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…]

Over the last few months, I've been very tempted to kill both my MySpace and Facebook accounts.

I was sick of responding to the seemingly endless ‘friend requests', mostly from internet marketers whose idea of friendship was to spam the heck out of my account with sales messages. I wasn't particularly keen to waste my time reading the ‘let's get together, baby' messages or viewing scantily clad women. Duh.

Overall, I just wasn't seeing the value of these social networking sites — but to be fair, I wasn't really actively participating to make them work to my advantage, either.

The video I watched this morning has me reconsidering the value of using social media sites as a marketing tool, however.

The 50 minute video “Social Marketing – There Are No Secrets” video by Don Crowther is the latest one in StomperNet's “Going Natural” series, which are some of the best quality production videos I've seen in the Internet marketing arena — not to mention entertaining and informative.

Don got my attention right from the start of the video by saying, “Forget SEO!“, a statement about search engine optimization that echoes the opinion I've always held and shared with my readers.

He also explains how you can still get ‘first mover advantage‘ if you start using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon now — and estimates that the window of opportunity on this marketing channel will start to close within the next 12 to 18 months.

The video shows how the Stompernet boys managed to claim the first 8 PAGES on Google (yes, pages, not listings) through social media marketing.

OK, that opened my eyes to the possibilities of using Web 2.0 (a.k.a. social networking, social marketing, social media) sites to build traffic and sales for your online business.

Don also shows results from research studies that demonstrates how traffic from social networking sites is actually more valuable than traffic we might get from ppc and other marketing techniques. Nice…

I think it's a worthwhile view and have posted the video below for you to view. Access to the other StomperNet videos is available through the playlist on video player. The Stompernet boys are also giving away a free 33-page social marketing strategy guide called “SMARTS”.

Watch it… you might find yourself reconsidering or adopting the social media marketing strategy it you do. 🙂

[tags]social marketing,stompernet,don crowther,brad fallon,andy jenkins[/tags]