I was recently approached by the team at Vpype to test out their brand new Facebook app that allows you to stream LIVE video directly from your Facebook profile or fan page to your friends and fans!

This app is a gamechanger! Live video streaming meets Facebook. and the best part? It’s FREE!

Vpype allows you to:

• Schedule regular shows
• Broadcast live anytime
• Broadcast as yourself or broadcast as your fan page
• Select specific friends to broadcast to (think private conferencing, trainings, etc!)
• Archive your shows
• Embed any show
• Browse through your Facebook friends’ show recordings
• .and more.

So, last night around 7:30pm PST, I put out a tweet, updated my Facebook profile status and began broadcasting – within a few minutes, we had over 40 participants view the show (ultimately 247 live views) and engage in the chat room from around the U.S. and as far as Singapore, Iceland and Gold Coast, Australia! (See this prompt recap of my Vpype debut by Marianna Fridjonsdottir in Iceland!)

The Vpype Facebook app displays on your Fan Page as a tab called "Shows."

By the way, here’s a hot Facebook fan page tip: All tabs to the left of Wall and Info can be reordered by dragging and dropping. In the screenshot below, I’ve placed my Shows tab inbetween my Blog and Welcome tabs:

Possible uses of the Vpype Facebook app – some are my ideas, some I asked my peeps in the chat room:

• Live Q&A for fans on your fan page
• Private conferences
• Family chats
• Daily/weekly show with guest experts
• Short tips/tutorial videos – live or pre-recorded
• New product demos
• Classes
• Video book reviews
• Virtual party
• Cooking demonstration

And a few excerpted enthusiastic comments:

We only ran into just a couple hiccups; for some viewers the stream was sticking from time to time (but that depends on variables such as internet speed on the viewer end, of course). Also, the chat area froze one time and I ended up hitting refresh – which temporarily stopped my live broadcast, but the users stayed connected and we ended up picking right back up where we left off. However, the second part didn’t seem to record.

Also, I first published this post with the video embedded – but was a wee bit alarmed to see the video plays on load! So, I took it out.

You can watch the show here. And, I’ve pasted below a screenshot of what the embed looks like. (Btw, the default width is 750px which is rather wide and needs to be sized).

A few items on our features wishlist as a result of this debut show:

• Embedded player does NOT play on load
• Default embed size is 600px
• Notification of who joined/left
• Participants’ names/avatars linked to their Facebook profile
• Ability to pause the chat area (similar to Tweetchat)
• Broadcast inside the "frame" of a fan page tab
• Ability to assign mic/webcam rights to others for live video interview

Vpype officially launches on Monday, March 15, 2010 at the Social Media World Forum in London.

So, what do you think? How will you use live video broadcasting on Facebook? Let me know in the comments below!

A Facebook friend recently mentioned she was intentionally responding to new Facebook friend requests late at night as she didn’t want to clog up her friends’ feeds. Thing is, there’s a setting in your Facebook Privacy to control exactly what gets published on your Facebook Wall and your friends’ News Feeds.

I have my settings tweaked so that when I add a new friend this is not published on my Wall or friends’ News Feeds. One of the main reasons was, like my girlfriend, I didn’t want to clog up my friends’ feeds.

But, also, what I found was that some folks would watch my feed and see who I was becoming friends with, then reach out to them and infer we had a much deeper connection than was so. Such is the nature of Facebook friends — it could be someone brand new you’ve just added or someone you’ve known all your life.

In any case, there are a few settings you may not be aware of either when it comes to what content you choose to publish on your Wall and, by default, out into your friends’ News Feeds.

How to edit your News Feed and Wall settings:

On the top blue navigation bar, mouseover Settings > then click on Privacy Settings > then click on News Feed and Wall as shown in the screenshot below:

On the next screen, check or uncheck the settings as you wish. The screenshot below is exactly how I have my settings:

Add a friend

If you have the “Add a friend” setting checked on your News Feed and Wall privacy section, your Wall could look like this when you confirm friend requests en masse:

Plus, this activity may show up in all your friends’ News Feeds. There could be very strategic reasons to leave this setting checked as maybe you want people to see how many friends you’re adding, or who they are. But my preference is to have it private for reasons mentioned above.

I’ve been at the 5,000 Facebook friend limit since fall 2008 but I do monitor my News Feed very closely to ensure the people in my inner circle are a match for my style and vice versa. (By the way, if ever you remove a friend, no notifications go out at all. I know this is a concern for many folks!)

Show Wall posts or not?

If you also use Facebook for personal purposes and want to keep personal separate from business, you might want to give thought to this Wall setting. In other words, if you prefer to have the Wall posts you write only show up on that friend’s Wall and not be published out into the News Feed of all your friends, uncheck the top setting. (There is a much more granular way to control your Publisher settings which I’ll write about in a separate post).

I tend to be totally open and use Facebook for strategic professional networking 99% of the time. Every action creates visibility so I’m happy for all Wall posts to go into all friends’ feeds.

One thing to consider though is when you’re wishing your friends a happy birthday. Whether it’s you or an assistant that writes birthday greetings, you might want to be aware that every Wall post may go out into your friends’ News Feed assuming the “Show Wall posts” setting is checked. If you have a lot of friends and all you write is “Happy Birthday” on your friends’ Walls one after the other, frankly, I think it looks automated and impersonal. Instead, I suggest mixing up the birthday greetings and perhaps even spacing them out a bit.

Change relationship status

Again, it’s a personal choice. But, for me, I recently went through a personal transition as I wrote about here and I didn’t want to broadcast that news via Facebook. This setting may be irrelevant to most people – but it’s certainly one you should be aware of.

Here’s what your friends might see in their Highlights section on their Home Page, unless the setting is unchecked:

Let me know if you found this post useful and how you like to have your News Feed and Wall settings in the Comments section below. Have you taken advantage of the really granular publishing and privacy settings? What’s your biggest question(s) about these settings?

Related posts:

• Facebook: Personal, Professional… and Private!

Recommended posts:

• 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

I created this five-part model – the ABC’s of Social Media – to simplify your social media efforts. Many folks come to social media and attempt to short-circuit the process by over-automating, over-broadcasting, over-delegating and miss out the vital component of connecting, engaging and building relationships.

Once you’ve confirmed your target market uses Facebook and Twitter, and you’re happy with your brand, messaging and systems for capturing leads, etc., here’s how the ABC system works:

Automate

First, set up systems to automate your broadcasts, feeds, updates, content. On Twitter, this could be using Twitterfeed to automatically post your blog feed as tweets. To pre-schedule tweets, use TweetLater and/or Hootsuite.

To update multiple social media sites, including Twitter, your Facebook personal profile, multiple Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and many more, Ping.fm works extremely well. To pre-schedule updates to multiple social sites, the best choice is HootSuite > Ping.fm.

Import your blog post on Facebook using the Notes app and/or the Networked Blogs app.

Aggregate all your social feeds into FriendFeed and add the FriendFeed app to your Facebook Profile.

There are many more ways to automate; these are a great start. However, I do recommend not over-automating. Pre-scheduling and auto-broadcasting are great to ensure you at least have some content going out daily. But you’ll also want to generate real-time content/broadcasts too.

Broadcast

Broadcasts are what I call regular tweets (as opposed to @ replies), Facebook status updates, posts on Facebook, blog posts and more. In fact, any way of pushing your message “out there.” This could be seen as more traditional “push marketing” though you’re not being pushy, per se. It’s important to broadcast your content and, in fact, broadcast others’ content in the form of retweets, favorites, social bookmarks and the Links app on Facebook.

Now the challenge with many businesses using social media is they stop at “B” – in other words, they just repeat the cycle of automate and broadcast, automate and broadcast. It’s hard to know who’s behind the Twitter account or Facebook page. It’s all about pushing content and there’s hardly any engagement. So the third step is vital to your success in social media:

Connect

On Twitter, this is the art of joining, initiating and responding to conversations via @ replies. Using popular third party clients like Tweetdeck, Twhirl or Seesmic Desktop, you can easily track and respond to @yourname mentions.

On Facebook, create Friend Lists with your key contacts, drag that friend list to the top of your News Feed and now that’s your default view [see screenshot to the right]. Then, even in just a few minutes a day on Facebook, you can easily connect by commenting appropriately.

Acknowledge your friends’ birthdays on both Facebook and Twitter. [On Facebook, all your friends' upcoming birthdays are listed on your Home Page on the right; you can also receive a weekly list of upcoming birthdays via regular email: click Settings > Account Settings > Notifications > under the first segment (Facebook) click Show More > make sure "Has a birthday coming up" is turned ON.]

Look for other occasions to celebrate and acknowledge. And, look for ways to introduce and promote others, compliment, add value.

Subscribe to a number of popular blogs and regularly post your comments. When writing your own blog posts, encourage your readers to comment by asking stimulating questions.

Delegate

If you’re serious about integrating social media into your marketing efforts, before long you simply cannot manage everything yourself. Depending on the size of your company, you may well have a member of staff who’s sole responsibility is to be the voice and face of the company, often called a “brandividual.”

Or, you may choose to hire a competent, trained VA (Virtual Assistant) or social networking assistant – at least to help set up and manage the basics. I usually recommend you do not delegate your voice, though most of us know some celebrities have “ghost tweeters!” [There are many sources to find good VAs, including on Twitter via the directory Twellow.com - that way you can find, follow and monitor their style before even contacting them.]

One major task you can delegate is to track and monitor your reputation by setting up Google alerts and tweet alerts (via TweetBeep and/or TweetLater which is a suite of helpful Twitter tools). Look for your evangelists who are always singing your praises so you can connect, empower and incentivize them more. And, also look for negative activity that needs to be responded to and ideally nipped in the bud. [The best book on reputation management is Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss.]

Evaluate

As quickly as you set up your social media systems, something new comes along or the big sites introduce new features. Facebook are constantly adding a tweak here and there, sometimes minor but often major. It’s important you stay informed and regularly evaluate how your systems are working for you. Are you meeting your objectives? Are you getting a good ROI (return on investment) and ROT (return on time). Have you thoroughly researched where your target market hang out most and are you reaching them effectively? How can you think outside the box, get more creative and innovative to stay ahead of the curve?

Let me know your thoughts on my ABC’s of Social Media model – did I miss anything critical? Does it help you better understand how you can effectively use the giants like Facebook and Twitter? Please do retweet this post too, assuming you found it valuable!

Today is a BIG day: a seven feet tall day! My giant friend, Dave Lakhani, releases his book How To Sell When Nobody’s Buying (And How To Sell Even More When They Are).

This book is a powerful step-by-step guide to generating significantly more sales using many proven techniques, along with tapping into the power of social media, how to be seen to sell, and how to build lasting, prosperous relationships!

I am thrilled and honored to be one of only four contributing authors. My chapter is called, How To Effectively Use Facebook To Find Your Ideal Work, Build Your Brand, and Increase Your Sales.

Hop over to Dave’s book site now and be sure to first order your copy of this awesome new book today. And then enter your name, email address and receipt number on Dave’s amazing bonuses page for lots of free goodies and plenty chances to win BIG!

Today, Dave will be randomly choosing winners each hour to receive free cameras, iPods, products, and private consultations. Plus, three peeps will win Dave’s $10k Grand Prize of a one day in person consultation to transform your business. Whew, that rocks! As the saying goes, you have to be IN to WIN!

As my own special bonus gift, here’s another super-duper special opportunity for you: a chance to WIN a scholarship to attend my Fast Track to Social Marketing Mastery program! (Worth $5k).

It’s an intense six-week program, very limited in size, typically only available via invitation. (See a quick overview of Social Marketing Mastery here). The next program is coming up fast on June 11th. We meet for six consecutive weeks via my private webinar room, plus one-on-one time with me to help you get big and go viral using social media!

Here’s how to enter:

It’s real simple; just write a comment here on this blog post (or in the comments section below if you’re reading this inside Facebook) telling me these THREE things:

1. Where you’re feeling stuck with Facebook/Twitter/social media.
2. How you think your business would benefit most from a rapid immersion in high-level social marketing training.
3. Why I should pick you as the winner of this scholarship.

That’s it! I’ll choose a winner by midnight tonight (June 9th) and will contact you via email. (I will be verifying with Dave that you got a copy of his book!)

NOTE: if you wish your comment/entry to remain private, please include the words “don’t publish” and I will read your comment offline and it won’t be published. (Of course, this only applies on my blog, not on Facebook).

Good luck!! Now, STEP #1: go get your copy of How To Sell When Nobody’s Buying FIRST!

BREAKING: UPDATE: February 17, 2009, 11:20 PM Pacific

I just logged into Facebook and they have this update posted right there on the Home Page announcing they’ve decided to revert back to the previous Terms of Use while they “resolve the issues that people have raised”:

Way to go Facebook members for speaking out and being heard. Hopefully we’ll see more clearly worded TOS.

[Original post follows]

I’ve been watching the hoopla and panic on the web and in the Twitterverse today regards Facebook’s recently (slightly) revised Terms of Use.

The main change folks are reacting to is the perception that everything you load to Facebook suddenly belongs to Facebook. Not so.

The moment you sign up for an account on Facebook, you ARE agreeing to their Terms of Use, which includes a clause that you grant Facebook a license to use your content.

Yes, the license is “irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide (with the right to sublicense).” Phew, we can see why so many members are upset because of all the implications and permutations this clause could mean.

And, yes, it does seem unfair to have members sign up for a service under one set of Terms and then to change them sitewide, even if moderately. As Facebook’s Corporate Counsel for Commercial Transactions, Suzie White, explained Facebook are working on consolidating their Terms.

Interestingly enough, I raised this very issue last month when I attended the Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas where one of the panels addressed legal matters in social media. Slides included screenshots of the TOS of giants like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube etc.

At Q&A time, I got up to ask a question on the mic, posed to one of the attorneys, specifically about Facebook’s Terms of Use – I asked if we are to interpret the TOS literally, Facebook are at complete liberty to do as they please with all users’ content.

Indeed, the attorney confirmed this to be the case. BUT, he quickly added words to the effect of: Facebook would be HIGHLY unlikely to ever utilize member content in any way inappropriate such that it would jeopardize the member experience of trust, safety and privacy. (Otherwise, they might just have a class action on their hands, yes?!)

See Facebook CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg response to the outcry today: On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information.

Excerpts:

Here’s the way I look at it:

1.   Much as I’m one of Facebook’s biggest evangelists and I believe they’re here for the long haul, we have to remember there was life before Facebook. Sure it’s great to share a ton of stuff with friends, family, clients, peers around the world. But caveat emptor. Don’t be sharing anything anywhere online that you wouldn’t want exposed publicly in some way. My rule of thumb on Facebook, Twitter and beyond is: “Would I be cool with this showing up on the front page of the New York Times, found in a Google search or seen by my grandchildren in a couple decades’ time??” If ever the answer is no, the data simply does not go online.

2.   With all due respect to many of my artist and creative friends in the Facebook community, I really feel photos of your artwork is safe on Facebook. It’s highly unlikely you’d walk into someone’s house one day and see a big coffee table book with your artwork published by Facebook. Believe it or not, Facebook really do care about their members and wouldn’t intentionally do something to upset or provoke their users. Adding a watermark to each image may help you feel safer. DISCLAIMER: I’m not an attorney, I’m not giving legal advice here at all – it’s important always to do your own due diligence.

3.   For me, all the content I load to Facebook is for public display anyway: I love it that my photos are propagated around the platform in the feeds. I take photos and load them to Facebook on purpose for more visibility. I love it that my blog posts import as Notes and can be shared around Facebook and commented on. And, all my public videos are on YouTube and imported into Facebook. My status updates, wall posts and comments are all strategically written. I *want* droves of people to be looking at my content – and I invite anyone using Facebook for business networking to consider this strategy too.

4.   Another thing, though I share a ton of content online for free, I’m also monetizing my intellectual property with my consulting services, products and training. I believe it is simply not possible to give away all your knowledge. And I highly doubt a third party giant like Facebook would be trying to profit from your IP. Though I don’t doubt they’ll use our data for market research purposes. Again, I’m cool with that as I’m sharing my data on Facebook of my own volition.

Bottom line, I really
encourage the Facebook TOS naysayers to put things in perspective. Facebook are listening. Mark Zuckerberg responded today. He’s had flack before (Beacon!) and has publicly apologized and put steps in place to rectify sticky situations in the past.

Facebook actually consider themselves still a startup! (Even at five years old and 165 million+ active users!) Just shows how much further they plan to go – I do know their #1 focus is growth.

What are your thoughts? Are you more reticent now about using Facebook? Do you think the revised TOS are harsh? How so? Add your comments below.

Related Posts:

• Facebook: All Your Stuff is Ours, Even if You Quit – Mashable.com
• Facebook: Relax, we won’t sell your photos – Cnet News
• Facebook: “We have never claimed ownership” of members’ content – The Standard
• Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Information – The New York Times
• Facebook terms of service compared with MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter – Amanda French
• Facebook Clarifies Terms Of Service: “We Do Not Own Your Stuff Forever” – Consumerist
• Do you belong to Facebook, forever? – Chicago Tribune

With the latest trojans, phishers, hackers and imposters floating around cyberspace, especially on Facebook, it’s no wonder members have cause for concern. I’ve put the following suggestions together for you to help protect yourself from identity theft, hacking and the likes:

1. Monitor suspicious activity/links.

Be vigilant in watching for suspicious activity in your News Feed, your Wall and your Inbox. Never, ever click suspicious links. They can often look innocuous, even enticing – e.g. “Hey come look at your photo on this blog.” Before you click, look closely! Do you recognize the blog?

2. Remove friends as appropriate.

Remove any friends immediately who post suspicious links on your wall and/or in emails (especially if they are multiple-recipient emails). (Sadly, these friends may not even be aware they’re posting phishing links – someone may have hacked their account.)

I also recommend removing friends who send you app requests that you do not resonate with. This is usually a sign they’re not quite on the same wavelength as you and may not be someone you care to network with. For me, I do not care to receive invites for apps such as kidnap, or mob wars.

To remove a friend who posted suspicious links on your wall, for example, right click their name from the wall post, open in a new tab/window, scroll towards the bottom right and click “Remove from Friends.” Related post: Annoying Facebook Friends? Give ‘em the FaceBOOT!

3. Keep your wall clean.

Once you’ve removed the friend who posted the bad links, be sure to delete the offending wall post (just in case another person should happen to click on the link). Removing wall posts isn’t so obvious since the Facebook design changed in July 2007. What to do: mouseover the post and the little Edit pencil shows up; click X Delete.

4. Turn off Facebook Chat.

Never, ever chat with people you don’t know at all. (Of course, ideally you actually know all your Facebook friends!) In fact, I recommend turning off Facebook chat completely. I find this feature too distracting and prefer Skype for private instant messaging.

You may have read/heard about the imposters who’ve been watching a member’s activity, then they jump in and start a real familiar chat – ultimately asking for financial help of some sorts. Ugh! See: Fears of impostors increase on Facebook [CNN.com] and Latest Facebook Scam: Phishers Hit Up “Friends” for Cash [TechCrunch].

To turn off Facebook Chat, click the teeny silhouette icon at the very bottom right of your browser when logged into Facebook. If you’re online (online Chat) the dot will be green next to the icon and when you click the icon, in the window that pops up, click “Go Offline” as shown in the screenshot below. Your dot should turn to red.

5. Change your password often.

Don’t use the same easy-to-remember password on all your social networking sites. For the ones you use daily – like Facebook and Twitter – make the passwords obscure with 8 characters or more using a mixture of upper, lower, numbers and characters. The more obscure the better. Yes, it’s tough to remember. But I use the excellent software Roboform to manage passwords. [And, my Mac friends tell me they swear by 1Password].

6. Be careful who you share your password with.

Many super busy professionals use the services of a virtual assistant to help with managing their social networking accounts. If you do so, be sure to do your due diligence when hiring support. There are many, many incredible virtual assistants – and this is a topic for a whole other post, but bottom line is just use your discretion if/when sharing your Facebook password.

7. Hide your year of birth.

Don’t show your year of birth. This may or may not make a difference. I’m not one to be coy about my age/year of birth… however, some time ago I heard from a reliable source that not disclosing your year of birth was just one small step towards protecting yourself from identity theft.

Here’s how: on your Facebook Profile, click the “Info” tab, then click “Edit Information” (or mouseover the Basic Information section and click the little pencil. From the drop down menu next to Birthday, select “Show only month & day in my profile.”

8. Keep your private info private.

Many folks think you have to live in a glass house once you get online and use social networks. My take on this is the lines are for sure blurred between personal and professional. However, you still get to maintain a private life and don’t have to reveal all. See this related post: Facebook: Personal, Professional… and Private!

9. Adjust your privacy settings.

Facebook have done well over the past 18 months or so to really tighten up their privacy settings. You can get quite granular with a variety o
f settings. I choose mine to be fairly open as I’m okay with anyone being able to see my Facebook Profile and content I add. [For some peeps though, I do choose to block them completely - thus making myself practically invisible to them.] Refer to my bud, Nick O’Neil’s great post: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.

10. Protect your mobile device.

Given most apps keep you logged in on your mobile device, as with #6 above, just be mindful about who might have access to your phone. And, yes, it’s a nuisance to have to change passwords across multiple sites and platforms but at least you’ll have more peace of mind!

Sage advice from Facebook:

“Remember that although using fake names is a violation of the Facebook Terms of Use, people are not always who they say they are. You should always be careful when sending friend requests to, or accepting friend requests from people you do not know in the real world. And it is always risky to meet anyone in person whom you don’t know through real world friends.”

See: Facebook safety – from Facebook.com

What’s your experience with Facebook safety and privacy? Have you had some challenges and concerns to deal with?

[UPDATE: Wow, just since writing this blog post, I received this email:

You’ll notice this guy’s name is not hyperlinked – meaning I can’t click through to his profile. This shows me his privacy settings are set very tight; you can’t look at his profile unless you’re his friend. But he can still receive email.

Best course of action:

1. Add this person’s name to your BLOCK list: Click Settings > then Privacy Settings. And you’ll see a field at the bottom – type the person’s name then click the big blue BLOCK button. Facebook will identify the person’s profile; click block again.
2. Click Report Message (just under the person’s name in the message). Facebook gives you two choices: “advertisement/spam” or “harassment.” I chose the latter.
3. Delete the message.

Whether you’ve purchased Facebook Social Ads or have in some way interacted with these ads, you may be underestimating the power of this Facebook feature.

First, as an advertiser, you can select very targeted demographics for your ad campaign, much as you can with Google Adwords.

Second, as a business owner utilizing Facebook to grow your brand and network, engaging with ads is a powerful way to increase your visibility.

Justin Smith wrote a great review of the Six Types of Facebook Ads which are:

1. Event Ad
2. Video Ad
3. Gifts Ad
4. Page Ad
5. Website Ad
6. House Ad

I love interacting with Facebook Ads! For example, during election time last November, Ben & Jerry’s ran both an Event Ad and a Gift Ad. With the Gift Ad, you could give your friends a “virtual” ice cream cone – and it would just post on their wall. No app to install, no “forward to friends” enforcement. Just a playful way to say “hey, I’m thinking of you” and, in return, creating additional visibility for both the friend and yourself because the action is pushed out into the News Feed.

Now with the inauguration imminent, CNN are running an Event Ad which you’ve likely seen on your home page. Regardless of your political orientation, by RSVP’ing for the Event and writing a short (relevant/positive) comment in the text field, you’ll gain additional valuable visibility for yourself.

Whatever you write in the text box gets automatically transferred to the Wall of the Event page. (Same goes for Event invitation request you receive from all your friends!)

Ads on social networks may not be as effective as ads on search engines, simply because web users are in “social mode” on the former and “search mode” in the latter. However, ads on high-traffic social networks, such as Facebook, are a powerful way to further your brand and gain name awareness – especially when you ad in the component of Social Actions.

As an advertiser, you may find more click-through success by advertising an Event, Group or Fan Page with a Facebook Social Ad, e.g. keeping users inside Facebook. When a Facebook member interacts with the item being advertised, the “social action” shows up next to the ad – usually in the form of “Jane Doe became a Fan of…” with their avatar.

From a user standpoint, just be aware that you are essentially endorsing that ad and what’s being advertised.

What’s your experience and opinion of Facebook Social Ads? Have you run an ad campaign with success? Do you enjoy interacting with ads as a user?

Related posts:

• How To Create and Promote Your Facebook Fan Page 
• Facebook Groups vs. Facebook Pages – Which Is Best?

I just got off the phone with yet another Facebook friend who had his account deactivated by Facebook with no warning. In the past ten days or so, several more people in my community contacted me asking if I knew how to get their Facebook accounts reactivated. (I typically always send people to this post.)

Of all the social networks, Facebook certainly appears to have the most rigorous Terms of Use – certainly when it comes to enforcing those terms. Facebook has all kinds of complex algorithms and ‘bots set up to trawl the platform. On the one hand, I especially appreciate Facebook because of these tight Terms of Use:

• You can only have one (personal) Account and it has to be in your real name.
• There are no fake or duplicate accounts allowed.
• You can’t have a (personal) account in the name of a business. Fortunately you can set up Facebook Pages to represent your business on Facebook.

Because of these particular terms, we can pretty much rest assured that in say, 95% of cases, when you’re friending and interacting with someone on Facebook – it really is that person.

But, on the other hand, Facebook’s tight terms often flag perfectly legit accounts and, unfortunately, terminate those profiles – frequently with no warning at all.

I compare this to having your spam filters on your regular email too high where you end up inadvertently directing a bunch of bona fide email to your junk folder. It seems Facebook’s filters are a tad too tight!

Here are some possible reasons your account may be deactivated:

 

1. You send “too many” friend requests in one day/session.
2. You make “too many” wall posts in one day/session – especially with verbatim content and with links.
3. You copy and paste the same friend request message “too many” times.
4. You send too many identical emails to individual friends and/or friend lists*.
5. You message your Group members “too many” times.
6. You message your Event invitees “too many” times.

Are you noticing a theme here?! Yes, it’s all about limitations … BUT, Facebook have not published these types of limitations anywhere! The one exception which is in the Terms of Use is that you can’t join more than 200 Groups.

Along with going over the “too many” limitations, here are another couple of possible reasons your account could be deactivated:

1. You’ve reached the 5,000 friend limitation and your pending friend requests are building up beyond a certain point. This happened just recently to a popular internet marketer and she was forced to start all over again. (If you’re in this situation, be sure to keep your requests managed. I came up with this solution: ConnectWithMari.com).
2. Facebook suspects you of impersonating someone else. This happened to Virtual Assistant, Erin Blaskie, and it was absolutely not true. Erin ended up seeing the lighter side of the situation and made a fun video for YouTube: I Was Banned From Facebook – Game Show Parody

It’s possible you won’t have your account deactivated for the above reasons, but you may find yourself being blocked from certain specific activities, e.g. you may be temporarily blocked from messaging your Event invitees and/or writing on your friends’ Walls. 

Recommended action steps

 

1. Take your time to build up a strategic network of friends on Facebook.

   Focus on quality, not quantity. Your social circle will grow naturally over time anyway. Think of it this way: there are currently 125 million active members on Facebook (predicted to be 500 million by 2011) and you can “only” be friends with 5,000 of those members!

2. Send no more than approximately 20 new friend requests at any one time.

   This number may be very conservative. Also, be sure to mix up the friend request messages.

3. Use your own opt-in email system.
   
   When using the Facebook Events app, be sure to have your friends opt-in to your own email list so you can broadcast the dial-in information from your own systems.
4. Build out your Facebook Page.

   I’ve yet to hear of a Page being deactivated – Pages get indexed and help with your and Facebook’s search engine ranking.

5. Include Facebook in your overall marketing strategy.

   You may also be using blogging, article marketing, press releases, teleseminars, webinars, radio interviews, your own BlogTalkRadio show, HubPages, Squidoo lenses, TV interviews, Google Adwords, live seminars, sample consultations, and much, much more.

6. Don’t put all your social networking “eggs” in one basket.

   Build up a following on Twitter. And, use FriendFeed, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc.

7. Remember there was life before Facebook.

   And there would be life after Facebook if ever anything happened to the platform or company. I believe they are a giant and are here to stay, however, it’s important to put their power in perspective.

Here’s a thought for Facebook’s monetization plan:

Would you pay for a more unrestricted Facebook account? For the ability to add unlimited friends? And create Groups of unlimited size? Facebook have g
iven themselves three years to come up with a lucrative revenue model. I appreciate implementing paid levels vs. free levels of membership has all kinds of programming implications. But I’ll bet a certain percentage of members would go for the unrestricted paid access in a heartbeat. I’d pay $10-$30/month – how about you?

[Psst - you heard it here first: stay tuned for an incredible new social network + membership site + ecommerce platform launching in early 2009!!]

Related posts/resources:

13 Reasons your Facebook account will be disabled

How should Facebook change its account disabling policy?

Which is better: a Facebook Page or a Facebook Group? This is a question I get asked regularly. I promised my peeps I’d write a blog post about this topic, so here ya go:

My short answer is you need BOTH a Group and at least one Page. Each serves different purposes.

Facebook Groups

USES:

Special interests, causes, masterminds, study groups, beta testers, book reader groups (e.g. long before you publish your book, build up a tribe of peeps interested in your subject, give them sample chapters, get feedback on the content and cover, request testimonials, etc).

PROS:

1. You can message ALL group members - up to 5000 members – and your message lands right in their inbox.
2. All group activities go out into the feeds: wall posts, posted items, discussion threads, photos uploaded, and videos uploaded. This provides tremendous viral visibility, as I call it. You’ll want to highly encourage your group members to interact with all the features.
3. Groups tend to be more informal and based around interests, so you can create better “stickiness” (members keep coming back) especially with regular email messages (I recommend keeping email content short, concise and max 2-3 times per week though – otherwise people will leave your group).
4. Anyone can start a Facebook group around any topic. (Mostly this is a good thing, but… um, sometimes not! )
5. You can take advantage of any of the three different types of Groups for different purposes: Open (anyone can join), Closed (the group owner/admins have to approve all members), Secret (only the members and invitees know the group even exists).
6. Groups are great ways to segment Facebook members and find your target demographic to expand your network. (I recommend participating in your top 2-3 favorite groups regularly, get to know some of the members and take some conversations private. Make friend requests when appropriate. Don’t go crazy with your links on other people’s groups).

CONS:

1. Once you reach the 5000 emailing threshold, you’ll no longer be able to message everyone in your group.
2. There’s minimal customization in groups and you can’t add apps.
3. If you no longer want your group to be live, it can be tricky to delete. However, good news – you can migrate all Group members into your Page. See screenshot below, accessible on the Facebook Pages help area.

Facebook Pages

USES:

SEO, SEO, SEO – did I say SEO? (Search Engine Optimization). lol. Seriously, your Facebook PAGE is specifically to represent your business and gets indexed by Google. In fact, Facebook recently released way more pages into the indexing system by allowing public search listings of member profiles to display a sampling of what Pages they are a fan of. What this means is that those people with Facebook Pages may see an additional increase in ranking.

Facebook currently has an Alexa ranking of 5: meaning it is the 5th most trafficked site in the world.

Pages can only be created to represent a real public figure, artist, brand or organization, and may only be created by an official representative of that entity.

(If you’re not sure what a page is for or how to set one up, check out my post: How To Create and Promote Your Facebook Fan Page).

PROS:

1. Your page gets indexed so more people can find you outside of Facebook.
2. You can have multiple pages (possibly unlimited!) – great news for that SEO.
3. As and when you reach the 5000 friend limit on your personal Profile, you have your fan Page to stay connected with more people.
4. You can have unlimited fans.
5. You can message all fans… though see Cons below.
6. You can add rich media and most all apps.
7. I recommend placing an opt-in box above the fold using an app like ProfileHTML.
8. You can work on your Page behind the scenes building out content, then publish it.

CONS:

1. Little activity goes into the profile news feeds. The most visibility is when (a) new people become a fan and (b) fans upload a photo or video to your fan page (therefore you want to encourage your fans to do so!)
2. When you send messages to all fans, it goes out as an “Update” which is in a separate section of Facebook, not the main email Inbox. This means fewer people may see your messages.

For both Groups and Pages, you do have to manually track any and all activity. There is no app or feature in Facebook that will notify you when someone has commented on your Group or Page wall, posted a link/photo/video, added to the discussion board etc. If you know a Facebook app developer – there’s a big hole here for this type of notification app!

Also, for both Groups and Pages, once you create the title, it’s the only field that cannot be changed.

You can create a Page using this form, or create a group here.

So there you have it – be sure to create BOTH your Group(s) and Page(s) for maximum visibility on Facebook!

I’d love to know your experience and/or questions on Groups/Pages – please add your comment below. And if I missed any pros or cons, let me know!

This Monday, October 27, I am honored to present at an all-day Social Media event in Ventura, California with my dear friends and colleagues, Deborah Micek (@CoachDeb), Denise Wakeman (@BlogSquad), Patsi Krakoff (@PatsiBlogSquad), Nancy Marmolejo (@NancyMarmolejo) and special guest Simon Leung (@SimonLeung).

There are still a few tickets left to be in the LIVE studio audience AND get a chance to be in the hotseat to receive feedback on your blog, Twitter and Facebook presence from the panel of experts.

The entire event will be filmed and made into a DVD set, so if you’re unable to join us live at the event you can pre-order a copy of the DVD set at a discounted price!

Our host for the day is Linda P. Taylor (@LindaPTaylor) who contacted me just three weeks ago to share this opportunity with me. Linda and I had connected on Facebook and Twitter not long ago. Linda explained she especially wanted to feature me as the Facebook expert (w00t! love that!) at this live event and asked me who else I’d like to present with.

Of course, my talented gal pals came to mind immediately: Coach Deb for her brilliant Twitter expertise and Denise & Patsi a.k.a. The Blog Squad™. While I was still on the phone with Linda, I sent a quick DM (direct message via Twitter) to both Coach Deb and Denise. You know when you get in the zone and something is just supposed to happen? Yep, the last three weeks have just whizzed by and everything popped into place perfectly – thanks to the leadership talents of Linda!

PLUS, we’re ecstatic to also be joined by visibility expert, Nancy Marmolejo and Google guru, Simon Leung on an afternoon Q&A Panel.

The totally cool part is Linda has a strong relationship with the Technology Development Center in Ventura and the TDC are underwriting the cost of the entire day including professional film studio with multiple cameras and everything that goes with a real film studio!! The end result will be a quality professional DVD set.

With this underwriting, what this means is tickets for the event are an absolute bargain!!!

So, if you’re ready to find out how to:

• Dramatically increase your visibility, your traffic, your subscribers and your PROFITS using FACEBOOK,
• Transform your BLOG into a marketing and REVENUE machine, and
• Create BUZZ and link all your social media into one powerful marketing platform on TWITTER…

…for sure clear your calendar and come join us. Or, go ahead and pre-order the DVD set.

Whether you plan to attend or not, let me know your TOP questions about making Facebook work for your business and I’ll do my best to address them!