The Chiropractic Marketing System That Works - How to Use Facebook to Get 12 Patients Immediately

The most powerful chiropractic marketing tool for chiropractors is not hard to find nor does it cost thousands of dollars. It's something which you probably already have and which you can do yourself. It's Facebook! Incredulous? My client managed to secure 12 new patients within a week of marketing his practice via Facebook. He did it in three steps, and I will share these methods with you right now.

Why market your practice via Facebook?

Facebook is Massive: It seems the whole world is using Facebook. 200 million people have a Facebook account. This population equals that of the 8th largest country in the world! We are talking about a huge social networking community.

These users love Facebook: In a single day, the total amount of time that users spend using Facebook totals 4 billion minutes. At one point of the day, 100 million users are logged in to their accounts.

These users belong to your ideal market: Two-thirds of Facebook members are finished with college. Among these people, those 35 years old and up are rapidly growing in number.

The Viral Nature of Facebook: The average member on Facebook has been shown to have 120 friends. 

How big is this opportunity?

Let me put it this way. If you have 200 patients using your Facebook page to connect with you, you'll essentially be plugged into 24,000 potential patients!

Get started on this powerful marketing tool in three steps:

1. Get your patients to use Facebook

I knew that my client was losing a terrific marketing opportunity when he told me that he didn't have a Facebook account yet. He already had 500 patients he had seen over the years.

I told him to go create an account on Facebook.com - it's free and takes only minutes. The site then allows its members to import their contacts from their email account. It makes it easier to find their friends already on the site, or invite their contacts to join them.

2. Upload a video about your practice or a symptom you treat

Videos are always fun to watch and online video is exploding with growth. I recently read that the average YouTube user spends 21 minutes a day watching video. We're going to take full advantage of the curiosity factor of video. Facebook makes it very easy to record a short video and then post it to your Facebook page... and then the goal is to drive as much massive traffic to view the video on your Facebook page as we can.

After getting his contacts, my client uploaded a video entitled "The Chiropractic Solution: How to Stop Back Pain Without Surgery." It was only 3 minutes long and was filmed in his clinic while wearing his white lab coat and simply sat on a treatment table and talked into the camera. Then he uploaded the video to YouTube.

YouTube generates something called "embed code" that makes it very easy to paste your YouTube video into Facebook. Also Facebook has many tools for posting your YouTube videos in your Facebook account. In fact 10 million videos are posted to Facebook every month -- so videos are very popular on Facebook. 

3. Spread the news and drive the traffic!

The final step was to drive massive traffic to his Facebook page by generating excitement to view his new video. Patients love watching videos like this. I told my client to send an email invitation to his 500 patients with a link to his Facebook profile to check out the video. He strongly encouraged them to post a comment about the video to get them involved! This whole idea of "involvement" is a core psychological component to making your Facebook marketing gain traction. The more involved we can get patients with your Facebook page, the more business it will generate. 

To summarize, this sent two simple emails:

- An invitation from the doctor to use Facebook;

- An email with a link to view his video on his Facebook page.

Let's talk about the results of this three step system:

This doctor got 12 patients in a week because he drove patients to his Facebook page, got them involved, and teased them with his video.  Since we know statistically that the average Facebook user has 120 friends, this excitement led to patients, referrals, and reactivations.

What can you do to continue getting great results from your Facebook marketing? He ensured the growth of his results by uploading more videos and each time sending an email to his patients inviting them to check it out and comment. Each instance resulted in more clients or reactivations.

There's no denying the potential of Facebook as your chiropractic marketing tool. Today Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world. Creating a single account connects you to 200 million people - all potential clients. By following my three simple steps of getting contacts, creating a video, and getting site traffic, new patients and reactivation will come to you faster than ever. And it's FREE - can any other advertising alternative beat that?

Resource for this Article:

Learn 1,001 more chiropractic marketing tips that work like crazy to get new patients at: http://www.practicebuildingcenter.com

Thanks for reading! Good luck in your chiropractic marketing endeavors.
-- Ben Cummings

Facebook - The La Brea Tar Pits of the Internet

Let's suppose that it's 35,000 years ago and you're a Wooly Mammoth. You're casually lumbering along, as you like to do. It's a hot day, and you're thinking it would be nice to find a pond or something where you can wet yourself down, cool off, maybe take a long refreshing drink. You happen upon just such a spot. You look around, and there's nothing untoward, so you dip a little bit of your foot in, and discover that the water is pleasant. You're up to your ankles, and nothing unusual has occurred, so you wade in further and stand there, up to your knees, soaking and sipping, and generally enjoying yourself.

After a while, feeling very much invigorated, you decide to mosey on, maybe find some marsh grass to nibble upon for a snack. What you didn't notice is that while you were wallowing, distracted, you've been slowly and imperceptibly sinking in to a pit of viscous goo. By now you are well and truly stuck. You may thrash around and try to extricate yourself a bit at first, but eventually, exhausted and resigned, you are completely enveloped by the innocuous-looking Tar Pit.

As with the hapless mammoth, so is it with the innocent Internet user upon encountering Facebook.

Even trying to write about Facebook is difficult, because it is sprawling, addictive and idiosyncratic. It is cohesive and fragmented, frivolous and utilitarian, a boon to society and a scourge to productivity. In case you haven't noticed, I have mixed feelings about Facebook. This article doesn't purport to be a review or an endorsement, but more of an overview, and perhaps an introduction. I'll be that initial elephant foot dipped in the water. Whether you decide to wade in is up to you.

What is Facebook?

What is Facebook? If we ask our old friend, the Wikipedia, it will say this:

"Facebook, formerly TheFacebook, is a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc."

That's a start.

Free access: anybody can use it. You don't have to pay for it.

Social Networking Website: A website where people voluntarily share information with friends, family, colleagues, and total strangers, and join themselves into groups and affiliations of all different varieties and sizes (more on groups in a little while). Facebook is all about communication, and members interact with one another in several different ways.

[NOTE: In this article, I will be capitalizing Facebook as a proper noun. In the company's logo, it is spelled all in lowercase.]

When you first sign up with Facebook, you create a profile. The profile contains a whole range of information about you. You can decide how much or how little to share, and you can control who gets to see the information. The settings allow you to control the levels of privacy. Some of it can be for public consumption, or just visible to the people in your network, or just to members of specified groups of family or friends.

Your profile page is broken up into different tabbed sections. You click on the tab to make that section active. The main sections are: Wall, Info, Photos, and Notes.

Info is pretty much what you'd expect. When you begin with Facebook, you join different networks. The main one will probably be based on a geographical area, usually a major city. For example, I belong to the "Los Angeles" network. You can also join networks based on where you went to school, and the company you work for.

The information that you share can be as detailed as you want, from your gender and your hometown to relationship status, political leanings and religious views. There is room to list your favorite music, movies, television shows and books. Once again, all the information is voluntary, and you don't have to share it with anyone you don't want to.

Photos get uploaded to the Photos section. You can "tag" someone in your photo by clicking on the center of a face, and entering the person's name, so that the face is associated with the person. If the person is also a member of Facebook, that picture will be linked to their profile as well.

Notes is a section where you can write or attach text: a poem, essay, opinion, idea; anything.

Wall is the equivalent of a virtual public wall where information about you is available to your friends and group members (more on those in a moment - I promise). Every time you do something in Facebook, you can choose to have it posted to your wall. This is also where you can type a short message about your status.

More exciting terms defined: Status, Friends, Groups & the News Feed!

The Status box is an empty box at the top of the screen labeled "What's on your mind?" You can write anything you want in this box, and it is displayed on your wall and on your profile page. If you wish, you tell everybody that you just walked your dog, or had a really terrific plate of scrambled eggs, or that you're feeling cranky, or will be picking up shirts from the dry cleaners, or that you're upset with a political figure's recent speech, or that you liked a movie, etc. etc. etc. You may attach links to anything on the internet, should you want wish to share something you've found interesting. You can also attach pictures, and upload or link to videos. You are limited only by your imagination and your own sense of propriety.

I should say at this point, that there are rules governing what you can and can't link to or say. They're pretty basic and you agree to them when you create your Facebook account. They can also be found at the "terms" link at the bottom of every page. There has been some controversy in the past with regard to the ownership of intellectual property when you post your original content to the site. They've modified the terms based on the feedback from the community, and my impression is that they're not out to screw you. Nevertheless, if you have a legitimate stake in your intellectual property, as a writer or photographer, etc., it would behoove you to carefully go over the terms before you post anything. This, of course, is true when posting anything, anywhere on the web.

You can easily configure Facebook so that you can post status updates from your cell phone. This allows you to share text, pictures and video from out in the world. No longer must you be tethered to your computer, should you wish to share your thoughts and feelings!

After you've been using the site for a while, your Wall becomes a document mirroring your life and activities, thoughts and interests.

Friends is an important concept on Facebook. Think of a friend, relative, coworker or acquaintance with whom you would like to be connected. You can search for them by their name. If you find a match, you can invite them to be your Friend. If the other person assents, then you each show up among the list of approved friends for the other. You then have access to each other's full profile, and your status updates will appear in each other's news feed (explained very soon).

All of the information in your profile that you have labeled as being acceptable to share with your friends will be available in your friend's version of your profile. Similarly, your friend's profile information is now available to you. You may also become friends with someone if they initiate the process. If they do, you will receive an invitation to become friends with the other person. If you recognize the person and choose to become friends, you can accept the invitation and then you will show up in each other's friends list as well.

You can post messages and comments to your friend's public wall. These Wall-to-Wall messages show up on both of your walls. It's a quick and easy way to communicate with someone, but don't forget that it isn't private. Anyone with access to either wall will be able to see the exchange.

If you want to communicate more privately, there is a message system that will be familiar to anyone who has used web-based email. It works like a simple version of gmail or hotmail, and allows you to send private messages to any of your Facebook friends, or the people in the groups to which you belong. Speaking of groups...

Groups are collections of Facebook members with a common interest. Anyone can create a group for any topic. For any given group, the creator can choose to make membership available to anybody in Facebook, or they can restrict the group to membership By Invitation Only, meaning the group is searchable on Facebook, but members can only join with the permission of the group's creator. Finally, the group can be private. A private group won't show up in the Facebook search engine, and can only be joined by the invitation of the group's creator.

Here are some examples of just a few of the groups to which I belong:

Friends of the Walt Disney Family Museum
Bone Marrow Transplant Awareness
When I Was Your Age, Pluto Was A Planet
Californians Against Public Education Funding Cuts
Lost Timeloop Theory Fan Club
BookCrossing
Another main Facebook feature is called the News Feed. The News Feed is a page that posts updated status messages, pictures, and links from the friends in your friends list. It's like having a stock market ticker of your friends' lives.

Fun & Games

Besides updating your own status and keeping tabs on the status of your various friends, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of different activities to occupy your time on Facebook.

Finding your way around on Facebook takes a little getting used to. The paths from one area to another, and the methods, for example, for sharing a link from your status box, or your wall, or your news feed are slightly different. If you need help, you can always post a question to your Facebook friends on your wall, and chances are you will quickly be inundated in advice. Facebook has a pretty good help system built in, and you can access it from the link at the bottom of most pages. There is also a search box in the upper right corner of each page. This is a good place to go if you are looking for a person, group, or application.

Although Facebook is free, you are continually exposed to advertising, mostly in a column down the right side of the web page.

Of course there is a chat feature. In the lower-right hand corner of the window, you can find a list of your friends who are currently online. By clicking on a name, you can start a text chat with someone.

There are thousands of quizzes available on Facebook, on every conceivable subject. If you want to discover which Disney Princess you most resemble, or which sandwich, Transformer, chemical element, Star Wars character, etc., there is a quiz for you. You can share your quiz results and compare them to your other friends who have taken the same quiz. The tools are available to make your own quizzes to publish and share, should you so desire.

One of the more bewildering Facebook applications lets you give and receive virtual "gifts" to your Facebook friends. The gifts come in thousands of varieties. You can choose birthday cakes, plants, buttons with slogans, furniture, motorcycles...anything you can imagine can be made into a gift and then shared. You can choose from existing gifts or create your own.

Another strange thing to do is to poke a friend. When you "poke" somebody, they receive a message that they've been poked by you, and they may opt to poke back. Then you will receive a message that you've been poked, and you can poke that person back again. It reminds me of two siblings in the back of a station wagon on a long trip: "If you kids keep poking each other, I'm going to turn this internet right around!" One friend came up with an explanation for this behavior that almost makes sense. Poking is just a way to let the other person know that you were thinking about them, which is a nice sentiment, I suppose. Poking on Facebook is less likely to cause restraining orders than in real life.

There are many many free applications available. Some are useful, some frivolous. You can keep track of events and birthdays with calendar programs that send you reminders of your friend's birthdays. You can maintain a list of the books you read, and share reviews with other members using applications like WeRead and Visual Bookshelf. Some of the applications are variations on simple games. They derive their income by getting you to play and exposing you to advertising. Some claim to be for a good cause, like saving the rain-forest, and others are simply for fun. In games like Lil' Green Patch, and Lil' Blue Cove, you collect and maintain plants, or fish, and send them to your Facebook friends.

There are travel games where you kidnap another player to a destination of your choosing, and they must answer a travel-related question to escape. You can trade salvos with a variety of water pistols or participate in an online pillow fight.

There are games where you unscramble words or manipulate shapes for points.

All of these games combine a participatory element, so that you can play with or against other Facebook friends.

The Big Wrap-Up

Facebook is so successful because of the social element: the ability to communicate with your social network. The site is well-known for reuniting people who haven't spoken in decades. It is an amazing tool for locating school-mates from the third grade, ex-girl and boyfriends, and faces from the past.

The idea of this seething community of people that you know, spread across the globe, busily pursuing their daily activities, living, loving, amusing themselves and each other, is what makes Facebook so addictive.

Before I wrap this discussion up, I would like to make mention of the potential business uses for Facebook. People and companies can speak directly with their clients, and maintain open lines of communication. Organizations can quickly and easily communicate among their employees through the use of groups as well. It gives a business new and immediate ways to connect to their clients.

Facebook doesn't really do any one new thing that can't be found elsewhere on the web. It is a success story because of the unique way in which it combines all the different elements. With over 200 million users, it has achieved a critical mass that allows it to leverage the affects of social networking. The site is still in its infancy, and exactly where it will go, how it will grow, and what new ideas and opportunities it will offer is open to speculation. It should be an interesting ride.

Meanwhile, come on in, the water's fine. Don't worry too much about sinking in the tar, you'll be entertained all the way down.

Larry Spinak is a professional computer consultant and tutor in Los Angeles, CA. He started his own firm in 1999, called CompuNerds.
? 2009 - All rights reserved

Facebook Business Applications and Marketing Tools - Even Create Your Own

The idea behind using Facebook as a venue for doing business is building a user base in the form of a community who respond to you as a person or to your product. If you just turn your page into one big advertisement, you are not going to get much in the way of a response. You need to educate people about the product without coming across as a hard sell.

You want to create the impression that you are here for socializing, not business. People will come to trust you and be more likely to buy your product or service if you can do this.

Facebook has built in tools which can be used to build your business. These include:

- Social Ads

- Pages

- Beacon

- Insights

- Platform

- Polls

These tools can help you to build awareness of your brand through Facebook and bring in potential clients. Needless to say, you are going to have to learn to use them effectively. Read on to find out how to harness these tools to build your business using Facebook.

You can learn how to take further advantage of these features by visiting the facebook website business section.

SOCIAL ADS

Social ads have a lot of promise for building your business since they can go directly to the news feeds of your Facebook friends. Anyone who is on your friends list will be able to get the word about your business right on their profile page.

This is also a very easy way of target marketing. You can control exactly who sees your ads - and target marketing is the way to get sales.

FACEBOOK PAGES

You can make a Face book page for a business, just as you would for yourself. This allows people to interact with and even become friends with your business. It is a great way to make a lot of people aware of your product and your brand who would not otherwise.

You know when someone becomes friends with your business on Facebook that you have a potential client; at the very least, they have shown some interest. People can interact with your business as they would with any of their other Facebook friends - they can leave comments and generally enhance the experience of a visit to your page.

You can use Facebook to your best advantage by adding features that will appeal to your target market and fit in with the brand image you are aiming to create. Quizzes, games, a Facebook group and so on.

FACEBOOK BEACON

Like social ads, Facebook Beacon gives you the ability to build your business by promoting yourself via your Facebook friends news feeds. You can set Beacon to notify all of your Facebook friends whenever you have a new product available, or any other sort of news or information you would like to disseminate amongst your Facebook friends. All you need to do is to add a little code to your Facebook page (this can be done by copy and paste, so no need to panic).

This encourages more interaction with your page, the website of your business and your company in general. This also helps get the word out about your businesses product or service.

Do not fret that you will be mercilessly spamming your Facebook friends and invading their privacy - they can opt out of these updates at any time they choose. You of course have the same ability for Facebook Beacon updates from others.

FACEBOOK INSIGHTS

If you are using facebook as a method of promoting your business you will of course want to know just who is checking out your Facebook page, clicking on your ads and joining your friends list. Facebook Insights is a tool which can give you a lot more detail on these sorts of statistics, which can help you to evaluate the efficacy of your campaign.

Armed with this information you can make the call as to whether viral marketing is working in your favor. Word of mouth is one of the best means of advertising and Facebook can facilitate it on a large scale. Facebook Insights lets you figure out what parts of your campaign are working and which are not as well as giving you valuable demographic information which will help you refine your campaign further.

FACEBOOK PLATFORM

Facebook Platform is an exciting tool for business indeed. Programmers can use this tool to build programs which will work with Facebook and add to the usefulness and fun of your Facebook page. If people like what you have on your page, they will spread the word and this build your client base.

You can add all manner of different applications to your site using this platform. Many opt for games, quizzes and other interactive features. You can have a look at the Applications page on the Facebook site to get an idea what sort of things others are using the platform for. These kinds of features can really help you build your brand image; take advantage of them.

FACEBOOK POLLS

Facebook polls can be a great way to gather demographic information from people using the site. Since you can make the poll interactive and fun to use, you'll have no trouble gathering data. Best of all, you can target your polling.

You can make sure your polls are targeted just where you want them to be since you already have access to some data such as marital status and age of your Facebook friends. This helps you keep your polling relevant.

Do not forget about these valuable tools - they can really help out your business.

Anyone who is willing to put in just a little bit of effort can make their own applications for Facebook. You just need to learn Facebook Markup Language - there are plenty of tutorials online which can help you learn the ropes of this quickly.

Remember to have a look through what is already out there in terms of Facebook applications before you develop your own. If everyone is already using a very similar application, not too many of your fellow facebook users will be enticed by it. Do something a little different if you want to grab the attentionof people.

CREATING APPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS

With just a little bit of programming know how, anybody can make and distribute their own applications. You'll be doing this to build your business and it can make a big difference. Applications can really draw in people and keep them on your site. Games are especially popular and can build your brand while keeping users engaged and entertained.

You would be unwise to neglect the use of these applications available to you through Facebook. They can help get the word out about your business - and that is why you made a Facebook page for your business in the first place, no?

You will also be building a sense of community amongst all of these potential customers which will help you get sales.

Here are a few tips for getting the best results from your applications:

1) Make it relevant

In marketing, relevancy is everything. If your potential customers can not get into it, or if it is unclear how the application ties into your product or service, rethink your application.

2) Privacy policy

Even if they are on facebook to socialize, people still want their privacy to be respected. This is why there are friend lists and groups, to which one must be invited. Privacy is a natural human desire and Facebook facilitates this while still allowing for socialization. Remember to respect the privacy of users and retain that trust you have worked so hard to build with them.

3) Free distribution

Once your application is finished and ready to go, you will distribute it. You can do this by listing it on the site along with all of the other Facebook applications and then invite others to install it. If your facebook friends like your application, they will spread the word.

Leon Edward helps people to start, build, market and promote internet based home businesses and ways to earn money at home

Learn More about Facebook Business Applications at http://www.homebusinessit.com/facebookaplications

Learn the secrets to awesome success and wealth from the greatest minds in the field of personal achievement..Leon Edward recommends personal development training at [http://www.PersonalAchievementOnline.com]

Facebook Phenomenon

Facebooking

In February, 2004 a new phenomenon began; it was called Facebook. Since then it has had more than 58 million active members, number of members doubling every six months and each member logging in for an average time of twenty minutes. Basically, Facebook is a social networking website made for students. It has now been so popular that the first thing college students do after checking their email is to log into their Facebook account because they will have at least some emails from Facebook, if they have not disabled the automatic email feature. When you get in, there is no way out until you check all your friends' latest photos and comments on your wall. You might just start "Biting Chumps" with is an invitation for you to become a virtual Vampire, Zombie, Werewolf, Pirate, Ninja, Jedi or Sith. It is pretty complicated but I am sure at least 58 million people could directly relate to it. After an hour or so, you realize you have a research paper due tomorrow and regret about the time you wasted on Facebook. I believe Facebook is more than just for social networking. It is a means of connecting people and defining yourself. Due to Facebook's newly established booming identity, it is not just surfing the Internet anymore, it is "Facebooking".

Facebook has started a common culture among students. Nowadays, Facebook friends are nearly as good as friends in flesh. You go around your college and smile at people you recognize from Facebook. Which is one of the reasons for its rise in popularity. College life is a radical social transition from high school which makes it unclear for for the students. Facebook allows these students to meet thousands of other people in the same situation. I believe which is why students are eager to make Facebook accounts as a way to get connected with their new college community. It is easy to strike a conversation with someone about whom you know every information from zodiac sign to favorite movies.

The most common use of Facebook is for social networking. Days when you had to advertise for a party using fliers are over. If you missed it because no one told you about it, it is your fault; it was on Facebook. And people will not even feel guilty about not informing you in person. It is also a common method to talk about interesting things that happened in college. Once you check friends that are on-line you can start a conversation that might have taken place on phone or rather on person. You could discuss about class or just strike jokes. And the best thing is, you have lots of time to respond so you can think of million ways to make your response humorous or classy.

It is absolutely normal for college students to spend so much time on Facebook. It is a way out from the hectic college life into the "world of Facebook". It has become something for fun rather than studying- a new method for "time-pass". You can spend hours at it and not know about it. May be people used to watch movies or listen to music during such free time but now they "Facebook".

One of the reasons for the popularity of Facebook has to do with all the features on it. There are so many applications and groups and discussion topics that you feel that you are involved in something important. It seems as you are expressing yourself and not just wasting your time. For example if a Nepali is to come across a group called "Gautam Buddha was born in Nepal, not India" than it is sure to interest him because he has seen the site in Nepal were Buddha was born and has also heard ignorant people say that he was born in India. By joining the group he seems to have made a stance. He will not leave without leaving a comment on the "group wall" about his encounters on the subject after joining the group. And doing so makes him feel like being a part of something that is contributing for a cause.

One of the other causes for increasing popularity of Facebook is because it lets you get connected with your old friends from high school. People have many good friends in high school and Facebook is an excellent medium to get to know about what is going on in their lives. Facebook will let you know if they had a party because you will see a new uploaded photo album and then you can go on commenting on all the photos and then continue discussing the good old days you had.

Due to its phenomenal use it has now turned into a means to advertise yourself. And I believe it is one of the most important cause for such exponential growth of Facebook users. Everything on Facebook is rather public. It is interesting to see how people share such private information as their birth dates, cell phone numbers and addresses on Facebook. And even the conversation you had with your friend is public. I believe the most important reason for this is because everyone is screaming to get recognized and Facebook provides a platform for it. Facebook is no longer just for social networking. It is a way of advertising your self in your world. You could advertise about your "Relationship Status", or your political or musical views. There are certain features such as "status" and "mood" which are used specially for this reason which allows other people to know how you are feeling. It is a easy way to let others know about what kind of a person you really are. And since there are millions of other people that are Facebooking, you are sure to be seen.

Nonetheless Facebook has been a major phenomenon for college students. Its creator Mark Zuckerberg has become the youngest billionaire. This reflects the grandeur that Facebook has turned into. Whether the students call it social networking, "time pass", self advertisement, or a waste of time, it seems that Facebooking is to be for a long period of time.

Don't Stick Cotton Swabs in Your Ears, Delete Facebook!

Sometimes during your life, someone will give you good advice. You have choices, you can hear the advice or investigate the situation, or you can take the advice. This article is about some opinions, some facts, and some advice. You read in the title about cotton swabs but the article has not much to do with the swabs. This article is about Facebook and about the control that Facebook has over your free account.

What do cotton swabs and Facebook have in common? Control. The key is control. Facebook gives you hardly any control over your profile and the rest of your account. And when you stick cotton swabs in your ears, you lose control of your common sense. Every since the beginning of time, moms have been telling kids to keep away from the cotton swabs. Now this mom is telling you to stay away from Facebook unless you are going to alter your pages on Facebook.

Just recently I was reading about Facebook, their privacy report and how hard it is to delete your account. Being a skeptic, I tried to delete my own account also. It is harder to crochet a full size quilt. Facebook does not want yor account deleted. And one has to ask oneself why one single website needs that much control over a person's account First, a little background, you open a Facebook account and you believe that it is a social networking account, a place where you and your friends can get together, share stories, share book reviews and view each others' pictures while meeting other friends and business workers. It appears that way when you first open your account. Then, BOOM! Then you get to know what Facebook is really all about.

You receive messages from your friends that seem like friendly gestures and these messages say join or sign up with a different application. There are warnings all over the account (red flag number one) that these applications have nothing to do with facebook. Then there are warnings that you can block these applications. If you opt to join the application to your Facebook account, you are then told you need to send the same application to about twenty (Yes twenty!) of your friends or networkers). Seems that almost everyone on Facebook is sending out these applications and almost every send demands that you send that to twenty friends. Can you imagine the email list that this corporation is forming with all fo these lists of friends? You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that Facebook and their affiliates are collecting emails for some reason or other.

Friends: This article is not about the friends. The friends that I had on Facebook are wonderful. This article is about privacy policy at Facebook, and it is about the nonsensical way that the applications insist that they obtain all of your friends email addresses to add a small application. This article is about the myths of Facebook and the truths that are really happening all over Facebook.

Tricks: Then you get the smart application that one of your friends send to you. This application boasts that you do NOT have to send this to twenty friends! Wow! You think, what a relief. So you press the button to check out this application and you ad to have it added, thinking that you do not have to send this to twenty friends. Then you hear the catch. You do not have to send this to twenty friends ONLY if you choose to participate in the endlist list of surveys that they send you. So there is the catch, participate in the surveys or send the application to twenty of your friends. (Does that sound like you are right back where you started from?).

Delete the Account: Ah, so you think that you can just delete your account when you want to? Better start now, and you will have your account deleted in a few years, maybe. Yes, I said years, and I said maybe. Under the pretext of making things easier for you in case you want to join Facebook again, Facebook insists that you delete each and every thing in your account FIRST and MANUALLY before they consider deleting your account. I have tried to do that in the past. It is like this, you delete something and you think it is deleted, yet in small print, Facebook tells you that somewhere else on Facebook that must be deleted again. Can you imagine going through this process if you have years of entries?

To finish their process, you might have to click tens of hundreds of thousands of times to finally clear out one Facebook account. Look at your friends list, look at your applications list, the wall, the other itmes connected to facebook! If you are the average Facebook member, you will take weeks or months to manually delete it all . And then Facebook can begin to delete your account.

Where is the Delete Button? It is not there. There is no listing in any of their sections to just delete the account. Finally after days of searching, you find the questions, How do I delete my account. The Facebook form letters give you more form answers, telling you you to manually delete all of your items, that means news sources, mini-feeds, news, messages, wall , and more. (If you have already delete these, you go back and send another message to Facebook stating that you have deleted all these. You wait, and you wait and wait some more.

Here is something from the tornado of privacy information that Facebook offers: They offer you the information that they are not responsible for ANYTHING at all that happens to you from your Facebook pages. Their privacy and contract instructions and information state that you are totally responsible for everything and anything that happens to you so they are not liable for ANY damages at all ever to anyone. (That is my wording but that is exactly what Facebook wants. They want out of any responsibility. In other words they have so protected themselves if you have any losses through Facebook, so much that they even put a dollar amount on it stating that you can't claim any more losses than $1,000. (This figure is as of this date of writing. Friday, March 14, 2008

More Tricks: When you try to delete some items, Facebook tells you that you can HIDE the items, but not delete them. Who ever heard of such a thing in any website? You go to delete and it tells you to HIDE it? Last time we looked, delete means to completely delete it and hide means something totally different. Hide means that these applications might be visible to facebook employees and others . (And probaly Facebook has hundreds of employees if not thousands. Do you really want all your personal information hidden rather than deleted? So, unwillingly , you hide all your personal information or whatever is not allowed to be deleted. And then you go back and email them again to say you ant you account permanently deleted. Still with me? The point I am making is that Facebook makes it almost impossible to permanently delete your account. They want you as a permanent customer. They figure at least one or two or more of your friends will convince you to stay with Facebook. If you have gone through this process, you have probably figured out by now that nothing will convince you to go back to Facebook.

Compare Other Websites: If you stop and compare other networking sites (there are plenty of them), you will see that other sites offer you more privacy and they offer a way to delete information and a way to easily delete your account. That is the way that it should be. There are many other sites that permit you to have more control over content.

Facebook is safe? Lots of the people we know, like Facebook because they think (That is THINK) Facebook is safer than other sites. And that could not be further than the truth. Facebook is a website and it is just as unsafe as any other ordinary webiste. They give it the impression, the look as if it is more busines-like (compare it to myspace.com) But what members do not realize is that Facebooks' business is collecting information and denying they have any responsibility to protect you or your friends. No one can or has proven that Facebook is any safer than any other site. So, be cautious on Facebook. Do not believe or think that this site is any safer than any other website. Any information that you type into that site can be obtained by any number of people, including by hackers.

Do You Want to Delete Your Facebook Account? If you want to do this, begin today by manually deleting each and every post,, picture, fun wall applications and any other thing connected to the Facebook account. Do not plan to delete it all in one day if you have hundreds of messages, but begin today.

Tricks for You: Here is a suggestion that you might or might not want to take. Have you thought of deleting all the messages and then posting a message on your fun wall, stating , I am deleting my account due to privacy policies of Facebook and due to the fact that Facebook makes it very difficult to delete items permanently. I am deleting my account on Facebook because I do not like an account that gives me little or no control over my privacy). You can write whatever anti-Fcebook statemnts that you like in your facebook account -as long as it is legal. , to express your opinion of Facebook. Now that might even help you get your account deleted, who knows? I can not imagine that Facebook would want all your negative publicity on your site. Remember type in there only what is legal. If you do this remember not to add any friends and not to add any other applications , gifts, or pictures.

Write and tell me if you are successful in deleting your Facebook - if that is what you want.

The author of this article has had many works published in the USA. She has traveled extensively throughout the East Coast and through the South while observing people and writing about life and everything that is in it. She writes about various topics that interest readers across the nation and all over the world.

How to Use the Facebook Like Button on Your Website

One of the questions we're hearing a lot these days is: "What's this Facebook 'like' button all about?" Once we explain it, the next question we get is: "How quickly can I get that on my website?" So I decided to write out an explanation for how it's done that anyone can read, understand and put into action for their own website.

Here are a few quick questions we often find ourselves answering that have quick answers:

Icons - Do I need to have a Facebook account to be able to add the "Like" button to my website?

No, you don't. Anyone can add it regardless of whether or not they have a Facebook account. Click here for our easy step-by-step guide on how to set up a Facebook account.

What are some of the key benefits to creating a "Like" button?

There are several very important reasons to get this like button on your website. Here's a list of a few of them:

* The Facebook brand carries with it a sense of safety, authority, trust and familiarity. Having their logo and a connection to them on your website will make your site look and feel more legitimate and trustworthy in the eyes of Facebook users. This is massive in building credibility, increasing traffic and driving sales.

* Your website has a chance to go "viral" as friends recommend you to their friends who then recommend it to other friends, etc... As the saying goes: "birds of a feather flock together" and this can be a fantastic way to penetrate your niche and have your customers spread the word in a low commitment way for them that can build amazing results for you.

* One great part of it is how much Facebook charges for it - nothing! That's right, it's free. A free advertising tool that relies on referrals and recommendations (we all know the value of those).

* A seismic shift is starting to happen and Facebook is squaring off against Google and looking to overtake them as the internet's number one search engine. This won't happen overnight, but it's wise to align yourself with Facebook early on so that you can get brownie points from Facebook for having got in on the ground floor.

So, now that you know what's at stake, here are some more general questions we get asked by people like you all the time. The answers are important for getting your head around how it all works - in simple terms.

What is the Facebook "Like" button?

The Facebook like button is used in two general places. One is on the Facebook site, the other is on sites outside of Facebook. For the most part we'll be discussing the button you can put on your website, but I'll just take a moment to talk about the like buttons on Facebook.

The like button on Facebook is a button you can click on after looking at pretty much any content on Facebook. This could be a friend's photo, a comment a friend has made or even a group or application. The fact that you have "liked" these things is then reported in your friends' news feeds. If you have "liked" a page on Facebook for a product, community, etc... then they can send you updates and information from them will appear in your news feed.

The like button we're most interested in is the one you can put on your website. This is the one you can often see when you visit a website online, and it looks like this:

The one on the left is the i-frame version and the one on the right is the JavaScript version, but we'll get into that later.

When someone visits a website with this button on it, they can click on it to let their friends know that they like the site. After clicking on the button they'll have a pop-up asking them to login to Facebook (or sign-up if not already a member). Once they've logged in, they'll see the button on the right above, which shows which of their friends like that page, along with their friend's profile picture. After clicking the like button, a story will be posted automatically to their Facebook page telling their friends that they like the site!

If the button has been set up correctly, the website can also be placed on other parts of the Facebook user's profile by using "tags". So if, for example, someone is looking at a webpage about their favourite movie and they click the like button. That movie can then be added to that person's profile under "interests". There are many categories you can tag.

How do I put the Facebook "Like" button on my website?

This is where it gets slightly more complicated - but only slightly. There are two kinds of like buttons you can add to your website. One, which is much more simple, is known as the i-frame. This button is simpler and gives users less information about who, specifically, likes your webpage. With this option, users won't get to see their friend's profile pictures pop-up and the button is far less customisable.

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The second option is JavaScript. This one is harder to add but allows users to see their friends' profile pictures and names pop-up which makes a huge difference in terms of emotional connection and trust building. The JavaScript button also allows the user to write a comment about your page that will be shown to their friends. The i-frame just shows the link, whereas the JavaScript will show positive comments that can be worth their weight in gold.

To get the "like" button put on your just head on over to Facebook's page that's designed to help you add the like button to your site. They have some explanations there on how to add the button with lists of all the options and how to implement each one. It takes a bit of programming experience and know-how that anyone with a web design background can have up and running in less than an hour.

However, if you're interested in using the JavaScript options to really leverage the full power this button can unleash, or if web programming isn't something you're overly familiar with and you'd like some help then you can get someone else to get someone else to set up your Facebook like button exactly the way you want it.

Christian Thurston (along with the rest of the Internet Marketing Solutions team) is a leading expert on Facebook. For in-depth analysis, advice and insights into how Facebook operates and what this means in the context of the internet and how Facebook effects businesses, other social media and individuals alike, go to http://www.adsforfacebook.com/the-facebook-like-button.php.

Enhance Your Brand - Create a Facebook Page

A large and growing number of some of the most valuable demographic groups are devoting more of their attention to Facebook versus other media channels. With 300 million active users and counting (plus 500,000 new users every day), Facebook is no longer just a virtual community for college students to share photos and news with their friends. Adults and professionals from around the globe have embraced the platform, including 90 million in the U.S.

This has businesses large and small asking themselves: Will Facebook really help my business? Does my company need a Facebook Page?

Why is Facebook Important to Marketers? Facebook offers a unique marketing opportunity for businesses. More and more people are migrating to social networks, and that's where they're choosing to research companies, products, and services. Marketing on Facebook has a viral effect, as it does on most social media sites.

Microsoft's recent partnership with Facebook to integrate Facebook updates with Bing paves the way for more real-time search results. Google likely will do the same with Facebook in the near future. So having an understanding of Facebook can open up new ways for marketers to reach out to their audiences and brand themselves.

Consider some of the benefits of using Facebook as a business branding tool:

Customer acquisition: As people become fans of a company's Facebook page or post comments on it, they get a notice posted on the wall of their own page -- where their networks see it. This increases visibility, and the viral aspect often leads to new fans. Facebook pages can also be linked to other social networking sites, increasing a brand's reach.

Customer interaction: Facebook provides a forum for dialogue between a brand and its customers. This enables companies to build better relationships and to demonstrate to their customers that they care about what they think.

Reputation management: Direct contact with customers via comments and feedback helps companies gain a deeper understanding of how their brand is perceived online and offers an avenue for brand enhancement and, if need be, damage control.

Traffic generation: As traffic increases on a company's Facebook fan page, traffic to the its Web site increases, too. Facebook Pages also appear in search results.

Targeted advertising: Facebook ads enable businesses to advertise an event, a Web site, a product - any content, really. Companies can target the reach of their ads by gender, age, interests, and location. With custom filters, Facebook automatically updates the count of people who fit the criteria and gauges the size of the target market on Facebook.

Increased exposure: An important reason to invest time in creating an engaging page is that all the activity of your fans (from becoming a fan to posting a comment) is shared with a greater network.

Branding: In addition to a company's Web site, a good Facebook Page can create brand awareness for new audiences and reinforce it for current customers by sharing valuable information with its fans and emphasizing the company's position in its industry. Developing and nurturing an active community enhances a brand.

It's free: What's not to like about using a new, viral channel for customer interaction without paying a cent?

Here are three brands that have embraced the Facebook Pagesplatform and successfully leveraged it to engage their audiences and create a real community for their fans:

Starbucks (5 million fans)

Pizza Hut (1 million fans)

Pringles (2.8 million fans)

9 Things to Think About As You Create a Facebook Presence For Your Business:

Start with a strategy: Just like any kind of marketing, having a solid strategy in hand from the beginning is key. What is your message? Who are you targeting? What's in it for them? How will you reach them?

Be creative: You need to have a strong creative execution. What is exciting or interesting to your customers/friends/fans? How does your page content add value? Creative execution includes sharing photos and videos, running contests and promotions, having lively conversations with members, and doing things that are just plain interesting that will keep your fans coming back.

Engage with your fans: Many businesses create a fan page, invite people to join, and then seemingly forget that the page exists. Active fan engagement is the key to an effective Facebook presence. Have a content plan in hand that's engaging and germane to your target audience. What will you post? When will you post it? How will you inspire your fans to participate? Don't just create a page - create an engagement plan.

Communicate consistently and frequently: The most successful and fruitful social media campaigns promote a strong message that is repeated often and is consistent in voice and tone. This increases brand awareness and sales potential by keeping your brand messaging top of mind with your target audience.

Own your fan page: Some company fan pages are created and managed by an actual fan instead of the company. Fans expect company pages to be run by the company itself, and they want the company to play an active role. Issues around having a fan own a company's page might not immediately present themselves, but not having control of a brand's messaging might cause problems down the road - even if the owner is the company's biggest fan.

Monitor discussions: It looks pretty bad when a business is inactive and doesn't respond to its fans. It's important to monitor your fan page for activity and respond to relevant questions and comments. It's a good idea to have someone who is dedicated to this effort and empowered to engage on behalf of the company.

Pay attention to analytics: Facebook fan pages offer analytics and insights, so you can learn how engaging your page is. These great tools will help you understand what is and isn't effective, aiding you in your efforts to constantly improve and refine your page.

Don't focus on the number of followers/friends/fans: Many businesses focus on the number of fans they have. This measure lacks relevance, since it's not difficult to get followers or fans. These numbers shouldn't be used as a key metric - what matters is how you engage your followers. A balanced approach measures what's really important based on your strategy.

Be transparent and honest: The importance of establishing integrity, honesty, and transparency up front cannot be overstated. Once credibility is lost, it's very difficult to get it back.

The Takeaway Facebook has quickly morphed from a fad into a highly effective business tool. If you have the time to devote to building and using social media for marketing, Facebook may have potential for your company. It can be a powerful avenue for establishing and enhancing a strong online brand identity.

Pam Dyer is a Seattle-area marketing professional who is very interested in social marketing. The advent of social networks and the ability to engage customers in all sorts of new ways for branding, advertising, PR, and CRM can be a boon to companies that are willing to embrace it. Her blog, Pamorama ( http://www.pamorama.net ) covers all of these topics and more.