Are you using Facebook to leverage your business online? Are you wondering if you’re using all the strategies you can, or do you want to discover additional ways to use Facebook?

On Monday, December 6th at the Cutting Edge Cafe I’ll be sharing some of the strategies I learned recently at the Facebook Success Summit. If you’re one of my email subscribers you’ll be receiving and email with the details.

If you’re not a subscriber, why? Ok, just kidding. All you need to do is visit the Cutting Edge Cafe page and sign up for the complimentary webinar. This is something I do for my subscribers and will be continuing to provide a complimentary webinar each month.

You say you can’t attend on Monday?  No problem. The webinar is recorded and the link to the video will be sent to you the next day.  So what do you have to lose?

Last year I received a frantic message via email from a Facebook friend. She went to log into Facebook and found her profile gone. She was close to the 5,000 limit on friends and was devastated. What did she do wrong?

One of the most common mistakes I see that could cost you your Facebook profile is the creation of a second profile.  Here is the verbiage directly from Facebook’s Terms of Service:

4. Registration and Account Security

Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way. Here are some commitments you make to us relating to registering and maintaining the security of your account:

1. You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.
2. You will not create more than one personal profile.
3. If we disable your account, you will not create another one without our permission.

At one networking meeting I heard a “social media expert” advise business owners to create a second fictional profile so they could stalk their children with that profile. YIKES!!! Today I found two “social media marketing firms” using their personal profile as if it were a business brand page. How can you be a social media expert or marketing firm and not KNOW how to use Facebook?

So you work hard finding friends, building your network and it’s all gone…..because you didn’t follow the rules. Is it worth it?

Here’s a tip….you can put your friends into lists. Create lists for your family, friends, business relationships, etc. That way you can adjust your privacy settings on your profile to separate what you share on Facebook.

I’m offering a free Facebook webinar on Monday, November 29th to answer your questions about using Facebook for business. I’d love to see you there.

I just received my Amazon order. I invested in some new books so I can keep abreast of the changes in social media. I already own Social Media Marketing: An Hour A Day and Blog Marketing and wanted to purchase Mari Smith’s new book, Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day. It only made sense to pick up YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day, and the newest book out…Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars.

I’ll be reading this last book over the two next weeks and will give you a recap of each section. It covers strategies, principles, applications, and social media websites.

I highly recommend any of the above books as fabulous additions to your social media library. Let me know what you think? What’s your favorite social medial book?

I recently interviewed Ken Foster, author of Ask and You Will Succeed about the book and how he used social media to market the book, taking it to number one in six business categories at Amazon.

He shared the premise of the book and the 1001 Questions you can ask to discover your passions, what’s holding you back and start creating your successes.

We also discussed the publishing process, from self published to being picked up by a publishing house, as well as his use of Facebook, Twitter, affiliates and connections to set up a marketing strategy for the book launch.

I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did. Please let me know what you think by commenting on the post.

Interview with Ken Foster [ 55:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (439)

Here’s an interesting post I read today about embracing social networking for your business. I’ve been a blog programmer for a couple of years now and I see how blogging and social networking can work together to give your business an edge.

Do you have your blog and Facebook page yet? If not, let’s talk. Now is the time to act, to be part of the growing online community and take your business global.

Let me know what you think by commenting!

I’ve been playing with both Plurk (http://www.plurk.com/user/Debra) and FriendFeed. I found a great synopsis of traffic data for Plurk and FriendFeed. I thought I’d share it with you!

read more | digg story

What kind of blogs do I program?

When I started talking about blogs in March 2005, I was using Blogger. In January 2007 I discovered WordPress. WordPress.com is the free WordPress site. There you can easily start your blogging adventure. However, your blogging url will be http://magicinwords.wordpress.com and you won’t have the flexibility of WordPress until you have it installed on your hosting service.

Why do I like WordPress?

I want to create passive income from the Internet. WordPress allows me the ease and flexibility of putting up a search engine friendly site that anyone can keep updated without programming skills. It’s the perfect answer to soneone who’s a solopreneur or small business owner. It’s easily customizable, has thousands of themes to choose from and, the plugins take the pain out of any task.

What are themes and plugins?

Themes are the design of the site. You might think of them as templates with unique looks. You can visit WordPress’ Theme Viewer to get an idea of the variety of themes that exist for WordPress. Themes are either one, two, three or four columns wide. The “style” can be changed through the Cascading Style Sheet. Very fun to play with!

Plugins extend the usability of WordPress. There are plugins for contact forms, surveys, tags, rss feeds, the list goes on and on . . . . Visit the WordPress Plugin page to see examples of what plugins can do for a WordPress site.

Sites I’ve Programmed with WordPress

• North San Diego Business
  
• SBS Associates
  
• Imagine Carlsbad
  
• Shirley Carolan
  
• Business Builders, Inc.
  
• Granny On The Go
  
• San Diego Women, Inc.
  
• Spirited Boutique
  
• Walters Consulting Group

Sites That Use WordPress To Manage Their Content

• Ali Lassen’s Leads Club
  
• BenchFit
  
• Vicki’s Flash Pops
  
• Chad Of All Trades

Contact Magic In Words today for
more information on how to get your business blog up and running!