Top 5 People You Should Ban From Your Facebook Page

I often encourage the authors at my book publishing company to use Facebook to promote their books. Facebook has around a billion users worldwide. Like Google+, Facebook shouldn't be ignored! Once in a while, though, authors encounter Facebook users who (frankly) should be banned immediately. Banning a person from your page is actually quite easy. Facebook has the instructions right here. In my experience, there are many types of people you shouldn't hesitate to ban from your page. Here are the top 5 in my opinion...

1. The attacker. This person decided to join your page and goes on to attack you and/or your other fans. This person is obviously some sort of hater and will never contribute anything positive to your community. Ban this person immediately!

2. The I'm-hijacking-your-page-to-promote-my-stuff jerk. This person jumps onto your page and attempts to hijack it by promoting his/her product(s). This jerk usually posts product links on your timeline or in the comments. This is totally unacceptable and should not be tolerated. You've spent hours and hours building up your Facebook fan page so you can connect with your fans and ultimately promote your stuff. Ban the jerk!

3. The potty-mouthed person. This guy or gal thinks that dropping f-bombs all over your page is appropriate. It isn't. You wouldn't allow a person to come into your brick-and-mortar store and start screaming obscenities around your other customers (especially kids), would you? Of course not. It makes a scene -- a very ugly scene -- and you should ban this f-bombing user right away.

4. The look-at-me-and-add-me person. You've probably seen this before: There's a huge amount of commenting taking place on a certain post and then look-at-me-and-add-me person decides to reply to nearly every commenter with "add me please." This person is using your fan page to try to build his/her own friends list. Ban!

5. The scammer/hacker. This unethical person (might be a "bot," actually) posts random hazardous links to your page in an attempt to get clicks and possibly scam or hack accounts. The "See Who Viewed Your Profile" link is a big one. The last thing you want is for a legit fan to pick up a virus, get scammed or hacked because of a link found on your page. Ban the scammer/hacker ASAP!

Top 5 Online Marketing Tools For Authors

Many authors ask me: When and how should I start promoting my book? The first part of the answer ("when") is yesterday. As with any product--and yes, a book is a product!--it's unwise to start promoting/marketing after the product releases. Here's the second part of the answer ("how"): Prior to publication, I'd say about 3-6 months before the release date (maybe even a year if you're really serious), you should already be actively utilizing these TOP 5 Online Marketing Tools For Authors (notice how I said "should." There are exceptions to every rule, of course, and some authors can certainly find success even if they begin promoting/marketing after the release, although it'll be more difficult):

1. Author website/blog - I remember launching my website/blog back in 2007, two years before the release of my bestselling novel Unconventional. This gave me plenty of time to get acquainted with my site and learn the ins and outs. Ultimately, you want to use all of your other online tools to drive traffic to your site/blog.
2. Facebook - Read this post--Facebook For Authors by Cindy Ratzlaff--to understand the personal profile, the fan page, and the benefits of using the leading social network as an author. Over 600 million people use Facebook nowadays, so it's not a tool you can ignore! Facebook ads are also highly effective for recruiting fans/selling your titles. FB ads allow you to target just about anyone based on interests, age, gender, location, etc.
3. Goodreads.com - I'm a huge advocate for this, the #1 social networking site for book lovers. This site, from an author's perspective, is all about targeted marketing and networking. You can network with tons of fans from your genre; include your book in Goodreads' giveaway program (which they promote to their members for you!); customize your author profile after signing up for the free Goodreads Author Program; launch a targeted ad campaign with self-serve advertising; and more!
4. LibraryThing - Much like Goodreads, you can run a giveaway on LibraryThing.com (LT), but I feel the LT giveaway program is superior. Here's why: You can give away e-book downloads, which cost you absolutely nothing but help you gain readers and reviews.
5. Twitter - Technically a microblogging site, Twitter limits each post (i.e. tweet) to 140 characters, thus encouraging short bursts of info. This is an ideal place to quickly network and form relationships with other like-minded individuals, help them and they'll help you (through "retweets," etc.), share the behind the scenes moments of your life (not so "behind the scenes" anymore), spread some of your links, etc. Amazingly, you can do all of this on the go. Just install a Twitter app on your cell phone. Twitter does offer a Twitter 101 "course" at their site. Check it out if you're trying to figure out how to get started.

Remember, you're only going to find success in publishing if you self-promote like all the other successful, entrepreneurial self-published authors out there. You can't expect the book to sell itself. That won't happen.

Facebook Security

I thought I was all secure on Facebook. I never give out my password and I'm usually careful what I click, but it appears that I was the victim of identity fraud on Facebook recently. I woke up this morning to see odd and offensive messages with photos in my Facebook account from a person that recently friended me. Now I don't know if that person's account was hijacked too or what, but when I went to block the person, it looked like she had already been blocked (or maybe she lost her account?). It also looked like words were exchanged via messaging, leaving me to wonder how long my account was hijacked and whether someone has been sending malicious messages to my real friends on Facebook. This is a sad day in cyberspace for me.

My point is that this craziness can happen to anyone, no matter how safe you think you might be. I've changed my password and adjusted my privacy settings to ensure that I browse Facebook with https which is supposed to be more secure than http. I've also decided that I will no longer accept friend requests from people I don't know. I'm sorry everyone has to suffer for this, but I just can't risk it.

The photo tag virus, chat virus, and others are getting out of hand. Have you noticed lots of photo tagging among your friends lately? Photos that do not relate to your friends? DO NOT click on them. Have friends been sending you odd messages on chat with suspicious links? Shut down chat and contact your friend immediately about the issue. Check out this article from Yahoo! regarding Facebook chat being hijacked. Scary thing is, once someone has hijacked your account, they can use it to do whatever they please.

Here's some security info directly from Facebook Security that I'd like to share with you: Helpful tips here and some common threats mentioned here. Be careful, and good luck!

Facebook Users Prefer Print Books Over E-books

I ran a poll yesterday at my Facebook profile page and asked my digital-embracing friends (they're using a social network, so obviously they've embraced "digital") what they prefer--e-books or print books. I wondered if the e-book format would actually triumpth over print in this poll due to the fact that the participants were "digital savvy." I think there's a belief out there that readers who choose print books over e-books aren't digitally advanced. I don't think that's true, and maybe this poll kind of proves that ... Here are the poll results:

Print Books: 85%
E-books: 12.5%
Enjoy both, can't choose between one or the other: 2.5%

I found it interesting that a few of the comments were from friends who actually own an e-reading device but still prefer print books. Many of the participants are in love with the smell and feel of print books and therefore will not switch to digital (or bother with e-books at all). So what's my conclusion? It appears that e-book sales (or popularity) might have increased from last year's 9%, but e-readers like the Kindle and Nook will need to do a better job mimicking print books if they ultimately want to conquer print books. Even some of the most digital savvy readers aren't about to abandon the "old fashioned" physical book for another piece of technology!

What do you think? Will you run a poll of your own and let me know the results? Click here to comment.

Facebook Fan Page Upgrade

Last Thursday, Facebook unveiled a major upgrade to fan pages. Users were -- and still are -- able to view their fan page(s) in preview mode, to understand the changes, before officially upgrading. Of course, sometime around March 11, Facebook will upgrade all pages automatically. I was initially a bit concerned about this upgrade as I control several fan pages, and let's face it, Facebook hasn't always been the most "user-friendly" social network. But I gave the upgrade a test run in preview mode and was pleasantly surprised. Here are some reasons I recommend upgrading your fan page(s) now:

•  New, neater design: The left sidebar is now packed with relevant info such as all tabs (e.g. Wall, Info, Photos, etc.), a cleaner space showing the total number of "likes," and a more prominent area to display favorite pages ... Feature photos sit at the top of the page. In other words, there's space for five photos at the top of each fan page, just like the new profiles. This is extremely valuable space and should be used to showcase recent business photos. You can even create a panorama with the five available spaces ... In case you haven't noticed, pages closely resemble the recent profile upgrade.
• Notifications, yes, NOTIFICATIONS!: Admins can now receive notifications when fans comment or post. This is a major improvement!
• Like and comment on other pages as your page

A couple cons to be aware of:

• No new Static FBML: Facebook has decided to do away with Static FBML. This is very disappointing for admins that like to create custom tabs (and have mastered Static FBML) for landing pages. FBML tabs that were created before the upgrade shouldn't be affected, but you won't be able to build a landing page with Static FBML going forward. Do not fear, though. There are other options: Check out http://www.pagelever.com.
• The editable text area beneath the default photo is no longer available. I was kind of bummed to see this disappear because I once used that area to offer extra links to fans. Now fans have to click on the info tab in order to see my websites.

Here's a screenshot of the fan page upgrade (click to enlarge):

http://www.facebook.com/mindstirmedia