The power of Twitter really rests in the hashtags and the ability to draw people into a conversation.  The simplicity of sorting your conversations by the hashtags allows for conversations in one thread to be all about BNI and in another it could be focused on your location.

Once this power is realized it is no wonder the next step is, “How do I get my own hashtag?”

The answer is honestly as simple as one, two, and of course three.

Step One:

Step Two:

Once you do this search there is one of three things that is going to happen.

1. There are absolutely no results for this hashtag and that means it is ready for you to use.
2. There are some uses, but they are scattered or outdated, which means you could probably take over the hashtag, let’s call this method hostile takeover of hashtags.
3. The only other possibility is to see a hashtag up and thriving, with multiple posts and interactions.  In this case you can either join the conversation if it is relevant to the tag you are trying to create, or you can move on and find a tag that isn’t being used that will work for your needs.

Step Three:

In order to make sure you don’t experience a hostile takeover of your tag you need to use it!  Better yet, you need to invite a lot of people into your conversation and have them using the tag.  You can directly invite people by sending them a public message using the @yourfriend mechanism, which has the added benefit of other people seeing your invitation to use the hashtag.  You can also  spread the word through other means such as: email, newsletters, web site, or the countless other ways you are using to connect with the audience you are looking for.

All Done

Now you have a hashtag, use it wisely and you will see that the conversations you can create with it will keep people coming back for more!

Good luck.

In our continuing our discussion of church marketing within Social Media, we’ve started looking at social networking websites, specifically Facebook. If you haven’t already created a profile on Facebook, either for yourself or your church, now is a good a time as any. It’s quick and it’s easy, but be warned…it’s also addictive.

So How Easy Is It?
You can setup a profile in Facebook for yourself in a matter of minutes. There are about 5 or 6 steps to the setup process and Facebook will walk you through not only setting up your profile, but also starting to find friends right away. Setting up a Facebook Page for your church is just as easy, maybe even easier. So, if you haven’t setup a profile for yourself or setup page for your church, do it now.

Setting Up a Personal Profile:
If you want to setup a Facebook profile for yourself, follow these simple steps:
• Go to http://www.facebook.com/
• The signup is on the Facebook homepage. Enter your name, email, password, gender, and birthdate. (All this info is required. If you feel uncomfortable having this info in your profile, you will be able to set your profile’s privacy settings later and can have information hidden.
• Once you’ve created an account, you’ll start to find friends immediately.
• One of the especially helpful features of Facebook is that it is able to interface with most email providers and retrieve your contacts list from your email account. So, if you have a Hotmail or Gmail account, you can import your contacts list and add them as “friends”.
• Next you will be asked for your high school and graduation date. This helps you easily connect with former high school classmates.
• As you have started adding “friends” to your profile, Facebook will show you some of your friend’s friends. You may find additional friends from your friend’s friends that you can add as your friends.
• Lastly you’ll be asked for the city you live in to further help you network with people in your area. (Again, you can decide how much information is available and to whom that info is available in the privacy settings of your Facebook profile.
• Once you have setup your profile, I’d encourage you to Edit Your Profile and add additional information, especially a picture. Their may be a thousand people with your name in Facebook. A picture will help your friends identify you.
• If you are concerned about how much of your information is available, edit your privacy settings to the level of privacy you prefer.

That’s it. Once you have your Facebook profile setup you can find more friends, write posts on people’s “Wall”, send emails, post pictures, and keep your family and friends updated on what’s going on in your life.

Setting Up A Facebook Page For Your Church:
• Go to: http://www.facebook.com/business/?pages
• Click the “Create a Facebook Page” button
• Select “Local” and choose “Religious Center”. You can also select “Brand or Product” and then choose “Religious Organization. (Be sure to select the correct category as it is very difficult to change that later)
• Enter name of your org.
• Enter you email and create a Facebook account. If you want, you can use your existing Facebook account
• Update your Page’s image and info.
• Click “Publish”. (If you don’t click “publish” people won’t be able to see the page. So, if you want to work on the page a little before you go live, you can do that.)

Who that was hard. Now that you have your church’s Facebook Page setup, you an add news, post pictures, distribute your blog through the page, and more.

In the coming articles we’ll talk more about how you can use your Facebook profile and your church’s Facebook Page for church marketing. In the mean time, spend a little time in Facebook, find your old college roommate, see what your high school friends are doing, and have some fun…just don’t forget to sleep.

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been providing Christian search engine optimization services for church marketing solutions and private school marketing.

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So what is Facebook?
Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family, and coworkers. The site provides a variety of features to facilitate communication between people as well as between organizations and people. Some of these features are news postings, chat, article distribution, photo sharing, and video sharing. With Facebook’s design, you can share information, pictures and videos quickly just by posting the info or media to your profile. That information or media can then be shared with all your “friends” or “fans” automatically.

The History:
Originally Facebook started out as an online college “facebook” at Harvard University created by then sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2004. More than half the students at Harvard had joined up within the first month. Considering that response, Facebook was opened up to all the Ivy League schools and then to pretty much every college and university in the US and Canada within a few months. In 2005 Facebook expanded to include high schools and finally in 2006 Facebook was opened for anyone over the age of 13.

Other than the fact that I find this history interesting, I wanted to share the history of Facebook to demonstrate the explosive growth and prominence of social media to demonstrate its value to church marketing.

Who’s Using Facebook?
In its first 2 years, Facebook grew from half the student population of Harvard, to a majority of all college students in the US and Canada. Since then, according to Facebook’s statistics page, Facebook has grown to more than 130 million active users. It is the 4th most trafficked website in the world, and it is the most trafficked social networking site in the world.

Here are some other interesting facts about Facebook:
• More than half the Facebook users are outside of college
• Over 85% of college students use Facebook
• The fasted growing demographic are people 25 years and older
• Facebook is also international with 35 translations currently available

So, who is using Facebook, a lot of people, probably a lot of your own congregation, and certainly a lot of people who you would like to bring into your congregation. In short just about everyone.

Facebook can be a great means of communicating with your congregation. It can also be a great way market your church and help your church members tell others about Christ and your church.

Over the next couple of articles, we’ll be looking at various ways to use Facebook for church marketing as well as church communication.

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been providing Christian search engine optimization services for church marketing solutions and private school marketing.

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The Winds of Change:
Over the past several years the web has undergone a transformation. It used to be that the “website” was the top item on the Internet, but over the past several years that has been changing. Now things like blogs, video sharing websites, social networking, and social bookmarking are the hot items. This is known in many circles as “Web 2.0” signifying that the change of how people use the Internet has been so dramatic, it’s like a whole new version of the web.

There are now companies, organizations, and churches that do not even have a website, but rather their online presence is a network of these various social media sites:
• They have a MySpace and/or Facebook page for information.
• They upload sermon videos to YouTube or GodTube.
• Articles are posted in a blog.
• Pictures of the latest pot-luck dinner are uploaded onto picture sharing sites like Flickr.

What’s The Big Deal?
The main idea behind Web 2.0 is the sharing and discussing of ideas and information with others. It’s a way for people to interact online and a way to distribute information to the masses. Both the opportunity for interaction and the chance to have their voices heard have made social media extremely popular, especially with the younger generation. For the first time in history anyone can break a story, create a funny video that millions will watch, become known as an expert their field, or shoot breathe-taking photos and show them to people from around the world in a virtual gallery. Social media has given unprecedented access to people and ideas.

Having all this access to people and being able to distribute messages around the world is a great opportunity for churches. Does the idea of your church being able to reach millions of people for Christ sound appealing? I would certainly hope so. But ask yourself:
• How is your church utilizing social media in church marketing to spread the Word?
• How can your church use these online tools to reach people with the Gospel and grow your church?

I’ll take a look at some ways your church can use social media in the next several articles.

One last thing I want to point out is that, while these social media options have become very popular, the “old fashioned” website has not lost its importance. Websites with good search engine marketing are still great opportunities for churches and other organizations to present information and reach people. In addition, many websites now incorporate elements of the social media, such as blogs and message boards. So, don’t go canceling your website just yet, but do start looking at how you can expand your online ministry by using the social media in concert with or on your website.

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been Director of Marketing Services with Ourchurch.Com for over 5 years providing Christian search engine optimization services including services specific for church marketing solutions and private school marketing. Kurt is also a Deacon at his church.

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Being a user of both online viral marketing services, I can certainly see why Twitter trounces Facebook in many ways, but will it be able to knockout the champion? Let’s start by taking a look at some advantages of Twitter over Facebook.

5 Twitter Advantages:

1. Easy to get followers

2. Easy to follow people, no permission required, and few rules and restrictions.

3. Very simple and quick, maximum 140 characters per ?tweet?

4. Allows aliases

5. Searchable, with full profile views

Now let’s take a look at some areas where Facebook has an advantage:

1. Fan page feature

2. Better support for multi-media, although this is improving in Twitter

3. Creates trust

4. Very viral

5. Event page feature

Overall, Facebook is a lot more complex than Twitter. And it’s much more cumbersome and restrictive to get friends on Facebook. Friends must approve you and if you are not a friend, you can’t see a person’s full profile.

Facebook also has some archaic restrictions on adding friends. There is a friend threshold, and if you go over the limit Facebook will disable your ability to add friends for an unspecified amount of time. And they also don’t publish the threshold so it’s a guessing game.

And if you violate their mysterious rules and restrictions too many times, Facebook will disable your account permanently and you will have to start all over with a new account and 0 friends. I know several people that have had this happen after growing their friend lists to a few thousand friends. And they weren’t even told what they did wrong. Ouch! I’m doing my best to avoid this.

I have personally violated the “mysterious adding friend threshold”. When I got slapped by Facebook for this I was not able to add any new friends for over a week. I significantly reduced the number of friends I was inviting each day and still got a nasty email threatening from them.

If you want to get started in viral marketing check out twitter for it’s ease of use, short messages, and lack of prohibitive rules and restrictions. The main thing, I’ve found that it’s a lot of fun and you can learn a lot from people posting interesting info!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/

About the Author:  Karen Sielski is a passionate online wealth builder, using her 20+ years in the high-tech industry to help small businesses, entrepreneurs, and online network marketers successfully grow their businesses online.

First we need to ask what the main purpose of Facebook is for the majority of online users.  To break things into absolute basics, social networks are built to do just that, be social and network.  There isn’t a person alive who just LOVES being annoyed to death by offers all day and night.  I can’t even describe how irritating and demeaning this is to all of our businesses when someone decides they’re going to spam the universe with all of their information.  (If that’s you, do us all a favour and stop it today.)

So what you want to do is just be on Facebook to really connect with people, and to benefit them in some way if you can.  If your goal is to improve others lives, simply convey value in your messages and they are find to send out, as long as the sole purpose of the message isn’t to sell something!  Remember, have a goal of solving problems in all the actions you take, and others will be attracted to your business offers all on their own.

Really, it’s a similar concept to networking at a Chamber of Commerce meeting or a Church of some kind.  Have you ever been attacked by a business opportunity at Church?  Well, I certainly have.  It is extremely irritating and invasive, just as it is to get the same canned marketing pitch on Facebook day after day after day.

I want to be clear about the way I use this website.  Facebook is not my main marketing strategy.  What I do is I use Facebook to personally connect with the people who subscribe to my newsletters via my other marketing and promotional efforts.  What I’ve found is this simple act of connecting increases the amount that my subscribers purchase from me by 200%.  Simple, isn’t it?  All I do after that is just respond to people who send me messages.  All I do is just check my inbox and respond to my messages every week.

It really boggles my mind how few people are using Facebook to connect with their customers.  Using this simple technique, I’ve created a lot of great relationships, and made enough money to make it worth it.  Try it, and let me know how it works!

Remember, just keep in mind the following principle and you’ll be ok.  Give abundantly, and you’ll recieve abundantly in return.  This is the law of abundance, my friend.  Perhaps I’ll see you on Facebook.

About The Author: David Wood is an expert in teaching people how to create incredible business relationships online.

Article Source: http://www.articlesphere.com

Facebook Pages

Although there are several tools businesses can use on Facebook to promote themselves, the primary methods of promotion are through Facebook pages and Facebook groups. With a Facebook page, your business can have its own profile in Facebook, and best of all, these pages are free! Your customers can become fans of your Facebook page, which enables them to receive any updates posted to your page.

The great thing about having a Facebook page is that anytime someone becomes a fan of your page, all of their Facebook friends can see it. This gives your business more exposure and the possibility of attracting more fans. You can use your Facebook page to share information about your company, and post videos, applications, photos, and messages.

When you sign up for a Facebook page, you will be given three category options and they are: a local business, a brand/product, or an artist/band/public figure. You cannot change your category later so be careful to choose the right one. Your decision will depend on how you want to promote your business. If you want to promote your business locally, sign up as a local business so you can reach your target market more effectively. If your goal is to spread brand awareness and image, display your page as a brand/product.

When creating a Facebook page, use a friendly, conversational tone. You don’t want to use a stiff, formal business tone on your Facebook page like you would on your normal company website. Facebook is all about building community, actively participating in discussions, and sharing information. You don’t want to come across as too stuffy.

Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are similar to Facebook pages except that they are built around a group of people rather than your business. Unlike Facebook pages, people cannot become fans of your Facebook group. They must become members of the group instead. The downside of Facebook groups is that they are more private in nature, and thus do not share as much information with the friends of group members.

Which One is Right for My Business?

Facebook pages will give your business more exposure but Facebook groups are more effective if you want to connect with your customers/prospects on a personal level. When you send a message out to your Facebook page fans, they will only receive an update notification whereas when you send a message out to your Facebook group members, it goes into their inbox. As such, Facebook groups can be more appropriate if your goal is to provide better customer service and communication and receive feedback.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/

About the Author:

Written by  SEO Sapien  SEO Company.  You can find more at  http://www.seosapien.com

But before you begin…

Marketing via Facebook or any another social network needs to be done strategically, using a proper marketing plan. So many people have destroyed their businesses because they abused these networks. Once you’ve become familiar with the tools described below, take time to outline a plan for yourself.

Here are some of the different tools (all free) with which Facebook allows you to promote your business. Using these tools wisely will help your business grow. Misusing them will kill your business and leave you with the reputation of nothing but a spammer. Browse Facebook and the “applications” link to find all of the below:

Creating a Group :

Anyone on Facebook can start their own group. An excellent way to build a community around your product or service is to create a group representing it. Some of the features that a group has are a discussion board, a “wall,” posted items (great place to post links) and the possibility to upload videos and pictures. When you start building your group, which is very simple to do, you can add your website link, location, contact and any other information you wish. The next step is to invite your personal network to join your group.

Joining Other Groups for Marketing Your Business :

The groups are one of the most powerful venues that can help you to promote your business. The effective way to do so is to join groups that are relevant to your business. Join those groups and become active in them. If you join and post a message only once, no one will look at you. Instead, participate in the back and forth on the discussion board and post regularly on the walls. One of the most effective ways to get attention is sharing your articles on the discussion board and responding to other people’s questions. In many ways this is like a forum. Once you start participating in these discussion boards, people will respect you and learn to trust you.

Pages :

Facebook recently launched “Pages,” which is similar to groups. “Pages” allows businesses to establish a brand presence on Facebook. You can add html code, flash files and even Facebook applications to Pages that can help you customize the page better, which you cannot do on groups. People who join your Page are called “Fans” – they become “fans” of your business.

Using the Wall :

On your profile page you have what’s called “The Wall” – this is where the members of your network can post messages on your profile page. Whenever someone posts something on your wall and whenever you post on friends’ walls, everyone in your network can see it. (Be careful not to post very private messages on a friend’s wall. If you need to do so, you have the option of sending a message to your friend’s Facebook inbox.)

Events :

If you are having an event related to you business or a sale at a friend’s house or on Ebay, this is the online place where you would want to post about it. After creating your event, you can invite your network to view and participate (or politely decline).

Notes and Photos :

These two applications allow you to share articles, blog posts or pictures with your network. You can utilize these applications to discuss your business or share photos of your products. Your friends can publish comments on your postings.

Messages :

This is an excellent alternative to using your regular email. With this application you can send personal or group messages to people in your network. The beauty of this application is that you are protected from the possibility of sending inadvertent spam, since Facebook has excellent methods of eliminating that possibility before you can send anything. Just be careful not to email too often.

Marketplace :

Marketplace is Facebook’s classifieds listing service. Here you can post a variety of ads related to your business. The marketplace allows you to upload pictures as well. Just take care not to flood the marketplace with your ads, as this will get you deleted from Facebook.

Status :

This incredible feature allows you to let your network know what you are doing at any given time. If you have just uploaded new content to your website, added a new product to your product line or what ever it may be.

Now that you have received the basics for marketing via Facebook, you are probably thinking, “So every time I post an item or a photo I have to message it to my friends? This will take forever!” If that’s what you’re thinking, this next and final aspect of Facebook that we will discuss will blow your mind:

Facebook’s News Feed :

This is our favorite, and this is Facebook’s unique advantage over other social networks. Whenever you log into your Facebook account, the first page that you will see is the news feed. This page gives you all the recent news in your network: updates of what your friends have been doing on Facebook, what groups they have joined, what items they have posted, what videos they have uploaded, whom they’ve added as friends to their network, etc. And just like you can see what your friends are doing, they can see what you are doing. In other words, every time you post something, your whole network will see it. This exposure creates a consciousness of your product or service within your network and beyond.

Be sure to use this feature, like all the tools of Facebook, with your integrity. Keep it clean and people will respect you.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/

About the Author:  Hillel Porath is the founder and developer of   http://www.iyazam.com

Following the creation of Friendstar, a number of eUniverse employees saw its potential and used its more popular features to create a social networking website with a wider base. MySpace was launched in August 2003 and with resources including technicians, bandwidth and server capacity already in place users increased at an astounding rate.

MySpace operates from advertising revenue alone. There is absolutely no cost to the end user. MySpace is capable of using behavioral targeting to customize the ads that each user sees. Only Yahoo! has been able to collect more data about it’s users in order to customize advertising. The success of MySpace has trickled down to many young entrepreneurs who provide widgets or accessories that add to the functionality of the networking powerhouse.

MySpace encourages users to customize their profile pages by entering HTML. In addition musicians are allowed to upload and share up to 6 MP3 songs provided it is their own work or they have permission to use the songs. Over eight million artists owe their discovery to MySpace so far! Political organizations and politicians themselves have created MySpace pages to expand their membership and to get more young viewers involved in campaigning. MySpace offers many engaging features including Bulletins, Groups, MySpace IM, MySpace TV, Applications, MySpace Mobile, MySpace News, MySpace Classifieds, MySpace Karaoke and MySpace polls.

MySpace networking has many positive aspects, unfortunately, they are matched in number by negative aspects. MySpace does not have a customer service number readily available. Most problems are solved via networking with other MySpace users. HTML code is rarely met because those using the code are not experienced. This can lead to accessibility problems and freeze up web browsers.

Security is another major problem. Advertisements are abundant and some provide links to fake login screens that trick a user into entering their MySpace user name and password. Spam bulletins and infections are prime examples of security breaches. Social issues arise such as teens inadvertently inviting a large number of people to parties. People are also more likely to present themselves in ways that they would not in person which undercuts the purposeful design of MySpace which is to bring people together. Stalkers also are able to gather a large amount of information about an individual via MySpace.

Facebook is also a social networking website. Unlike MySpace its origin is not corporate but academic! Membership was initially offered to only Harvard College students. Shortly after in March of 2004 membership was expanded to include Stanford, Columbia and Yale. In September of 2005 Facebook welcomed high school students by invitation only then employees of Apple Inc. and Microsoft. Finally, Facebook expanded its membership to include everyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address in September 2006. Facebook members join networks which are organized by city, school, workplace and region.

Facebook remains privately owned by Facebook Inc. but has investors who are major players including PayPal co-founder Peter Theil, Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Microsoft.

Facebook offers many of the same features as MySpace like banner ads, creating customized profiles, and the viewing of the profile data being restricted to users from the network or confirmed friends. Facebook’s features include the Wall, Pokes, Photos, News Feed, Facebook Notes, Chat and Gifts.

The most significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization. Facebook only allows plain text as opposed to HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. But despite its 3 year head start in the general public, MySpace fell behind Facebook in May of 2008 with a total of 123.9 million unique Facebook visitors. According to Alexa, Facebook’s ranking among all websites went from 60th to 7th from September 2006 to September 2007. It is currently 5th.

Currently young people are leaving MySpace in droves for Facebook. Some speculate that it is typical teens moving on from one trend to the next. Others speculate that Facebook attracts more affluent users. Facebook originated with Ivy League students who then attracted high school kids who were eager to become part of the culture in their upcoming college experience. Danah Boyd, a researcher for the University of California, Berkley, claims that the “goody-two-shoes, jocks, athletes, and other ‘good’ kids” are going to Facebook. These ‘good’ kids are attracted first to the Facebook’s origin and they are also eager to stay away from the controversy that surrounds MySpace. Therefore there is evidence of a class divide rather than a change in trend for all young users. It will be interesting to see if Facebook becomes similarly polluted.

MySpace leads Facebook in revenue earned form advertisements. But recently, Facebook has surpassed MySpace in unique visitors. This is an astounding accomplishment being that MySpace had a three year lead and enjoys immense popularity. Users are leaving MySpace for Facebook in droves and it is speculated that this transition may be a result of class rather than trend.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/

About the Author:

Allison Merlino has an extensive background in Finance and Fiscal Procedure. Please visit her at  http://www.thesoftwarespot.com!

Facebook “Fan Pages” are the answer to both.

A Fan Page is simply a public profile that allows you to share information about your business, services or products with other Facebook users. To create a Fan Page, click on “Advertising” in the lower right hand part of the screen. After doing this you will be taken to a page with several choices listed at the top. Click on “Pages” which has an orange flag next to it. Then, just click the green “Create a Page” button.

Once you have created your Page, you can now reap its benefits. What are those benefits? There are several, but here I will highlight the top three:

Driving Traffic. Facebook Pages are public. Most of Facebook requires a login for you to access it. However, Pages are not behind a login and thus are visible to the search engines. This means people can not only find your business listed, but it is likely to be ranked highly due to the fact that Facebook itself is. Therefore, you might want to consider using relevant keywords in your Page title as well. For example, Facebook expert Mari Smith’s Page title is  Mari Smith – Relationship and Buzz Marketing Specialist.

Of course, once people visit your Page, they will also have a way to continue on to your main website or blog which you will have listed.

Promoting Discussion. Pages are a great way to communicate with potential clients and customers. You now have an opportunity to listen, watch and provide answers when needed. People will notice when you take the time to help and add to the discussions. Send updates periodically through the update feature and concentrate on building relationships and being a part of the conversation.

Spreading Awareness. By utilizing the wall for discussions, providing links, adding pictures, importing your blog posts and more, you are making it easy to connect with you. This will help turn people into fans as well as encourage others to visit your Page. When others become fans it will show on their profile as well as in their mini-feed. When your fans interact with your Page, these interactions are visible to their friends via the News Feed. This is fantastic for word-of-mouth and for exposing your business to an ever-increasing circle of Facebook users.

Some Tips:

*To get to your Page from your main personal profile, click on “Applications” at the bottom to the left and then click “Ads and Pages.”

*You need to click on the link that says “publish this page” for your page to become public. This is nice as you can have your Page all set up and complete before you begin promoting it.

*If you click on “Edit Page” you can add applications to your page such as discussion boards, reviews, events and more.

*People can become “fans” of your page. To encourage this, you can click the link for “suggest to friends” under your picture. If you click on “Share” on the left side under “create a page” then you can also post a message about your page to your personal profile or send a message to others.

Create your Page today and start building your community of raving fans!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/

About the Author: Christine Gallagher, MLS, MSIS, founder of CommunicateValue.com Visit  http://CommunicateValue.com