plus.

Google introduces these big changes which impact search capabilities and results. Previously, Google search took into account your personal information and location to customize your search results to make them meaningful to you. With Google Search Plus Your World, results include your Google Plus contacts information, tips, comments, news, pictures and video.

Here the official notice from Google.According to Google, “you can see how your results look for a particular search with or without personal results by clicking the person icon personal results button or the globe icon globe button on the top right side of the search results page. You can also turn off personal results in your search settings”

ABC and Associate Press expressed concerns about the impact these changes have on search competition, Twitter, Facebook and anti-trust issues.

Google is connecting authors to their individual internet content through their Google Plus account. This allows authors to rank in search results based on their portfolio of writing as an author or publisher. Learn how to connect your Google Plus account to your content.

Google Plus personal accounts have been around for a months while Google Plus business pages are more recent. These two profiles will not only impact organic search results, third party endorsements from your connections will sway consumer’s opinion and impact click through rates.

Find April M. Williams and CyberLife Tutors on Google Plus.

Social Media

FourSquare Location Based Social Networking Website

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FourSquare is a geo-location-based social networking application accessed millions of times each day as members check in at locations using smartphones. With this mobile marketing tool, users earn FourSquare badges, become mayor of a venue and claim discounts. Mayor status is earned by checking in the most times and this is your most loyal customer.

Businesses use FourSquare to attract and retain customers. With FourSquare tools for business, your first step is to claim your business venue. Edit details, add a link to your website and Twitter handle. You can set up free marketing campaigns and specials like the “Newbie Special”, “Swarm Special” or “Mayor Special”.

Monitor your campaigns with the Merchant Dashboard with venue stats to get a statistical breakdown on your visitors.

FourSquare apps are available the Iphone, BlackBerry, Android, Palm and many other smartph0ne devices.

Contact us and to get your business started with FourSquare.

Social Media

A Simple Way To Earn Cash While Shopping

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Dorothy Tucker from CBS Chicago News recently interviewed me about mobile marketing applications WeReward, ShopKick and CheckPoints. With these tools, shoppers can earn points which can be converted to cash or merchandise.

FourSquare is another popular application where merchants can create special offers for new or repeat customers.

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Customers use mobile marketing or geo location services on their smart phones and tablets while shopping, dining or recreating.

According to Nielsen’s third quarter 2011 survey, 43 percent of all US mobile phone subscribers own a smartphone. 62 percent of mobile adults aged 25-34 report owning smartphones.

Businesses use these tools to create offers to encourage new customers and loyalty among existing customers. On most sites you can list your business for no cost and some customer offers are free.

Interested in mobile marketing? Give us a call at 414-604-6635 and we will set up your sites and guide you though using them.

Read the full article “A Simple Way To Earn Cash While Shopping” at
CBS Chicago.

Social Media

Get a Google Plus Business Page Vanity URL

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Google Plus Business or Personal pages are now available to all. I created pages for myself and two businesses then noticed the page URLs are lengthy. A long URL is hard to remember and accurately type into a computer. I used a neat tool to shorten the URL to a memorable set of characters.

Here are examples of how the original Google Plus URLs look compared to the shorter versions of the URL.

 

You can create your own vanity URLs at http://gplus.to. Just enter the original Google Plus page URL and the desired new URL. Your will then have a Google Plus page URL http://gplus/username.

Google Plus logo

Need assistance getting your Google Plus page set up? Call us at 414.604.6645 to do it for you.