Why is this feature amazing? It’s another way to share your content of interest with a larger audience and create buzz around your brand.

Let me explain the impact of this plugin. Let’s say a Facebook user visits your website and enjoys your recent post on wine tasting. When the visitors click on the Like” button, a link to your website page is added to their Facebook profile under Recent Activity.

Let’s say, that same visitor has at least 250 friends. This link is shared and your message is being exposed to an additional 250 people from this visitor’s friend list.

But, wait, it gets even better! The same visitor that clicked on the “Like” button will also receive updates in their news feed from the website owner. Can you say, Absolutely Fabulous?

What does this mean for businesses and retailers? More traffic to your website, more exposure of your brand and more in-store traffic. The “Like” buttons provides a wonderful way to increase your content visibility, promote discounts, sales and coupons from retailers and increase your audience reach.

So, have you installed the Facebook “Like” plugin on your website? If so, tell me how it is impacting your brand.

The following is a list of my favorite Facebook apps for making your profile “sizzle”;

1. SlideShare –allows you to upload your presentations, documents, PDFs, and add mp3 audio to a presentation.   You can create webinars and embed Youtube videos into them and import your SlideShare.net presentations into Facebook.
2. My LinkedIn Profile – promote your LinkedIn account with a badge on your Facebook profile.
3. Networked Blogs app – Get your blog networked with the largest blogger community on Facebook. Supports multiple blogs, RSS and ATOM feeds, and fan/business pages. The best way to promote your blog while promoting other people in your network blogs.
4. Social RSS –allows you to add your blog RSS feeds to your wall, boxes tab or a dedicated tab on your profile or Facebook Page. It updates automatically and lets your readers subscribe to the feeds if they wish!
5. Business Cards – Business Cards will help you network better on Facebook. Personalize your card and attach it to your Facebook messages.
6. Poll Daddy Poll – This is a great research tool. You can create polls that you can share with your own network or with the whole Facebook community.
7. YouTube Box - Share your favorite YouTube videos on your profile and pages. This application will automatically streamline your YouTube video into your Facebook page.
8. Twitter – You can update your Twitter status, and see what you and your friends are up to on Twitter, right from Facebook!
9. Visa Business Network - A community of like-minded business people moving forward to achieving their goals.
10. IEndorse – People feel more confident to use your service when their peers say you are great. Testimonials are a great way to increase the value of your brand. IEndorse allows Facebook denizens to endorse your company or find it via the IEndorse business database.

There are tons of other useful Facebook applications to help establish a presence and build a brand. What about you?  Are there any applications you currently use to promote your business on Facebook? Leave a comment and let us know your favorite.

Facebook pages and group members have dramatically grown into thousands in just a few days. American Red Cross, Wyclef Jean, and Carel Pedre, a prominent Haitian radio and television host, have utilized Twitter to provided real-time updates on the crisis while encouraging donations for the victims.

News media and reporters have finally found the true value of social media during this disaster crisis. With that being said, Bloomberg, a major global provider of 24-hour real-time financial and general news, has invited me to participate in their story “Haiti Fundraising Speeds Up with Twitter Facebook”.

Here are a few tips I found and are currently using on an almost daily basis to automate my social media activities:

Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed is a simple publishing tool, which turns any RSS feed into a Twitter and Facebook stream. As soon as you have published your blog, your post will automatically post on Twitter and Facebook with the headline story and a shortened link.

Twitterfeed now also includes a basic analytics dashboard. You can see how much traffic is coming to your site and how many clicks per Twitter or Facebook. I try to get in the habit to compare my Twitterfeed stats with my Google Feedburner stats, to see where most of my readers are coming from and which platform I need to target more or less and I adjust accordingly.

Seesmic
Seesmic is Adobe AIR desktop application, which integrates both Twitter and Facebook, but more on the visual effect. This all-in-one tool makes it easy to reply to your friends, share links, photos and videos in one screen. Some of the features I enjoyed the most are the capability to have multiple accounts and columns. I can view my Twitter friends, my Faceboook friends, my Corporate Cosmo fans and other fan pages I want to stay tuned into. Of course, I am a Blackberry fanatic, so Seesmic is also available on my Blackberry.

TweetDeck
TweetDeck is another Adobe AIR desktop application for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. TweetDeck has the same features as Seesmic except for the geolocation aspect. This feature allows your friends to tagged their Tweets by location, so you can instantly see where that coffee shop they’re talking about is. A little scary, but it may serve some purposes. Businesses typically use this feature when they are running “Tweet Specials” i.e. specials that are targeted in their social media campaigns. Let’s say you owned a restaurant and you have some Monk Fish that is going to go bad. Put it on special and Tweet it out! It works!

Ping.fm
Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging web service that enables users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously. This service allows you to update your status only once to almost 40+ social networking sites, blogs and micro-blogs. Ping.fm groups services into three categories – status updates, blogs, and micro-blogs – and updates can be sent to each group separately.

Although, I would not solely rely on Ping.FM to shorten a link that I post, I do use budurl for my link shortening (due to analytic capabilities), cut and paste the story headline and post.

Please be mindful of how often you post. Automation can make your life easier, but it can also potentially spam your followers. Try not to use every automated service you can find. The majority of these services have the same features on posting to the same social network profiles, but repetitive posting can be annoying to others especially when relevance is an issue. Sending out 40 posts or Tweets about how you are on your way to Aunt Tillie’s for dinner is not something your followers need to know.

Thanks again for reading this week’s post. Don’t forget to tune in to our next radio show on Blog Talk Radio on Thursday, January 14 at 8:00 PM EST.

Have a Cosmopolitan Day!

Nan Ross
Social Media Diva

1. Value is New Black: What color will you get if you had to purchase the 2010 Lexus RX350? On the other hand, that Gucci bag? Black of course! Black is sheek, sophisticated and it compliments any style and flavor. The upcoming year is not just about having the competitive prices, it about value. If your brand offer low beatable price, consumers will still contemplate on why they should buy from you. Value needs to be authentic, you need to know how to keep your real voice and use it to build credibility and trust with your customers. It’s about value that your customers can share and is honest in their interaction.

2. Brand differentiation is Brand Value: Being distinctive is no longer an option, it is necessary. More and more businesses are utilizing Facebook and Twitter to promote products, some products are virtually identical. “Awareness is obsolete”. The only way to truly differiate yourself is by marketing the product’s unique valuable qualities.

3. Consumer expectation is growing: Two of my former employer’s customer expectations are ‘Done Right’ and ‘Done on Time’. That was easy enough! That is why my department always maintained a 98% average on our customer expectation survey. Today, consumers are smarter and more innovative with technology that a brand has to stay on their P&Q. Look at your kids. Consumer are expecting you to not only have it ‘Done Right’ and ‘Done on Time’ but to respond quicker to their feedbacks, create unique, consistent and relevant content, while the same time they are waiting for you to ask them about their lives, kids, dogs and hobbies. Consumers want engagement and Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites are the perfect platform to receive feedback on your customers’ expectation.

4. “Because I said so” is over: Do you choose what makes up your child’s DNA? The same goes for your brands. It is not what you think of yourself, but what others think of you. Consumer will decide your brand based on your distinctive qualities and attributes and how well you engage with your customers. I have come across some entrepreneurs who claim their brand is about “consistently providing knowledgeable information/services to help your business grow”. I have seen the brands for three months, vigorously pump out content and try to build a Facebook community. Then they disappear or you do not hear from them as much. What perception you have about this brand?

5. Old tricks don’t and won’t work anymore: This is a good one. For example, I receive a Facebook friend request. He was a marketer, so I accepted his friend request. A few hours later, he introduced himself and was very eager to learn about my interest and business goals. So far, we were having a nice conversation. However, I notice how persistent he was during the conversation. It seems as if he was rushing to build a relationship with me. Hell, at first I thought he was flirting with me, but after 30 minutes of conversing, I realized he was only trying to get me to be part of his network marketing team. Should I remind you that consumers are not stupid? Consumer can see through brands that play the emotional game to make a sale. We must have a motive beyond profits and sales. Companies that focus on long time profit build trust.

Once you have defined your brand, your next step is to develop an implementation plan to accommodate these upcoming trends. This is a paradigm shift mindset. The questions you should ask yourself are “how can my product and service innovations deliver with value and how can I enhance my customer’s perceive value of my brand?” This may sound painful but it only today’s reality!

News Feed will automatically picks stories that are the most popular or the most interested, based on your friend’s response and comments.

Live Feed is to see what is happening now. However, your Live Feed is only limited to show 250 friends to your list. Do you want to be limited on what friends show on your Live Feed? Or, what if your live feed are invisible to your friends? What do we do now?

Check out this video, so I can show you have to edit this option!

Nine months ago, I jumped on Facebook to reconnect with old friends, family members who I have not seen in years and business colleagues that I can expand my network. After gaining a few hundred friends, I thought my personal profile would be the perfect platform to gain buzz for my Corporate Cosmo website. Therefore, I began branding myself as a Social Media Enthusiast. I would post links of compelling social media articles, promote the Nan Ross Show talk show and the Corporate Cosmo blog updates. However, those article links were not so compelling to everyone. After a few months, my twin sister and her husband told me they were planning to boot me from their friend list. “You are boring now! All you talk about is social media stuff that we really do not care about”. What the !@#, me boring? How dare they tell me I was BORING! Then I thought about it, what if others are feeling the same way as they do?

After carefully evaluating the constructive criticisms from my family members, I came across the Facebook fan page. I decided to separate my personal life from my business. At first, I send a request for anyone who was interested in learning more about the social media industry to join me on my Corporate Cosmos Fan page. Those who have joined my fan page are my supporters. The blog updates and social media article links are relevant to my target audience. I am not boring to this group of fans. So, what does it me for you?

Facebook fan page are for businesses, authors, celebrities and charity organizations to build a community around whatever they are promoting. This means, fans and supporters are interested in what you are trying to promote. Here is why you should need a Facebook Fan Page for your business:
1. Unlimited number of fans.
2. You do not have to accept a fan/supporter.
3. Your fans do not see your personal profile.
4. Send relevant updates and messages about new products, and updated websites.
5. Fan page are public, thus search engines can index the page.
6. It is free and easy to use.

Many people have their business URL on their personal Facebook profile. That is great to inform your friends of what you do, but not effective in creating buzz and building a community. Find a target audience who have interest in your service and keep them regularly inform of your business growth. Oh, yeah! Do not worry about why your friends may not care about what you promote, in due time they will realize the need for your services. Now, my twin sister is one of my biggest fans.

Marketers are taking this concept and running with it. They are so quick to reach out to consumers and build relationships in the social networking world that they are going back to their old habits: to “spend money to generate impression” and keeping tight control of their message.

We all know that in social media, a positive personal customer experience is the key to an effective word-of-mouth marketing. However, what if they do not have a clue about your brand, and how your product differentiate from the rest. Would their feedback be two-faced and fake?

We all had at least one job in our lifetime where we felt like kicking the boss’s ass. However, you still show up every day just to look forward for payday. Get my point! Remember, you are transparent on social media!

Having It Both Ways

Well, can you have it both ways? Can you pay someone who is passionate about your brand? One of my favorite books is, “Personality not included” by Rohit Bhargava. Rohit talks about the different types of deliberate spokespeople. One I should mention is the “enthusiast”, like Jared from Subway. Jared is real and his story was compelling. Ok, the Subway diet did not work for me, due to the carb count, but it worked for Jared. His situation demonstrated real passion and offered an “authentic credible opinion”. Now, would you pay someone like Jared to tweet your brand? Uhmmm!

Either way, we are living in the time when people do not trust big companies. Why? These blood-sucking tyrants who oversees a slave ship of employees are totally fake. Whether paid or free, the true power of word-of-mouth comes from passion and natural authenticity.

Resources: Advertising Age: Paid Tweets Just as Healthy As Organic Word-of-Mouth?
"Personality not included" by Rohit Bhargava

Whether you are web savvy or a novice, Ning is one of the best platform for setting up fully functional and visually appealing social networks from scratch. With 30 million users and 6.1 million social networks, Ning allows people of common denominator to join forces to make a change in today’s society. Are you ready to be among those innovators and thought leaders?

During this episode, I figure LaShanda Henry, Web Expert and Internet Marketing Coach. I call her the Black Diva of Social Networking. She is the creator of Sistasense.com, WebTechGurl, Multiple Shades of You Online , BlackWomeNetwork, Create A Website For Profit, along with several other websites. With her savvy technical skills and social networking knowledge, she has written the e-book “Create Your Own Ningalicious Network”. LaShanda has graciously revealed some of her secrets to creating popular Ning Network with thousands of members. Listen in and learn!