This checklist provides 50 simple ways for you to make your website even better!

1. Use .htaccess to redirect the non-www version of your website to the www version.

2. Extend the registration of your domain for at least five years.

3. Make sure that when a visitor clicks your website’s logo, they are taken back to the homepage.

4. If you think your font is too small, make it bigger!

5. Remove widgets that aren’t directly enhancing your website.

6. Include an easy to find contact link, e-mail address or phone number on every page of your website.

7. Use a CSS stylesheet to make your website printer friendly.

8. Fix or remove broken links (external and internal).

9. Add ALT tags to all of your images.

10. If your website is using frames, get rid of them!

11. If you don’t have a robots.txt file, create one.

12. Provide the same basic navigation menu on every page of your website.

13. Use the same color for links throughout your website.

14. Spell check your content.

15. Format your content so that it is easy to scan.

16. Add at least one picture to every page of your website.

17. If you don’t have an About page, create one.

18. Use your About page to show your brand’s personality.

19. Include at least three pictures on your About page.

20. If your website has pop-up windows, get rid of them!

21. Link to relevant social media profiles from your About page.

22. Add a search box near the top of your website’s layout.

23. Create a privacy policy page.

24. Place a link to your privacy policy at the bottom of every page.

25. Use dashes in filenames instead of underscores.

26. Add a link to Google Maps on your Contact page.

27. Add internal links from one piece of content to another.

28. Write a unique META description for all of your main pages.

29. Validate your source code and correct any errors.

30. If you have a link exchange page, get rid of it!

31. Add a site search box to your 404 page.

32. Create a sitemap for your website.

33. Add a link to your sitemap at the bottom of every page of your website.

34. Add a copyright notification to the bottom of every page of your website.

35. Underline your links throughout your website.

36. Turn off music that automatically plays.

37. Get rid of any flashing GIF animations.

38. Include your website logo at the top of every page.

39. Register the .net and .org versions of your domain and redirect them to your website.

40. If you don’t have a help or support section, create one!

41. When you answer a question via e-mail, add the answer to the help/support section.

42. Look at your contact forms and see if there is any information you don’t have to request from your visitors.

43. Add your analytics code to every page of your website.

44. Get rid of any pages that automatically resize visitors’ browser window.

45. Create a favicon for your website.

46. Only use email address that include @yourdomain.

47. Label each box of any forms on your website.

48. Show a confirmation any time a visitor completes a significant action on your website.

49. Create one new piece of quality content for your website every week.

50. Leave a comment with your suggestion for the fiftieth tip!

Before I share some of the things we did to grow the fan page at such a rapid pace, the FreelanceFolder team would like to thank all of our readers for your support. The biggest reason for our success on Facebook is your interest and participation, and we definitely couldn’t have done it without you — Thanks!

Okay, let’s start with a quick guide to creating fan pages for anyone who doesn’t already know how, and then we’ll move on to some of the more growth-oriented stuff.

Getting Started With a Facebook Fan Page

To create a Facebook fan page you can simply visit the public page that allows you to create ads and pages. Click on Create a Page. You will be given three options:

• Local
• Brand
• Artist, Band, or Public Figure

Choose the category that suits your business the most and follow the instructions.

Creating a fan page on Facebook doesn’t take more than two minutes, but building it and creating a thriving community within that page can take months.

Now that you’ve created a fan page for your business or site, let’s start growing it.

Get Your Closest Contacts Involved

Now that your Facebook page is ready to roll, it’s time to give it a little push.

The first thing you want to do to grow your fan page is utilize close friends on Facebook. I am not talking about online acquaintances, I am talking about people you probably have met or have interacted with on Facebook quite a few times.

Let your close friends know that you have created a fan page. Ask them to be a fan. It’s almost guaranteed that they will become a fan without hesitating.

This step really depends on how many of your close contacts use Facebook. The more the merrier. At this point, do not use the Suggest to Friends feature to contact random connections. Save the first few days for the close-knit group and then extend invites to a larger group.

It’s Time to Send Some Invitations

Now that you have asked your close friends to become fans, it’s time to send out invites to your acquaintances.

If you have a few hundred friends, do not send out invites all at once. You don’t want a spike of fans one day and be dead in the water the next day.

My approach to sending out invites for our fan page was to choose a set of first letters each day and only send out invites to those people. For example, the first day I sent out invites to people whose name begin with the letters A, B and C and the second day I sent out invites to people whose name begin with the letters D, E, F and G and so on and so forth.

This way you don’t end up getting fifty fans one day and nothing the rest of the days. The Suggest to Friends feature is on the left right under your fan page profile picture.

Make sure to spread out your invites. You want your fan page to grow faster, but you don’t want it to spike and die off suddenly. Send out a few invites each day for a couple of days to keep new fans coming to the page.

Now that you’ve sent out your invites, you need to decide whether to run an ad campaign to promote your fan page.

Run a Facebook Ad Campaign

I know that many freelancers are on a shoestring budget, but if you can spare $5.00 to $20.00 I highly recommend running an ad campaign. Facebook allows you to target your ads and gives you the option to pinpoint who sees the ad. You can target ads based on age, gender, location, profession, etc.

You can either pay for impressions or for clicks. I usually go with impressions because my main goal is to get the page seen by as many people as possible. Even if they don’t click and sign up when they see the ad, there is a possibility that they might come back later. It’s just one of the ways to take your dollar further.

To create an ad, go to public page that allows you to create ads and pages.

At this point, you can start promoting your fan page through your website.

Cross-Promote Your Fan Page

Now that you are done asking for help from your close group of friends and sending out invites, it’s time to kick it into high gear.

When we launched the FreelanceFolder fan page we didn’t announce it on the site for a couple days. We knew once we announced it, we would get a lot of freelancers signing up. Although we wanted to grow fast, we wanted it to be a gradual growth and already have some kind of community active on the fan page.

Once you have some activity going, talk about your fan page on your blog or your site. Grab a fan page box (like we have in the sidebar) and embed it on your blog. Anyone who missed your announcement post about the fan page can still see that you have a community rolling on one of the hottest social media platforms.

By now, if you have been active and updated your fan page regularly, you should already have a few hundred fans. (Please note that for these tips to work efficiently you need to constantly update your fan page and stay on top of the tasks.)

After you are done implementing the above tips, the main thing is to engage your fans. You can only ask so many people to become a fan. After a certain point, people need to come to your fan page organically. They need to find you without you having to call them.

Above all, make sure your fans are interacting. There is no point in having a fan page with thousands of fans where no one really interacts. So let’s see some of the ways to pull in people without really having to ask them to become fans.

You should follow the tips outlined below as soon as you get your fan page up and running.

Your Updates Should “Call For Action”

If you are a popular celebrity or a big brand, you won’t have a hard time getting your fans to engage on the fan page.

As freelancers, though, we often lack that sort of popularity. It is necessary to take measures to make sure there is interaction.

The key of having a fan page is to create a thriving community on a different platform other than your blog. Once again, the more platforms you can utilize, the better.

You will often see fan pages that have huge number of fans, but they often lack participation. Numbers alone won’t do the magic. We need people behind those numbers that are willing to engage and interact on your fan page with you and the rest of the fans.

One of the best ways to “call for action” through your updates is by asking a question. If you look at our fan page, we ask a lot of questions. We do this not just for the sake of asking, but because we value what our fans and friends think.

People love to voice their opinion and share their expertise. Make sure your updates ask them to do that. Simply linking to each article you publish on your blog won’t help you much as far as growing your fan page goes.

Also when you update, make sure you are asking your fans to do something. Make them feel they are an important part of your Facebook community.

Two of the best ways for your fans to interact are through the Like and Comment features.

Like and Comment Are Your Best Friends

The reason I say you want as much engagement as possible from your fans is because you want them to take action. That action can be either clicking the Like button or commenting on your update.

These Like and Comment features are extremely important to growing your fan page. Every time someone comments on your update or clicks the like button it shows on their feeds. Your fans’ friends see their profile or feed on the main page. They also see that one of your fans have been commenting on or using the like feature on your fan page. This can creates a viral effect.

If the update is good enough and really thought-provoking, those users who didn’t know about your fan page might join because they saw someone they knew on Facebook actively using it.

The key is to make sure your fans are participating and using those Like and Comment features so that it shows on their feeds. This is one of the best ways to get your fan page exposed to as many people as possible.

Now that we have explained how to use Facebook features to promote your fan page we will examine the use of third party apps.

Utilize Third Party Apps

One of the reason Facebook is so popular is because of all the third party Facebook apps that are out there. I am talking about the apps that actually add value to your fan page.

If you look at our fan page, you will notice two tabs at the top that are not default tabs for fan pages — News and Twitter. If you click on the News tab you will see our recent posts. If you click on the Twitter tab you will see our Twitter updates.

In essence, these apps allow us to make our fan page a single stop information source for our fans (you can find these apps at involver.com for free). Our fans can quickly check our Facebook updates, see what’s new on our blog, and even see what we are tweeting.

I personally think one of the best Facebook apps is the FBML application, also known as FaceBook Markup Language. You can use this app to create customized tabs, etc.

If you are good with HTML, the possibilities are endless. For example, you could create a custom welcome page so that anyone who is not a fan yet will land on the custom page rather than the wall.

Here is a good example of a custom welcome page created by AllFacebook for their fan page using FBML.

Conclusion

Following the steps outlined above will definitely help you attract more fans. However, do keep in mind that numbers alone don’t mean a thing.

Your fan page can have 50,000 people, but if they are not interacting it’s not really a community. Without an active community, neither you nor your fans will get any benefit out of your fan pages.

There are many other ways to utilize the fan page to gain more fans and make it an active community, but we will cover those when we hit the next milestone .

Your Turn

We’ve given a quick guide to creating a fan page and we’ve show you how to build a community around your fan page.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Also, do share your personal experience regarding Facebook fan pages.

To ring in the New Year, we’ve compiled 5 email marketing tactics that are likely to gain even more ground this year.

1. Integrating Email With Social Media.
This email marketing tactic – which picked up steam throughout 2009 as a way to boost customer reach – is likely to spread like wildfire throughout 2010. Consider the results of an early 2009 study by Exact Target, Ball State University and the Email Marketer’s club: 46% of marketers planned to incorporate the two marketing strategies in ‘09, compared to 13% in ‘08—a whopping 253% increase.

Both BtoB and Consumer Marketers are moving beyond simply including links to social profiles, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, in email messages.  Some additional tactical ideas for integrating the two strategies include:

• Using a blog to highlight content from an e-newsletter once or twice a month, and inviting readers to download the full content via a landing page
• Conducting a timely poll on Twitter, and creating a visual representation of the results, in an e-newsletter
• Leveraging social media channels to offer email subscribers customized options (i.e., receiving a combination of a monthly newsletter, a Twitter feed with promotions and an RSS feed with daily news instead of receiving a generic bi-weekly e-newsletter)

2. Focusing on Engaging Subscribers.
In a December article from Direct magazine, writer Ken Magill reports that ISPs are now looking into using engagement as a factor to determine if emails get to inboxes. That would mean if subscribers aren’t interacting with email messages, the ISP may stop delivering the messages.

Of course, it’s not yet determined what exactly will constitute an “engaged” email subscriber. But potential measures of engagement we would recommend focusing on improving include:

Open Rates: Try increasing open rates by personalizing subject lines and including clear information in the “from” line indicating who is sending the email.

Click Rates: To improve CTR, analyze if the design of the email is guiding subscribers to the CTA. Web heat maps, for example, can be used to distinguish areas of a Web page most frequently scanned by visitors. Also, give subscribers a reason to click, whether for additional content, a product coupon or a complimentary gift.

Number of Forwards: To increase the number of subscribers forwarding an email, make it as easy as possible to do so. Include the ability to forward the message via email, as well as the option to share on social networks.

3. Re-engaging Inactive Subscribers.
Building an email subscriber is one thing; building an active email subscriber base is another. Virtually every email marketing list contains a group of inactive subscribers, those who aren’t opening emails but haven’t yet unsubscribed.

To re-engage these sleepy subscribers, consider these email marketing tactics:

• Offer the inactive group a complimentary white paper or free trial of a product
• Create a sense of urgency with notifications that their subscription will end soon
• Segment the inactive subscribers and cut back on the frequency of email communications
• Send a series of opt-in engagement messages to the inactive group reminding them of the value of the emails

4. Creating Viral Campaigns.
Viral marketing isn’t a new concept. But today, with sites like Twitter, Digg, Flickr and Facebook, email messages have the potential to be shared like never before. Try out these email marketing tactics in 2010 to help extend your message to a maximum number of customers:

Tailor forward links to specific campaigns: In lieu of the typical “forward to a friend” link, customize the link for the individual campaign, content and audience. For instance, if an email message provides tips to help small business owners build credit, create a forward link with the text: “Forward these tips for building credit to a colleague.”

Don’t restrict access to content: In order for a message to spread to a maximum number of prospective customers, make content free and accessible to anyone. Plus, make all login processes as quick and painless as possible.

Experiment with placement of forward links: Avoid subscribers developing a “blindness” to forward links because the links are placed in the same location for every campaign. Instead, try varying placement, size and color of links.

5. A/B Testing and Optimizing Landing Pages.
Thanks to quickly advancing marketing automation technology, email marketers can more easily perfect landing pages to create a relevant experience and maximize conversions. Many email marketing tools now offer built-in A/B page-testing capabilities, enabling marketers to test multiple page variations and measure the performance of each.

In a recent post on Email Marketing Strategy Blog from Silverpop, CEO Bill Nussey suggests that advanced A/B testing and optimization can easily yield a 5% to 10% lift in conversion rates. Plus, because email solutions are automating what used to be a manual process, marketers can spend more time interpreting numbers and focusing on the creative.

There’s no better time than the New Year to set resolutions and make improvements. As we head into 2010, take some time to assess your email marketing tactics. Could any of these 5 ideas be incorporated into your marketing mix to improve results?

Early this morning, the endlessly ingenious iPhone hacking community released Blacksn0w, a carrier unlock for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Even if you have no need to plug in a different SIM card than what was originally intended, however, Blacksn0w still has its perks. Namely, it brings the aforementioned unauthorized data tethering right on back.

We’ve just walked through the process, and it went off without a hitch. If you’re interested in doing the same but don’t want to do it alone, we’ve thrown together a handy step-by-step guide, just for you.

Disclaimer: We are not your mom. We are also not the ones who made any of this stuff, nor do we recommend doing it. There have been reports of this process bricking (read: breaking) phones, though it seems to work just fine for everyone we’ve talked to. If your iPhone breaks, melts, or runs away, or if AT&T somehow figures out you’re tethering and charges you a million dollars per megabyte, it’s not our fault.

We’re seeing some reports on Twitter that some users are having issues with WiFi, GPS, or YouTube after unlocking with Blacksn0w. If you have any such issues, go to Settings > General > Reset> and hit “Reset Network Settings”. Once that’s complete, do a hard power cycle by holding the sleep/home button for a few seconds and then sliding the on-screen power toggle.

With that out of the way, lets begin. The entire process is drop dead simple, and should take roughly 10 minutes. This should work on both Windows and OS X. The steps below assume that you have not yet jailbroken your iPhone, and will walk you through that process.

1. Download BlackRa1n for either Mac or PC here.
2. Plug in your iPhone
3. Run BlackRa1n



4. Hit the “Make it rain” button to jailbreak your iPhone. Your iPhone 3GS will almost immediately reset, and will soon display a picture of iPhone hacker Geohot. The entire process should take about 45-60 seconds. Do not interrupt this process by unplugging the cable or tinkering with your iPhone.
5. Once your iPhone has fully booted: Congratulations! Your iPhone is now jailbroken.



6. Look for the Blackra1n icon on your iPhone’s homescreen. Open the Blackra1n app
7. Tap the label that reads “sn0w”, then hit the Install button in the upper right. This will unlock your phone for use on any SIM-compatible carrier, and reenable the IPCC hack required to enable tethering.. This part should take about 30 seconds.
8. Once the unlock is complete, open Safari. Navigate to:
   http://m.peacefulinsanity.com/Tether.mobileconfig
9. Hit the “Install” button in the upper right. Confirm the resulting prompt, alerting you that the file has not been signed. Allow the IPCC file to install, which will take about 10 seconds.
10. Close Safari. Hold the sleep and home button until your iPhone resets. This reboot may take a bit longer than normal.



11. When your iPhone resets, go into Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering. If you can successfully switch the “Internet Tethering” slider to “On”: Congratulations! Everything seems to have worked as expected.

From here, tethering is a matter of following the on-screen instructions. Enjoy your jailbroken, tetherable iPhone 3G/3GS on OS 3.1/3.1.2! If you’ve gotten this far, we’d recommend installing Cydia (just open up blackra1n and tap the Cydia label). You should also consider allowing Cydia to record the signature hashes of your device once installed; be it that Apple patches this exploit in the next release, you’ll most likely need those to get back to a jailbroken state.

You can use this script to view a photo in the original album, even if you’re not friends with the person.

Get it Here

2. How to Remove Annoying Facebook Advertisement

Get rid of some of the Facebook advertising and sponsored by sections with this tool.

Get it Here

3. How to see Real Profiles from Public Pages

This script redirects to real profiles from the Facebook people pages (public profiles). There is a risk of an infinite redirect loop if not logged in, so be logged in.

Get it Here

4. How to Undo Facebook Changes

If you hate some or all of the new Facebook changes, undo them with these scripts and use what you liked previously.

Get it Here

5. How to View All the Photos from a Person

You can search for pictures of a Facebook member who has tight privacy settings and view all his/ her pictures without his/ her consent.

Get it Here

6. How to Find More Friends at Facebook

Suppose some of your friends have newly joined Facebook and you didn’t even knew. Use this script and it will help you go through your friends’ friends list and find them out.

Get it Here

7. How to Share Files from Facebook

With this box widget, you can share files from your computer through Facebook. Isn’t it great?

Get it Here

8. How to Get a Job from Facebook

Looking for a job? This application gives Facebook users unique access to job information, networking opportunities and other career resources.

Get it Here

9. How to Tighten up the Privacy and still Maintain Communication Convenience

The Private Wall combines the best of both worlds of Facebook: online convenience and communication with more serious privacy settings.

Get it Here

10 How to Cheat Facebook Texas Hold em Poker

This is one of my Favorite hacks and that is why I have saved it for the last one. Using this software you can see the cards of any player and the advanced version of this software allows you to even add credits to your account for free.

Get it Here

 Author: 

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook Platform for Developers and Marketers

We’ve been keeping track of Facebook’s self-reported demographic statistics on the US market for a while now, and here’s the latest update for November 2, 2009. While Facebook says these stats, provided to advertisers, are not necessarily real time, they do give us a sense of how Facebook is growing.

On the whole, Facebook’s US audience grew by 6.8% in October to 94.2 million uniques (compare to latest data from Quantcast, Compete, and comScore). Here’s how Facebook’s gender and sex numbers break down as of today:

(Note: about 5% of users do not report either gender or age, and are not included in this chart.)

Where did the growth come from? Primarily from younger audiences. Males 18-25 led Facebook’s demographic categories this month, adding nearly 1 million monthly active users to over 12 million. Females 18-25 also increased in number by nearly 1 million last month. In addition, women 35-44 showed strong growth, while increases in males 35-44 were lower.

While Facebook is still growing most quickly percentage-wise amongst users over 45 – an interesting demographic trend that started earlier this year – the growth rate amongst users under 18 is also picking up. Interestingly, the growth rate of males 13-35 is faster than females, closing the overall gender gap on Facebook somewhat. Women still represent 57% of the overall Facebook audience.

Overall, 48 of Facebook users in the US today are over 35, and nearly 20% of all US Facebook users are over 45. That’s a good sign for Facebook’s brand advertising business, which has brought 83 of the top 100 ad spenders on board, according to VP of Global Sales Mike Murphy.

]]> http://brainlessweb.com/latest-data-on-facebook%e2%80%99s-us-growth-by-age-and-gender/feed 0 http://brainlessweb.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-facebook-fan-page-and-a-facebook-group http://brainlessweb.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-facebook-fan-page-and-a-facebook-group#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:02:52 +0000 Dynasty Web Solutions http://brainlessweb.com/?p=480 Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites online and offers varied options for promoting yourself, your site, your business or your client.

Two of the best ways to go about marketing yourself through Facebook besides your main profile are Facebook Groups and Facebook Fan Pages. While both are similar in concept, there are some key differences to keep in mind when you’re setting them up.

I would advise you to create both a group and a fan page, because while they perform similar functions e.g. as outlets and communities for your like-minded fans/visitors/clients/friends to meet and share about whatever topic you’ve chosen for your page or group, they offer several different options.

Here’s a breakdown of what they offer side by side:

Not to mention the viral marketing exposure for those that have a Facebook Fan Page.  Basically the more your “Fans” interact with your page, the more your page is exposure to their personal friends on Facebook!

However, promoting your Facebook Fan Page can be a bit challenging if you don’t know what you’re doing.

So I want to help you today by showing you 4 simple, yet powerful ways you can promote your Facebook Fan Page:

1)  Create A Custom Username

Read my detailed “How To” for creating a Facebook custom username here.  Get the abridged version below!

** NOTE ** You must have at least 25 fans of your Facebook Fan Page to be eligible for a custom username.

A custom username is now pretty easy to come by on Facebook.  And in fact, this strategy works great for your Facebook Fan Page AND your personal Facebook profile.

Most new Facebook Fan Page web addresses look like this:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/McComb-MS/Thomas-Morgan-at-Hometown-Realty-Inc-GMAC-Real-Estate/137967351701?ref=search&sid=720066266.1538296960..1&v=wall

Now that’s a lot of numbers, words, forward slashes, and whatever else is going on there.

With a custom username, you can now have something like this:

http://Facebook.com/SocialSEO (that one is mine by the way)

Do you see the difference?  And from a marketing perspective, a custom username (or custom URL) allows you to more easily brand your Fan Page on things like websites, business cards, documents, etc…

Also a custom username for your Facebook Fan Page makes it easier for you to tell others how to get there (again, look at the 2 addresses above for example).

Create A Custom Facebook Username & URL

The way you create a custom username for your Facebook Fan Page (and also your personal profile) is by first visiting http://Facebook.com/Usernames.

This page opens by default in the personal profile option.  Look below the shaded box and click the link that says “Set a username for your Pages.”

You will then be able to proceed and set your custom username for your Facebook Fan Page.  And whatever you enter here, will be what’s here:  //facebook.com/YOURCUSTOMNAME

2)  Embed your Facebook Fan Box

Read my detailed “How To” for adding a Facebook fan box here.

If you visit your Facebook Fan Page, and then look under your the profile picture, you’ll find the following link:

“Add Fan Box to your site”

Go ahead and click that link, and you’ll be taken to the dashboard for your “Fan Box”.  There are a lot of ways to customize this fan box, but you’ll see 2 easy edits right in the dashboard and these are “Streams” and “Fans”.

If “streams” is clicked, then the comments from your Facebook Fan Page will be included in your Fan Box.  And obviously, if it’s not clicked they won’t.

The same for “fans” – if it’s clicked, then your default number of fans is 10, and if it’s not clicked then you won’t see any fans.

If you look at the right hand side bar of this site (just look right), you’ll see my Facebook Fan box.  This is the standard box without “streams” checked, but with “fans” checked.

Once you’re done selecting “streams” and / or “fans”, there are options for embedding into your Blogger blog, TypePad blog, or other.  If you have a Wordpress blog, then select “other” and then highlight the code in the text box that will appear.  Then take that code and embed it into a sidebar widget, or wherever else you want to present your fan box.

You can learn about more advanced customization by visiting this link.  This is a the Facebook developers platform with instructions for you to customize the code.  It’s actually quite simple once you see how the different elements are working.

3)  Utilize the new “Get More Fans With SMS” feature

A lot of people have yet to realize that Facebook now allows people to send a text and instantly become a fan of Facebook Fan Pages!  Go to your Facebook Fan Page, find the word “more” (it’s in small blue print), click that and a drop down menu will open.  Look down that menu and you will see “Get More Fans with SMS”.

But wait… there are a few restrictions on this feature – which are:

*  you must have your own custom user name (see #1 above)

That’s really the only restriction.

If you have your own username for your Facebook Fan Page, then you’ll see this feature present.  You can start telling others about, and you can even put a quick note on your blog or website with instructions on how to text to become a fan.

Look at the top right of this blog for an example.

The only other thing to remember with the “Get more fans with SMS” feature is that text rates do apply.

4)  Add a custom Facebook Fan Page banner to your Facebook profile.

This one is my favorite!  It’s been a point of contention since Facebook Fan Pages launched that Fan Page owners had no way to promote their Page to their personal friends on Facebook.

The “Add Fan Box To Your Site” does not embed into a Facebook profile.  And without that, how else is someone suppose to promote their Facebook Fan Page to personal friends on Facebook?  People don’t want to be emailing their personal friends all the time talking about their Fan Page – most would perceive that as inconsiderate.

** OUR SOLUTION **

We finally had enough people ask about “how to promote my Facebook Fan Page from my Facebook profile” that we decided we were going to find a way – someway, somehow, to make this happen.

The result of our efforts – – ->>  an awesome looking banner image for your Facebook Fan Page that fits perfectly underneath your personal Facebook profile friends.  Here’s a screen shot of my profile:

There you can see the banner image for my Facebook Fan Page directly underneath my friends on my personal Facebook profile.

Since adding this image, my fans on my Facebook Page have more than doubled!

The image is custom made with a screen shot of actual fans from your Facebook Fan Page, and designed to resemble the actual “Fan Page Box” that Facebook provides as a widget.

The Take A Way

Having a Facebook Fan Page for yourself, your business, and your organization is a powerful way to engage fans and interact on a personal level.  The interaction that is generated on Facebook Fan Pages is invaluable to the marketing and exposure of your Facebook Fan Page due to the viral marketing effort of Facebook.

Remember that you need at least 25 fans to create a custom username and URL for your page.  But once you hit 25, make sure you get in there and pick up a custom.

—–

Finally, if you are interested in having us create a Facebook Fan Page that you can add onto your Facebook Profile and promote your Fan Page to your Facebook friends, then let me know in the comments below

I’ve previously written a couple of articles here about Facebook, such as the controversial method on how to view private Facebook profiles, or how to email mobile photos to your Facebook account. However, in addition to those tips, there are other codes and features that aren’t immediately obvious to most users – so I wanted to provide a list of the top 6 of my favorite Facebook “hack” codes and tips to other Facebook enthusiasts out there.

#1 – The Konami Code Lens Flare Hack

This is a rather silly hack, but if you’re visiting friends who may not be very computer savvy – this is a very easy way to impress them with your hacking skills. Borrow their computer (or bring your laptop), log into your Facebook account, and then on the computer keyboard just type the following key sequence of arrows and letters exactly: UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT-RIGHT-B-A-<Enter>

Then, click around on your Facebook page, or scroll up and down the page (this seems to work best), and you’ll discover a pretty cool display of lens flare effects.

Oddly, the effect isn’t horribly annoying because it disappears pretty quickly when you really need it to. It isn’t the most impressive hack though, because it’s probably the most common one mentioned across the net – but it’s still kind of cool and fun to play around with.

#2 – Aye, Make Yer Profile a Pirate’s Page You Landlubber!

The second profile hack is also one of the easiest to implement. Facebook offers users the ability to transform their Facebook pages into any language that they like. If you scroll down to the lower left corner of your profile page, you’ll see your current language setting. Click on this, and you’ll have a list of all languages available to you. Notice the English Pirate option?

Ahoy matey – yer now a Cap’n! Now as you go through your profile page you’ll notice some pretty hilarious pirate variations.

Now, the wall is the Plank, your profile is the Cap’n’s Log, and you can now either click a post as pleasin’ to me eye (like) or blabber t’yer mates (comment).  It certainly removes the “boring” factor from your old standard Facebook pages.

#3 – Upside Down Status Updates

If you’ve been on Facebook long enough, you’ve probably noticed a few people posting upside down status updates. They sure do think they’re clever don’t they?!  Yes, you too can be the envy of all of your friends and family by posting your updates so that people have to look silly by tilting their heads upside down so they can read it.

Most of the people you’ve seen doing this have likely installed a Facebook app just to do so. However, I dislike installing apps because you always have to provide permissions to those applications to access your profile. A better approach is to use the free online application at FlipText to generate your upside down status update.

Simply copy the upside down text from the lower text box, paste it into your Facebook status box and post!

#4 – Download Complete Photo Collections From Your Friends’ Profiles

If you have a lot of friends on Facebook, you may not have the time to keep up with all of the new family photos they’ve posted – but you are very interested in them and would love to have them stored in your own private photo collection to review later. Well, thanks to a very cool FireFox plug-in called FacePAD, you can do just that. The add-on is awesome, and I would recommend that anyone with the resources to do so should send in a contribution to Arthur Sabintsev for his efforts.

After you install the FacePad plug-in, make sure you select Tools->Add-Ons, and configure the options for FacePad so it has your correct Facebook language. Then, all you have to do is go to your friend’s photo albums, right-click on the title and select “Download Album With FacePAD.”  That’s right, you’re not downloading a single picture – but an entire album.

Once you do, FacePad downloads every single image within that album into the download folder you’ve configured in FireFox. Don’t forget to organize all of those photos using JetPhoto, as recommended earlier by Jeffry.

#5 – Schedule Facebook Status Updates With Sendible

Do you like to keep your Facebook profile active, but you’re coming down with a cold and may be offline for a few days?  Maybe you’re taking a trip and won’t be anywhere near a computer for a week. Or maybe you’ll be playing hooky from work and traveling, but you want your colleagues and boss to think you’re stuck at home sick. Accomplish any of these wishes by using Sendible to schedule your Facebook status updates. This is an application Daniel covered earlier, so check out his article for more details.

But for Facebook specifically, once you sign up with Sendible, just click on Facebook and provide your Facebook login details. Sendible connects directly with your Facebook account. The, under “New Messages” click on “Status Updates“.

On the next page you can schedule out as many updates as you’d like! This service is awesome – and you can distribute scheduled updates to a number of social networks including MySpace, Blogger, Twitter and more.

#6 – Hide Your Online Status From Certain People

Look, don’t feel bad about it. When I first joined Facebook I left my online status wide open. After a couple of weeks of getting inundated with nonstop chat requests, I simply turned off my online status completely. Problem solved. Except, there really were certain people I wouldn’t mind hearing from – is it really fair for a few chatterbox buddies to ruin your chances for communicating with everyone? Well, there is a way for you to selectively block your online status from certain people.

All you have to do is open up your chat icon in the lower right corner of your Facebook display, click on Friend Lists, and create a new list called “BlockList.” Make sure after you create it that it’s configured under “Display these lists in Chat.”

Now, all you have to do is either click “edit” and add the friends you want to block, or if they’re already online, just click their name and drag them under this new list. Once you’ve got everyone there who you want to block from see your online status, hover your mouse over the green dot to the right and click on “Go Offline.” Now, you appear offline to only those certain friends.

Facebook, unlike MySpace, is not really easy to tweak – which is actually a good thing. Gone are the days of those horrid eye-bleeding pages with pink flashing backgrounds and instant music that you can’t turn off. However, the tweaks and plug-ins in the list above offer at least a few ways to customize your Facebook account and usage to suit your life and your personality.

How do you use Facebook? Are there any hacks or add-ons not offered here that you especially like to use? Share them in the comments section below!