Mike Mueller, Social Media.ist

From Seth Godin’s blog here’s Gary V…

Linchpin: GaryVee from Seth Godin on Vimeo.

What do I do?
I build Custom Facebook Tabs for Business.
Two of them – one for Fan Conversion and the other for SEO / Fan Engagegment.
That’s my closest level, my “spot”.

What’s yours?

By the way – who’s P. Diddy?

From my article...

The GOAL:

I want to pass Candace.

You might remember her as “D.J. Tanner” on Full House.   That was a while ago.  She’s all grown up now and a personal friend of the Skip1 Founder.  She’s currently in the #2 position on the leader board and as you can see she’s “low hanging fruit”!

Read the original story here:http://activerain.com/blogsview/1475208/beat-candace-

No hiding the fact that one of my favorite charities right now is Skip1.org.  You may have seen one of my tweets about them, or a Facebook post.

The fact is that I love the concept.  Skip something small and insignificant in your life, donate what you would have spent on that item, and make a very significant difference in the lives of others.

100% of the donations go directly to make a difference.  No overhead fees, no salaries, $1 in makes a $1 difference there.  Speaking of “there”, while Skip1 works worldwide, right now the efforts are focused on helping Haiti.

I also like social media aspect of the site.  I can go on the site and proudly proclaim to the world that I “Skipped a Latte”!  Recently I offered to help them with their Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/Skip1org).  I may not have much to give these days but I can certainly help by donating my elbow grease.

I also have a Goal and I have a Plan…

The GOAL:

I want to pass Candace.

You might remember her as “D.J. Tanner” on Full House.   That was a while ago.  She’s all grown up now and a personal friend of the Skip1 Founder.  She’s currently in the #2 position on the leader board and as you can see she’s “low hanging fruit”!

The PLAN:

Candace has the looks.  She has the fame.  She has the connections.  Heck, she even has a job (Yes, I’m still working on finding a job) – but here’s something Candace doesn’t have… She doesn’t have the awesome potential of Social Media behind her.  That’s my plan.

With your help I believe we can displace her.  ( I can’t do it without you)

STEP 1: Go register yourself. http://www.skip1.org/user/register It takes moments to do and as a bonus you can enter all your websites and get a little link love back to you.

STEP 2: Go Skip Something.  Anything.  Or just make up something.  Here’s a list of ideas if you like http://www.skip1.org/skipit It really doesn’t matter what you skipped.

STEP 3: While logged in to the site (see step 1) now make a donation.  I don’t care how little or how insignificant you think it may be, it isn’t.  When Shelene told me she was buying mattresses for $3 and giving children a place to sleep off the ground for the first time – you get the idea.  Donate Link is here: https://www.skip1.org/donate.

But here’s the part where my “plan” takes effect.  In the donation box I want you to enter “Paying Mike Mueller”.

STEP 4: Now that you’ve donated you feel pretty good don’t you?  Go ahead and do it again.  How about spreading that feeling around?  Share this article with all your friends.  You can ReTweet it, copy and paste this post and reblog it on your site (it’s ok), or share it with everyone on Facebook.  The idea is to use your Social Media Super Powers and let’s surprise someone.  Ok, let’s surprise a lot of someones!

Skip1.org PSA from Skip1 on Vimeo.

There are 4 ways to bring outside content into your Facebook Fan Page.

1. RSS or any application that pulls the RSS automatically
2. Notes – Facebooks own way to pull an RSS
3. Embedded Link – Just start typing the link into the box
4. The “Attach a LINK” button.

I believe the LINK button is the best – here’s why.

Agree or Disagree with the article or Video you are sharing?  You can state your case right at the top in the “write something…” box.  Set the stage, entice the viewer, or just simply share why you are sharing.

Once you Attach the LINK – Facebook will go to that post and then give you the choice of a Thumbnail.  You can pick any of the images it provides or none at all.  Sometimes a picture is all it takes to pull someone into wanting to learn more.

Facebook grabs the Title of the post or article.  Click on this Title and you’ll be able to rename that Title.  That title is a hyperlink to the article (we call it Anchor Text)  This is important in two ways…  First, you can rename that link to something a little more enticing to your Friends than it is now.  Second, Google loves Proper Anchor Text.  Instead of adding a link like this: http://areweconnected.com/post123 most any search engine is going to give more juice to a link that looks like this: The Best Way to Share Information on Facebook even though both links go to the same place.

Facebook also grabs the first paragraph (50 or so words) of the attached article and displays that.  Just as the Title is Anchor Text, so is this article description.  As an example, look at the first 50 words in this post.   Perhaps the first paragraph isn’t as enticing as you might like.  No problem!  Click on the text and change it.

Here’s the last reason and it’s just for all you SEO Peeps.  The links you attach in this way are all “DO Follow”.  Yes your Facebook Fan Page is indexed by all the search engines including Google and Yes your Facebook Fan Page can have a PageRank(http://www.facebook.com/MikeMuellerConsulting has a PR of 3)  And since the Links have a Do Follow if you are sharing your own articles, you are driving PageRank to your own website or blog.

That’s it.  The BEST way to share information on your wall.  Yes, I realize this takes a few moments of your time, time is money, yadda yadda yadda.  Yes, I realize there are faster easier ways out there that automate this.  To that I’ll argue you get what you pay for.  You can’t automate engagement.

NOTE: I use a wordpress plugin that does much of this for me.  Share this article on Facebook in the same way and the title will be “You can’t automate engagement” with the 50 word description “There are 4 different ways to bring outside content into your Facebook Fan Page.  Here’s the BEST and WHY.”   The same thing happens when you see this article in a Google Search Result.

Testing a plugin called “photodropper” that is supposed to pull in images from Flickr with the correct Creative Commons License, add the proper photo credit and do some other things..

You can find it here: http://www.photodropper.com/wordpress-plugin/

With the Photo Dropper plugin, you can now search millions of Flickr photos and add them to your Wordpress posts with just 1 click, all without leaving your Wordpress dashboard. Attribution links are automatically added underneath the images to comply with the Creative Commons license rules. It’s the easiest way to add photos to your blog. Period. And best of all – it’s Free!

I did a quick search for “Sharks Hockey”  and  found this one (and many more)

 photo credit: The Written Geek™

How’s that look to you?  I did that all with one click.

One other side note.  If you have a commercial blog you’ll have to do a small bit of adjusting to filter out those that are not “commercially approved”

I speak often about Fan Conversion being a critical part of any Facebook Page.

If a visitor doesn't become a Fan on the first viewing of your Fan Page you've probably lost your one and only chance.

If you go to my main Fan Page (http://facebook.com/MikeMuellerConsulting) I've built a special landing tab just for new visitors. I can't replicate the exact way it looks and works here on ActiveRain but here's the general idea.

On Facebook, all of the various logos / images are links to the various sites. My main call to action is front and center "Become a Fan"

What do you think?

NOTE: I realized I totally messed up and forgot to include an ActiveRain logo! I'll be fixing that later today!

I want you to watch this video.  The band is the same one that brought us that beautifully choreographed music video using 6 running treadmills.  It’s funny and entertaining but that’s not why it’s here.

When you watch you might notice that’s it’s one take. It’s called a “Long Shot“.  No cuts, no edits. Turn the camera on and Go!

I also LOVE the creative use of camera angles!

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

The reason I bring this up is this.  Often times we’re presented with opportunities where we get one shot to make our point.  No cuts, no edits, no retakes.  Some people will over think and over practice for the occasion.  Others, like those in this video will strive to do their best but should they stumble, mumble or fall – it’s ok.  Practice is good, it essential, but sometimes over-practicing can stifle great creative work.   With a keen I eye you can see many “mistakes” in this video.  Late or early timings, out of position, missed marks.  You might see that now that I pointed them out but did it ruin the video?  Not at all.  I say “dust off and keep going! ”

MORAL OF THE STORY

Keep this in mind when you are creating your first video, your first blog post, or even your first tweet.  Strive to get it right but don’t sweat it.  Get your point across and move on to the next.

As a BONUS here’s a Long Shot from “The Goodfellas”.  Imagine the entire cast hitting their marks on time for Martin Scorsese!

Here's 14 reasons your business should!

According to the latest stats from Facebook itself…

1. More than 350 million active users
2. 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
3. More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
4. More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
5. More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
6. Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
7. Average user has 130 friends on the site
8. Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
9. Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
10. Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
11. Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
12. More than 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook Connect on external websites every month
13. There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
14. People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Now tell me again why you don’t think Facebook is worth your time and energy?

Go start your Custom Facebook Business (fan) Page

This morning I suggested to that since this is the last day of the year, it’s also the last day to make someone’s day by writing them an unsolicited recommendation on Linkedin.

I did it on Linkedin:

I did it on Twitter:

And I did it on Facebook:

Linkedin or not, who would you like to recognize, recommend or thank for 2009 and more importantly why?

There’s some special people out there – let’s make sure others know about them!

1. Make a donation,
2. Suggest to all your friends
3. Use the Reblog button here and share this post with your friends and followers.

These were my actual tweets. Each image links to their Facebook Page:

Is there a Charity on Facebook you think should be added to the list?
Add them to your comments below!