Facebook, the most popular social networking site in the planet, may have millions of users but how many of them are actually active? As an answer to that, Facebook recently added a “reconnect” option aside from the usual friend suggestions.

Facebook is now enticing its users to reconnect with other less active users in your friends list. The reconnect strategy is brilliant as it encourages its users to prompt these less active users to use Facebook more often as well.

One of the problems that Facebook is having is that it is getting too big and eventually less exclusive and interesting in the long run. This is a serious problem that is only encountered and experienced by the biggest online services. The growth of Facebook users is starting to decline as well which makes you wonder if the popular social networking site is reaching its limit. If you have conquered a huge portion of internet users not only in America but all over the world and are unable to get new users to sign up where can Facebook turn to?

The answer lies in its existing users. Although Facebook’s algorithm is not perfect, it has been spotted that there are users who do not log in to Facebook regularly. Inactive users are just as valuable as new users. Therefore, the reconnect strategy was born. By enticing the friends of the users to connect with them by writing on their wall, they can be prompt to log in more often to Facebook.

Active users are able to take this as an opportunity to reconnect with some of their friends and are able to reestablish a closer friendship. There is no doubt that Facebook’s latest reconnect strategy is one of the smartest tactics it has used when it comes to reengaging inactive users.

Social media will soon become much easier with the development of new technologies specially made to enhance the social media experience and make things operate easier. Here are some of the latest technologies that are newly developed and that are predicted to be a good help in the growth and improvement of social media:

• Natural Language Processing – this is similar to Optical Pattern Recognition where the goal is to have computers automatically categorize and understand the requests and needs of their human users. This can cause developments in the future such as applications that can analyze your comments or tweets and give you suggestions on which people or brand for you to follow.

• Open ID – this is an open authentication protocol that allows its users to use one username and password for every site that they visit. Once you are authenticated, there will be a second application called OAuth that would allow you to share information about yourself with the other sites that you use. This also collects data for you so you do not have to fill in redundant information in your profile at each site that you use. This technology would help eliminate the need to fill out registration forms for sites. Aside from that you do not have to remember a lot of passwords for multiple accounts.

• Optical pattern recognition – there is now biometric face recognition technology that is being used by most police and security services to help identify criminals. Google has Neven Vision and is using their technology for its Picasa site. This helped Picasa when it comes to photo organizing. You do not have to tag each photo manually anymore – Picasa can tag the pictures automatically by recognizing the faces in your photos. These technologies are still not at their best since they are newly discovered and there is still room for improvements. But these tools can have a significant effect on how people would use social media and the internet in the future.

Here are 14 ‘levers’ you need to be pulling

Like any social tool, Facebook needs to be worked in order to achieve specific marketing, event or fundraising goals. Yes, you need to have a an effective Facebook Page where fans can easily interact (see “11 Quick Tips to Enhance Your Facebook Fan Page” by @franswaa). And yes, you need to have compelling content.

However, even with all this, if you don’t consistently nurture your Facebook relationships, you’ll end up with visitors — potential fans — wondering, “Are they still in business?”

What you get by working your Facebook levers

• You’ll grow your fan base organically, which means they’ll stick around.
• You’ll be able to identify your biggest supporters.
• You’ll stay current on what’s important to your fans (also called “market research”).

Facebook levers (manual)

Many of the levers you pull on Facebook require time, attention and consideration. You can think of these as the manual levers.

1. Messages

Facebook Pages and Groups allows you to send messages to fans. Treat this feature the same way you would an email marketing service:

• Your best fans are busy fans. Be sensitive about sending too many messages.
• Make the message personal – and use your human voice, not “marketing-speak”.
• Make each message count by making it about them — not your organization.
• Always include a specific request for action that creates value for them.
• Cool tool: Use bit.ly measure how many folks clicked on your ask.
• See how Danny Brown uses messages in the 12for12k Group.

2. Encourage sharing

If people are real fans (meaning they feel good about you and your organization), they’ll want to share what you have (PDF) — either through messaging their friends, or posting to their profile. All you have to do is ask.

3. Discussions

Hildy Gottlieb does a great job engaging members of the Community-Driven Institute Facebook Group in meaningful discussions. She’ll share an article and then ask a specific question for folks to discuss. Participants learn, share and get to know each other – all because of Hildy’s efforts!

4. Rotating photos

Your Facebook Page has an incredible main image, I know. But try rotating out a different image — kinda like Google does with their logos. Fans will take notice when they see the new image in their stream.

5. Profile statuses

If it feels good (not forced), share news about your non-profit in your status. And yes, please share good stuff from your “competing” non-profit friends. The karmic boomerang will always return!

Tag! You’re it!: Tag relevant friends in your status updates as well:

6. Facebook Page Wall posts

Make a habit of posting videos, links and photos on your Page’s wall. Share the best stuff and lots of it.

7. Facebook Page and Group Wall comments

When people comment on a your wall post, please comment back. They’ll feel a stronger sense of belonging when their thoughts and feelings are valued. If you don’t have time to comment on posts, keep planting seeds by liking comments.

Facebook levers (automatic)

Many Facebook levers can be automated, although you still need to invest time, attention and consideration. You can think of these as the automatic levers.

8. RSS blog feed

Make sure you’ve set up the Notes Application to import your blog posts. This is an easy way to automate a stream of great on content on your Page and drive traffic back to your blog.

9. Facebook toolbar for Firefox

The Facebook toolbar for your Firefox browser lets you save time and effort with your Facebook actions:

• Search Facebook from anywhere.
• Get notifications about friend requests, messages, event invitations, and group invitations.
• Check your friends’ profile pictures and statuses and interact with them on Facebook.

Take 90 seconds and download the Facebook Firefox Toolbar!

10. Seesmic Facebook Page feature

If you use Twitter, you should know about Seesmic, an incredible desktop tool that allows you to easily manage relationships on Twitter and Facebook. Recently, a feature was added that allows you to hand-pick Facebook Pages that you want to connect with better.

Take 5 minutes and download Seesmic! (Also watch these video tutorials on using Seesmic).

11. Multiple administrators

Do you know who your biggest fans are? Is there someone you trust who wants to do more? Give them administrative rights to your Group or Page. You’ll be able to focus your energies elsewhere. Plus, your new admin friend just might teach you a thing or two about Facebook.

12. Landing page URLs

Each tab on a Facebook Page has its own URL, so you can target a precise landing Page for off-site promotion. For example, if you are promoting a fundraising event, you can target a Tab containing FBML promoting that event. You can also choose which tab to set as the default when users find your Facebook Page vs. when they visit as a fan.

13. Know your nodes

It’s easy to aquire 1,000 Facebook fans on a Page who doing nothing, proving that bigger is not necessarily better. The power of your Facebook community depends on the relationships that you have with key influencers (relationship marketing). These are folks that can sway a group of friends with a post, a tweet or a video. You already know who they are, and have already developed sincere friendships with many of these influencers (don’t forget – they’re friends first!). Facebook lists allows you to organize friends into groups so that you can more effectively nurture these friendships.

14. Measure, rinse and repeat

Facebook Pages provides many ways to measure the results of your actions so that you can quickly decide what’s working and what’s not. These reports enable you see what types of content your fans prefer and how they like to engage with that content.

Here are three of my favorite reports:

Bonus: How to use Facebook for business

If you’re interested in learning more about using Facebook for your business or non-profit, download Hubspot’s free ebook, How to Use Facebook for Business

What levers are you pulling?John Haydon delivers social web strategy solutions for “the quick, the smart, and the slightly manic.” Curious? Then connect up with John.

Scott Stratten has really been on the pulse of Social Media for a while.  He’s a Twitaholic who goes through withdrawals if he hasn’t made a Tweet within the last 4 seconds.  Don’t believe me? Well it says so in his profile: http://Twitter.com/unmarketing

I “met” Scott online after discovering his viral marketing techniques using video.  He’s made over 60 videos and has over 60Million views.

With Scott’s love of Social Media and being a big time proponent of the REAL social aspect of it, he made a music video.

Now, Scott is a man of many talents but I didn’t expect one of them to be singing!

Alyssa Milano likes the song

One of Scott’s friends said  “by Twitter standards you basically just made out with @Alyssa_Milano”.

The video is on its way to making it big. As of the writing of this blog post, there are 41,314 views of the YouTube video.

Scott really captures what so many people are thinking and/or want to say. That is one of the reasons it’s growing in popularity. Although, stars like Alyssa Milano and Ashton Kutcher think it’s great too, and they tweet it to their followers too.

Personally I’ve watched it a few times and don’t know why.  Maybe it’s because I can’t get it out of my head, I don’t know but it’s worth the view.

Scott, Great Job. When will you be performing on the late night talk shows?

Sent to his 2Mil followers!

Social media has been taking its rightful place in the business world as more and more companies are recognizing them as an effective tool for their marketing strategies. Using Social media as a marketing tool requires some creativity and strategy – two things that most companies do not consider as they rush into making their own twitter and Facebook accounts. Here are some tips that can act as your guideline in making a social media marketing plan.

First of all you have to decide on which social media tools  you want to use – twitter? Facebook? Blogs? all of the above?  Try to check which are the best options for your company first or simply check what your competition is doing. o a marketing research. Remember that the World Wide Web has a wide range of audience. One wrong move online can greatly damage your company. It is best to do this research ahead of time.

After sending out a marketing team to do some research and come up with ideas, try to make a good campaign once you meet again. Come up with mock up blog designs or even make a list of possible twitter updates that you can get. Have some articles, photos and videos ready. Make sure to review each one meticulously. Once you post something in cyberspace, it can not be undone right away. So take your time in order to gather ideas. Having a lot of options to choose from will call for more positive results.

Having a team think of the campaign is very helpful. But having the whole team maintaining it is not a good idea. You must have a social media controller in your company. Most companies decide to outsource this responsibility or get someone among the staff. Nobody likes to see a page go untouched for months. Having a social media controller to be able to update your profiles is the best way to keep it alive.

Remember that the key to using social media as a marketing tool is interaction. Get to know your audience and reach out to them. Social media is all about relationships. If you want to have maximum social media success, you have to be able to build relationships with the in your niche.

Using social media is the best way to promote your business brands. And with the explosive growth of social media, it is no wonder that a lot of companies are using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

A lot of marketers are now using social media and the numbers keep on growing. But these companies must understand how to employ effective methods and tactics in order to make the most of using a social media platform.

Remember that setting up an account is not enough. What is important is that there is participation and interaction among you and your audience. If none of this is happening then you are wasting your time. If you commit to making an account on a social networking site then you must be able to stay visible and active to your audience by doing regular updates. Keep them interested by constantly giving them useful information that is at the same time relevant to your brand.

Be humane. When people go to your account do not slap your company’s logo everywhere. Post a face to your profile, have a person’s name and have a good description. Make it more personal. Without doing so, people might think that you are becoming too self promotional. This could instantly make them lose interest because they will be thinking that you will just be pushing your products on them. It is ok to promote something but it should not be the main focus of your account.

You must be able to engage with your audience. Try to start conversations by posting articles, videos and links that is relevant to your business. You should also comment on other people’s sites or pages so that they can check your own site as well. Having a social networking account is also a great way to listen to your customers and potential clients. By interacting with them, you get to harness trust and loyalty from them as well.

Aside from making use of social networking sites, you can also set up a blog. It is actually a great place to start employing social marketing strategies and you can set up links going to your blog from your profiles. Your blog can be your home base wherein you can directly promote your products to entertain those audiences who are interested and want to know more about your business and the services you have to offer

A lot of people are using social bookmarking sites to help get more cash for their blogs or websites. This is because these social bookmarking sites can contribute greatly and to the amount of traffic that your blog or website can receive.

Social bookmarking sites are a good tool for you to generate traffic and reputation to your blog and website. Through their help, your feed count can also increase in a short period of time as long as you are producing high quality articles. People at these social sites generally prefer reading about a lot of fun and interesting topics so if you are able to produce articles that are able to capture a lot of attention then you are sure to get a lot more traffic than the usual.

These social bookmarking sites will also have a significant impact on the page rank of your site or blog especially if you have been receiving positive ratings on your posts. Your Alexa rank will also improve due to the increase in traffic and page rank. As you can see, social bookmarking is a good way to hit both rankings at the same time.

These social bookmarking sites will be rating your articles and can feature your blog. By being listed in one, you can actually get a huge amount of traffic in a single day when you post something really cool or interesting.

You have to make sure that you have good content when it comes to your articles. These social bookmarking sites rate your website and your blog by your articles and content. If they do not rate you at a high point then your reputation and your site can be reduced since other bloggers would also be able to see your ranking.

As long as you are able to keep impressing your readers with great content then there is no need to worry about any rankings that these social bookmarking sites give you.

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Learn more about bookmarking by getting volume 1 of the Social Media Formula… Social Bookmarking Traffic

A lot of people blog simply as a hobby to them or as a form of self expression. What most people do not know is that they can earn a lot of money through their blogs. There are a lot of bloggers nowadays that uses their blog as their primary or secondary source of income.

Of course making this possible will not be easy unless you really have a good blog. This means that you need to have good blog content and attract a good number of regular traffic in order to generate some cash. If you think that you have both elements then you can start advertising in order to make money online. It is important that you concentrate on having both good content and traffic first before you look for advertisers.

You need advertisers since they are a great way that you can generate money from your blog. There are a lot of advertising programs available online like Google Adsense or Yahoo Publishers. You can get cash through the number of clicks that they get in your blog.

You can also use text link advertisement wherein links are embedded in your content (Like this!). When the reader clicks on your content they can be lead to the site of your client. This is one way of getting more clicks for advertising.

There are a lot of advertisers and companies who realize the potential of blogs to be a good marketing platform. In fact, some are contacting bloggers that write on their industry offering them payments in order to have some advertising space in their blog. Being funded by an advertiser is the ultimate goal that a blogger can aim for when making money online because you are able to make more money this way compared to participating in advertising programs.

If you want to learn more about blogging and how to make money doing so Click Here!

Blogging is the latest trend in the media today. A lot of people are now putting up blogs to share their rants, their views on social issues and even their business. Blogging is definitely considered as one way to reach a large  audience.

Having a blog can give your business that one boost that it needs. There are a lot of reasons why business owners would want to set up their own blogs as well. Blogging can promote your brand significantly. When it comes to having a business blog you can reach the level of business success that you are hoping to achieve.

Having a well managed business blog gives people something to remember and would keep them coming back to your blog for more. Having a blog also provides your readers something to get excited about. Once readers find your blog content interesting then they would surely talk about your blog to someone else thus the start of a word of mouth marketing business. Some would even write about it in their own blog and would link back to yours sending more traffic to your site than usual.

Having a blog also gives interactivity between you and your clients. Your blog can be a venue where you can create a community of fans and with the regular traffic, you can make your own subscriber base by aggregating your blog feed. But once you make this move, it is important that you blog constantly which means you have to make updates from time to time. Make sure that everything you put online is consistent with who you are and what your business is.

Blogs are communication tools. They can help establish your credibility and your expertise. It can significantly help you be found online when it comes to search engines making you accessible to prospective clients and business partners.

Many people don’t think blogs are part of the Social Media Landscape, but they are mistaken. It is the blog which first became a popular way to communicate online. That communication capability by leaving comments, and responding to such made it social.

If you would like to learn more about blogging and how to make some serious money from it, I recommend you Click Here!