Mike Mueller - Builder of Engagement

One of the best things about having a Facebook Page is the ability to direct a new visitor to any one of your Tabs first.  That means that anyone who has not yet LIKE’d your Page or not currently signed in to Facebook can be directed to your Wall, or Info, or Photos or any of the Tabs your Page currently has.

If you are really cool, your Page has a specific Tab (App) custom built to convert visitors to LIKE’s like these people do: http://areweconnected.com/facebook/

You can’t do that with your Profile.  You can’t do that with a Group.  You can’t do that with an Event.  Just a Page.  If you have a Page, here’s how to set that function.

STEP ONE

Find your Page.  Not sure where it is?  Log into Facebook, then click this link.  That will show you every page you have ever started.  Did you find the Page?  Good, now click on it.

STEP TWO

Edit your Page.  To do so, you’ll need to navigate to your Page’s ‘dashboard’.  First find the WALL tab on the left and click on it.  In the upper right you’ll see a button titled EDIT PAGE.  Click on it.

STEP THREE

Set the Default Landing Tab.  You are now in your Page’s Dashboard section.  You’ll see various tabs on the left side.  Make sure you are on the “Manage Permissions” Tab.  You’ll see checkboxes that will turn on or off features.  Did you find the drop down for Default Landing Tab?  Good!  Click on the drop down and choose which of your Tabs you want to be the Default Landing Tab.

Got it?  Great!  Wait!  before you go, don’t forget to click the blue button at the bottom…

Now here’s a few things to keep in mind.

• Don’t have the ability to set a Default Landing Tab?  You created your Page as a “Community Page”.  That’s bad.  That’s a secret Facebook trap for twerps and spammers who create Pages like The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team’s Pants. Seriously *.   Delete the Page and start again.  (http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php) Stay in the top 3 boxes there and you’ll be fine.

 

• Set a username for your Page.  If your Page is right, do this soon.  Not right away, but soon.  Think about what title you want for this page.  You’ll be using it for all your marketing materials down the road.  Now, sleep on it.  Why?  Because once you set it you can never change it.  Make very sure it’s right.

 

• Admins (that’s you) will always go to the Wall, even though you set the Default Landing Tab.  To check and see if your page is working properly you can log out and go to the vanity URL you set for your Page.  Here’s mine: http://facebook.com/MikeMuellerConsulting  If you are going to try this with your page make sure you don’t accidentally use https://  That S will direct you to the secure server instead and facebook will just ask you to sign in.

 

• Add an Admin.  Someone you trust.  Funny things happen in Facebook all the time.  If you are the only Admin on your Page and somehow FB accidentally deletes your Profile, you lost the keys to your Page.  My Canadian friends would say, You’re Hosed, eh?  But if you’ve added an Admin friend, they can add you back to your Page and save your Bacon.  (yes, another silly canuck reference)

 

• Getting Started – ONLY shows for you (the Admin) and only for a short while.  While you can’t delete it, just Ignore it.

* True Story… Vancouver Canada, the 2010 Winter Olympics, and the Nord Curlers debut with these wild and crazy pants!  Some random guy created a Page as a tribute (remember they were once called Fan Pages and you “Became a Fan”?)  That Page gathered 300,000+ FANS and shortly after, Facebook took it away from him and turned it into a community page.  There was a ruckus and uproar and in a very unique decision, Facebook gave it back to him and changed the Page to what it is today.  I know what you’re thinking… You won’t be so lucky.

 

 

I want to delve into the idea of expanding or enriching your sphere of influence.  In the past you might have heard someone say, “It’s all about the numbers”, or maybe “It’s not about the numbers it’s the quality of the relationships”.  Ok, so who’s right? (hint: I’m not going to answer that)  I will be the first to say there’s a lot of grey area in between.  The correct answer for you may very well be somewhere in the middle.

In Facebook, you have to start somewhere so let’s start with your Profile and in particular, the Timeline.  Facebook’s newest feature replaces your Profile with a BIG banner image called a “cover image”.  The wall is replaced by two columns.  Yadda yadda yadda.  There’s a lot of grumbling about the new Timeline as well as plenty of people singing it’s praise.  

Remember, we're working on expanding your sphere.  We want to meet and learn about new people outside of it.  Yet, the Timeline is all about you (right?) but in order to see others Timeline, you'll first have to enable it on your profile.  Does that make sense?

Enable Timeline

While the new Timeline is coming to everyone eventually, it was first released to the developers back in September.  Shortly after, someone figured out how to get it without being a developer and we had the “Developer Hack”.  Recently, Facebook rolled it out as an option to everyone.  To enable Timeline on your Profile just go to http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline  At the bottom, you’ll see a small button.  Just press that.

Now you can upload a “Cover” photo.  You’ll want to upload an image that is at least 850 x 315px.  Like a profile picture, you can resize and crop once it’s up.  You’ll still have a profile picture that overlays on top of the lower left.  No longer will you have a long profile picture (the old 180 x 540 max that’s still in use for Pages) instead it’ll be a 130px. square.

You’ll see a warning that you should not put advertising or commercial crap in the picture.  Please don’t.  Social Media already has enough spam, why add to it?  It’s supposed to be a picture that represents who you are – not what you sell.

Totally unrelated but I hereby nominate this as the BEST cover image of the year…

Important: for all those grumbling that they don’t like Timeline and they want their old profiles back, there’s some great virus spam scans out there that purport to allow you to revert.  They are scams and will take over your profile.  Be smarter than that, don’t fall for it.  Too late?  Here’s how to fix it

http://areweconnected.com/facebook/how-to-kill-a-bad-facebook-app/

A little bit of a late start on it this year but I’m happy to help make your picture PINK for breast cancer awareness month.  Every year for the past couple of years I’ve made people PINK.

All you have to do is send me an email ( mike912mueller@gmail.com ) and do these two things…

1. Subject line “Make me PINK”
2. Attach the photo you want PINK’d

I’ll square up your image, put a pink ribbon and border around it and you’ll be telling everyone you support Breast Cancer Awareness!  Yay!  The square image works best for Twitter, Linkedin,Facebook and most all social networks.

Here’s the last few I just did.  Come  November, I’ll be participating once again in Movember and would love it if you helped by supporting that effort.  Want to do even more?  Go write a blog post about why you went PINK.  There’s a lot of compelling stories I’ve heard and thought more people should hear this than just me.  Don’t forget to link back to here and I’ll help push it out to others as well.

    

    

 

Here’s a whole Flickr set of PINK  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikemueller/sets/72157622376094013/with/6211294575/

 

And besides – everyone looks better in PINK!

One of the new cool things about the new facebook is the real time sharing of music.  There’s a number of different apps out there but it seems the #1 in use is Spotify.  I have a beta account, I like it but new people who sign up with it are also required to attach it to their profile.  That also means that when they listen to songs they’ll also be broadcasting to their newsfeed. (they can now turnthis off but the default setting is still ON)  It’s a vicious (or smart) cycle, eh?  Some people might have a little issue with that.

Like it or dislike it – you can easily hide or block the App in your newsfeed from just a single person or everyone.  Easy to do.

 

Why would I want to block just a single person’s music?

If you know me, I’m a kilt wearin’ bagpipe lover 24 hrs a day.  There’s nothing sweeter than starting the day with a little “Scotland the Brave” turned all the way up to 11.

But, you might be more apt to be listening the latest Rebecca Black song.

And while that’s ok, I might not enjoy your choice in music as much as you do.  

And then there’s my clients – who are also friends on Facebook.  Most of my clients also LOVE the Pipes so no problem there.  Do they like your music?  Does your music choice reflect negatively on me?  We tell our kids all the time that people will judge you by the kids you hang out with.

That’s why although I might respect your choice in music, I also value your friendship, but I’m blocking your music.  Thanks Facebook!

It’s Battle of the Public Lists!  We’ve got Twitter, Facebook and now G+ that can all share lists (or circles) publicly.

I certainly don’t want to share all my circles.  I have some pretty down and dirty ones.  Yet there are some I would be very happy to share and I’m interested to see how the new Share a Circle  function works.  So I took one of my circles (aptly called Givers and Sharers) and made it public.

You’ll notice I made it public but also shared it to my circles.  Everyone in the circle should also be notified and can see those I’ve included.  Interesting that you cannot see what I named the circle.

Hmmm…then I found this video from G+:

I’m not sold yet on the idea that I want to publicize my circles even after my Circle Saturday post.  Hey, I already have next weeks Circle Saturday written.  I really hope the Circle Saturday thing catches on.

I think the reason this isn’t such a big thing to me is that it’s very temporary.  This share happens in my stream.  It’s just a point in time and it disappears down the stream in a few days.  It’s not bookmarked over on my sidebar.  It’s one and done.  It’s like a group POKE, but then you can’t return the Poke.  Maybe it’s more like a Tweet containing only a #FF and 6 @Names with no explanation why.  Not very valuable, eh?

Compare that to a public Twitter List like  my Hockey Pucks, F1 Peeps or Coolest 100 or even a public Facebook List like my Great RE People – all of which have  staying power and at least tell people the ‘what’ or the ‘why’.

But then again, with the new Facebook Timeline a public list is going to be hard to find.  Does  that mean Twitter won this round?

What do you think?  Have a list to share?

I’m happy Facebook came up with a way to encourage more people to put their friends in lists.

If you know me, you know I’m a HUGE pusher of LISTS.  Lists are the key to making Facebook work for you.

From the Facebook Blog:

To make lists incredibly easy and even more useful, we’re announcing three improvements:

• Smart lists – You’ll see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you–like your work, school, family and city.
• Close Friends and Acquaintances lists – You can see your best friends’ photos and posts in one place, and see less from people you’re not as close to.
• Better suggestions – You can add the right friends to your lists without a lot of effort.

You’ll start to see List Suggestions on the sidebar in various areas.  If I pull up the “Most Recent” newsfeeds for one of my existing lists, Facebook now suggests people it thinks might be applicable additions to this list.  With a click of the + I can add them.

“Look!  There’s Joe Ferrara.  I didn’t know he wasn’t on this list – I should add him.”

One click and it’s done!  Joe is now on my new “super close friends” list.  Automation is great, eh?  Except in this case.  (Joe passed away some time ago and as much as I miss him he doesn’t belong on this particular list)

It’s not perfect but it’s a start and kudos to Facebook for addressing this and making it easy for people to add friends to lists.  Once we have lists we can start adjusting the privacy settings accordingly.  But that also brings up the other side of Lists…

You know, that really nice guy from across town that is actually a competitor farming your neighborhood?  Or that ultra radical and overly vocal political twit that is also a great source of referral business?  Or how about that client who regularly posts R rated jokes or worse and cusses so hard she’d make Richard Pryor blush?

We might want to (or really need to) accept their friend requests BUT we also need to have a little control.

Facebook lives in a world of puppies, rainbows and unicorns.  They don’t get the fact we have people like this in our lives and actually need to friend them.

So while you ‘one click’ your way to lists for all the shiny happy people in your life, you should also think about making lists for the dark side.  You might want to put people in lists so that you can

• HIDE certain content from them (posts and profile items)
• NOT allow them to Tag you or check you into places
• NOT allow them to see your Friends
• NOT allow your other friends to see their interaction with you

Yes, I really do have a Scary People list as well as an Almost Blocked.  It’s important to note that friends won’t know that you’ve put them into a list or what that list is named unless you make that list public.  The default for lists is Private – something Facebook got right from the start.

These may be the most useful lists you have but they have to be built manually.  Start buildinguseful lists here: http://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/

Sometimes in business we tend to keep it a little too real.  We’re afraid to let our personal side show to those watching our professional side.  I completely understand as I teach and coach others on how to properly manage their various social media accounts in an effort to do just that.

This last week I had the pleasure of attending the Florida Realtors Convention and Trade Show in Orlando again this year.  The event was once again a smashing success!  Starting with REBarCamp and moving into a full convention mode with presentations, vendor booths, and plenty of networking.

When you get together, face to face something magical happens.  You step outside your normal ‘professional’ image and become more ‘personal’.  That’s a good thing.  It’s the ‘personal’ part that I admire, respect and become friends with.

Between the TwitterQueen’s and their Tiara’s, the T-Rex jokes and gestures, and the occasional plank there were quite a few ‘personal’ connection points.  Having a little fun while getting out of your comfort zone really connects people.  Think about the last time you pushed the boundaries with strangers- did they become friends?  How often do stuffy ‘professional’ meetings result in new friendships?  Not many.  I wonder why that works like that?

   

Wait… Did you say PLANK?

Yup! A year and a half ago I mentioned on the radio show that there was a Facebook group for Planking or the Lying Down Game (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5989617014).   There’s also a Page with almost 700,000 LIKES (http://www.facebook.com/OfficialPlanking)  It’s just a bunch of people taking pictures of themselves in a stationary horizontal position face down in places where they wouldn’t be expected to be.  Simple, yet silly.

It took a while but Planking finally hit the real estate world or at least this conference.

  

Over cocktails one night Planking popped into the conversation.  Kim and Cari (closest to the lamp) mentioned that they had created a Listing Video and used Planking (and a few other things) to spice it up.

Really?  A listing video with planking?  Obviously Chris and I were not impressed.

That is, until we saw the video…

How’s this for jumping out of your comfort zone?  WAY OUT!

By the way, I asked the obvious question and yes, the seller thought it was great!

Will every Listing Video now require Planking?  Probably not.  Will the home sell because of it?  Maybe.  The thing for me is this…  I know it’s silly but I now have a deeper connection with Cari and Kim than just a simple exchange of business cards could ever do.  Not because we’re fellow Plankers (hey, I may never plank again).  It’s deeper because… well… you figure it out.

Go get out of your comfort zone and create some new relationships!

So, I got this so called friend “Gerry”.  He sent me a t-shirt once after I nagged for over a year but that’s a different post for later.

He’s doing a charity ride on his bicycle.  He’s riding for his 3rd time.  As you can plainly see in the video he did last year that he’s not in the best of shape.  This isn’t an easy 192 mile ride (especially for him).

I kid of course.  I love Gerry (in a “bud hug” way).  The point is, he’s doing something, anything, to fight this evil disease!

This year, a good friend of ours is battling cancer (Clint Miller) and Gerry is going to dedicate this year’s ride to him.  I heard something about attaching streamers to his jersey?  I’m thinking someone should explain the laws of aerodynamics to him.

BUT he’s also raising a few $ for the charity organization (http://www.pmc.org/) and presently is below his goal so here’s the plan.

We’re going to auction off a Custom Facebook Business Page.  That’s a $400 value!

Here’s how this will work. 

• In the post on http://areweconnected.com/social-media/donate-to-a-great-cause-and-win-a-custom-facebook-business-page/ -  just leave a bid as your comment.  
• You can leave a comment here as well but all BIDS need to be in one place. :(
• On Thursday at 9 PM Eastern the highest bidder wins the page.  Simple as that.

Other Rules: 

• In the case of a tie, the winner will be the one with the most tweets using the #WeLoveClint and #PMC2011 hashtags
• Sharing this multiple times on Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus will only earn you KUDOS.  However, in the case of a random drawing down the road, past judges have been known to look at the Kudo Scores before drawing a winner.

To Recap:

	an overweight, out of shape, weekend warrior, who doesn’t know much about slipstream effects and aerodynamics, but willing to go thru lots of pain to raise a few bucks to help fight a horrible disease.
	Really nice guy, with the horrible disease, fighting his a$$ off.
	You
	a Custom Facebook Business Page just for you.  Custom designed to your specs.  Perfect for a welcome tab or as a landing tab for a Facebook Ad.  Like these:http://areweconnected.com/facebook/

 

QUESTION: What happens if I don’t win? 

Cheesy answer:  In my book, just donating makes you a winner. 
REAL Answer: Did you really just ask that?  Seriously?  Go donate right now just for thinking about it. 

Did I mention the donation is tax deductible?

Here’s the LINK to Gerry’s page http://www.pmc.org/profile/pfp.asp?profileid=gb0117

Any part of it.

Did I miss something? Was the CANN-SPAM Act repealed?

Yeah, these are all "Newsletters I Never Signed Up For"

 

Interesting title?  It could have easily been
"99 comments that mean almost nothing except to you for the points".  Or how about
"Why in the world did you even take the time to comment?"

The following are just random comments I pulled from posts.  We've all seen them (or plenty of others just like them).  

The point of this post is just can't we do this all a little better - please?  That's all.

Some of the comments I see on AR kind of remind me of this guy

BONUS: if you are the type of person that would rather not read posts and just leave generic comments for the sake of the points, here's 99 easy to use CUT and PASTE comments to make your day!  You could even use them here on this post!  How ironic would that be?

 

Thank you for the information and tips. Bookmarked for later.

So much information, I really need to wrap my head around this.

Good tips. Great post. Certainly a guideline for anyone to follow that are serious.

I flagged this one for a feature. You are a true professional!

Thanks for reminding me. Personally I have done a few but need to start really doing a lot more.

You've been BOOKMARKED! Thanks for the info. I'm been thinking about blogging but I was sure what to blogg about. thanks!

Good Job. I'm going to try the same thing too. You have inspired me.

What brilliant ideas that you've shared....thank you for your generousity!

Excecellent post. I will copy all my agents with it. I have been working hard to convince them of the value of doing this. I hope your article will help.

Thanks for the great tips-I am just starting out with this whole blogging thing and can use all the help I can get.

I have done the same thing in some cases - I look forward to the same results one day:)

So worth that little Gold Star. I keep a little Active Rain notebook about tips that I refer to when I write my articles. I'll be putting your advice to good use!

This is so exciting to read more success on blogging and congratulations to you.

I'm planning on blogging about it so that others will be more and more inspired.

Thanks for the information and congrats on the Feature.

I have been meaning to do this and you just inspired me.

Congrats on a well-deserved feature. You have this down to a science. We can all learn from your expertise!

Thank you for posting...

Thank you so much for posting this. What an awesome idea. I never even thought about this.

Thank You. I have started doing this. I must have need a kick in the pants...

Great post. It's so true. Keep up the great work and congratulations.

Thank you for this. You gave me some good reminders and great ideas. This will help me a great deal. Thanks again.

Thank you for the information. I have been interested in doing this and you have basically given my the layout to how

Thanks for the great informative post!! You gave some excellent ideals. Thank you! I have bookmarked this one!

This is agreat post! I will be looking closer at this too! Thanks!

Your blog was recommended by another "Rainer". Glad I stopped by.

This is great, thank you so much for sharing!

I will have to experiment with that a little more.

I really needed this reminder. Thank you.

Great idea about _________. Thanks for the tip.

You have given me an excellent approach to adding to my blog and making it more relevant. thanks for the tip!

I think thats a brilliant Idea. This is a strategy that I plan to implement as well. Thanks!

Lots of great ideas to add to what I am doing now. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.

wow, did I learn alot here. thanks for great info.

Great Post. Thanks for all the ideas.

Great post, I do the same thing.

Thank you for "paying it forward." I've bookmarked this to come back to. Thanks again.

Great post, flagged for feature.

You have given us some great tips! I will take your advice.

This is some really great information. Thank you for the advice!

This is a fantastic idea! I just may have to do a little of this myself in the coming months. I will definetly be visiting this blog again to learn more!

Inspiring. You have great talent putting them all together.

Your post is very informative and appreciated. Thanks.

GREAT POST! I am looking to improve my blogging and this was very insightful.

Thank you for the helpful information! I am new to blogging and social networking, and your post has been extremely helpful! Have a great day!

I never thought about that. Thanks for sharing such great information.

I started doing this and left it. I will get back to doing this. Thanks for the kick in the pants.

Great post! I am going to have to show this one to some other agents!

I will keep that in mind. Thanks for the great information.