1. I can easily search for email, appointments, attachments and updates from each of my contacts when using the connector. If you’re like me and don’t get to LinkedIn and Facebook enough, you can catch up on clients’ updates from within email.

2. I’ve noticed that even if I’ve not connected with some of email contacts, sometimes their photo will pop in anyway. If their Facebook profile is public, then it should pop in (or so I’ve read). Conversely, if someone has mega privacy settings, then you may not see much of them. So having a face to put with a name is nice (but sometimes disturbing-haha).

3. If you live in your email all day, you’ll be more up to date with what’s happening with your clients. If you see an achievement, you can quickly send an email or go make a comment on their social media page.

4. It’s just a cool thing to have and really brightens up my email. You can adjust the size of your social connector to stretch the entire width of your screen and pull it up near the top of your screen to get a great view of what’s going on with people you care about.

Steps for Downloading, Installation & Use of Outlook Social Connector

Outlook Social Connector has been around for a couple of years, but there’s been a recent update (April, 2012), and if you don’t download and install it, some of your components will stop working effective May, 2012.

Outlook Social Connector – Separate Components

First, you’ll need the connector itself – find it here. If you don’t need to update, it won’t install.

Next, you’ll need to get the components or pieces of the social part you want. Below are the five currently available. (So glad they took MySpace off). All these components can be found here. There are separate downloads for each piece.

Have Outlook closed when installing – but it’s OK if it’s open, you’ll be prompted to restart upon installing the components.

Restart Outlook and get going

When you start Outlook, you’ll be presented with this pop-up where you can choose which components you want to use. The My Site is for people who use SharePoint.

You’ll be prompted to enter your username and password for each site you want to add, then you’ll see the checkmark when you’re connected – that’s it! Start scrolling through your emails and watch your email pop with photos and updates. If you’re connected to someone in multiple ways, you’ll see all the updates if you select ‘all’.

If you don’t get the above screen, you can get to it by going to ‘View’ then look over to the right where it says ‘People Pane’, open it and then you’ll get the accounts screen. Make sure you have the people pane ‘on’ or you won’t see it.

Below is an example of someone I’m connected with on LinkedIn & Facebook. You can see she’s active and uses social media a lot! The icons I’ve circled are very helpful because I can choose to show only emails I’ve received, or only appointments, only attachments or only updates. It saves time.

If you have questions or need some troubleshooting, here’s the FAQ on problems with social connector. Not everything works all the time, they still seem to be working bugs out. If you’re using it, how do you like it? If you’re not, do you think you’ll install it?

How to Eliminate Facebook Ticker From Chrome

To remove the Facebook News Ticker from Chrome – click here to go to the Chrome App store. Then simply click the ‘Add To Chrome’ button and just like that – no more Facebook news ticker! No restart of Chrome necessary either!

How to Eliminate Facebook Ticker From Firefox

Firefox has also made it easy to eliminate the Facebook Ticker. It’s simply an add-in. Go here and add it to Firefox. You will need to restart your browser.

If you’d like to remove a slew of Facebook notifications, such as when someone ‘friends’ someone, if someone ‘likes’ a page or updates their profile and all the little things like that, there’s a way to eliminate all of that too. Click here to go to Feed Filter where you can decide the kinds of updates you’d like to hide.

Eliminate Facebook Ticker From Internet Explorer 9

Internet Explorer 9 was the last to add this feature and it’s got a lot of steps to it. Pete McKenna did a great job outlining the steps along with screen shots on his blog, so if you’re interested in removing the Facebook Ticker from Internet Explorer 9, then check it out at his site.

If you’ve ‘Liked’ business and other informational-type pages and like to read great articles or learn tips to be more productive and you use Office software (of course, you can apply this to other software or gadgets you’re interested in), then try asking your Office questions right from within Facebook. Below you’ll see some of the Office products I like.

I just recently noticed while reading some wall postings that one of the moderators advised a writer with a question to use the ‘Support’  tab and that people were standing by to answer questions like hers.

Here’s what you get when you click on the ‘Support’ tab. At first, I thought it was going to be similar to posting to a wall, but looking at the interface and noticing the search for answers and the post a question, I noticed that the page is linked to the on-line Microsoft Answers site. This isn’t a bad thing at all. It saves time because you don’t have to go and search for this site on the web. You will need to authorize the Facebook app to have access to your basic information, including your email. This also saves time because you don’t have to set up an account or sign in with your Windows Live ID. So all in all, it’s pretty handy to be able to do this from Facebook.

Other Microsoft Resources With One Click

In addition to the Support tab, there’s also tabs for videos and blogs for instant consumption and learning. Everything plays or you read it from right within Facebook.

Just for fun, I went to the Facebook Google Apps Page and there were no specialized apps, just a wall. Open Office was the same—just a wall to post on but no apps. Both were pretty boring.

Do you use Facebook to learn or do you enjoy reading articles coming through your newsfeed from businesses you’ve subscribed to? That’s probably my favorite use for Facebook.

Facebook Badges Available

I wrote about how to do this back in July of 2008. Looking back at this article, not a whole lot has changed. There are still the 4 badges shown below:

Profile – this shares your personal profile, not your business profile

Photo – if you want to share your Facebook photos on your website, this is the one for you (you only get 8 photos, not sure if they rotate to others you may have)

Like – this shows the pages you like, not a button to click for people to like your page

Page – this is the one I use and the one I think is most useful if you’re wanting to promote your business page from your website

When you click one of these, you’ll be taken to another page where you can choose the page you want the code for. I use WordPress, so I clicked the ‘Other’ and then a pop-up box opened and next put your cursor in it and click on Ctrl+A to select everything in the box, then click Ctrl+C to copy everything and then take it to your website and paste it in the space you have set aside for it. For me, it’s a widget box – strategically placed. Then refresh your page and hopefully, everything has worked. If not, see the link at the end of this article for help.

Preview of what your 'Page' Badge will look like

Facebook Social Plugins

The social plugins were around 3 years ago, just a few more have been added – now there are 10. They are all below with links to tell you more about them.

• Activity Feed
• Comments
• Facepile
• Like Box
• Like Button
• Live Stream
• Login Button
• Recommendations
• Send Button

The one I like best is the Like Box because of the information it shows. It shows your page’s name at the top in bold, then it shows your latest post (they are all brilliant, aren’t they)? The reader can click in the box and instantly be taken to your page where they can read more and LIKE you. You can do some styling of the box, which is great.

Options to style your "Facebook Like Box" - use these!

You don’t have to limit yourself to one plugin – choose more than one and sprinkle them around your site – just be strategic about it and don’t overdo.

Need Facebook Help?

Here’s where you can go to get comprehensive help on promoting your Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/help/search/?q=facebook+badge

I’ve had a personal Facebook account since about 2007. I , like so many other parents, got on to keep track of what my child was up to and it was great for that. When it became the thing for businesses to have a page, I didn’t want to have one and ‘subject’ my friends to a stream of business news from me. I had been inundated by some ‘friends’ business pages and eventually had to turn them off.  I didn’t want to be a pest and annoyance to my friends so I stayed on the sidelines.

A Philosophy and Mindset Change

Time went by and I gradually developed more of an interest in the business side of Facebook. I started building Facebook pages for business and did a lot of reading on the hows, whys and marketing of a Facebook page. I found and observed how successful and interactive having and maintaining a page could be. I saw the great tools Facebook provides for connecting to Twitter and my website and I thought, ‘what am I waiting for’, and worked on my page for a few days and now I have a business presence on Facebook! Another tool that changed my mind is the ability to take a group of people from your Facebook list of friends and assign them to a targeted list. This way, I can send business updates to my business friends and not my personal friends – perfect!

Below is my landing page. It’s not in its final form, but I’m a believer in getting something out there and then tweaking it. I’d like to get your comments on my page. Does the landing page attract your attention? What about the colors and pictures? Most importantly, what about the content? That is the most important thing. Please leave your comments here at my site, or go to my Facebook page and make a comment there. I’d appreciate your ‘liking’ my page too!

A Facebook Business Presence for All?

So if you’re a business and you’re not on Facebook, maybe reading this will get you to think about what’s right for your situation. I think a business or company should NOT get a Facebook business page unless they are committed to regular updates and maintenance. There’s nothing sadder than seeing a ‘dead’ page, i.e. one that has a smattering of postings months apart. If you don’t post, you die.

If you want a page or have a page that needs attention, check out my

Social Media Packages

here on my site. I have several packages – hopefully one will be right for you. Many small businesses don’t have the time or energy to figure out how to build a page that takes advantage of the newest Facebook tools, apps and landing pages. Email me at lynn (at)extremevirtualsupport.com, call me at 405-633-1770, or just leave a comment here on my site and I’ll be happy to talk with you.

We’re going to add audio to Facebook and make it more interesting by adding pictures!

Instead of Just Audio, Use Audio + Video

It seems backwards, but I think it works. Instead of having just an .mp3 file that might get boring for your fans to listen to, why not add some video to it. Instead of building your project around the video, build it around the audio! That way, your friend or potential customer is fully engaged with both video and audio!

Since we’re talking about audio + video, it seemed to make sense to do a short video on how to get your audio posted to Facebook, a blog, etc. Of course, you’ll need to have your audio clip recorded and saved to your hard drive.

Then, you’ll need to match your message with your images. If it’s a product you are highlighting, take photos of your product and use those to make your message. Be creative, but tasteful. My sample video is not beautiful, but the purpose is to demonstrate the steps.

Now, you’ll have a more powerful, impactful message since you’ve gone beyond text or just a bland audio clip. Give it a try!

The second is a ‘Social Authentication’ process. If Facebook detects that you are logging in from say, Oklahoma in the morning and that evening, they notice a login from Australia, they have you re-authenticate yourself on the spot. Instead of answering a ‘security question’, instead they’ll produce a picture and have you identify someone in it. We’ll talk about these two security features in this week’s article.

HTTPS

Most of us are familiar by now with the notifications to look for when we’re banking – the little lock symbol down in the lower right side of our browser and then the site will have a green bar to denote a secure connection.

Now, Facebook will provide this same level of security.

Utilizing https is not automatic, you’ll need to go to your ‘Account Settings’ and then click on ‘Account Security’, and you’ll see the below. Click on the checkbox and save your settings. From then on, you’ll be using Facebook totally encrypted. I’d also check the ‘send me an email’ box when a new computer logs into your account – that’s a smart thing to do too.

Besides selecting these options, you can also take a look at the most recent activity on your account. Just another level of information they’re giving you.

Warnings

• Facebook warns that encrypted pages usually take longer to load, but probably not significantly
• Many of the third-party apps on Facebook can’t handle the encryption, so they may not work, i.e. games

My suggestion would be to leave it off unless you’re going to go to a public place. Just remember to turn it on before you leave your secured home connection!

Social Authentication

This one is pretty cool. If Facebook notices logins from two widely separated locations (they don’t say how ‘wide’), they will initiate an authentication challenge to you. They’ll show you some pictures of your friends and you’ll identify them. In one of the screenshots I saw, it wasn’t one of your friends’s profile pictures, it was actually a picture you had posted on your site with you and this friend in it. Kind of cool, but kind of creepy too that they can pull that up so quickly.

It’s a great idea because a hacker may have brute forced your password, but they won’t know your friend’s names. Of course, if a spouse or former boyfriend/girlfriend  has taken your password, they just might know who is in the picture!

Beware Evil Apps!

Last weekend I was looking through my Facebook news stream and noticed that my son-in-law had remarked that I was certainly up too late and should get to bed. NOw, he knows I don’t stay up late, so I wondered what he meant since I hadn’t been up late. I kept going through my news stream and to my shock, I was seeing postings supposedly from me, attached to comment threads from my friends. These postings were from the ‘Take Your Email’ App from  Facebook! They were attached, at random, on my various friends’ pages. The message was something like, ‘click here to get your Facebook email name before it’s too late’, or something like that. I found these spammy messages in conversation threads where it made no sense at all. One friend was commenting about a picture, someone else had responded, and then, there was ‘my’ post about the stupid FB email!

Of course, I was embarrassed to see these inappropriate posts, so I started going through and deleting all I could find. I know I didn’t find them all, but I was thankful that the app had posted these random comments between 1-4 AM, so hopefully, not too many people saw them. I did get 2-3 emails from friends asking me about the app and if they should get it, etc. I explained that they should ignore it and apologized for it happening.

Then, I went into investigative mode. I had an idea what had happened and my suspicions proved correct. When I signed up to get my FB email when it became available, I implicitly gave this app my permission to do a number of things that I did not intend or want it to do, such as post to my wall at will and without my knowing what would be said. Below you’ll see an example of how ping.fm can do the same thing (now removed).

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I didn’t realize at first that the ‘Get Your FB Email’ was an app until I went to my ‘Account’ drop down and then selected ‘Privacy Settings’. Then I saw the  ‘Apps and Websites’ icon down at the lower left (see illustration below).

I opened it up and took a look at all the apps and websites I was using (more than I thought). Then I started opening up each one and taking a look at all the data it could access/use. For each app, there;s a list of required data it has to access in order to function, but there are many things that is your choice to remove. So I started clicking on ‘remove’ to just about everything I could in my apps.

Lessons Learned

1. To go through my apps periodically and see what’s there and what kinds of things I’m allowing to happen and remove permissions as necessary.
2. It’s even better to take a few minutes and immediately go to privacy settings after adding an app to remove unwanted features.
3. Realize that when I use Facebook to sign into other services, SlideShare & DropBox to name two, that I have just added that app to Facebook and I need to go and either remove it or adjust the settings.
4. Write a blog post about my experience!

So there you have it. Although I’m pretty up to date on privacy settings and try to keep informed as to new things or changes happening with Facebook, I completely missed checking on my Facebook apps. I’ve never noticed any of my other apps posting on my wall or friends walls – until this particular one. Now I will be ready! I wanted to write this in hopes it would be of service to others.

I saw a video from Facebook proclaiming the satisfaction you’ll receive from checking in when you get to various locations. They say that sharing your location with friends enriches your Facebook experience and your life because all this sharing is what Facebook is all about—right?? Do we really need Facebook to do this for us?

You Must Change Your Privacy Settings To Deactivate Places

I have no intention of using Places, so I really didn’t pay much attention to the roll-out—that is until I heard that all Facebook users are automatically opted in to Places. I should have known – whenever something new is rolled out, the settings are left wide open and it’s our responsibility to check our privacy settings.

When I say ‘opted in’, that doesn’t mean that FB knows where you are and is publishing it without your knowledge. You have to ‘check in’ to a place. (see illustration below.) The FB default is that when you check in, it shows your location to ‘Everyone’. It’s up to you to go in to your privacy settings and change it (if you wish). I clicked on the ‘Places I check in to’ and changed mine  to ‘Only Me’. There is not an option to turn it off, but the only me setting makes it as private as you can get. I did this so I could experiment with how it works.

Then notice the “Include me in ‘people here now’ after I check in” section below. The ‘Enable’ box is checked (the default). If you leave this box checked, then anybody who visits a location you’ve check in at can potentially view that you’ve been there before.

The other setting you’ll want to review is ‘Friends can check me into Places’ , then your ‘friends’ can check in to a place and then go crazy adding other people as being there with them. I saw on a friend’s location that she and 21 of her friends were at a hair salon all at the same time! It can be fun and silly, or it could be done to embarrass someone by putting them in a place they’re not know to frequent.

While looking into Places for this article I found Lifehacker’s short video on how to change your Facebook Privacy settings. Take a look at this if you’d rather have visual instruction on how to adjust your settings.

Custom Settings

Facebook does allow for very granular custom settings. For example, from within your privacy settings, click on the ‘custom settings’ and you can really go to town and exclude or include certain people for Places (or other FB services). This is grand and glorious, however, you can spend a lot of time getting this set up. And it must be done for each privacy setting. What a pain.

Why I won’t Use Places

• I really doubt that my friends have time to be continually checking FB to see where I (or others) am.
• Places might be handy for a densely populated area with many locations/destinations close to each other, but where I live, that’s not the case.
• Do I really want to take the time to  log into FB and do the check-in thing? Even two or three times a day might get to be tedious after a couple of days.
• Depending on our settings, our actions and locations can be seen by lots of folks. Do all those people need to know when I’m not home so they can come over to my house. Do you really trust all those people we say are our ‘friends’
• Think of how the marketers are salivating over how they will market to those using Places
• That old ‘creepy’ factor that lots of people like to mention.

How To Use Facebook Places

Trying to figure out how to use Facebook Places wasn’t so easy (at least for me). When I did some searches, I found plenty of places that wanted to show me how to change my privacy settings, but no instructions on how to actually use Places.

If you are just getting started and don’t have an iPhone app, just follow the instructions below:

1. Point your browser to http://touch.facebook.com.
2. Tap the Places tab.
3. When you are prompted to share your location, tap “Share Location.”

Then if you need more help (and I did), just check out the Facebook Places Help as it goes into detail and explains what certain things do.

What have your experiences been with Places – would like to see your comments.

A few months ago, Facebook changed their terminology as it relates to ‘Fan’ pages. Instead of ‘Fan’, they now say we ‘Like’ a particular page. I still prefer ‘Fan’ to ‘Like’, but we’ll work with what we have.

At any rate, Facebook has added several types of badges available to put on your website. You can see below I’ve highlighted the Page Badge and it defaulted to a page that I’m an admin for. Then, you’ll be presented with 3 options – Blogger, TypePad or Other. I use WordPress, so I clicked the ‘Other’ button and copied and pasted the code it gave me into a widget in my sidebar.  It’s as simple as that. Of course, the graphic has a hyperlink where someone can click and be taken to your page. Or they can simply choose to click the ‘Like’ link and stay on your site.

Another way to add a badge is right from your Page site. You do have to be an administrator in order to get the code. Click on the ‘Edit Page’ link after you get to your Page and then look way over to the right side and all the way down the page and you’ll see the below.

To take a quick look at the other badges…The Profile Badge will show your current profile picture and a link to your Page.

The Like Badge is for choosing one of the pages you’re a ‘Fan’ of and highlighting that page with a small badge on your site.

The Photo Badge puts up to 8 photos (random) from your photo albums on your website. I’m assuming they rotate, but I don’t know for sure.

Social Plug-Ins

In addition to the above Badges, Facebook has made it easy to get a number of Social Plug-Ins to put on your website.

Looking at these Plug-Ins, it seems like there’s a lot of information that can be put out for everyone to see, so check into the help section of Facebook so you will be aware of expectation of privacy. When you first get to this site, you’ll see several links (you’ll have to click about 3 times), to get to the place where Facebook explains, in detail, what is exposed. There’s even a video you can watch.

Help Center & Other Resources

Since Facebook is always changing something, refer to their Help Center for what’s new, what they’re calling things and how to utilize it for your business or just personal use.

Do know that if you have a hosted WordPress account (you have wordpress in your url), inserting badges and plug-ins won’t work for you. I found it only works in the self-hosted WordPress.

I like Duct Tape Marketing for small businesses. They have some great resources – both free and paid. Here’s a free Video on Facebook for Small Business from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s about an hour long.

Facebook for Business from John Jantsch on Vimeo.