Archive for Facebook
Facebook Overwhelm? Create friend lists!
Posted by: | CommentsAre you overwhelmed by the amount of updates coming through your Facebook news feed? Do you even care what your boss had for dinner last night? A way to avoid overload on Facebook is to create friend lists. That way you can view the updates of who you want to view and filter out everyone else.
Here’s how to create a friend list on Facebook:
From the Home page → Click on Friends (located on the left side of the screen) → click +Create a List button at the top right. Name the list (ie. High School Friends) then select all of your high school friends and click on Save List.
You can create as many lists as you need. Next time you log in to Facebook to check your news feed check by friend list. You can have a list for family so it’s easy to quickly see what all your family is up to. Another one for work, etc. The newly created lists will be located under the Friends link on the left side of the home page.
If you want to delete a friend list on Facebook follow these steps:
Click on Account → edit friends → On the left column find the category “Lists” → click on the list you want to delete → then click “Delete List”
How to Use Social Media for Restaurants
Posted by: | CommentsSocial Media for Restaurants
By Guest Blogger: Bethany North
As a restaurant in a local area, you may have a difficult time making your mark if you are competing with the big chains out there. Even if you do happen to be a big chain restaurant, there is no such thing as too many customers, which is why it is important to make social media work for you as a restaurant, whether you are big or small.
- Facebook: Start out by setting up a Facebook account so that you can keep people updated about events in your restaurant, specials, discounts, and even happy hour. This is the best way to get people involved because they do want to know what is going on locally, but they don’t want to have to search for it. The way that this works is that your friends will friend your Facebook page for your restaurant, which will in turn be quickly circulated to their social circles. Genius.
- Submit to Directories: Whether you submit to a paid or free directory, directories are a big deal when it comes to social media. This is where people go for local reviews and information, so if you don’t take the time to submit your restaurant, you may be overlooked in favor of your competitors.
- Twitter: Twitter will work the same way as Facebook where people can follow you to find out the latest happenings when it comes to your restaurant. This is the quickest way to tell people to make reservations in time for Mother’s Day, about your new menu for Valentine’s Day, or anything of the like.
- Encourage Your Customers to Visit You Online: After you have set up all of your social media profiles for your restaurant, don’t stop there! You must include your Facebook page and Twitter profile on your restaurant business cards or website so that people are encouraged to follow you. If they don’t know that you have social media profiles, they won’t search for you. However, if you are easy to find online, you better believe that people will follow you to stay aware of your happenings and come in as potential customers.
Social media is much simpler than it seems for a restaurant, but you do need to put yourself out there so that your customer base can find you online!
Check out guest blogger Bethany North’s Website for a great selection of Pasquini Livia 90 at The Coffee Bump!
Privacy Lists on Facebook
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For the last three weeks I’ve been attending the Social Media Success Summit and learning lots of new tips and tricks.
The fabulous Mari Smith, the Queen of Facebook told us 500 million active users have logged on to Facebook during the last 30 days and 250 million log on every day for an average of 55 minutes. Just one good reason why a business owner would want to be on Facebook.
Also learned from Mari that you can accept strangers as friends on your personal Facebook profile and still maintain some level of privacy. You can let all friend requests in but limit their view of your profile. I knew this but I did not know you could create a list of people to limit. The way this works is instead of individually entering each person you want to limit access to in to your privacy settings you can just add the whole list under your privacy settings. All you have to do is create the list and add every person to the list that you want to have limited access to your profile and then add that list under your privacy settings.
You might be saying why don’t I just ignore the friend request? Well, you can but what if that friend request is from your mom, your boss or your neighbor and you really don’t want to offend them?
You have choices:
- You can ignore their friend request and deal with the “why’d you ignore my friend request on Facebook?” questions
- You can stop posting updates you wouldn’t want them to read (good idea but most people don’t do this)
- You can allow them in as your friend but limit the amount they will see on your profile
Here’s how:
First you need to make a list.
- To make a list click on the Friends link (located on the home page, on the left, under your profile picture)
- Click +Create a List button (located to the right above your list of friends)
- When the box pops up: enter a name for your list and start typing in the names of your “friends” that you want to add to your list
- After you select some friends for this list click on the blue Create List button
You now have a list!
If you want this list to be given special privacy settings you need to do the following:
- Click on Account drop down menu (located at the top right of your Facebook profile page)
- Click on Privacy Settings
- Click on Personal Information & Posts
- Click on Posts by Me, Photo Albums (whatever you want to keep private)
- Click on the drop down menu to the right of the setting you want to edit where it says Everyone, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, or Customize. Click Customize.
- Then start typing the name of your list. My list is called Not Sure which means I’m not sure if I want to let this person in to my full profile yet. After I get to know them a little bit I might take them off the Not Sure list and give them more access.
It’s a small social media world
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It’s a small world and with social media it’s an even smaller world. A few weeks ago I spoke at the IVAA conference in Phoenix, AZ. While at this conference in Arizona I met Eve Lindi (who is not my neighbor but close).
Anyway, Eve told me about a friend she has that lives in the same town I do who she thought I’d like. She introduced us on Facebook. Turns out Eve’s friend, Michele and I have a lot of things and people in common and we live in almost walking distance to each other (if it weren’t for that big hill). Michele and I met for a hike today. She’s great! I’m just realizing if it weren’t for social media I probably would have never met my neighbor.
I don’t think social media is a waste of time.
Do you like the new Facebook pages format?
Posted by: | CommentsDo you like the new Facebook Fan Pages? Wait what exactly are they called now? Like Pages? I call them business pages. I’ve been hearing lots of opinions about people “liking” and disliking the new format of the fan business pages. As you have probably noticed you no longer become a fan of a page, instead you “like” a page…
The Bath Nook and I have a deep need to be liked. Because of this need we are going to give away a free bar of homemade natural lavender soap (3.75oz) AND a full size (8oz) bottle of Oatmeal lotion. My two favorite scents! Now I know soap and lotion don’t really have anything to do with social media BUT it is important to smell good in life!
On Friday, 4/30 we will be randomly selecting someone who “likes” both of our pages to be the lucky winner*. If you want to be that lucky winner… make sure you “like” The Bath Nook AND Virtual Simplicity and leave a comment on one of our walls letting us know you want to smell good. While you are at it you can “like” Sally Around The Bay too (please – shameless I know).
*Unfortunately at this time The Bath Nook can only ship to US residents (sorry Jaime Lee Mann) … 
Should I Set Up a Twitter or Facebook Account for My Business?
Posted by: | CommentsYes! If you are a business owner you really do need a Twitter and Facebook Fan Page for your business. It’s important for businesses to be involved in social networking.
Photo by Matt Hamm.
According to Mashable:
“the study by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies found that consumers are 67% more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter, and 51% more likely to buy from a brand they follow on Facebook (
). Moreover, they’re 79% more likely to recommend their Twitter (
) follows to a friend, and 60% more likely to do the same on Facebook”
Read the whole article here on Mashable.
Is your business on Twitter & Facebook yet? Have you joined in the conversation? If you need some help getting started with social media → Virtual Simplicity is here to help! Contact us if you are ready to jump on the social networking band wagon!
Friends or Fans on Facebook?
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How do you prefer to connect on Facebook? Do you like to keep your personal profile just for good friends and family or do you open it up for the world to see? Do you let complete strangers friend you on Facebook? How well does someone have to know you to be allowed in to the inner circle of your personal Facebook profile?
Say you meet someone at an in person business networking meeting, they then send you a Facebook friend request, what do you do? Do you accept, ignore or invite them to be a fan of your business fan page instead of being a friend on Facebook? If someone does this to you, how does it make you feel?
I’d like to start a discussion about this. I don’t think there is a right answer and I’m still deciding how I feel about it. I want to hear how you feel about it and what you think is the best practice for business owners.
I personally am pretty open with who I let in to my inner circle on my personal Facebook profile. At first it was weird for me when my clients and neighbors started friending me. I felt exposed, but then I thought about it and decided I don’t do anything I’m ashamed of so why not let my clients and neighbors be my friends on Facebook?
I know some people who only friend their very close friends and family and ask clients and others to connect via their fan page.
What do you think? I understand why someone wants to keep business and personal separate but when I’m the one who has been denied a friend request I have to admit I feel a little bit excluded.
In this day and age of social networking and being authentic is keeping business and personal separate really the best thing to do? Is anything really private anymore?
I figure if my clients don’t like my political views, the amount of time I spend on Facebook, the pictures of me from when I was 12 or hearing about the random things I do everyday… they either don’t have to work with me or don’t need to be my friend on Facebook, but if they want to be my friend and are interested in what I’m cooking for dinner then… why not let them be a part of my community?
Neighbors… well they are a whole other story… LOL if you are going to talk about a party or going out to dinner on Facebook make sure to invite ALL of your neighbors or expect messages saying things like: “thanks a lot for inviting me!”
If you are a business owner with a Facebook fan page, what do you do?
If you are someone that wants to connect with a business owner and they deny the friend request and ask you to be their fan instead, how does this make you feel? Do you want to be their fan still or does it kind of feel like “Let’s just be friends?” when someone says “Let’s just be fans”?
Please leave a comment and share your thoughts on this topic.
Thanks!
Sally
Facebook Etiquette
Posted by: | CommentsSince Facebook is one of the world’s largest countries now and we are all living in it together… Here are a few things that might help keep the peace.
- When sending a bulk message on Facebook to a bunch of your friends: Please (PLEASE) think twice before doing this. Did you know when you send this message to your 20 best friends, every single time one of those people responds to that message, we ALL get the response. Mulitply that times 20 plus all the back and forth responses and that is a lot of messages in my email box that I don’t need to read nor want to read and it takes my precious time to delete those unwanted messages.
- When sending a long and salesy message from your personal profile or fan page this feels like spam to me. I did not ask for you to send me an email about your services or what you sell. I became a fan of your page because I want to support you or because I’m interested in your businesses but I did not sign up to receive messages from you. There is no unsubscribe link in Facebook messages so if I keep getting unwanted messages my only choices are to unfriend you or unfan your business.
- Farmville and all ville apps on Facebook: If you play those games, enjoy, have fun but please turn off your notifications. I really don’t want to know if you just bought another pink pig or watered your green beans today. I have never played Farmville so I don’t know if this really works but it is worth a try. I looked up how to stop Farmville from sending notifications and found this How To Stop Farmville From Sending Notifications on Yahoo answers. Can someone please verify that this works? (If lots of your friends are playing Farmville and you don’t want to know their status you can always click Hide when you see one of their Farmville udpates. Clicking Hide on the right side of the update will Hide all future Farmville updates.)
Thank you for listening to my tips rant. 
Have a nice day.
Have You Been Phished?
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Please be careful what you click on in Twitter, Facebook and all social networking sites!
If you receive a DM on Twitter saying something like “haha is this you?” with a link or other strange DMs please do not click on the link.
If you do click on the link please do not give them your Twitter Log In info, even if it looks like a Twitter page (it’s probalbly not).
This is how people get in to your account and send out those icky DMs to all your followers. This is called phishing, the mean person or program on the other end tricked you in to thinking you are just relogging in to Twitter but really you are not, you are giving someone else your log in info.
This can happen on Twitter, Facebook, eBay, PayPal, you name it… always check the url at the top of your browser, if something feels suspicious it probably is. If you do click on a link and you are asked to log in to Twitter again… don’t. Close your browser, re-open it, and start all over entering Twitter.com.
Scott Stratten explains phishing much more eloquently. Please read here.
If you are going to participate in social networking, it is uber important that you know how to protect yourself and your followers.
If your account did get phished you can easily stop the problem by quickly changing your password.
Thank you!
3/1/10 Update: There is a new phishing scam going on today. If you receive a DM that says: “Some1 wrote something about u on his blog” IGNORE it or DELETE it but please do not click on the link.
Squeeky Clean Social Media
Posted by: | CommentsI was talking with Dusty, the owner of The Bath Nook (my favorite soap product in the world) and we were talking about fun things we could do with social media.
Dusty came up with the idea to do a combined contest on Facebook. She offered to give away some of her fantastic products to the Virtual Simplicity Facebook Fans. She’s giving away a bar of soap and a small bottle of lotion in my very favorite scent: Oatmeal!
The contest is open until 1/30/10 at 12noon PST. At that point, I will do a drawing using the randomizer and post the winner. Winner will have 3 days to get mailing address to me.
If you would like a chance to sample this amazing soap and lotion here is how to enter the contest.You only need to pick one option below to enter or you can enter more than once by doing each of the following. You must leave a separate comment for each entry. ***MAKE SURE TO LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW TO BE ENTERED IN CONTEST.***
1. Become a fan of the Virtual Simplicity Facebook Fan Page and then come back here, leave a comment and let me know you are a fan.
2. Become of a fan of The Bath Nook Facebook Fan Page and then come back here, leave a comment and let me know.
3. Tweet about this contest linking back to this post. Leave a comment here letting me know you tweeted about it. Here is a convenient tiny url you can use to tweet about the contest: http://bit.ly/6MGCC0
4. Link to this contest from your Facebook page and leave a comment here letting me know.
Thank you and I look forward to sharing this wonderful product with you.
Sally
PS. At this time we can only ship to US addresses. Sorry to my friends from all the other wonderful countries.
