March « 2009 « 4realz Strategies

Posts Mentioning RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

Dustin 12:03 pm on March 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: Facebook (27), feeds, friends (8), News (6), show fewer

Are your Facebook friends hiding from you?

Turns out the latest update to the Facebook news feeds sets a bunch of feeds that you may want to follow to “hidden” so that they don’t show up in your main feed. This includes both “friends” and “public profiles”, so it’s probably worth checking to see if you have some things hidden that I did not mean to!

How to check?

This is not self-evident, at least it wasn’t for me. The trick is that you first have to hide a news item, and then Facebook will (briefly) give you a link to edit your hidden items (i.e. “show hidden friends”):

This will open up a menu similar to this one where you can unhide (or “add to newsfeed”):

Personally, I was not only surprised at the number of “pages” or public profiles that were hidden, but also at just how many people were hidden in my menu. I think the old messaging of “show fewer updates” turned into “hidden” in the new layout.

And if you’re looking for more background on Facebook, maybe you should ask yourself, Why bother with Facebook Pages?

Laura 10:06 am on March 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply

I figured out how to “Show Hidden Friends” (and I feel like a bit of an idiot that it took me this long): at the bottom of the news feed, in the box that you click for “Older Posts” there is a link that says “See Hidden Friends” – and ALLEGEDLY this offers the option to “Add to News Feed”; however, these links seem to be non-functioning at present.
So my Hidden Friends are doomed to remain Hidden until this is resolved.
- Molly Duffy 8:18 pm on February 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  
  Hey Kids, I think my friend may have hid me. Is there any way I can tell if she hid me? let me know if anyone has anything?
Whitney 5:48 pm on March 31, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Hopefully Laura reads this again. In order to get my friends off their hidden status (I noticed that the links are completely gone now) I had to hide someone and then click the “Show Hidden Friends” that popped up in the window… as shown in this article. It’s the only way you can change the list right now.

Sooo frustrating.
Mark Green 3:49 pm on April 1, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Has anyone figured out how to hide/unhide friends out of the Facebook BlackBerry App? I’m forced to unfriend folks that annoy me with updates, but I’d rather just hide them!
Dustin 3:53 pm on April 1, 2009 Permalink | Reply

I’m wondering how you’ve managed to use the Blackberry app at all. I think I *might* be stuck with an old version because I find it unusable for anything other than uploading photos. Status updates for example still force me to start with “dustin (is)…”
Dany 10:50 pm on April 10, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Hey ,can anyone tell if his friends are hiding his news feeds?
Dustin 12:30 am on April 11, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Interesting twist Dany…. I’m pretty sure there’s no way to tell.
Kamran 1:33 am on May 28, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Thank you very much. it works. lol
VJ-ATL 7:47 pm on July 10, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Well, its pretty simple to unhide your friends. I finally figured it out. Go to the end of the news feed page. At the bottom right corner, you will see “options” menu which will pop up a screen showing all the feeds or friends that are hidden from your news feed. You may then select to “Add to news feed” button to add them back so that you can see their posts.
sjunkie 10:07 pm on July 29, 2009 Permalink | Reply

damn.. i’m also looking for the option to hide a few (i’m lying a LOT) of overzealous updaters on my blackberry. I love em but damn it! its too much! stop with the updating!!! When will they fix this??!
kbryce 8:05 pm on October 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply

I what to unhide the Farmville links on my facebook! Any ideas?? I hide it when I didn’t have time to have a farm but now have one and need to adopt 2 animals to get a ribbon but I need to do this through the entries! PLEASE HELP!
- Dustin 2:05 am on October 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  I have no idea about Farmville. I’ve managed to successfully avoid that game!
- Pat 1:36 pm on November 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  I accidentally hid farmville feed & i want it back if you get answer please tell me! Thank you ever so much
Jamey 12:22 pm on November 5, 2009 Permalink | Reply

I’m with Dany… I’d like to know if I’m being hidden… There has to be a patch for that. Hackers, how about a hand?
Joel 7:04 am on November 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply

I’d like to know if there is any way do discover if any of my friends are hiding me.
Michele Scheideman 11:24 pm on December 2, 2009 Permalink | Reply

I am no longer able to see my neighbor’s farmville posts either. HELP!
Madeeha 12:07 pm on December 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Hi.. m v worried tht my bf iz cheating on me haz been avoiding me & he haz smehow managed 2 appear offline 2 me on fb chat while he still remainz online 4 da rest of his friendz.. plz plz plz help me out n tel me if thr iz sme way tht i can find out if he iz appearing offline 2 me only….
- Dustin 1:38 pm on December 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Madeeha, If there’s a way to hide your status to only one person, I wouldn’t no how to do that. Sorry I’m not gonna be much help.
Madeeha 11:21 pm on December 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Thankyou Dustin 4 ur trying 2 help… but m pretty sure tht u can create certain friend lists n appear offline 2 thm only while appearing online 2 the rest of the frndz… PLz GUYZ N GALZ…. NEED HELP HERE!!! m sure thr must sme way of finding out… msn yahoo n gtawk all hv been covered m sure thr must b a hacker whu haz found out 4 fb also……… DESPERATELY HELP NEEDED!!!!!!
Donna 5:19 pm on December 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply

My son travels with his job and used to mention his whereabouts on facebook almost daily . Also another son would post and 2 daughter-in-laws.. No I feel like it’s all hidden from me. Nothing new has shown up in weeks. Is there a way to view those hidden files w/o contacted them?
- Dustin 12:45 pm on February 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply
  
  As far as I know, if someone hides stuff from you, there’s really no way to see it as long as you’re logged in as yourself.

Dustin 2:39 am on March 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: connections (2), Facebook (27), fans (2), followers (3), friends (8), Marketing (77), pages (6), Social Media Strategy (12), value
4 Levels of Social Media Connections

I was chatting with Dale Chumbley about Facebook Pages and how we’re both using them to reach out to our respective communities when he touched on an interesting topic… He said about 1/3 of the folks who became “fans” of his page were not his “friends” yet on Facebook.

I’ve had a few conversations on this topic lately and I’ve boiled down the different types of social media relationships into the four most common types and given a bit of an explanation about the implicate meanings behind each type:

1) No connection. This one seems to be obvious… but there could be a number of reasons you don’t connect with folks. Most of the time it’s because you simply don’t know them, but maybe it’s because you don’t like them, don’t think they’ll add value to your network or, even worse, view them as spam.

2) Follow. This is the Twitter model and the connection is probably one of the “weakest” ones out there. You could have any number of reason to follow someone and it’s completely one-way. There’s no reason to expect that just because you follow someone that they’re going to follow you back, be interested in you, or even take time to learn anything about you.

3) Fan. This is the model used by Facebook Pages. While functionally it is identical to a “follow” connection (i.e. a one-way connection with no reverse interest implied whatsoever), there’s a value judgement implied when you become a fan of someone. Whereas it often only takes one interesting tweet to get me to “follow” someone, it takes a bit more before I’ll become a “fan” of someone.

4) Friend. This is the model used by Facebook Profiles, Digg and many other social networking sites… and clearly implies (and most likely requires) a two-way relationship. However, the term is so often abused (I’m just as guilty as anyone else of becoming “friends” with people I’ve never met and am likely never to meet) because I thought I might find some value to having them in my “network” in the long run.

Similar to Dale, a little over 1/3 (30 out of 85) of the people who have become “fans” of my Page are not “friends” with my personal Profile. This tells me that based on their actions, a fair number of folks feel more comfortable becoming “fans” than “friends” with someone they don’t know.

Almost all of these people are professionals I *would* have connected with on Facebook (via a “friendship”) in the past, but I’m so much happier to have them separated on my business page so I can begin to do a better job separating my work life from my personal life.

Also interesting is that from a marketing perspective these relationships imply different levels of business outreach. When someone becomes a “fan” of my business page that definitely implies an “opt in” to a certain level of marketing that is not necessarily part of being a “friend”… or even a “follower”.

If you’re ready to explore how different professionals are using Facebook Pages, start following (i.e. become a fan!) of these pages:
And while you’re exploring, you should probably also check out the page I created for my listing syndication tool.
Laguna Niguel Real Estate, Dustin, and Patrick Healy are discussing. Toggle Comments
- Laguna Niguel Real Estate 4:47 pm on March 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Thank you very much for sharing all these fantastic article. I liked “4 Levels of Social Media Marketing the most”.
  
  This comment was originally posted on Future of Real Estate Marketing
- Patrick Healy 2:31 pm on March 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  I agree with everything you wrote here. I pose a question though. All of this information and these relationships are virtual and all can (and often do) stem from one master database. Why not have the “become a fan” feature on your personal page that one can see a limited amount of information on as a visitor?
  
  I segment everyone I encounter on FB into separate groups and use those groups to not only pull in content and check out their update/statuses/what have you but also use those groups to push content with permissioning (only certain people can see certain things) as well as invite folks to events, groups, etc).
  
  If we are striving for adoption AND simplicity then it would make sense that you can do this all in once place for everyone on both sides of the equation.
  
  With FB being a platform more so then a website it would lend itself to other media/networks taking advantage of this and lead to better capture of analytics all the while not pelting people with things they don’t want to see.
  
  Thoughts?
- Dustin 2:44 pm on March 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Patrick,
  
  I’m not positive I understand how you’re thinking “friends” and “fans” should be managed on Facebook. What do you mean by have the “become a fan” feature on my personal page? Right now, in the “about me” section I have a link with a recommendation that someone “become a fan”, but I’m not sure anyone pays attention to that.
  
  The option I *think* you’re suggesting would be for me to segregate my “friends” into different lists and then “market” to one list (i.e. biz folks) and socialize with a different list (family/friends). However, this really isn’t available as an option in that FB’s permissions functionality doesn’t work this way. For example, as best I can tell, there’s no way for me to post a link, but only have that show up in the news feeds of my “biz” list. It’s going to show up in the news feed of anyone who I’ve given permission to see my links.
  
  In other words, if I want to share videos, links, photos, etc, with both groups from my personal profile, then I’d *have* to give both groups permission to see all all my videos, links, photos, etc. Hence, my desire to have both a FB Page (for biz connections) and a FB Profile (for personal connections).
  
  Am I interpreting your comment correctly?
- Michael Pierce 8:24 am on March 30, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Great information Joel, thanks.
  
  This comment was originally posted on Future of Real Estate Marketing
Dustin 12:40 am on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: Facebook (27), Marketing (77), pages (6), twitter (28)
Did Facebook just usurp Twitter in providing a micro-blogging platform for the masses?

I’ve been using Pages on Facebook for quite a while (the NY Times even featured me in an article around a biz page I created on FB almost a year ago), but it’s only with the most recent update by Facebook that I think everything clicked…

With the new design of their homepage, just about all the technical functionality of Twitter is built into Facebook, except FB has made it even more useful from a marketing perspective. I’m of the opinion that Facebook has hit the sweet spot in terms of micro-blogging for the masses. Here’s why:
- While Twitter’s command-line style communication (i.e. commands like “@” and “d” make sense only after you’ve been initiated), Facebook offers a cleaner interface that allows for better photo, video, and link integration
- While Twitter rocks because it feels like all the “cool” kids are on the service, Facebook hit the masses a long time ago and has more active folks that twitter ever will.
- While Facebook *should* have been all over integration with live events on other websites, it was FB who first nailed this when they linked your status updates with the live video feed of the inauguration (the traffic results were mindblowing)
- While people have tried their darnedest to improve twitter by adding groups and highlighting “best of” content, it’s really Facebook who has nailed this with their latest updates. If you run a page (i.e. you have “fans” instead of “friends”) your updates end up in your friend’s newsfeeds. If you’re interesting, then your stuff will be featured in the “highlight” section of your fans (and potentially their friends!). Obviously, going viral requires you to be interesting to your audience, but that’s as it should be!
I’m obviously smitten with Facebook’s latest updates… Not so much because I like the idea of giving so much marketing power over to the Facebook gods (I don’t), but because they’ve made it way too tempting and some early movers will most definitely do well in this space.

However, to be fair, there are some issues with using Facebook in place of twitter. Here are some of the things I’ve run into:
- The main issue I have is one of terminology. If you want to follow my updates on FB, you’ve got to become a “fan”. On twitter, the barrier is lower in that you only need to “follow” me and not put such a positive judgement on our relationship. The result is that getting people to follow your updates is a bit tougher on Facebook, but the quality of people following you should be much higher!
- FB users can’t treat your Page like a profile in some key areas like photo tagging and putting you into lists
- Managing a profile for a client can be awkward. For example, I’m an “admin” on a page for a somewhat popular author. As an “admin”, I’m only allowed to leave comments in his voice, although sometimes I’d really like to take part in the discussions under my own voice. Considering creating two profiles is against Facebook’s TOS, this is a bummer. I need to be an admin for this profile in order to make sure things stay clean (i.e. delete spam, install apps, etc.), and would really love a way to toggle between my personal profile and the admin profile.
As you can see, my complaints are pretty darn minor, and definitely not going to stop me from playing more with Facebook. If you want to follow along, become a fan!

Plus, I really want to say thanks to all the folks who have become fans so far! As an experiment, I’m going to use the 4realz blogroll to give a little something back to folks who become fans — a homepage link! It may take me a few days to link out to all the folks who have become fans, but I’ll continue to work at hitting this moving target!
Dustin 2:26 am on March 14, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: Facebook (27), links (7), Marketing (77), online (4), pages (6), Social Media Strategy (12), twitter (28)
Why bother with Facebook Pages?

Call me crazy (you won’t be the first), but I think Facebook nailed it with their updated news feeds and new functionality of their Facebook Pages. But before I can explain why, I need to give some background on the difference between a Facebook Page (also called a Public Profile) and the standard Facebook Profile.

A Facebook Page is geared toward giving businesses, brands, public figures, etc. a way to engage an audience on Facebook. With a Standard Facebook Profile, you make “friends” and engage with people on a very one-to-one level. With a Facebook Page, people become “fans” of your page, which doesn’t require you to connect with them at all… In many ways, it becomes a “broadcast” tool similar to twitter, but like twitter, you’ll need to engage with others, be interesting, etc. in order to get any real value out of the tool…

And here’s where it gets interesting…

Like a Standard Profile, Facebook Pages allow you to give status updates, share links, create videos, host discussion boards, and generally interact with other people (your “fans” in this case) in much the same way you might interact with them if you were friends. To get an idea of how you might use features like this, check out my Facebook Page:
- Dustin Luther on Facebook
If you check out my “wall”, you should notice that since I created the page a few days ago, I’ve left status updates, recorded videos, shared links and generally interacted with people in much the same way I might interact with people using my “personal” profile… (note: you’ll need to be logged into Facebook to see all of the updates)

However, this begs an obvious question… if these Facebook Pages are just like your personal profiles, why bother?

I can think of three reasons:
- Unlike a standard profile, Facebook Pages are public and get indexed by the search engines
- With a Page, you *can* send updates to an unlimited number of fans, whereas (I’m pretty sure) Facebook limits you to sending messages to 20 friends at a time
- Because people become “fans” of a page, you won’t need to follow them back in order to have them follow you
This last point is extremely important to me because as I hit up near 1000 friends, my news feed is getting pretty polluted with updates from people I have no connection to other than we both travel in online real estate circles.

Interestingly, I reached the point on Twitter where there was too much noise a few months ago when I was following around 1000 people. At that point, I would see so many automated tweets (i.e. “just posted on ActiveRain…”, “view my latest blog post at …” and “view my latest listing at…”) that reading my twitter feed felt like a chore.

At one point, I unfollowed a ton of people (over 700), and now that I much more cautious about how I follow, my twitter experience has improved 10-fold as it’s now much easier for me to follow and engage in interesting and (sometimes) meaningful conversations…

Returning to Facebook

Going forward, I’m going to be using my Facebook Page to give online marketing and online real estate tips, links, videos, etc, and my Personal Facebook Profile to connect with family and close friends. While it might seem a bit mean, over the next few weeks, I’m going to “unfriend” a bunch of folks (probably hundreds) whom I simply do not have a personal connection to…

Obviously, I highly encourage anyone reading this post (that means YOU!) to become a fan of my page… and order to give you some encouragement, I can tell you that my plan is to keep the page interesting and worthy of your attention by posting a steady stream of social media links, commentary and videos in a similar (but cleaner!) way that that I was using the 4realz Hotlist.

In the big picture, I’m going to continue to reserve 4realz.net for my “big” ideas, and share my little insights over on my FB Page.

One more thing…

If you made it this far on this long post, I figure you must be a glutton for punishment, so I thought I’d indulge you with a video I posted yesterday on my Facebook page. This video highlights 6 ways Facebook Pages excite me in a similar way that business blogging did nearly 4 years ago when I started Rain City Guide:

P.S. Did I mention that Scotty Brown and I both published our pages around the same time (over a cup of coffee the other day)? He thinks that just because he’s a Reality TV star he’s gonna end up with more fans than me. We can’t let that happen, can we? Go become a fan!

P.P.S. I also want to thank some of the folks who first signed up to be my “fans” like Alex Scoble, Scotty Brown, Cecilia Camps, Bob Maiocco, Susie Blackmon, Ines Hegedus-Garcia and Victor Lund. Each and every one of you rock!
Jean Smith, Sheri, Dustin and 7 others are discussing. Toggle Comments
- joespake 9:18 am on March 14, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Dustin, how does one get “personal information” on their page? The only field I am offered is “Public Transportation”
- Dustin 9:29 am on March 14, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  hmmm… not sure what you’re seeing on your page. For me, I have an “info” tab on my page and I’m given the ability to edit that page (at little edit icon shows up in the top-right when I’m on the page). Can you show me your page?
- Scotty Brown 9:54 am on March 14, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Please join my page
  I need more friends than Dustin
  
  http://tinyurl.com/amoher
  
  Cmon!
  
  Scotty Brown
- Loren Nason 4:34 pm on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  I can see the value of FB Pages but I think a lot of people (myself included)
  are stuck on the … I’ve got my page, NOW WHAT!
  
  The ease of use (your #1 point) is defenitely a plus point.
  
  I think the problem a lot of people see/have is they want traffic to come back to their site so they can at least possibly see a result of their efforts.
  
  Yes you can see results with your FB Page.
  
  I think really where I get stuck and many others also do is..
  
  I’ve got enough FREAKING work to do, now i’ve got to do a FB page also
  
  What’s harder to explain is I can’t even put my finger on my exact point.
  Am I having SocMed burn out?
  
  Maybe it’s because I haven’t spent much time on FB and I think I’ll do that for the next couple of days and see where it gets me
  
  Loren
- Dustin 4:54 pm on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Loren: The “now what?” question is a great one…
  
  The marketer in me says, figure out who you want to reach and then do everything you can to reasonably appeal to them… For me, this involves providing videos, status updates, links and the occasional photo.
  
  With FB Pages, blogging, twitter and just about every other social media tool, you’d be making a mistake by starting with what you want everyone to know about you… because that often appeals to only you.
  
  To give one example, on my page, I want to appeal to people who are exploring out to use social media tools for business. So, I’m going to continue to give them updates, links, videos, etc on the topic on the hope that they will enjoy, engage and share the information. Of course, at the end of the day, I’m looking to get more business in the social media space, but if I spend my time telling folks about “me” and my business, then I can be pretty sure to consistently appeal to a crowd of one.
  
  In terms of the social media burn-out, I’m right with you… I haven’t been excited about much in a while… that is until the new FB Pages hit. The potential seems so huge to me, and there’s such a mainstream appeal to the tools that I’m definitely excited to explore different ways to use this tool for marketing.
- Mike Mueller 5:20 pm on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  I’m becoming more and more of a Fan of the Pages daily.
  
  I started my first page just to be able to create upcoming events.
  I can then create an ad from that event or blast directly to the members of the group.
  
  I can also place specific items there that might be lost in the stream of my wall. Example: I was interviewed on a local TV channel last night. Not only is the Event highlighted in the page, I just added part one of the interview. The show uploaded a quick and dirty video to YouTube and I put it right inside my Page.
  
  Hey Scotty – I’ll be a fan of yours any day!
  http://bit.ly/nUKp
- Dustin 5:26 pm on March 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Thanks Mike for your feedback! I didn’t know you had a page, but now that I do, I just added it to my Page’s favorites! I agree that the messaging is potentially extremely powerful… especially in the long run assuming we build up a decent size base of fans.
- Rhonda Porter 9:31 am on March 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Dustin, You’ve convinced me (again)… so I now have a Facebook page… I was a little confused over what type of page to set up (local, brand/product, or personality).
  
  I guess on my blog, I should be promoting my Page instead of my Profile? I like that the page gives me a venue to be more professional.
- Dustin 1:13 am on March 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  So glad to give you a bit of inspiration! Like you suggest, I’ve started promoting my page over my profile around the web.
- Bob 3:49 pm on March 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Facebook is a minor client management tool at best. It continually baffles me that people in the RE industry view it as a primary means of lead generation and self promotion.
  
  The tool that will make real impact on the real estate industry in the next twelve to twenty-four months is brokage adoption of Microsoft Communications Server and agent use of an application called Office Communicator, yet you hear almost nothing about either of these.
- Dustin 3:58 pm on March 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Bob,
  
  I agree that FB makes a lousy client management tool, so you’re clearly interpreting the post wrong since I’m not talking about using it in that way.
  
  Nonetheless, I’ll bite… What makes Office Communicator so revolutionary?
  
  A quick glance at the product page on Microsoft makes it look like their answer to Google Apps. But Google Apps is free, so I’d hope it offers more than integrated chat and VoiP?
- Loren Nason 8:27 pm on March 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Bob & Dustin,
  
  I’ll take a jab at the Office Communicator and Communications Server.
  
  I do not see a traditional brokerage ever adopting the above technologies, and I push a lot of MS technologies.
  
  The problem with a traditional brokerage is that every agent is an indepedent contractor and not an employee. With that being the case every agent is pretty much allowed to use whatever technology they want therefore not every agent will adopt the office’s chosen platform because they don’t have to.
  
  From my limited reading of Offfice communicator and Server it is basicly an enterprise version of MSN Messenger that ties into the enterprise environment. This tool would probably require to much work to explain how an agent could use it with a consumer (if at all possible)
  
  End point. It’s not free as other solutions are either free or relatively very low cost and inter operates with what consumers are using anyways.
  
  As mush as I love MS products I don’t see it becoming widely used by brokerages
- Ricardo Bueno 11:46 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Ok…I get it. I see the benefits. But I think that a lot of people fall into the “ooh this is shiny” and “cool” phase, they sign up, and then don’t make the most of it (no engagement, and ultimately derive no value). Am I right or am I being harsh here?
  
  Anyway, I so I get the benefits of having a Facebook Page, but let’s talk about who **shouldn’t** have/or get a Facebook Page. What do you think?
- Carry Jackson 11:24 am on May 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  hello
- Paul Hood 3:28 pm on July 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Thanks for all the solid info, and not to be too critical but nobody is joining Facebook to actually buy anything. Plenty of people on there trying to sell stuff already, and they largely get blocked, dropped or hidden.
  
  Have you actually made a single sale because of your involvement with Facebook? I’m not intending to be harsh, just realistic.
  
  The Facebook pages may get indexed by search engines, but so do standard web pages, and a well done standard web page gives a much more professional impression to a potential buyer than a Facebook page. This hype was all applied to Myspace previously, and I don’t think it’s been proven to be a rousing commercial success as a substitute or even supplement to other marketing strategies. Fine for Myspace: selling ads, and great for lonely teenagers but I don’t think a lot of houses are being sold there.
  
  Just my 2 cents, of course “your results may vary”.
  - Dustin 5:58 pm on July 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    
    The short answer: Yes.
    
    Personally, I’ve definitely made money because of my Facebook page. I may be the exception, but I’m also not trying to sell a widget. For example, yesterday I ran a movie promotion with Facebook using my Spinnio tool for the movie Food, Inc. I can tell you that unless I had created a page and understood how to use it to drive traffic to a FB event, I would never have gotten the job… and the people who hire me to run these productions look at some of the other pages I run before contacting me to help them out.
    
    However, I don’t think your question is really geared toward someone like me, but rather someone more like a real estate agent. I’d guess that very few real estate agents have made any money on FB because they’re going about it wrong and treating it like an SEO opportunity similar to the sentiment in your comments.
    
    Making money on FB involves getting your fans and/or friends to be your advocates toward their friends for your service. The tricks to this are beyond the scope of this comment, but none of it is brain surgery… mostly just common sense strategies that get people talking on your page so that your content is being shared with their friends.
- Jean Smith 1:06 pm on July 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  I am having a problem with Facebook that perhaps you can give me insight into.
  
  Recently I created a page for business (no profile-by choice).
  The address is http://www.facebook.com/pages/MPI-Label-Systems/117070082648
  
  The problem I’m having is that when I click on this link from any computer, it seems I have to be logged in to view them. I want to be able to use the address & put a link on our website, etc. I’ve seen a lot of other url’s looking just like this one (/pages/name/number) that does not have to be logged in to view.
  
  Do you have any idea how I can resolve this?
- Jean Smith 1:45 pm on July 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Opps! Just found the resolve for this after 3 days of searching. I had selected over 18 & when I changed that, then it allowed it to be public.
  - Dustin 1:52 pm on July 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    
    nice! I asked the question over on http://dustinluther.com/ so now I need to go let them all know the answer!
- Sheri 9:21 am on September 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  So, I created a page, but whenever I try to add cool apps, it says I need to create a profile in order to add the app. What gives?
  - Dustin 5:38 pm on September 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    
    Sheri: I’m not really sure, but it sounds like you might have to have a FB profile in order to add many of the apps. I know it’s possible to create a FB Page without having a FB Profile, but I’ve never tried to do that.
    - Sheri 8:14 pm on September 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
      
      Hmmm…and yet there is a scary warning about losing your privileges if you create a profile but are not an actual person…
      
      Do you know how I can get help from facebook on this? Their help pages are difficult to filter.
      
      Thanks in advance!
      - Dustin 4:32 pm on September 4, 2009 Permalink | Reply
        
        Sheri: Not sure why you’re trying to create a profile that’s not an actual person. Why not create one for yourself?
        
        Sheri 3:54 pm on September 8, 2009 Permalink
        
        Hi, Dustin,
        
        I think Jean answered my question below. Thanks again!
        
        Sheri
  - Jean Smith 5:36 am on September 4, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    
    Sheri,
    I have created a page (business page) for MPI.
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/MPI-Label-Systems/117070082648
    Mine is just that, a page & not connected to a profile. It’s pretty limited without a profile. You cannot use any of the apps. You also cannot get the shorter username when you hit 100 fans unless you have a profile.
    
    The above mentioned is the negative side of not having a profile. The positive side of not having it tied to a profile is that it can still stay in tack if an employee leaves the company. Then it can be the company page instead of the person the profile belongs to. It is also more professional.
    
    Hope this is helpful for you.
    - Sheri 3:53 pm on September 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply
      
      Jean, THANK YOU – I thought I was missing something. It is annoying not being able to get to the apps, but I, too, do not want to tie the page I created for my employer to my personal account. Did facebook miss the boat on this one? I still haven’t figured out how to contact them for “support.”
      
      Thanks again!
      Sheri
      - Jean Smith 5:14 am on September 9, 2009 Permalink | Reply
        
        I have never actually found a support email address either, but have sent several requests to info@facebook.com. It doesn’t bounce, but they’ve never answered either. I’ve sent an email twice asking them to make the username available for all business pages (without profile). Maybe if enough people ask, they will consider the change.
Dustin 12:23 am on March 13, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: blogging (121), books, business (7), inspiration, Marketing (77), online (4), PR (11), real estate (168), Strategies (3)
Now Open! The 4realz Bookstore

Early today I was having a conversation with Eric Bryn on twitter when he said:

“have you read Guy Kawasaki’s book Art of the Start’?“

which was all the impetuous I needed to finally get around to publishing my very own online marketing bookstore here on 4realz. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing ever since I built a similar (Amazon-powered) bookstore for a client, but just never took the time to do for myself.

So far, I have three categories of books:
- Online Marketing
- Starting Your Business
- Blogging
and only two books in each category. My idea is to limit the books under each category so as to make it a “best” of breed books…

Nonetheless, I like the idea of adding a few more books to each of the categories and potentially even another category of two, so if you have a book that should be included because it’s been particularly inspiring to you, definitely let me know!
Dustin, and John C are discussing. Toggle Comments
- John C 12:00 pm on March 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Dustin- am I clicking on something wrong? I only see 2 books.
- John C 12:03 pm on March 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  Oh – I see, I was only in the section on blogging. I needed to go to the right sidebar and click the other sections. Sorry.
- Dustin 12:27 pm on March 23, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  
  John, glad you made sense out of it… Amazon makes their bookstore is pretty darn easy to set-up and configure, but the result is that there isn’t a lot of flexibility in the design or structure. I definitely wish they made it a bit easier to make the categories stand out a bit!

Started searching earlier today for a pl… (4)
- retechulous: Shared from GReader: Started searching earlier today for a pl…: Started searching...
- retechulous: Shared from GReader: Started searching earlier today for a plâ€¦: Started searching...
- RealEstateTL: Started searching earlier today for a plâ€¦ http://bit.ly/aZGG71 This comment was...
- JustAskOmar: Started searching earlier today for a plâ€¦: Started searching earlier today for a...
A mobile solution that works for TechCru… (1)
- tyr: Testing out bringing related tweets and blog comments into 4realz as comments…...
I added the PuSHPress plugin that’s sup… (2)
- Dustin: Total pipe dream… but with pubsubhubbub, it would be entirely possible to build a...
- Loren Nason: sweet
Stat of the Day from Niki: “Since Move’… (1)
- mwurzer: Wow: “Since Move’s founding in 1993 … it’s amassed losses of $2 billion,...