Today I want to share with you a little more of what I learned going through Mari Smith Extreme Fanbase Growth course. Since Facebook introduced the subscribe button at the end of last year I sometimes get the questions what is the difference between “Facebook subscribers” and “Facebook friends?” Do I need both?

Are there benefits to turning on Facebook subscribe?

Well, it depends. If you are like most of the millions of users that uses Facebook strictly to connect and interact with close friends and family members then maybe you don’t need the Facebook subscribe option because you most likely will never hit the limit of 5,000 friends.

However, if you are a marketer or business owner wanting to use your personal Facebook profile also for growing your business then yes, you may want to consider turning on that option.

That’s actually what I do. From the very beginning I started using my personal profile for connecting with fellow network marketers.

7 Reasons for turning on the
Facebook subscribe option.

1. As I already mentioned above you can’t have any more than 5,000 friends. Once you reach that limit you’re done. Before the introduction of the subscribe button you were practically forced to create a fan page.  However now you don’t necessarily have to as you can have as many Facebook subscribers on your personal profile as you want. Also, (and I didn’t realize that) when people send you a friend request they automatically become one of your subscribers. But as soon as you approve them they move from subscriber status to friend.
2. Enabling  Facebook subscribe kind of lifts the friends limit and gives you a whole new marketing channel. You need to be careful with your approach though as you are mixing close friends and family with people you may not know.
3. Since they are connected with you on your personal profile users feel closer to you. The atmosphere is warmer and friendlier compared to the more business-like fan page. Being one of your subscribers is the next best thing to being a friend.
4. The news feed tends to favor personal profiles.  I don’t know if you have noticed it, but I sure have. I get a lot more engagement and interaction on my personal profile compared to my fan page. (Well, then again, I don’t have that many fans yet either.)
5. You get two chances to getting seen in the news feed when you build both your Facebook subscribers and your fan base. That’s a pretty cool benefit, don’t you think?
6. Your subscriber interaction expands to include your subscriber’s friends and their subscribers. So now you are reaching a broader audience getting more news feed visibility, more exposure and that all-important extra EdgeRank.
7. When you always share valuable content that your friends and subscribers are eager to get and share, then they won’t mind if you drop in that occasional promotional message. Tread with caution here though and do that sparingly. The best ratio is 9:1. Nine personal messages to one promo.

So, these were the pros for enabling the Facebook subscribe option, but like every coin has two sides, this one does also.

The Cons for enabling Facebook subscribe.

1. Having to manage both a fan page and personal profile could be a lot of work.  Also, some of your friends could be offended if you mix promotional messages with your personal ones.
2. You could open yourself up to being spammed or to people posting their own promotional messages on your personal profile. That’s happened to me before. The easy way to deal with this is to just delete those messages and blocking people who do spam you. Another way to eliminate a lot of spam is by adjusting your privacy settings and tweak who can send you friend requests and who can post on your timeline.

So, if you haven’t yet …

I bet you’re dying to know how to turn on
Facebook Subscribe

It’s quite simple. Just go to http://www.facebook.com/about/subscribe and you will see the subscriber option in the top right corner.

Once you have enabled subscribers you may want to tweak your privacy settings. Just click on “Privacy Settings” in the top right corner and then navigate to “How You Connect.”

Here’s a screenshot of mine.

By the way, you may also tweak your settings in “How Tags Work” and “Limit the Audience for Past Posts” to those you are most comfortable with.

Obviously you can see there are many more pros than cons to the Facebook Subscribe option. So if you are an online marketer like me, I think you definitely want to turn it on in order to gather more exposure.

You know how much I love getting your feedback so please make some noise below in the comments.

To Your Massive Success!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

Related posts:

1. How to Add Networked Blogs to Your Facebook Page for More SEO
2. Unfriend Finder Lets You Know When Someone Unfriends You on Facebook
3. Timeline for Facebook Pages – Love it or Hate it
4. Facebook Influence – Why I Highly Recommend FBinfluence
5. Where to Get the Coolest Facebook Timeline Cover

Change is good!

If you haven’t been living under a rock you’ve heard about all the changes Facebook made in recent weeks. Actually, I heard there were somewhere around 90 changes in the last 60 days alone. Now that’s a TON!

The biggest change obviously is the new Timeline for Pages.

Well, as a matter of fact the early release of the new Timeline for Pages was even a surprise for Facebook Guru Mari Smith. I am following Mari’s new course “Extreme Fanbase Growth” trying to immediately implement what I learn.

But sometimes life gets in the way and since I was a little late in (finally) implementing a “Welcome Tab” on my Facebook Page it bit me in the butt. Because, now it’s obsolete.

Imagine that! No more like-gating!

Darn it!  Well, so much for procrastination!

I really don’t mind Facebook rolling out the “Timeline for Pages” early though. Honestly, I was looking forward to it because now that I have gotten used to it I really like that interface on the Personal Profile Pages. I just didn’t expect it so soon.

(And it really messed up my blog posting schedule as well, because now I’m scrambling to get my ducks in order before March 30^th when the new Timeline for Pages becomes mandatory.)

Don’t you just love it? Every time you think you’re up-to-date on Facebook and you have a little breathing room they smack you with another update you have to take care of.

But anyway, there’s nothing you or I can do about it short of leaving Facebook altogether. And with 845.000.000 users, half of which log in on a daily basis, I’m not ready to discard Facebook as a marketing tool. Are you?

I have been on several lengthy webinars since last week with one more to go tomorrow by one of my favorite Facebook Ninjas, Amy Porterfield. Gosh, I’m so glad I bought her course “FBinfluence” because I get lifetime updates.

Here are some very important points I learned about the new Timeline for Pages …

_ Absolutely NO Calls to Action in your Timeline Cover Image. You can get in big trouble and lose your account. So, no phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, ect. (As a matter of fact, I will have to edit my timeline cover images for my Personal Profile page now because I do have my web address in there.) Oh, and no arrows either!

_ No more like-gating on the new Timeline for Pages. (I already mention that above.) Visitors land on your timeline by default now. Some people are not happy about this because they are losing a great opportunity for opt-ins. However there are ways around this because custom tabs are still available and you now can even create a custom image for your tabs which helps with drawing attention to them.

_ More Space to Show Off Your Pictures. Instead of only having 520 pixels available in the past you now have 810 pixels available to really make a statement. Facebook wants us to design our Pages as if it was our primary hub. It also wants to make Pages more social proof oriented.

It’s all about pictures. Pictures tell stories and now you have more space to tell your stories or show your videos. And of course pictures and videos are GREAT for EdgeRank because they get more likes, comments and shares.

There is so much more that I could share from what I have learned during these mammoth sessions but this post is getting quite long already.

Update: I have recently purchased Rosh Khan’s FanPage Simplified  which is “The Most Complete Step-by-Step Professional Training System for the New Facebook Fan Page Timeline Layout.” And…it comes with some amazingly cool FREE Fan Page Cover Images. So you don’t have to design one from scratch.

But if that is not enough,  here a couple of websites where you can get more of the scoop…

7 New Facebook Changes Impacting Businesses

8 Things Businesses Need To Know About Timeline for Facebook Pages

28 Things You Need To Know About The New Facebook Pages

I hope this post about the new Timeline for Facebook Pages was helpful to you.

You know I always love your feedback, so please leave your comments below.

To Your Massive Success!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

Related posts:

1. Where to Get the Coolest Facebook Timeline Cover
2. Facebook Subscribe Pros and Cons
3. How to Add Networked Blogs to Your Facebook Page for More SEO
4. Facebook Influence – Why I Highly Recommend FBinfluence
5. Unfriend Finder Lets You Know When Someone Unfriends You on Facebook

Personally, I haven’t been too concerned about this, because I rarely use the Facebook unfriend option. But it seems to be a very popular question because it often shows up as a search query on my blog. Just today I had several people ask, …

“Will friend know if I unsubscribe them — unsubscribe facebook find out – does facebook tell friend if you unsubscribe – does someone know if I unsubscribe them”

And I get those queries on a regular basis.

So I went to Facebook and did a search for it in the “Help” section but couldn’t come up with an answer. Guess Facebook isn’t too eager to volunteer answers to questions about how to unfriend someone.

Then the funniest thing happened. As I was updating my Buffer app with more great information for my Twitter Followers the answer popped right up in form of a great article on Mashable.

There is actually a browser extension called “Unfriend Finder.” Wouldn’t you know?

How does “Unfriend Finder” work?

Unfriend Finder will alert you when people you have previously been friends with deactivated their account or have removed you from their friends lists.

But first of course, you need to install the script. You can find it at Userscripts.org. If you are using Google Chrome all you need to do is click the green “Install” button and you are ready to go. If you are using Firefox then you will have to install the Greasemonkey add-on first.

As you can see from the screenshots below I am using Google Chrome.

Step one: Get the “Unfriend Finder” extension and install it on your browser.

Step two: Go to Facebook and check it out.

As you can see from the image below, once you have the script installed your Facebook account will show these two changes immediately.

1) You will see an additional tab in the top right-hand corner called “Unfriends.”

2) You will also see and additional link in your “Favorites” right underneath your profile picture on your home page.

Oh, by the way, if you hover your mouse over the tab you will see more useful info. For example the total number of your friends, how many pending friend requests you have and the number of “Unfriends” the Unfriend Finder extension detected.

You will receive a notification when someone unfriends you and a red number appears above the “Unfriends” tab. (Since I just installed the add-on there are no red numbers yet.)

By the way, you will also be notified trough your main notifications. (You know the ones that appear next to your message notifications and friend requests in the top menu bar on Facebook.)

When you click on the “Unfriends” option in your “Favorites” list you will also be able to see who unfriended you, together with the date and time they decided they didn’t want to be friends with you any longer.

As I mentioned earlier above, not only will this script let you know when someone unfriends you, but it also tells you when someone you were friends with deactivates (or re-activates) their profile. I think that can be very helpful as two of my sons just deactivated and reactivated their profiles recently. (Of course they neglected to tell me about it and I was wondering why we were no longer friends, haha.)

Another Helpful Feature of Unfriend Finder:
Pending Friend Requests

This great feature helps you keep track of your “Pending Friend Requests” on Facebook. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes forget whom I sent a friend request to, because I just get so busy. So, now I can check what friends requests are still pending, who ignored them and who cancelled my friend requests. (Although I can’t think of anyone who would ever do such a thing.)

So, there you have it. Check it out for yourself!

Unfriend Finder is compatible with Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer and translated into 65 languages.

If you already have this great add-on installed on your browser go ahead and share your experience with us in the comments below.

To Your Massive Success!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

P.S. Please also read the original article about Unfriend Finder on Mashable. Thanks!

P.P.S For more Facebook Insider Tips I invite you to check out Amy Porterfield’s incredible Facebook Influence Course

Related posts:

1. How to Add Networked Blogs to Your Facebook Page for More SEO
2. Facebook Subscribe Pros and Cons
3. Where to Get the Coolest Facebook Timeline Cover
4. Facebook Influence – Why I Highly Recommend FBinfluence
5. Timeline for Facebook Pages – Love it or Hate it

Typically the first page you see after you log in to your Facebook account is your “News Feed” displaying the content that people you are following have shared. You can find all kinds of content there. For example, photos, videos, links to articles or blog posts, notes, status updates and more.

So of course if you have hundreds or even thousands of friends your News Feed can’t show all of the content your friends share or you would get totally overwhelmed. That’s why the developers at Facebook created “EdgeRank” to determine which relevant stories, photos, videos, etc. make the cut.

How does EdgeRank determine which content makes the cut?

Now here is where it starts to get interesting. Every item that shows up in your News Feed is considered an Object. The more attention a particular Object receives, for example the more comments, likes, or shares, the higher this Object’s Edge Rank and the longer it will stay visible in your News Feed.

Did you know that? I sure didn’t.

So, for example, if one particular piece of content is very popular it could stay on top of your News Feed for hours.

Very, very cool!

So how can you take advantage of Facebook’s EdgeRank?

It’s quite simple. Just share content that people want to interact with. For some reason the 4 E’s just popped into my mind … Enlightening –Entertaining – Educational – Enriching. Whatever people find interesting and are eager to interact with will work great.

The more shares, likes, comments, etc. that piece of content receives, the higher its EdgeRank and the longer it will stay in people’s News Feed.

Here are some facts you may want to consider…

Comments rank higher than “like.” And pictures rank higher still.

This gives a whole new meaning to commenting on Facebook, doesn’t it? Because, if more emphasis is given to comments than “like” that would mean that posts, status updates, or whatever, with comments will get higher priority in News Feed. Right?

So the goal here is to publish great content that people will want to interact with and then have lots of people comment on your content and share it.

Find out more about EdgeRank

I came across this new Facebook technology first by reading this article about it on TechCrunch. In the meantime it’s been popping up all over and I’m learning more and more about it. And the more I learn about it, the more interesting it becomes to me.

How about you? Learned something new today? Let’s hear your thoughts about EdgeRank in the comments below. What do you think about this?

To Your Success!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

P.S. And as always I would really appreciated if you could share this article with your friends and followers….And…Don’t forget to give it your vote of approval by clicking the Google +1 button in the Sharebar. Thank You! I truly appreciate you!

Related posts:

1. How to Add Networked Blogs to Your Facebook Page for More SEO
2. Unfriend Finder Lets You Know When Someone Unfriends You on Facebook
3. Where to Get the Coolest Facebook Timeline Cover

How to Tag People on Facebook

I always appreciate it when my readers use the Facebook Share Button on my blog to share my content with their friends on Facebook. It’s the greatest compliment I could get. And of course I would love to show my gratitude and say “thank you” to everyone each and every time that happens. But sometimes I actually have no clue who shares my content.

So for all the times I missed to say “thank you” to YOU. Here it is … “Thank you so very much for sharing my content with your friends on Facebook! I truly appreciate you!”

Did you know there’s actually a little trick that alerts people when you do share their content on Facebook? It’s pretty cool! I learned this little trick from my friend Ryan Biddulph.

How to tag people when you share content on Facebook.

It’s very easy. Just follow the illustrations below to find out how to do that.

For example, if I wanted to share a blog post of my friend Ryan I would click the Facebook Share button on his blog and the above window would pop up. To tag Ryan all I have to do is type the “@” symbol and start typing his name.  Facebook will then load a list with all of my friends who’s first name is Ryan. I then just highlight and click the person I want to tag and voilà it’s done.

As you can see in the image above, his name is now a clickable link. Of course you can tag more people and share content with them. (The cool part here too is, that since everyone’s name is clickable people can check each other out and make more connections.)

Oh, by the way, always make sure you add the correct picture to the blog post when you share it. You can do that by choosing the correct thumbnail.

In the image below you will see that Ryan’s blog post is now posted on my Facebook profile page. By the way, it is posted on his profile page as well for him and all his friends to see.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Not only can you share people’s blog posts and tag your friends to let them know of the great content that’s out there. You can also share content that is already on your Facebook profile page. For example a video you posted like in the image below. My friend Liane shared that one with me, which by the way had me in tears.

All you have to do to share content on your facebook page is click the “Share” link and follow the steps above.

So, that’s how you tag people when you share content from Facebook. Pretty quick and easy!

I hope I will never miss the opportunity to say “thank you” again to the great people who share my content.

To Your Success!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

P.S. If you found this information helpful please retweet and share it with your friends on Facebook. You know now how to do that Thank you!

Related posts:

1. Unfriend Finder Lets You Know When Someone Unfriends You on Facebook
2. How to Add Networked Blogs to Your Facebook Page for More SEO

Have you ever wondered how you can show a certain group of your Facebook friends?

Well, I just found out and would like to share it with you.

For whatever reason, there may be a certain group of friends you would like to show to everyone who comes to visit your Facebook profile.  They may be highly respected business people, co-workers, close personal friends, or maybe family members.

Usually Facebook just rotates through all of your friends randomly. But you can select certain people or lists of friends to be rotated through instead.

Here’ s how you do that…

When you are logged in and on your “Profile Page” click the little pencil icon in your Friends box.

You can change the settings in the “Edit Box” to whatever you would like to display.

Where it says “Always show these friends:” you can either type in individual names or you can select a certain list of your friends.

If you haven’t grouped your friends into lists yet, here’s how you do that …

Go to your “Home” page and click on “Friends” in the left menu. Your friends will show up and the “+ Create a List” button at the top right corner. Click on it.

Enter a name for you list and highlight the friends you want to add to that list by clicking on them. When you have everyone selected, click “Create List.” And you’re done.

Voilà! That’s it! You just selected a certain group of friends to show off.

You can change things at any time. You can highlight a certain group of your friends this month and a different one next month. Or you can change it every week. It’s totally up to you.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood

P.S. If you found this tip valuable please share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook or Digg. Thank You!

Related posts:

1. Unfriend Finder Lets You Know When Someone Unfriends You on Facebook
2. Facebook Influence – Why I Highly Recommend FBinfluence
3. How to Add Networked Blogs to Your Facebook Page for More SEO

Or …What NOT To Do When You Receive A Friend Request At Your Social Network

Ouch! Someone hit me over the head with a baseball bat again. Not literally, of course, but it hurts just as much and it had me run for the Aspirin.

Over the weekend, I invited several people to be my friend at one of the top social networks. Unfortunately, one person mistook it as an invitation to spam me with his business opportunity.  Now, I will give this gentleman the benefit of doubt and assume he didn’t know any better. But this is a sure-fire way to get scratched off of my friends list. Like most social network members, I am there to build relationships.

Don’t take your clothes off on the very first date …

Spamming people who sent you a friends request with your business opportunity, is like taking your clothes off on the very first date. It accomplishes absolutely nothing. Rather it sends people running. Not a good way to start a relationship.

Let  me ask you this …

If your husband (or wife) would have asked you to marry them on your very first date, would you have said “YES?” I certainly wouldn’t have. My (future) husband would have scared me off and I would have run for the hills. And what a shame that would have been, because I would have never found out what a great guy he is.

So please, don’t make that mistake. Don’t rob people of the opportunity to get to know you, by spamming them with your business opportunity on your first ‘Social Media Date’. Don’t make them scratch you off of their friends list.

Instead…

• Get to know them.
• Share some valuable information with them.
• Offer your help.
• Start a discussion by asking questions about their family, their hobbies, etc.
• Comment on their pictures or on their bio or status.
• Get involved and find out if you have common interests

People will buy from and/or join people they know, like and trust. So give them a chance to get to know you as a person first. Eventually they will ask you the $64,000 question … “What do you do?”

What kind of behavior do you dislike? In other words, what makes you drop people off of your friends list? What tips can you share on how to social network in online communities? Please share them with us in the comment box below.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

And by the way, if you like this post, please don’t forget to re-tweet it and share it with your Facebook friends.

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Most social networking sites (if not all of them) let you upload a profile picture. Usually that is very easy and in the event you should get stuck there should be a help menu that will guide you through how to do it. Or just ask one of your friends on the site how they did it.

But not only on social media sites you find them, even the blogosphere has its share of people without a face. I used to be one of them. Not because I didn’t want my picture out there on the comments I left, but because I had no clue how to do it. Well, if you don’t know how to do something … just ask. So I did ask Jason just shortly before he posted about the ‘Invasion of the Face Snatchers.’ He told me about a little site called  Gravatar.com

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a techie to set it up. It’s really easy and they even have a little video that shows you how. In just a few minutes you can ‘have a face.’

Put your face out there. Especially on your profiles. People are much more likely to connect with you and accept your friends requests when they see your smiley face.

Just think about this scenario…

You go into a store and there behind the counter stands a clerk with a ski mask asking how he could help you. You’d be out the door in a split second.  Wouldn’t you? I get shivers down my spine just thinking about that. Pretty creepy!

Remember, people do business with people they know, like and trust.

Looking forward to see your smile.

Oh, and by the way, moosey on over to Jason Better’s Blog you will find some great information and meet some cool people there.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

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I watched in amazement how Perry Belcher teaches step-by-step how he gained a Fan base of 130,000 in just 9 month. He put 58,000 of those on his personal list..and all for FREE.

He’s also giving away free information on 3 things NEVER to do on Twitter. If you want to keep your followers, that is. (I see people every day doing this…and guess what, I do not follow them.)

I encourage you to get this intriguing and very informative little handbook on how to use social media like Twitter and Facebook. Anyway, you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s free. But the knowledge you will gain from this little book is absolutely PRICELESS.

So get it now while you can still get it for free.

Enjoy!

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