I thought, Boy that looks pretty cool, I wonder how I can get one of those…

I studied it for a few moments, trying to figure out what this thing was and if it was a feature I could add to my own blog. I saw a little logo on the left side and hovered my mouse over it.

Hey, I can click this! Let’s see what happens…

I clicked it, and was directed to http://hellobar.com.

Whoa. Does this thing work on WordPress?

As I checked out their website, I discovered that this tool was being used by big name marketers such as Tim Ferris, Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk.

Okay, I’m in, where do I sign up…

Obviously, I clicked the big “SIGN UP NOW” button and was on my way. Since the Hello Bar requires approval before access, I got my login and password about 24 hours later (if that). As soon as I saw the email with my login credentials, I was on the site signing in and taking the next step.

Since all of my sites run on WordPress.org, I needed to know where to put the code once I created by new Hello Bar. This is where things got a little tricky. While I’m not bad in the HTML editor part of my admin panel, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where to put it. I did some additional investigating and discovered that there is in fact a Hello Bar plugin forWordPress that makes things SO much simpler. I installed it and pasted my code. Ta da.

So check it out. I have a new Hello Bar on my site, and you should too.

There’s absolutely no problem with sending friend requests to people you don’t know, in fact, I highly recommend it if you’re looking to build a solid online presence for yourself. However, there are a few things you should know before you get started.

Many Facebook users start out with the assumption that the game is in the number of friends you have. Add as many people as you possibly can, and someone is sure to be interested in what you have to sell, right? Not exactly.

Let’s take a look at the example below:

The individual above is adding a MASSIVE amount of new friends. Look at that number! 550 new people?! There is absolutely no way they are building relationships with all of the people they are adding to their page at once. In fact, they’re lucky Facebook hasn’t shut them down yet for ‘suspicious activity’. This can happen if you add friends in large quantities too quickly; you trigger Facebook’s spam alarms.

So, what should they be doing instead? They should be sending friend requests to people whom they have a specific reason for wanting to connect with and spending time building real relationships with them.

I took it upon myself while writing this post to find somebody that I would like to connect with on Facebook, so that I can show you an example of proper friend request etiquette:

As you can see in this screen shot, I just sent this guy, Ryan, a friend request. Since we’ve never talked before and it’s quite possible that he has no idea who I am, I included a personal message telling him why I’d like to be friends. (Now I hope he accepts, because if he doesn’t after I shared this image with the whole world, that would be just plain awkward.)

Almost every day I receive friend requests from people who do not include a personal message. This is frustrating for a few reasons. (1) I then have to click their profile and see how they may possibly know me and if I want to give away a “friend spot” to each person. (2) I try to determine if they’re just out to spam my wall with links and sales crap. (3) If we have no friends in common, how did they find me and why should I connect? As a general rule, I decline all requests from individuals who have less than 5 mutual friends with me and don’t include a personal message. However, I may accept if they introduce themselves and let me know why they want to connect.

In discussing this with other seasoned Facebook users, I’ve found that many share this same view. If you don’t include a personal message, and nobody has heard of you before, you are going to be very easy to ignore.

So next time you friend request a stranger on Facebook, include a message! This will likely lead up to conversation right out of the gate and you’ll find that your requests are accepted a lot quicker.

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Need help with social media? Contact me about coaching! mandee@chargedupmedia.com

I hate all kinds of spam. Email spam, Facebook spam, phone spam (a.k.a. telemarketing) and I’d probably hate the food spam if I tried it. But today, I want to focus solely on Twitter spam.

As it is, there are a lot of people who are uncertain about using Twitter to begin with. They don’t get how it works, and many don’t even care to take a stab at it. But then, somebody finally convinces them to sign up, so there they are, a newbie in the midst of millions of other Twitter users. Then they’re suddenly sitting prey, just waiting to be influenced by the first people that get to them.

Within the first few minutes, they’ve already got some new followers (see below).

Time to celebrate, right? Somebody is interested in what you have say! Sorry to burst your bubble, but you’d better check up on that. Chances are, if somebody followed you within moments after you opened your account, it’s SPAM.

Wondering what SPAM looks like? Well, I went over to Twitter to see if I had any new spam followers, and I didn’t. (First and only time I was disappointed to NOT have any spammers to block.)

Ironically enough though, I tweeted that I didn’t have any spammer examples for a blog post, and check out what happened:

So let me explain how this worked. There was a spammer (@IngeborgSteinfe) that was searching Twitter for the word “blog” and auto-tweeting everybody who said it in an update. I said “blog” and they auto-tweeted me instantly.

Truth be told, I’m not entirely against this concept. Let’s say you’re a mechanic on Twitter, and you’re trying to establish your name around town. So you get on Twitter and do an advanced search for the phrase “car problems” within a 50 mile radius to see what others are saying. Then, you respond to those people and help them out, positioning yourself as the “expert” and the guy to go to with car troubles.

The difference between Mr. Tweeting Mechanic and this spammer is that the former is actually reading tweets and responding personally. There is no automation, no spammy links. This spammer above just set up an automated response to the word “blog” through another website so they don’t have to sit around actually talking to people.

(Oh, by the way, I blocked @Ingebooger-however-you-spell-his-name after I took a screenshot. That’s what automation will earn you.)

Twitter gets a bad rap because automation is being severely overused by way too many people. Twitter is about having real conversations with real people, not setting up automatic “Check out my website” posts that go out every 5 minutes. And don’t even get me started on auto direct messages. I was using them myself for a while, but I turned them off after realizing I was confusing people. (They thought I was actually sitting at my computer talking to them. Oops. And we won’t even mention the adult entertainer/weird fetish person that I once auto-messaged…like I actually wanted to be friends with her on Facebook?! Eww.)

Okay so maybe my examples are slightly extreme, however, I still hate Twitter spam. I’ll leave you with my top 5 reasons for not following or unfollowing (changing my mind after I followed) on Twitter:

1. You don’t have a profile picture. That screams spammer.
2. You post links to your own content constantly and never share content from other people.
3. You never respond to people (they call this “mentions” – where you include an “@” symbol before a user’s name)
4. You haven’t posted in months. Heck, I’ll even unfollow if you haven’t posted in 3 weeks.
5. You tell me to share your stuff. Look, if it’s good, I’ll find it on my own, thanks very much!

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Need help with social media? Contact me about coaching! mandee@chargedupmedia.com

Now that you know how to create a list, you should learn how to properly use this feature to your advantage. We’re going to focus on use for fan pages, since our primary use of Lists is to target people who are genuinely interested in the pages we create. For example, we manage Horse Family Magazine on Facebook. If we tried to suggest that page to all of our Facebook friends, well, that would just be silly and defeat the purpose of the page. Our friends have varying interests, and if people joined this page who in fact were not interested in horses, they wouldn’t be benefiting the business any. This is where targeted lists come in.

Instead of clicking the “Suggest to Friends” link on the HFM fan page and clicking every person that pops up, we drop down the Filter Friends button, and select the friends list entitled Horses. This list contains only those who own or have an interest in horses, clearly targeting people who would benefit by joining this fan page:

As you can see from the screenshot, there’s a nifty “Select All” option that selects everyone in this particular list who is not already a fan of the page. On this particular example, there were only 14 people who did not already like HFM.

In addition to targeted fan page growth, you can also use Lists to target status updates, or hide photo albums. We’ve been hearing feedback from many Facebook users who say things like:

“I only add my close friends to my profile because I don’t want everyone seeing my information or pictures.”

“I want to promote my business on my personal page, but I don’t want to overwhelm my friends and family with my business talk.”

This is why it’s important to get your lists created and start organizing your page so you don’t need to have these concerns. Some list examples could include Personal Friends, Local People, Business Owners, Potential Clients…and the options just go on and on. Personal Friends could see one set of photos, while another set can’t see them at all.

To preview how your profile looks to someone, go to ACCOUNT > PRIVACY SETTINGS > VIEW SETTINGS > PREVIEW MY PROFILE then type in that individual’s name. If you can’t see an update or photo album, you’ve successfully changed your privacy settings.

So head over to Facebook now and get those lists created and start making the most of your online experience. You can thank us later.

Drat, somebody else has the username you wanted! Not only that, they aren’t even using their account and it looks like they haven’t logged in for months. Now what?

Here’s the good news. If a Twitter account has been inactive for roughly 9 months, Twitter will typically release the name upon request.

Step 1: Send an email to username@twitter.com with your current username as well as the username you would like to secure. If you hold a trademark on the name, be sure to add that in the email as it may have some influence on whether or not Twitter approves the transfer. I also recommend that you send an your message from your company domain (such as @chargedupmedia.com) instead of a generic address such as gmail.com. This will improve your chances of landing the username you want.

Once you send this email, you’ll probably receive a response like this one that was received by a client of mine:

Step 2: There will be a link to your Support Ticket at the top of the email (not shown in the screenshot above) that you will need to click in order to respond with the requested information. Do not respond to the email, because it will bounce. Go to the Support Ticket on the web, log into your Twitter account, and respond from there.

A client of mine completed this entire process in an effort to acquire his business name on Twitter, and once he responded to the Support Ticket, his requested username was released within about an hour. I expect that results will vary for each individual person, but we now know that Twitter is quite capable of releasing usernames to a new owner. Here is what my client said about the ordeal:

“As soon as I heard someone was squatting on our Service Marked name, I knew I was in for a head-hurting experience, trying to figure out what to do about it, and how to do it. Thanks to Mandee, I got through it with my sanity in tact!” -Gordon B., @EnergyAlliance