About Gunnar Engblom

Gunnar Engblom was born in Sweden and lives in Peru. He is a birder, runner, post-punkrocker and blogger and he is especially keen on social media for birders. Gunnar Engblom organizes birding tours in Peru and the Neotropics with Kolibri Expeditions. Gunnar is passionate about new Peru tours that support community based ecotourism and conservation and has initiated several project this way. In October 2010 Gunnar started a multi-author blog - birdingblogs.com - which fast has become one of the most popular blogs for birders.

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How to add birders from all over the world as friends on Facebook.

Birding Facebook Friends on-line!

Birding Facebook Friends on-line!

On the last delivery of Social Media for Birders we dealt with Facebook Groups. The reactions to the post on my Facebook profile (no comments on the actual post so far, please leave your comments!), was that Facebook groups are quite lame.

  • They are impossible to follow effectively, as one has to enter the group to see if anything new has been posted. (Although the Group tab on in the left column in Home mode somewhat helps if you are member of few groups, since new photos and links will have alerts).
  • Many groups have large number of members. Facebook Birders for instance have around 4350 members. Yet, there is very sparse activity often several days pass without posts.
  • Apart from proper photo and link sharing, there are re-ocurring self-promoting spammy posts, links, uploaded videos and photos that give little value to the group.
  • The groups don’t invite to engagement in the present form.

But what if we became Facebook friends with all those 4350 minus the 50 people or so that are obnoxious spammers. Then everything they post would show in the NewsFeed and it would be easier to engage on the topics that interest you.  This fact convinced me that the best way to connect with other birders on Facebook is to collect birding Friends. This is the topic of today’s post.

Every birder could have 5000 birding friends on Facebook.

Facebook has, more than any other non-niche social media present, the potential to interconnect millions of birders worldwide.  We are far from there of course. Looking at the most popular groups for birders and bird photographers there may be at the most 10000 birders on Facebook presently (beginning of 2010).  The numbers of new birders signing on increase every day and it will not take long before the majority of the birders will have a Facebook account.
In contrast to Groups and Pages that allow unlimited number of members or fans, 5000 friends is the max you are allowed to have on your profile.  Here is why collecting birding friends to your Facebook Profile makes sense.

  • Profile becomes like a Facebook group but with much better connectivity. Profile is more inviting to engage, because there is a real person not a brand who is speaking, compared to Pages.
  • Connect with birding celebrities. Most of your birding heroes that are on Facebook still don’t have 5000 friends. Wouldn’t it be great to have the guy that wrote the field guide you are using as your friend on Facebook?
  • Easy to get identification advice from more experience birders. There are always birders who know better than oneself.
  • Local assistance when travel for birds all over the world. Cheaper and better birding trip. I have friends in India, Thailand, Taiwan, China, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Colombia and South Africa etc.  Guess who I will be asking for advice when I will travel to these countries.
  • You can find partners to go on a birding trip. If you deal with a local birding outfitter, you can use your network to find other birders to share costs with you. Save thousands of dollars compared to a birding trip with the big birding company!
  • Instant reviews and recommendations when you want to buy optics, cameras, gadgets or bird books.
  • Great, fast network for bird conservation campaigns. Conservation minded birders and nature lovers will become more connected than ever for urgent actions. ProAct campaigns will become extremely powerful in the interconnected community.
  • If you have a blog or a bird photo web-page you want visitos to, 5000 birding friends on Facebook would mean more visitors to your page.
  • If your business is birding related…..well obviously 5000 birding friends is not bad, as you will be able to engage with potential customers. Just don’t be a jerk shoving your products down their throats. Business have to learn, that in the Social Media room you don’t try to hard to sell, but instead try to be their for the community. The more you give and share, the more friends, supporters and good karma you get. In the end it will come back to you!

How to get 5000 birding friends on Facebook in five steps.

These are the different strategies I have used. I am still half way from the maximum.  It takes time to build friends and it is not an overnight thing. One little observation – The number is not so important. It is what you do with your friends that is important. You have to nourish your friends. More about that later. If you have a mixed account with birders and non-birder friends you could organize all your friends in lists. Then when you do updates, you can choose if you want everyone to see the updates or just certain lists.

1. Invite those people you already email.

In the right column two sections from the top, there is a blue “Find Friends” button which you click. If you use Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo it is quite easy to let Facebook search for the people you have email at one time or another. You have to give permission to do so, but it really no security risk to do so as you are not giving your password to Facebook, but rather the mail provider holds the password, but gives permission to Facebook to make an automatic search.

WARNING. When this is done a new page pops up with all the emails of your contacts that yet don’t have a Facebook account. DON’T SEND THIS INVITATION.  You would be sending invitations to a bunch of people you may not know well, as well as to all listservers you are subscribed to. When testing the “Find Friends” function I accidently pressed the wrong button, and later got a very angry mail from a birder I don’t know, and had to apologize to a few birding lists I am on. Save yourself the embarrassement.  Only send invitation to people still not on Facebook that you really know well. And a part from sending the impersonal invitation, also hit your friend with a regular email explaining what it is all about and what you like about Facebook.

2. Facebook want you to connect with others!

Contrary to what Facebook was in the beginning, a network of close friends, it has not grown to become a more open network, where you also interact with people you don’t know well, but maybe share an interest or a hobby with.

How to invite more friends to Facebook

How to invite more friends to Facebook

This is how you go about:

  1. Make sure you are in the home mode, and look at the right bar.
  2. You may already have some friend request. I open 10 at the time holding down Ctrl so each open in a new tap in the browser. You want to make sure that the person requesting to become friends with you shares your interest.  So do check them out. If I accept I usually leave a note on the note on the new friends note thanking for the friend request. But don’t spam your new friend’s wall with self-promoting links
  3. Facebook also make suggestions. In general I don’t except brands as friends. They should have a fan-page instead. The smart way for businesses is to become profile friends first because of the shared interest (in this case birding) and the later gain a fan to the page once there is a relationship.
  4. Open each suggestion to see who is behind it and what interest you share. Sometimes it will be hard to know if privacy settings are high, but if your share many friends this is a good indication that the suggested person is also a birder.
  5. Always include a message with the request. Below is my standard note. I manually alter the first name, so it becomes somewhat personal and add my name at the bottom. I also include the person into lists. I have a general list for birders and other lists from the country or region of the friend.
Always send a message when your send a friend request on Facebook

Always send a message when your send a friend request on Facebook

3. Search groups and pages for more friends

When you have run out of suggestions from Facebook, you could actively start looking for friends on groups, pages and check out your friends of your friends. This will be the fastest way to increase your friend number. Just click on See all on members, fans or friends and you get a pop-up that looks something like this:

Add as Friend on Facebook

Add as Friend on Facebook

I don’t send friend request right away, but open each profile that is not yet friend with me (again with Ctrl pressed to open several at once). I send requests to those birders that share a few friends with me and that are obviously birders. Look at quality, rather than quantity.

4. Don’t be an ass on Facebook

  • It is better to send invitations to birders that already have a lot of friends in common with you than totally new birders with only a handful of friends. New Facebook birders who don’t know you, may still not understand why he/she should want to become friends with a total stranger.
  • If you send requests to a lot of people at once, it may happen that Facebook registers your activity and will send you a note questioning your activity. You will want to slow down on the speed you are adding more friends. Remember, you also have to nourish the new friends. Some will write you and you need time to answer.
  • Don’t spam the wall of your friends with self-promotion.
  • Stay away from apps….they spam the walls of your friends. Don’t send virtual flowers, wine, beer and kisses etc. If you absolutely have to post a picture on someone’s wall for a birthday or Christmas, let if be one of your own pictures.
  • Some people on Facebook, may not want to become friends with you. Respect that! (Note in the WARNING above that I totally blew it with my accidental Facebook invitation to my entire email list of email contacts! Anyone  of the receivers reading this, please accept my apologies)

5. Keep and nourish your friends.

Here are a few tips how to nourish your friends. There is no point in having 5000 friends if you don’t make an effort to be there for them.

  • Check your Most Recent Live Feed often (in Home mode). Also make sure to click Edit Options at the bottom of that page to set your number of friends to 5000. If not only feeds of  250 friends chosen by Facebook will show in Most Recent. You want to see all here.
  • Make a list of the friends that comment and like your posts. They have seen you, and you want to keep on engaging and build a relationship with those that care about you.
    Here is how to make a customized feed. Open two parallel pages. One with you profile, so you can see who has commented or like you posts, and the other one after clicking friends in the left column in Home mode, at the top you will see Create List. Then keep selecting those that comment on your page.
  • Use NutshellMail to get daily (or maybe several daily) summaries of your Facebook activity. Here you can select certain lists you want to monitor. It is a way to fast overview your Facebook. Facebook can be a time sink. This way you can turn it off, and come back to it at a certain hour.
  • Always send a birthday wish to your friends and include his/her first name. This means at least once a year you are actively connecting with your friend. It does not have to be elaborate. It does not even have to be on time. The important thing is that it is sent. Nutshell mail also helps you remembering the birthdays.
  • Remember the Social Media mantra. Listen. Engage. Share. Simple rules to live by.

Homework

  • Quite obvious. Make some more friends on Facebook!
  • Your tips how to nourish your friends? Comments below, please!.
  • Your tips how to not be an Ass on FB? Comments below, please!
  • You still have not let me know what your favorite Facebook groups are in the last post? Let me know!

Previous posts in Social Media for birders

If you still have not signed up for the workshop, which will give you an email notice when there is a new post, please do so below. It is not too late. there are still 25 posts to go! Set up a folder in your mail program to which you import each delivery to have it handy for future reference.

Photos by license of creative commons:  Linda Tanner (Starlings at Dusk)

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Facebook groups. Everyone use them, but few people engage.

Take control of your Facebook groups now! What are your top 20 Facebook groups?

Take control of your Facebook groups now! What are your top 20 Facebook groups?

Sorry for the delay in this post….I have enjoyed family holiday in Colombia…and while most of this text was ready for quite some time, I only found time to post it today. You shall receive much more frequent posts in the series the coming days.  In the last installment we talked about sharing on Facebook and prior to that about Facebook Pages. Check out these posts, where the comment section is still open for you to take part in the discussion.

Today, we shall look at Facebook groups. Are they useful?

Do you recognize this?

You get a group request. You accept. And for a few days there is some activity. But very soon there is hardly any activity and less interesting discussions. Or the group is spammed with off topic items from annoying self-promoters. Very soon you notice that all the groups on birds you have signed up to contain exactly the same links, the same videos and the same photos.
Part of the problem is that most Facebook users have signed up to too many groups, which  makes it impossible to follow the groups whenever there are uploads and changes. The other major problem is that the owners/admin of the groups often allow off-topic and self promoting garbage.

Take control of your favorite Facebook groups.

Here is the strategy to take control over your groups.
  1. Ignore most group requests you get. In fact I just ignored 147 group invitations.
  2. Limit to 20 groups maximum at one time. That way when you open the Facebook Groups link you can see all the updates that have occurred in groups at the same time.
  3. If you admin a group, be merciless I deleting off topic and spam posts. Also take time to write the poster. Often the “offence” is not done on purpose, just that the offender may not be on top on good practices on Facebook or has not understood the purpose of the group. For example if someone posts a Heron on a Shorebird group, group owner would naturally erase it, but the poster may be a newbie on birding, and not yet grasped that with the term “shorebird” we only include Stints, Plovers and Sandpipers, etc and that Heron in spite being found at the water edge in shallow water do not count as Shorebirds. Not sending a note explaining this, would be quite arrogant and scare off a novice birder.
  4. Complain on the group wall or directly to the owner of the group when you see irrelevant stuff.
  5. Post regularly on each group you belong to. If there is no activity it is partly your fault.

Start a group.

The advantage of the group compared to Pages is that you may send group messages directly to the members of the group. This feature is often miss-used by the administrator. Only use this function when there are specific very important announcements to be made.
It is easy to start a group and then send invitations to join to your friends. If your friends like the group, you shall see that they also invite their friends and soon it can become viral.

Birders Facebook groups Top 20.

In order to kick extra live in the best Facebook groups for birders I thought it would be a good exercise to let the readers decide which are the best groups.  You name the top 10 groups you belong to ranking them 1-10. I shall collect the results and put them into a spread sheet and add up the scores with 10 points for number one, 9 points for number 2, 8 points for number 3 etc. I hope to get at least 30 lists from which I will compile a top 20 list posted in the next blog post.
This will both stimulate more people to check out these groups as well as participating. It will also be a timeless promotion for the same groups as they will appear on a top 20 list on a searchable blog which is indexed by search engines. Also make sure that they are groups and not pages.
Come back to this post in a couple of days to see what the best groups for birders are.

Homework

  • Delete groups that are inactive or excessively spammy
  • Write the admin and complain about spammy content
  • Don’t forget. Let me know in the comments below which are your 10 favorite groups about birding on Facebook. Results shall be posted here.
  • Nurish the groups you like. I am sure you have some photo or link you can share.
  • Last post’s survey was not working.  I have  changed to a doodle survey. It is full of google ads (not mine of course, but which finance the free service from Doodle), but it is free.  Is birding your job or your business?

If you still have not signed up for the workshop, which will give you an email notice when there is a new post, please do so below. Set up a folder in your mail program to which you import each delivery to have it handy for future reference. I promise the next deliveries will be more frequent.

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Sharing stuff on Facebook.

Sharing

In the last post we talked about Facebook pages and how it is useful to have a Facebook page if you have birdwatching business, run a birdclub or have a birding blog you want to promote. Today, it is all about sharing on Facebook. How do you share your own stuff in the best way? And should you not also be sharing stuff of your Facebook Friends? Social media works with altruistic magic. The more you give (share) the more you receive! And I am not talking about virtual flowers and virtual wine, but sharing useful stuff and things you think others will enjoy, and you shall see that your Facebook friends willingly share also your own stuff. Interestingly, and something to think about in your own facebooking, the number one strategy that social media gurus such as Chris Brogan talk about for businesses to be successful using social media as a marketing tool, is providing value for others. That value should be beyond the product/service the company sells. Rather than tooting your own horn the whole time trying to sell, sell, sell, sell – you share for free. The same model that got Facebook and Twitter started. It is free. It is still free, but now they have gained our trust and they can start monetize. This strategy comes in handy even if you are not planning to sell anything. If you provide value for others, you will see that you practically can count on receiving assistance when you need it. Should your birding eventually become a business rather than just hobby, the social network of birders you have built up may actually be the key to your success.

(This is an interesting topic. How many of my readers have a birding related business? How many plan to eventually make birding also your job? Click here to take survey)

Today we look at a few tools, such as Status updates, Notes and Networked blogs we have for sharing on Facebook. Finally, a call for a birders link-sharing club.

Status updates sharing options.

Status updates comes with the option to also link to a webpage, a photo or a video. This is your main way of sharing your own stuff and a simple way to share stuff of others. It is straightforward when it comes to sharing external links. In a way it is similar to sharing links on Twitter. Sharing on Facebook is very effective because it comes with a photo and a short text sample, plus often a personal comment from the linker that is not restricted to 140 characters (although Power Twitter plugin for Firefox does a similar job). Strangely, enough birders are not linking as much as they could on Facebook, which brings us to the question:

What to share?

  • Birding news from near and a far.
  • Birding events – both as the facebook events function or a link to the event itself
  • Your Facebook friends shared items, be that regular links or one of their photos that you admire.
  • Birding blog posts you enjoy.
  • Photo albums with birds on Flickr and pBase you liked.
  • Good trip reports

Also share non birding stuff that reflects your personal taste in moderate portions, such as:

  • Music videos from You Tube. I have somewhat strange taste of music since I like both punk, hip-hop, Frank Zappa and Elvis Presley. I often share my music at 2 AM, with a warning that it may contain foul language. Remember small portions of shared music. Your Facebook wall should not become a jukebox
  • Funny videos from You Tube. Most people like a good laugh. Again small portions is best.
  • Good social media links. OK. That is me because I enjoy social media posts. Some are more useful than others for my birding friends and can thus be shared.
  • Causes. There are causes that can need some more mouth to mouth activity. Challange your friends to match a donation for a good cause.

A blog on Facebook = Facebook Notes

Contrary to what you may think, there are other uses of Facebook notes, than annoying your friends with 20 things about me, your bucket lists, and tagging photos. The main feature of Facebook Notes is to use it as a blog, which was the original purpose. It is very easy to use. If you are not a blogger yet Facebook notes is a way to get started. Here is a short test post about Lomas de Lachay I did to try it out. The drawback is that it cannot be seen unless one logs in on FB, even if you leave all permissions free.

RSS feed to Facebook Notes.

Another interesting function of Notes is that you can import an RSS feed to Notes. The idea is that you could feed your existing blog into Notes, so that it becomes published on your wall. However, as many other bloggers, I use the application Networked Blogs, which does the same thing and has better sharing options. This leaves the feed open for other uses. I tried to make a custom feed containing the blogs of some of my favorites but it did not work that well, as it did not mention the name of each blog, making it appear as if I was the author. I consequently erased my test posts. My apologies if I offended anyone. Currently, there seems to be no way to automatically feed blogs of others to your own wall. If I am mistaken let me know.

For the Birding Peru page I recently created an import a feed from the Birding Peru Yahoo listserver, which immediately creates relevant content to the page and invites non-listmembers, to take part in the discussions. For my company Facebook page I import a feed containing news and new trips published on our main webpage.

Networked Blogs

Lots of bird bloggers use Networked Blogs to share their blog on Facebook. I have the application feed my blog automatically to Kolibri Expeditions’s Facebook Page and I can manually broadcast via Networked Blogs to my Profile wall.

Advantages:

  • Community of blogging birders. OK, the community is not very active, as it is not as effective as it could be. It is easy forget to look at and interact with the blogs that you have chosen to follow.
  • You can find blogs to follow by doing a search and other birders may find yours.
  • Networked Blogs creates a feed containing the blogs you follow which is displayed in the left sidebar of your Facebook home. Be sure to move the Networked Blog feed higher so you don’t forget to look at often.
  • Good sharing options with also Twitter included.
  • Invite your Facebook friends to become readers of your blog. You can invite 20 friends per day. I use a standard invitation such as this:

There’s absolutely no commitment involved by following my blog. I follow 110 blogs on NetworkedBLogs and never get any direct mail notes. Receiving this, you’ll hopefully check my blog and find it interesting, and show your support if you follow! Thx

  • You can pay for the service to be able to broadcast your blog directly to your Facebook friends, a function to be handled with care, but may be useful for the future. As for now, I only use the basic function, which leaves my whole Page function free for other use.

Sharing your blog – How often can I share?

I think one may get away with linking three times on Facebook to the same blogpost, as long as you also share other stuff, and add something every time you link again. This works for me.

  1. Status update. When I have finished the blogpost I post immediately with a short URL from https://bit.ly. I always try to think of an eye-catching title and comment. The link will open up anyway, but to get the text in the status update feed, you need to close the link.
  2. Link. After I posted I go back to see if there are any updates that need to be done. There may be comments, that should warrant some changes or there could be an interest discussion going on that can be referred to. I also check to see that the excerpt for the blog that will be pulled by Facebook is concise and on topic. My blog posts are often published in the middle of the night at first, so I try to repost the link in the morning the following day, when hopefully more people are on line. Between the Status update and the link, I should have linked to other interesting stuff, so it does not appear that I am only blowing my own horn. I also change my status update. The nice thing about Link, is that one gets to chose which photo to illustrate the excerpt with. I find a bit annoying that the full URL does not show or at least the title of the blogpost in the link. I most often only sea my company root URL, where my blog is housed. If anyone know how this can be tweaked let us know.
  3. Networked Blogs. About an hour or so, Networked Blogs automatically send my blog to the Facebook page of Kolibri Expeditions (check Page settings how to do this –let me know if you need help). Therefore, 32 hours later (24h +8h), it makes sense to post once again, if there are comments here. Also, there is a prompt when you open networked blogs that suggests you to publish. Here you can’t make an additional intro comment and the photo is already fixed. However, the app shows the name of the post and the ongoing discussion. Again between the link and networked blogs there should be various other links and updates.

Birders link sharing club.

A couple of weeks ago I explained in a blog post how to make a customized Feed to replace the default  NewsFeed (selected content by FB) and the Live feed (the wall feed from all your friends combined). Check this post because it tells you how to make lists. UPDATE: Unfortunately, with the new Facebook lay-out it is not possible to customize the feed at home more than selecting which friends should show in the live feed. This is done at the bottom of the page at your Home. You may wobble between Top News and Most Recent. Make sure you select More Recent and scroll down to the end of the page. The default is showing only 500 of your friends. You may set this to show all friends (up to 5000) or select only the ones you want to show.
I recommend the former and instead create a special group of friends you want to follow closer. Why not make a club – a feed of people following this Social Media Workshop. State your Facebook URL below. Each of us invite each person and create a new feed containing Social Media birders. Click on Friends on the left column in Home and Create a list (on to). Make to monitor list frequently. You may also subscribe to the links of each through RSS (with for example Google Reader), but then you will need not to forget to check the RSS feed.

When you see an interesting link use the share button to share with all your Facebook friends. Be sure to share blogposts of the Social Media Workshop participants that you like. Both your friends and the blogger will be grateful.

Facebook sharing birders Friend List.

I am adding the Facebook profile links to the birders that comment to this article as well as the previous deliveries. I suggest you befriend each one – send an invitation, and don’t forget to mention that you saw their name here, so they know what it is about.,

  1. https://www.facebook.com/gunnar.engblom
  2. https://www.facebook.com/DawnFine
  3. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1068613170 Brian Allen
  4. https://www.facebook.com/amv2010 Alyssa Strouse
  5. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000356912263 Andrew Thelander
  6. https://www.facebook.com/fabian.ducry
  7. https://www.facebook.com/wlynch83 Bill Lynch
  8. https://www.facebook.com/jbcbirder J.B. Churchill
  9. https://www.facebook.com/shilfiell Kimberly Sucy
  10. https://www.facebook.com/steve.happ
  11. https://facebook.com/sbcjr Steve Corbett
  12. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000624055424 Catherine Lewis
  13. https://www.facebook.com/jbwaugaman John Waugaman
  14. https://www.facebook.com//profile.php?id=100000703937608 Peggy Henderson Williams
  15. https://www.facebook.com/mwridgway Matthew Wridgway
  16. https://www.facebook.com/rripma Rob Ripma
  17. https://www.facebook.com/susan.hedman
  18. Your Facebook profile HERE.

Homework mentioned in the text.

  • Click here to take survey Is your birding your job or your business?
  • Use the Note-function of Facebook either as a blog or to import some stuff.
  • Enter your blog to Networked Blogs
  • Subscribe to a number of birding blogs
  • Place your Facebook url in the comment section.
  • Send friend request to all the birders that put their info there.

Last, but not least, here are the results of the previous survey. All 28 that answered the survey are on Facebook. On the other hand, those that are not on Facebook, possibly did not read the post anyway. I am surprised to see relatively large percentage do have both Twitter account and blog, but as I expected many are a bit inactive. It is revealing to see that there are many people who have Flickr accounts, but few people who actually use it much. Very few use social bookmarking. Is this because we can’t understand the benefits of it or because it is somewhat complicated? Nobody uses Reddit, why I didn’t bother to display the result. Click on the image below to see a larger picture.
Survey_Social_Media_use

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