Facebook

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Fake Facebook profiles

Faked Profiles

Faked Banksy Faked profileOne of the things I have picked up as good practice as a blogger is to try to give suggestions that will solve someone’s problems. This is such a post. I am not intending to point fingers and make this into a rant -which certainly struck me as a possibility – but to try to suggest a solution to an increasingly annoying problem. Please share this post as you feel necessary.

New Facebook Community Pages

I started two new Facebook Community Pages a few days ago. One for Worldbirders and one about SocialMedia.  Community Pages are like a combination of groups and pages. Posts will show on the walls of the members and the page can be seen also by non-users just like pages, but one may promote a general topic as with groups as well as un-official fan-pages. The new concept was created to tackle pages that did not follow the guide-lines.  Once the pages grow to a certain size of a couple of  thousand members the original admin will lose the admin rights and the whole community will manage the page.

This is good news. The groups I have started have very strict rules regarding spam and self-promotion. Since they are open to all public they need to be heavily monitored. For the time being I have no problem doing the daily admin duties. The community can help in reporting the posts that are not following the rules. Advertising is generally not allowed.However, there is one thing that worries me which is the topic of this post.

UPADTE September 4, 2011: The new Facebook groups make community pages for small communities superfluous, as dialogues and updates are easier to monitor for both the admins as well as the group members. Read about the new groups here.

What to do with fake names?

There are a lot of profiles that have names that does not respond to a person’s real name. Most of the time, I think these names have been created not really understanding how Facebook works. When creating an account in Facebook you SHOULD use your own REAL  name and tie that to your email.  Fake names can be sorted into 3 categories.

  • Pseudonyms or alias. Most of the times, these are pretty harmless – and I don’t make a big fuss about it. Although, it would be nicer to know whom you are actually talking to. While it is allowed to use a pseudonym on Twitter it s not allowed on Facebook.
  • NGO:s and causes.  Most of the times due to having not understood well the Facebook structure. NGO:s and Causes do well to have proper pages.
  • Businesses.  Every tweet is in effect  advertising. Some users are using this as a strategy by posting on every single group about birds they can find.  It can become quite annoying and even though it give exposure, it also hurts the business as it upsets a lot of people. Business should have Facebook pages.

Advantages of Facebook page for businesses and NGO:s

  1. You can talk about your product 24/7 and you are expected to.  With your personal REAL profile you can take part in conversations  without looking like a spammer. Soon enough without being too obvious you will be the person behind the brand which in turn will give strenght to your brand if you come off as a nice, helping person.
  2. As a person you can send invitations to become fans of your page. If you have been engaging it is more likely people will become true fans.  Sure, it is a bit like friend invitations and you may not get as many fans as you have friends this way, but I would not worry too much about that. As for your fanbase you want to have real fans. Among the Facebook Friends you can build relationships that indirectly supports your brand.
  3. There can be several people as admin for a Page.  It shall be much easier to create content on your fanpage if there are various people on your team involved.
  4. With a Page you can advertise. It is remarkably cheap to advertise to specific age groups with specific interest in specific geographic areas. I have had around 100 000 impressions for only 20 dollars in a recent campaign.
  5. The Page will be 100% searchable by search engines.  The Facebook page for my company now has Google Page Rank 5 after 6 months!
  6. You can customize the looks of your page. UPDATE: Facebook now use iframes which are much easier to use than the old FBML code. See this link for some tips. Also check this post from John Haydon about custom tabs.
  7. You can add a widget of your fanpage to your blog or your web-page. That is pretty cool.

Is it too late now to start a new Page?

Actually, it is not. It is very easy. Four steps

  1. Just enter https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and follow the instructions.
  2. Make sure to send invitations to all your friends by the Suggest to Friends link under the profile picture in the newly created Page.
  3. Change the name on the profile to your real name. I am not sure this option was there before, but it is now.  Just enter Account top right and Account settings – then edit your name. As easy as that!
  4. You should also send a direct message to all your friends explaining what you are doing. You can only send to 20 people at a time so it may take you a while. You can naturally also post on your wall which hopefully your friends will see.

In the end you win big time this way, not only have you created a Facebook page for your company, but you also give a face to your company. A real person your clients and supporters can relate to.

More about Pages can be found on this recent post in the Social Media for birders series.

Image by Streetart
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25 improvements suggested to Facebook.

25 things to make Facebook better

Dear Facebook,

There are at least 25 improvements we would like to suggest to Facebook. While we are happy users, there are still small annoying limitations that could be improved.

  1. Group Feed. In spite that there are millions of groups and the average user belongs to several dozens of groups, there is yet no effective way to monitor the groups. A group feed of the groups you belong to would take care part of the problem.
  2. Add friends to your different lists while looking at their profiles.
  3. Custom feed when opening Home. Before the change in which Home opens with Top News with the ability to wobble to Most Recent, I could have the feed of selected friends show when opening Facebook.
  4. Download the emails of your friends
  5. Possible to write more than 20 friends at the time.
  6. Send a friend request to fans of pages you manage
  7. Send friend requests to members of groups that you manage
  8. Upload sound files that would play on your Page.
  9. See Friends Status in a list, which also include the hidden friends.
  10. Able to edit lists of friends in Home as well as in Profile.
  11. A filter to be able to hide texts like ‘X became a fan of Y’ or ‘X became friend of Y’ or ‘X joined to group of Y.
  12. Search for your friends in geographic area and then a function to select all to add to a list or create a new list.
  13. Send personal event invites to all of your friends at once w/o receiving a SPAM warning.
  14. Option to comment like yourself to your fan page. So when I comment to Kolibri Expeditions Fan page, it will show as Gunnar Engblom is commenting (or other admin person) rather than the long SEO optimized Kolibri Expeditions Birdwatching Tours – Birding Peru.
  15. Search function for your own wall and for home feed for keywords on topics that interest me as well as being able to find stuff that you enjoyed in the past.
  16. Taking this search engine further with multi-level search for example categories, friends or not, country, etc
  17. Better analytics for Facebook Pages.
  18. In Peru availability to advertise by cities and nearby, just as you can in other countries.
  19. Polls built within Facebook, not as an app people need to accept for it to be able to work.
  20. Commenting with video within FriendFeed and Google Buzz.
  21. Drag and drop for images, files and videos.
  22. Voice and Video Chat not only text
  23. Searchable Chat like on Messenger and Skype
  24. To be able to see Fans in alphabetic orders, not only in the order they signed up.
  25. Your suggestion! Please leave comment below. Which should be the 25th improvement that could be done to Facebook?

Sincerely

300 million Facebook users all over the world

Share

If you help Retweet, share on Facebook and Google Buzz and use all sorts of bookmarking services such as Digg, Stumble Upon and Delicious, maybe before we know it, Facebook will notice and listen. Just use the various button below . Thanks!

Thanks to Janet Zinn, Gyorgy Szimuly, Jill Routh Rucker, Debbie Blair and especially Daniel Falcon for helping me coming up with so many suggestions on how Facebook could become better.  Also thanks to Grahame Boath, Kim Allen, Peter Gustas, Cathy McArthur and Chris West for additional discussion.

Photo from Flicker by Creative Commons license by Joe M500.
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Every birder should have 5000 birding friends on Facebook. Day 6. Social Media for birders.

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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Day 5. Facebook groups. Social Media for birders

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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Day 4. Sharing on Facebook. Social Media for Birders

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

If you still have not signed up for this workshop you may do so here:

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Day 3. Social Media for birders. Facebook Pages

If you have a blog pseudonym or a birding related business or non-profit you need a Facebook Page!

Facebook

Before jumping into today’s post and before we get more advanced, it would be great to learn something about your experience with social media. I put together this little survey. Click here to take survey. It couldn’t be easier. A couple yes or no questions. (Update Feb 25, 2010: Survey closed. Thanks for participating. The results are presented in in Day 4. )  But it will show me where you are on the Social Media ladder. Also, I would like to know what issues you want raised on the workshop. Nothing is written in stone. I have set 31 titles of the workshop, but the content can still be adjusted the way we want it. In fact I can even change the titles if necessary…so apart from today’s task, also fill in the survey and leave comments in the DisQus section below what you think should be treated in the workshop. Now over to today’s topic: Facebook Pages.

In the previous post I discussed the  Facebook profile and made quite a case that you should not use an acronym or company name  for your profile name.  Erik Hirschfeld made an interesting comment on that post that it may be a bit uncomfortable actually to have a birding company as a friend rather than a person, as every time that person posts on your wall, it looks like advertising for a business you in real life know little of. If you screwed up when signing up for Facebook, there is still hope. See below how to do it.

I made very recently a post about Profile, Pages and groups on Facebook on my blog. You should have a look at this before you proceed here, especially the part on pages. We shall treat groups in a later post, as well as how to manage lists. In spite of that post there are still more things to say about Pages.

You get your page on https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. Pages are reserved for organizations, companies or people, such as musicians and artists, that need a public profile on Facebook. Contrary to your  Facebook profile and groups, you don’t have to be logged in to see the content on a Facebook page. In this sense a Facebook page could work as well as, if not better than, a blog or a web-page.   If you have a blog pseudonym, a birding related company or if you work as a bird guide, or if you are just incredibly vain you should get a fan page.

Advantages.

  • Searchable on search engines such as Google
  • 350 million users of Facebook.
  • It is easy to invite Facebook friends to your Fanpage on Facebook.
  • You can make a great Facebook widget to show on your blog and your web-site
  • With only 25 Fans you can get a vanity URL with your company name, slogan or keywords.
  • Viral marketing. Every time you can get someone to interact with you on your page it is reflected on their wall with a note that they have commented on your page. That doesn’t happen when someone visit your blog or web-page. Or even better they have the opportunity to share your content. Any business that does not have a Facebook page is loosing out.
  • Can be managed by more than one person

Disadvantages

  • You can’t invite you fans to an event. When trying to send invitation only your profile friends show up.
  • When you message all your fans about an event or something else it does not come to their inbox, but rather in the updates, which is less intrusive…but then again maybe a bit too obscure.
  • If you don’t have a brand or a smart blog name, it shall look a bit odd to have a proper fan page for John Smith who maybe only has 39 friends on Facebook. Best to build up friends on Facebook first (remember to set your privacy levels a way that is comfortable for you).

It shows that it actually relatively difficult to communicate with your fans directly. These disadvantages are bound to change….and it is likely that there may be some pay for such a service.  I won’t go in deeper into what you can do with your page, as we are getting outside the realm for the regular birder and more towards needs for businesses. John Haydon is currently running a series on his blog called 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media. In this series there are some great tips for your Facebook Page.

I screwed up when I signed up for Facebook. I didn’t know this!

The basics says, you shall use your real name for profile, and your blog pseudonym or company name in a Facebook page. If you screwed up, you may want to consider to put it right, now.

This is what I would do!

  1. Create a Facebook (Fan) page from “fake” profile
  2. Post the new fanpage URL to  your wall so everyone knows what you are doing.
  3. Change you fake profile to your real name.
  4. Upload a picture of yourself to your real profile
  5. Send invitations to your current friends of  the now real profile to join your new page and explain why you do so.  Ask them to share relevant (non spam) stuff on your page wall. Ask them to interact. Ask them to invite their friends.
  6. Nourish your friends and your fans. Post, share and interact on both accounts.

If you already have a private profile in your own name, you can either kill the fake profile after you have invited all your friends from the fake profile to your private profile and the new page  or you can give the fake profile to a co-worker who still doesn’t have a Facebook account.

Congratulations. You now have a fan-page. If your business involve a few people, you can make some of your co-workers administrators as well. That way you share the burden of uploading new stuff.

By the way, I just did a little excersize and started a New Facebook Fanpage.

https://www.facebook.com/BirdingPeru/

for www.birdingperu.com which is a portal and database for birds in Peru.

And that is your excersize as well for today: Create a Facebook Page —-and invite all your friends.

UPDATE: Click the link for a more recent post about fake Facebook  profiles and Pages.

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.

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Day 2. Social Media for birders. Facebook essentials.

Get control of your Facebook and engage

Facebook_friends
In the last post we talked about how essentially birders are very social and have been using pre-social media for quite some time.  Today I want to help you get control over your Facebook. You are not on Facebook yet? No problem, how to sign up and get started in the small updated Facebook introduction that can be found here.
I have already justified why I think Facebook is essential in these previous posts. I want to explore how the Facebook experience can be more effective. Today, we shall treat the basics (long) and over serious of shorter post other Facebook functions, such as groups, pages, notes and how to get more friends. I mention some of my tricks here, but I am interested in hearing about yours. Please comment freely. Remember this is a workshop – not a course.

Facebook profile and setting of privacy

Can’t stress enough that this is the most important part of your Facebook. It determines if birders want to become friends with you or not. Facebook, has recently changed the policy, so that it is possible to keep various parts open for full view for everyone on the web, not only those on Facebook.  For example, now it is possible to show your wall openly.  Technically it also means that what is written on the wall can be indexed by search engines if you keep no walls to your walls. This is good if you have any business aspect of your Facebook, but maybe less good if you and your friends write all sort of private stuff on your walls, rather than sending closed messages. Also make sure that birders can contact you. Showing the email is no danger of getting more automated spam as it is an image your email shown. It can not be read by robots.

There are two major areas you should work in detail. First is the Info section in the Profile. Secondly, in Settings there is the Privacy Settings. In the latter you can for instance decide whom you want to share your photo albums with. I share for instance all my Bird photos with everyone, but keep my family photos private.  How do you keep your privacy settings? It is not sure what works for me works for you.

Checklist (update):

  • Photo. We really want to see what you look like. You may play around with your profile picture and change it as often as possible – and maybe once in a while put a bird there for a couple of days. But a picture of you on your page is really what works best in the long run. I also recommend you NOT to put your kids or your high-school photo here – if you are to connect with basically unknown birders around the world. Again, we like to know what you look like and it will help you be recognised by your Facebook birding friend if you run in to each other in live at a birding site.
  • Your real name. You should not have your company name as your Profile. For your company you should start a page. More on this in a later post. In fact,  not using you real name in your profile is against Facebook rules. Your competition may just report you and you’d lose your account.
  • Personalize your Facebook page with a Vanity URL. Would you not rather be www.facebook.com/Your.Name than a www.facebook.com/id?=234567812. Well, now you can and contrary to belief it is free. Check out https://www.facebook.com/username/
  • Check your privacy settings. Share your birdphoto folders with everyone and I recommend also sharing your profile pictures with everyone, but set the Thanksgivings dinner available only to your close friends and your family.

The Facebook time-sink

Facebook can evolve to totally dominate your daily activity if you don’t watch out. You need to take it in, in slices and control your time.

Here are some time saving tips.

  • Use a Timer to control how much time you spend on Facebook Set 30 minutes and don’t surpass that
  • Avoid re-checking Facebook every time you get a notification (serious distraction and time spender), by turning all notifications off (in Settings in the top bar) and subscribe to the Excellent free N utshellMail service.  You get one email delivered per day with the birthdays, comments, feed, etc and you may comment directly from the mail. The service also works for Twitter and MySpace.
  • If you are short of time, disconnect the chat function temporarily.  Good strategy to employ for several other chat options such as Skype and Messenger as well, if you are working with deadlines.
  • Get Facebook on your phone, so you can work away some stuff while on the bus, in the line, waiting at a red-light and yes, I admit it – in the bathroom!!!  iPhone seems to  have the most seamless function. I use Blackberry and it is not as useful since I turned off the mail notifications, but I often use the browser on Blackberry to do some Facebooking, which works reasonable well. What phones do you use? Discuss below to the benifit of those wanting a to buy a phone to use Facebook.
  • UPDATE: Throw out the television. I did this 20 years ago.

Facebook apps

I don’t know about you but I find virtual gifts and games showing in my feed or on my profile wall are extremely annoying. Fortunately, you can opt out.  Previously (and I don’t know if this is the case still with Farmville and Mafia Wars), one used to be able to opt from all by just drag the cursor over the right corner and you get the option to hide the person who sent the annoying stuff or hide/block the app itself Update: Now, only Delete is there – see below how to block apps now. I usually just blocked the app. If you hide your friends you may as well de-friend them. I used to send some messages to the people sending me the apps, but there was always a risk they thought I was being rude and not grateful of receiving their spam virtual gifts.  So just block, delete, and occasionally post some wall post such as:  For the record, I don’t play Mafia Wars, I don’t collect flowers or sea urchins, and I don’t accept virtual flowers nor virtual beers. But I tell you this,  next time we meet in real life, I’ll buy you a real beer!

I would have included a screen shot what to do, but I have been too effective getting rid of apps, I guess, so I could not find an example. For the matter of completeness, maybe one of the readers would be willing to help – for a link!

Recently just before Christmas new greetings with Blingee. It looked pretty innocent at first and they looked like OK greetings to receive as it was Christmas. But when the same people were sending the Blingees almost every day to my profile wall, it became too much. What was worse. They did not have the block option in the right corner. I got a bit desperate, but soon figured out that I could just enter the app page by clicking  the name of the app below and then block the app from the app page. This is a strategy that always will work. I am not sure if this is the case for all apps you want to get rid of, but it will remain the best way to deal individually with apps. Update: This is the way it done now for Mafia Wars and other notes in your Live Feed.

Anyway, Grandma Mary explains it well and she is kind of funny too (in small portions!!)

Facebook purityFinally, the most effective way to get rid of apps is using a greasemonkey script for Mozilla Firefox called Facebook Purity. This works well if you always work from the same machine and in Firefox, but if you often change computers, the above method of individually blocking apps as you see them works best.

Facebook engagement with birders

There is no point of having a bunch of Facebook friends if you don’t engage with them. Although, it is said Facebook is all about you, it is and should be more about your engagement with others. Having mentioned all the time saving tips, you should still spend considerable time engaging with birders on Facebook. Some ways to engage are faster than others.

  • Live and News Feed. Check what your friends are up to and comment. The fast way of commenting although, it is a bit impersonal is marking with “Like”,  but it is better than nothing at all. If you can, try to leave a short comment
  • Events invitations. Always reply with yes, no or maybe. And leave a comment. You comment is potentially seen by everyone that has been invited to the event, so make sure you are not commenting with nonsense. As there may be a lot of people invited, there is a good chance to engage with other birders. Even if you don’t plan to take part in the event, you may want to respond maybe, so the you can still monitor for replies on your comment. If you answer no, the event disappears from your event calendar. If you like the event, make sure you share it on your wall.
  • Birthdays show in the sidebar of  Home. Always wish a your Facebook friends happy birthday, even if you don’t know them well.  Open several tabs in your browser by holding Ctrl while clicking each you still have not greeted. Then write on the wall of that person. The simplest is just: Happy Birthday, Thomas!! or whatever name.. If you can add something more personal, but it is not really necessary. It is a manual birthday wish, and a good level of engagement.  If you have more friends than you actually know on FB this strategy makes sure that at least once a year you will engage with each. If you are away for a day or two, go back and check past days in the by clicking “See All”, select Birthdays here and you will see all the past birthdays you missed.
  • Answer those who write you and reply to all comments on your post.

What should I post on Facebook?

Status updates can be personal or funny. And you can send links. Of course you should share your blogpost and your photos on your wall. It is after all your wall! Most Facebook users (including myself at times) are far to occupied sharing their own stuff only.  But also try to share more of the cool birding stuff  you come across. Not only are you giving content to those who are your friends on FB, but you can also promote some your FB friends. This will make you look like a much nicer person.  Make sure always to give credit to the person who shared with you in the first place.  And don’t forget to share your friends events. They will be very grateful!

Facebook and birders

Facebook is perhaps the most important  of the non-birding specific social media platforms.  Here is a question for the discussion below: Is it or will it be the MOST IMPORTANT social media platform period? That is; More important than Surfbirds, Birdguides, Birdchat, Avibase, Birdforum and other birder specific web-pages? Or is there something else around the corner that will take its place?

Homework

  • Look over privacy settings
  • Check that your info on your profile is accurate. Remember you don’t have to fill in all fields.
  • Post some birding links you picked up today….such as this one…on your wall.

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.

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Day 1: Social Media for Birders – How did we get here?

Social Media for Birders. Some background.

BirdersThanks for joining me in the Social Media event of the year (at least for birders). I start off with some history and definitions as background to build the rest on.  You may also want to check out these two posts introducing the event as they give you some additional background.

Since I noticed that there are relatively few birders that use all the Social Media platforms that we are going to deal with, it makes sense to start off at a beginners level. On the other hand, many bloggers participating in the workshop have excellent knowledge. I ask you to be understanding when I deal with things that are obvious to you. I  appreciate your expertise and hope that you will contribute with your wise comments, to further improve the experience of the participants. Later in the workshop we shall deal with more specific tweaking of the Social Media set-up.  Let the fun begin!

Birders are social. Social Media is natural for birders

Birders have always been using different types of media to connect with each other before the rise of Social Media. Birdclubs announced excursions in their bulletins and newsletters. Friends of birders had a telephone list to announce appearance of rare birds. Answering machines turned into birdlines and pager systems. Cellphones and SMS made it easier to call in and receive birding news. On the internet listservers and later yahoo groups mailing list for local birding popped up everywhere. Special pages and forums for birders where everyone could participate have become among the most popular web-pages the last couple of years.
So with all these specialized social media for birders, why should birders even bother about generic Social Media such as Facebook and Twitter? What we got seems enough! Social Media surely is just a waste of time!
During the 31 days of the course of this workshop I intend to show how generic Social Media is the next big thing for birders and how it can be molded to fit our needs, without taking too much of our time.

Look at Social Media as marketing of a business even if it is not!

Sure, everyone can understand that smart businesses want to make use of Social Media to market their product.  But why should the same rules that applies for business Social Media marketing be of any interest for regular birders? Why should a birder try to get more connections with other birders that he/she does not know personally? What is the point? The birder in general does not have a product to sell! The birder in general is quite content with the small network of birders he/she already knows.

That is true, but have a look at these statements:

  • Every birder wants to become a better birder. We are passionate about learning more.
  • Every birder wants to recruit new birders. We are mostly passionate about trying to spread the “gospel”. We know that birding is about fulfillment -that also is mostly a very healthy hobby – and few things would please us more than to be an inspiration of another human being to become passionate about our passion. One of the most attractive features with the general Social Media platforms is that it can be seen as recruitment grounds for converting non-birders into birders.
  • Every birder wants more effective bird conservation. Bird conservation campaigns should certainly use Social Media as if they were  a business. The same campaigns would gain if the birders were better connected
  • Every birder wants handy advice about identification and travel to see birds. More birding Facebook friends will not hurt you.

Let me ask you again. Don’t you think it would be fantastic to be’ better connected with other birders than you are today? We would become more and better birders.

More birders – More business!

DISCLAIMER: Birding is my business and “more birders” mean more business. (So much for my “altruistic involvement”  in Social Media, huh?)

But “more birders” also means more business for other birding businesses. In Peru for example, more birders (both native and visiting foreign birders)  would lead to more eco-friendly involvement, because conservation and eco-tourism runs very well together. It creates more sustainable resource management and an alternative economy for the local communities.  The threats are deforestation, mining and oil exploits. If every birder took on a mission to try to make more birders, the world would be a better place. Hallelujah!

The three pillars  of Social Media – Facebook, Blog and Twitter – and an outsider for birders: Flickr.

For a business it is essential to have a blog on the home web-page, as this creates content and helps SEO. Facebook and Twitter can be used to bring traffic to you blog. These three pillars are also valid for a birder Social Media novice and we shall treat the three platforms in depth during the workshop. There is one extra leg for any birder that also photograph. Flickr has become the best sharing site of bird photos.

Facebook is the most popular Social Media platform with some 350 million users. Much of this workshop will circle around Facebook as it has most potential to create a large community of birders fast and many birders already have an account. And if you don’t have an account in which you keep in contact with your non-birding friends and family, you should start an account specifically to communicate with other birders.  Facebook has made many changes since I wrote a blog post called  “Facebook for birders“. I plan to update this post tomorrow, but nevertheless you can probably still use the instructions to sign up for an account if you don´t have one yet.

In the next post we shall start tweaking your Facebook account to make it as optimal as possible for connecting with other birders.

Homework.

  • Get a Facebook account if you don’t have one.
  • Make a presentation of yourself in the comment section with your Facebook link, Twitter, Flickr and Blog URL.

Extra credits: Post a link to this post on your Facebook wall and ask more people to sign-up – and use the Retweet button above if you are on Twitter. I still think we should become 1000 people on this workshop! And yes, I will reciproke with links or tweets to your blogs.

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.

Photo (birdwatching)  by Albuquerque BioPark on Flickr. License: Creative Commons
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31 day Social Media workshop for birders

Not a waste of time!

Social Media for birdersI think I know what many birders who are still not on Facebook or blogging think. Social Media is a waste of time and it will only result in less time for birding. Can’t be bothered with that!

I was thinking the same thing a year and a half ago.  Therefor, I challenge you to read through this article and follow this course-workshop. Give it a chance! It is winter in the northern hemisphere so you may just have a little bit more time now to actually find out WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT!

31 day Social Media workshop for birders

The workshop (I prefer to name it workshop instead of course as I also will be learning) will run for 31 days on my blog. There  will not be a daily post. More likely 3-4 post per week, so you will have time to contemplate what you have learned. You will learn how to use social media more effectively and specifically for birders and for birding related companies. Here are a few topics.

  • Listservers
  • Facebook for birders
  • Twitter for birders – including rare bird alerts.
  • Forums.
  • YouTube – sharing bird videos.
  • Flickr and photo-sharing. Building a photo guide of the birds of the world.
  • Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit, Delcious and other social bookmarking services.
  • Blogging. Would you like to have 100s of visitors daily to your blog?

This birding network that you will create using these tools will give you an enormous advantages anytime you look for an answer on a birding question, and ID problem, advice to buy a birding gadget or if you look how to bird a new destination more effectively and less expensively. Birding news will reach you fast and there may even be applications for Rare Bird Alerts.

Part of the resistance to Social Media among birders is that they feel they are doing quite well with the existing channels. It is hard to see the benefit of something new if you haven’t tried it…and if you try it and your mates are not on and it take ages until you actually find a lot of other birders to engage with, it becomes a bit boring and you will leave your Facebook and Twitter without activity, convinced it is not for you.

I understand you perfectly. Social Media will appear as a waste of time.  But say we get 1000 participants to this course/workshop and we all started to connect between us, start to share what we have learned about social media with our existing network who are not following the workshop. If each of us have some 50 connections in average, it means the network can reach 50 000 birders. That is for starters. With the expansion of Facebook this is already happening and with 10 years millions of birders will effectively be connected this way. If we look at the same equations regarding how birders can become more effective in conservation issues and how we can recruit a new generation of birders, Social Media become the means to achieve this.

My background

I have been on Facebook for some 21 months and on Twitter for 18 months. Both have served to connect with other birders.

I have been blogging for about a year regularly on this site. I had blogged before, but a year ago, I moved my Blogger blog to be housed on my company site and I became part of the community of bloggers at NatureBlog Network. I realized then that frequent blogging could be a way to get more birders also find my commercial site.

Soon I also realized that both Twitter and Facebook were excellent tools to tell others about my blog – and thus indirectly my business.

In spite of these early notions, I worry much less about driving traffic to my commercial site today, but rather just blog on topics that I believe will be interesting to other birders. In the end, anyone interested in the commercial part of my web-site will find it looking in the about pages. I have no need to glue it to your face. In the end, you may – or may not – chose to purchase what I offer, but it will often be after we already have gotten to know each other.

One thing that has become very clear to me as I have been on this journey, is that birders in general know very little about why social media can be just mind-blowing for birders. This, I think, is the main objective with this workshop. To show you why Social Media for birders rocks!!

Three Social Media Mantras

When social media is best, there are three pillars – three main rules to live by.

  • Listen
  • Engage
  • Share

Remember this as your Mantra. You shall hear those words again and again.

Sign up

The workshop will be published on my blog, but in order to know immediately when a post have been posted you should sign up for the Social Media for birders challenge filling in the form below. In these messages there will also be specific tasks for you to complete so you can put your achieved new knowledge into practice. It is through the mailing list that we shall be building a community. By signing up and saving all the messages in a specific folder you shall have all the items ready at hand when you need them for reference.
Finally, please share the link to this page with as many birders you know. We will come out stronger after this, building connections for conservation, for recruiting new members to the birding community, for finding info on birding in foreign countries including local guides and operators, for getting the ID:s on your photographed mystery birds, for helping newcomers to get into the hobby without get turned off before even gotten started because now they have access to more experienced birders.

Now sign-up, please!

Here is an updated post with some more justification to share the news about this workshop and also contains a disclaimer which reveals my motives to organize this event for FREE!

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Facebook News Feed and Live Feed.

Customize your own News feed.

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When you have as many Facebook  friends as I do, neither the default News Feed or Live Feed is good for me. I custom-made a feed to be my default feed containing the people that recently have interacted with me. This post teaches you how.

News Feed and Live Feed.

Open Home in upper left corner of Facebook. In the left column you shall see News Feed on top. When clicking that you will see the feed that FB think you are interested in. This feed pretty much replaces the “Highlights” that used to appear on the right column in the Home area on Facebook. It is thought that News Feed will be a more static feed of things you are interested in, based on your past activity. It is a place to check on the important stuff posted the last 24 hours and gives you a chance to catch up.
It is possible to wobble to see Live Feed – the feed in real time from everyone. This is a bit too overwhelming, though and often contain stuff from Facebook friends that you may not be connecting that much with.

I am interested in interacting with people that have interacted with me. Therefore, I have custom-made a feed and created a new list of selected friends and put this feed on top. When I open Facebook, I will immediately see the feed from friends that have taken their time to comment on my links and status updates on Facebook.

Step by step instructions to create a customized feed.

1. At the bottom of the left column you shall see the button “more”. Click it!
2. At the bottom of the expanded column is “create list”. Click it.
3. If you have a second window with your Facebook Profile open you will see all the people that have commented and “liked” your posts. I selected all these and made a new list.
4. Once the list is created you can drag it to the top of the side column.
5. Add new people as they comment on your profile wall, by clicking the little edit pen on the feed. It helps having two windows open when you do this step as well. There is a little search window that is very convenient to use. Just tape in the first few letters of your friend name and his/her icon will show immediately.

Other nuisances in the feeds.

Apps and games of course. Most apps and games on Facebook are a waste of my time in my opinion. And getting notes in the feeds whenever Facebook friends use an app or some achievement in Mafia Wars becomes quite overwhelming. However, they are easy to get rid of. Just click “Hide” in the upper right corner of the the note in the feed and that shall be the last time you see that app or game. It has to be done quite frequently to start with, but soon your feed will be almost clean.

One app I do like though and is very useful to me is Networked Blogs. It is an excellent app that both drives traffic to your blog and makes you discover other blogs without being intrusive.
If you have this app I suggest you also drag the Networked Blogs feed high up in the column so you check the blogs you follow once in a while. And leave a comment! Everyone likes to receive comments to their blogs.

Related topics from my blog.

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