Guess what? Facebook is upgrading friendship pages! “Friendship pages?” you ask. “What are those?”

Although you may not know what a friendship page is, these nifty little pages have been available since October 2010. Anything that’s every transpired between you and any given friend is displayed on your friendship page with said friend.

To find your friendship page with Jane Doe, for example, you’ll need to go to her profile page. From there, click on the gear button on the right (next to “Message”). You’ll see a list of options. Select “See Friendship”. You’ll see posts that you’ve sent to each other, posts that you’re both tagged in, and photos that include both of you. Yes, Big Brother is watching.

Well, Facebook is slowly rolling out Timeline-style pages to match the Timeline on your profile page. You may or may not have it yet. If you do, you’ll notice a few additional options, like being able to edit the page and remove photos that you may not care for.

If you’ve never perused your friendship pages, go ahead. They’re fun to look through. As a bonus, Facebook is also adding a new page for you and anyone you’re in a relationship with. This oh-so-cute page is appropriately named facebook.com/us.

Staying up to date with all of the Facebook changes isn’t easy. We’ll continue to post updates to try to simplify the process for you. Happy Facebooking!

Have you heard about Tout yet? In case you haven’t, it’s another social media platform that utilizes video-just video-to create posts. It allows users to shoot 15 second video status updates via smartphones and webcams. Touts go out in real time, and you can automatically send them to your Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest accounts, as well as to your e-mail contacts. Tout has a reply feature, enabling you to engage in Tout conversations.

The author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies has revealed that their are 12 errors that preclude most users from successful marketing on the platform.

By Meghan Peters

When Facebook launched its Subscribe button on Wednesday, many were quick to note its implications for journalists, celebrities and other thought leaders. The new feature allows for users to follow public updates, and these are the people most often broadcasting their ideas.

Yet there’s more the average user can get on board with than meets the eye. The release came with a slew of additional features — including a more customizable News Feed and increased privacy — that users have been wanting for years. The trouble is, there are so many moving parts in this product launch. Users are now presented with a number of options, and they’ll need to dig deep to understand which pieces to take and which to leave.

We hope to make that process a little easier for you. Here are some key points you should know based on what type of user you are:

Super Users & Celebrities

If you’re kind of a big deal, you likely already have a Facebook fan page to update your followers on what you’re up to. The launch of the Subscribe button leaves you with two options:

1. Keep the fan page and continue to maintain two separate Facebook presences: profile and page. This strategy’s main pro is that pages are optimized for marketing. Profiles can’t be updated by multiple admins and fans are more acclimated to updates with an on-brand feel. Perhaps more importantly, profiles don’t have Facebook’s analytics tool Insights — and “they probably never will,” says Vadim Lavrusik, journalist program manager at Facebook and former Mashable community manger.

2. Do away with the fan page and merge your page likers into profile subscribers. By deleting your fan page, you will lose all page content. However, your likers will automatically be subscribed to your public updates. The biggest advantages? Profiles are easier to update via mobile than pages and people are prioritized over pages in search.

With either of these methods, you’ll have direct messaging capability (from your profile to your page likers or from your profile to your subscribers) and neither has a limit on the number of people who can follow your content (subscribers or likers — though profiles do have a limit of 5,000 friends).

Journalists & Artists

The Subscribe button is arguably most beneficial for journalists and artists. Though, in a sense, they’re public figures, these types of Facebook users likely aren’t well-known enough to justify a fan page.

If this sounds like you, the first thing you need to do is actively opt-in to allow subscriptions to your profile. You can then choose to allow subscribers to comment on your updates and control your notifications.

Another change to note is that when you unfriend someone, they stay subscribed to your public updates. This is important if you’ve been accepting friend requests from people you don’t know who want to follow your work. It can be uncomfortable to friend someone without knowing them personally. The Subscribe button allows you to unfriend these people and still reach them via public updates.

Finally, when composing updates you want your subscribers to see, be sure to set the privacy to Public. They won’t see it otherwise.

Parents & Teachers

The relationships parents and teachers should have with their kids and students on Facebook has always been a touchy subject. The Subscribe feature can help to make crossing the Facebook connection threshold less awkward.

Users can subscribe to others without enabling others to subscribe to them. This means teachers can allow their students to follow their public updates about school and classes without actually friending them (and accessing more personal information). That way, students can continue to update friends about their lives without worrying what might pop up in their teachers’ News Feeds.

For parents, this feature may work the other way around. Instead of asking your son or daughter what that Jaime So-and-So they used to hang out with is up to, you could subscribe to Jaime, whereas friending her might be uncomfortable. The feature could also be helpful if your kids aren’t OK with you watching their every virtual move. Brace yourself for a sensitive conversation at the dinner table.

Students & Average Users

For the occasional Facebookers who mostly use the service to keep up with friends and post photos, here’s the bottom line: You never have to see your Aunt Suzie’s FarmVille updates ever again. But, you can still see her photos, videos and status updates if you’d like.

Before the Subscribe button launch, it was either all or nothing when it came to blocking a person’s updates from your News Feed. Now you can control what types of updates you see from a person and how often. That means you can skip the virtual sheep without missing out on engagement notifications and puppy albums.

As of now, the feature is only available for tailoring updates from non-friends that you’re subscribed to. The Subscribe button, and this feature, will be rolled out to friend pages in the next few days, Lavrusik says.

Conclusion

As the virtual world grows, relationships and the ways we’re connecting with others are changing. The Subscribe button addresses issues about the depth of connection the term “friend” implies on Facebook.

Some critics say the feature goes against Facebook’s nature — that it was built on “friending,” not “following.” It’s important to note that the News Feed algorithm weights updates from friends as well as private posts more heavily than public ones. In addition, the Close Friends list Facebook rolled out on Tuesday makes the updates from your strongest relationships more prominent in your News Feed, and you can enable notifications specifically from friends in this list.

With the number of new social networks gaining speed, Facebook is and should be making changes to stay competitive. What’s important is that it doesn’t divert too far from its core. In this update, Facebook is only giving its users more options — which the majority may or may not take advantage.       http://mashable.com/2011/

Facebook is at it again! More changes to the site's functionality and layout, this time to business pages. The new format is now similar to the new personal profile layout, with a filmstrip of thumbnail pics running across the top. The tabs have also disappeared, and now the navigation appears on the left, under your picture.

One big benefit of moving the tab links to the left side is that you can see them all listed at once. Previously, only 4 - 5 tabs were visible, and users were required to click on the "+" sign to see more. This hid useful information, especially for those fans who were not aware of the "+" sign. Now, the full list of your apps appears on the left, which should make it easier for all users to navigate through your page and find what they need.

Another major change is the "Edit Page" link. It now appears on the right side of your business page. Previously, it was under your picture on the left.

Besides the layout, Facebook's changes also make it possible for you to interact with people and pages as a page name. For example, now e-websmart (the page) can leave comments on other pages' walls, as well as people's walls. You accomplish this by logging in, clicking on Accounts >> Use Facebook as Page, and then choosing which page you'd like to post as. Of course, you can only do this if you are an admin of a page. But, once you make this switch, your post appears as if it is coming from the page, not you. Switch back to your personal profile and be "you" again by clicking on Accounts >> Switch back to (name).

This also means that even if you are an admin on a page, you can post as yourself on that page.

And last but not least, and you're going to love this... you can now get e-mail notifications when fans interact with your page or posts! This is a long awaited change, and it's finally here! This feature is automatically activated, but here's where you find the setting:

• Go to a page that you administer and click Edit Page (remember, it's on the left side).
• From the menu on the left, click Your Settings.
• The check box next to E-mail Notifications controls whether you receive e-mail updates or not.

What do you think? Like it? Hate it? Let us know, and if you need help understanding what all of this means, give us a call!

By now, most small business owners understand why they need a Web site, so they come to e-websmart and ask us to design one for them. However, we often find that, once a site goes live, our clients don't update their information on a regular basis.

From a search engine standpoint, that can hurt. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines crave new information. When they notice that your site is being updated on a consistent basis, they will reward you by placing you higher in their rankings. That means you'll appear before your competition, and it increases the likelihood that your site will attract new visitors. Stagnant websites aren't nearly as popular.

E-websmart always suggests that our clients make frequent site updates, and our blog component makes it even easier. A blog is essentially a content management system that allows you to organize information into topics and categories. With a blog, you can add updates about your business, post news, distribute articles, and generally make your site a go-to-place for information when people want to learn more about you and your area of expertise.

Today, social media is all the rage. Experts recommend Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and several other social media sites to connect with your customers, and we do, too. But, just like your Web site should be the foundation for all of your online marketing, a blog should be the main component of your social media strategy.

The e-websmart blog module allows you to seamlessly add a blog to your new or existing Web site, And, because it resides within your Web site, you no longer have to send visitors away from your site to read your blog.

The features of our blog component include:

• Ease of use - just enter your title and type your post 
• A special home page section that lists the titles of your 3 most recent entries, keeping your content fresh and always changing
• Readers can leave comments on each post
• Readers can also subscribe to your posts so they are notified when you add new information
• Archives your information so readers can refer to previous posts.
• RSS feed address that you can feed your blog content to social networking sites and feed readers

It's easy to get started with a blog! We can not only install the blog component on your site, but we can also offer tips on what to post to your blog. We will also feed your blog posts to your social networking sites for you! Contact Michelle at e-websmart to get started.
 

A recent study released by BlogHer finds that women who are online are twice as likely to get their information from blogs than social networking sites. However, 75% of them use social networking sites to keep in touch with friends and family.

The 2009 Women in Social Media Study, which was released on April 28, indicates that women use social media platforms as their primary sources for community interaction, entertainment, and information.

"Blog now wield considerable influence on consumers' purchasing habits - 45 percent of survey respondents stated that they decided to purchase an item after reading about it on a blog," the survey states.

The study, conducted by BlogHer and iVillage, and in partnership with Compass Partners, offers insight on how women in the U.S. use social media every day. Of the 42 million women who use social media each week, 55% participate in blogging, 75% visit a social networking site such as Facebook or My Space, and 20% use Twitter. The study also suggests that women are spending less time with more traditional media, such as TV, radio, magazines and newspapers.

The implications here are obvious for small business owners. If your target is women (and even if it's not!), you need to be active in social networking. Whether your blogging or promoting your profile on Facebook and MySpace, or both, you will likely reach a larger and more engaged audience than if you are advertising through traditional means.

If you need help developing a strategy for your social networking activities, e-websmart would be happy to help! Give us a call!