This is the fifth in a 5-part series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric. You may read his other posts here.

The news feed is quite probably the most powerful part of Facebook.

The screen capture show here to the left is the news feed that appears on the Facebook home page when you first login. As you can see, some of the activities showing up in the news feed are things your friends have done. In this instance Richard created a group and had added videos to his group, and 41 of my friends are now friends with Sean.

Other items that show up in the news feed include: [Read more…]

This is the third in a series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric.

It's great to have thousands and thousands of friends, but building a relationship with just one person who is highly influential in your market could be more valuable to you than all the rest of your Facebook friends put together.

To get these folks on board, start by making a list of between 30 to 50 of the top influencers in your market.

Keep in mind that these are busy people and that they have new people contacting them all the time who also want to use their expert power, so you will need to decide how you are going to set yourself apart from the crowd to get their attention and make them want to help you.

The easiest way to connect with these power brokers is to offer to do something for them first because this starts the ball rolling.

In simplest terms, “you scratch my back I'll scratch yours”.

So when you help get the word out about their business or their product or give them a testimonial they will be more inclined to help you after you've done that for them.

Most people I see make the mistake of asking for something before first giving something.

Don't make this mistake because getting them to accept your friend request is all you want to do righ now.  Then you can deepen the connection with further communication and offers to assist them.

You do this because the power of your network can really be more important than the size of your network.  As well the strength of the relationships you have with those people in your network can be far more powerful than the size of your network.

You can open the lines of communication by sending them an e-mail asking about their business, what they're working on, or what you could do to help spread the word about their business.

You can also make a text post on their “wall”. This is something unique to facebook (myspace.com calls it ‘comments') which allows you to post a text message on to their profile that they and anyone who views their profile will see.

There is now also a cool floating bar that hovers at the bottom of your screen when you're logged in to facebook which tells you how many of your friends are currently online and gives you the opportunity to have a live text chat with them. So you can have an instant messenger type conversation with those big influencers when they're online. Using this tool alone could be a great way for you to get your foot in the door with power brokers in your industry.

Do it today. Make your list of influential people in your market and start making friends in high places.

To discover more about Facebook and claim your free social media marketing bonuses click here.

This is the second installment in a series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric . Be sure to read Part 1 in the series How I Got 2198 Facebook Friends With NO Profile.

When you're building your network you want to do both active and passive networking. Especially in the beginning you'll have to be more active in your networking to get your initial facebook friend networks started.

In that spirit here's my profile. Because you're one of Rosalind Gardner's readers and I know that you're interested in business and marketing, you can request to be my friend and you're off and running.

One thing I definitely recommend is using your profile to build both business and networking contacts. Even facebook says that you can have two separate accounts one for your personal and one for your business contacts. It's much easier to keep things straight when you have an all-business or all-personal account.

In that vein, here's a time-saving trick using a tool called Roboform that allows you to customize the info that you put into forms. With one click of a button you can register at sites, login to sites, and fill out questionnaires and forms.

With all the Web 2.0 stuff out there that requires you to be a registered user this is an indispensable time-saving tool. There is a free version but I have the $30 paid version because it allows unlimited customization. I estimate this saves me between 30-60 minutes of typing logins everyday.

You can set up a custom field “message” and with one click of a button it will fill the message in on your friend requests on Facebook. This works best when you're going through a group(facebook has many groups on a wide range of topics) and requesting friends from members of that group.

Only send 5-9 of these same ones daily or else your account may be suspended!

Here's a pic of my friend request to T.Harv Eker (of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind book fame)

This is the personal message that I included in the ‘message' field:

Harv,

I loved your book “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”. Very good stuff in there especially the part about the financial blueprint.

Carol [redacted] suggested we should be friends and networking or partnering with you on your projects would be cool.

Alexander

Note: [redacted] means I removed her last name for privacy reasons and the [redacted] was not actually in the message I sent to Harv.

There are four reasons this personal message is so effective:

1. First, it addresses Harv by name. Many independent studies have shown that the most pleasing, sweetest, most desirable sound to the human mind that always gets attention is….YOUR OWN NAME. Unmistakable, undeniable just use it.

2. Second, I referenced his book. Especially when you are dealing with someone who has some fame or is recognized, talk about what they've done and flatter that work. Put in a specific detail about why you liked their work so they can be positive you actually know their work and aren't just throwing out b.s. flattery.

3. Third, I used a mutual friend to connect Harv to me. THis is the 2nd degree of separation and is a motivator used in marketing that's known as Social Proof. Basically it's saying “You and Carol are cool, me and Carol are cool, therefore you and I should be cool”.

   I hate to take you back to math class but this IS actually a proven mathematical property. To refresh your memory it's the transitive property:

when A = B and B = C then A = C

4. Fourth and finally, I offer to do something for him right out of the gate “networking or partnering with you on your projects would be cool” before even hinting at asking anything from him. This gets the very powerful Law of Reciprocation working in my favor (and will work in your favor when you use it because it's a universal law).

   The recipient should feel compelled to accept the friend request and curious to see what I'm about with a “how could I help him?”. Here's the email I got confirming that Harv had accepted my friend request.

Going through groups that are within your market or topic area are a great way to make many good business contacts.

For example, suppose you're in the poodle market. You could find many groups for this. I just did a search for “poodle” and Facebook said this: “Displaying 1 – 10 out of over 500 group results for: poodle” so there's many potential partners and contacts there.

You can customize your message based on “hey I saw you in this group on this topic I'm interested in, would like to be friends so I can network with you“. Quick tip: make sure you keep your message short because Facebook puts a 255 character limit on friend request messages. Too, this person doesn't yet know you so you want to send them a short message to get their attention and make them want to accept your friend request.

To achieve the greatest success with Facebook or any social network keep real-world common sense networking strategies in mind.

In short, be real and you'll build real contacts.

To discover more about Facebook and claim your free social media marketing bonuses click here.

This is the first of a 5-part series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric .

One of the reasons people use Facebook for networking, especially for business, is because it is a protected environment.

Unfortunately, many new users get caught by the Facebook spam Nazis and get their accounts shut down. These guys mean well but unfortunately sometimes the “baby gets thrown out with the bathwater”.

Even seasoned Facebook users have had their accounts disabled and banned. Robert Scobleizer (a long-time and experienced Facebook user) wrote about how his account got shut down here. He later got it reinstated but why make yourself go through the hassle.

So, let's start out with some of the Facebook basics and avoid having your account shut down. Because after the effort it takes to build up 500, 1000, or more friends you want to protect your account and the time that you've put in. [Read more…]