Are You at Risk? We hear about these things but never really think it’ll happen to us. It just happened to me!

I got an email with this as the subject line – “Security Alert from Facebook”. I thought it was a scam, “Yeah right, like I’m going to fall for that one”.

This was the opening dialogue – “Hi Peter,

Our systems indicate that your Facebook account has been compromised by cybercriminals attempting to impersonate you. These criminals often will try to trick your friends into sending them money by claiming that you are stuck in a far away location and need assistance. It is possible that your email account was compromised as well…”

It had a strange reply email address along with an odd web address to “update” your info. You can understand my scepticism.

I was just going to ignore it and move on but when I went to log in to my Facebook account – “Account Disabled!”

OMG, it was true. I was “Facebook-LESS”. The short story version of the “fix” was I replied to the email, updated all my email passwords and followed all the other instructions but I had to wait another 36 hours before my account was reactivated. Luckily, everything was still intact in my account, I was sweating on that cause I’d loaded a lot of video’s and stuff.

The other worry was “Had these criminals tricked any friends into sending money?” Apparently not, that was lucky! I’d hate to see your money wasted with a stranger. But, hey, if you’re feeling generous, I’m always good for more cash – Let’s go with that part – my PayPal account is xx xxx xx.

The moral of the story is stuff like this can happen to you and does happen to people close to you.

We help clients get better SEO rankings and one of the ways is by leveraging off Social Media Marketing. My password portfolio is over 500 passwords. I’ve set up dozens of different social media accounts for clients and linked them to their website so obviously I needed access to those accounts.

Imagine trying to keep a handle on your own plus dozens of client’s details. Obviously security is a major issue – I use RoboForm and couldn’t manage without it.

So, don’t let this happen to you. Get safe and secure and update your passwords regularly, RoboForm will help you keep a handle on it all.

They have a free version; you can get that here -

RoboForm Freebie

or you can go Pro which has no limitations on passwords stored and a few extra bonuses like password backups and stuff – you can see that here –

RoboForm Pro

Most of us are resistant to updating passwords because we get to “know” them and it can be a pain to do but identity fraud is becoming more common and is now a global problem, do be on guard.

To sort out the aftermath of a hacker is a lot more of a pain, let me tell you!

Our Fanatical and even bordering on Obsessive Service has now updated you to the new sexier WordPress 2.8 Version.

No, you don’t have to do a thing because that’s what we do. What’s new?

Mostly the “widgets” area actually. It’s a lot easier to edit and change stuff to your hearts delight.

Here’s the short story verson of the update but needless to say your site will be found by more people more often and all in the organic search results. Yippee, free traffic!

• New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
• Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
• Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
• Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
• Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
• Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
• Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
• Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

If you want the techy stuff you can have a look here.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.8

Up until now your Facebook profile link was just random characters like this

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=703908113

That’s memorable… not!

For the savvy people you could use the ‘profile to’ application which would look like this

http://profile.to/peterbutler/

which is certainly a lot sexier. (Especially with my name in it )

But Facebook are releasing this weekend the chance to grab your specific named Facebook username URL which will look like this

http://www.facebook.com/username/

This can either be your name or your niche or group name. Facebook have protection in place to guard against name squatting and you can read about that right here on their blog

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130

The Facebook countdown link is here

http://www.facebook.com/username/

Now, if your a client of mine then make sure you get signed up. Onece you’ve secured your names Facebook account let me know the URL so I can update your links on your site. If you’re technogically handicapped then get back to me by close of business tomorrow so we can schedule time to help you get registered.

I made this post to my core “Smarter Websites” site but the same principal applies to Mortgage Brokers.

There’s a lot of ways you can leverage off social media marketing to build your business and increase traffic to your website.

Social media marketing is a form of viral marketing – which is effectively getting others to share your message with the world, mostly using the social media networks.

How that might look is simply this – the visitor to your site has read your stuff and they liked it, great!

How can you take advantage of that and make it easy for them to share it with the world?

Have you ever read a ‘post’ on a website and noticed the nifty little icons down the bottom? – like facebook, digg, linkedin, my space maybe and a heap of others.

Giving your readers a quick and easy way to share and promote that ‘post’ or article to whatever social media sites they use will be the smartest marketing move you ever make.

I’ve done it many times with my own clients – I’ve read their post, liked it and thought others would too – I’ve clicked the social share button and bang – there it is on my facebook for all my friends to view it. Once its set up it runs on auto pilot and your clients and visitors will literally run it for you. When you set it up right there’s nothing more for you to do.

There a literally hundreds of social media and bookmarking sites in the world.

How can you tap into those in the easiest way possible?

The Wordpress platform and plug ins is the perfect model to minimize your time and effort with social media marketing but maximize the result.

Today we’re going to focus on a Wordpress plug in called sociable. Specifically we’re going to show you how to set it up to maximize its use by your clients and therefore your exposure to the world.

That’s the theory now let’s get down to actually setting it up. This video shows you step by step.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiu4rI6WGlY

First you need to go to your Wordpress admin area. For non Wordpress users this is where you get to control your entire website.

In the video I’ve already opened the sociable tool from within the settings section. There are already 105 social media and bookmarking sites to choose from within ‘sociable’. All you need to do is simply click the radio button to select it.

Now the trick is to know which sites are going to give you maximum exposure.

You need to put yourself in your client’s shoes.

• Where do they go ‘online’ socially’?
• How old are they?
• What do they do by day? … or night!
• Who do they hang out with? … or want to hang out with!
• There’s also a sexy print function and email function too, which might be useful for your particular group.

You need to consider all the demographics.

But here’s the thing – you don’t have to have all of this exactly right from the get go. Just review your settings in a month. With there being hundreds of social and media sites to choose from you only want to include the ones relative to your ‘group’, otherwise it really is overkill and you will lose the effectiveness of the whole concept.

You might be wondering – what do half of these mean and which ones should you choose?

Here’s some links that will give you an overview of that.

Vladimir is well respected and comes out with some great info along with some of his own plug ins. This list is very cleverly set up.
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/top-list-of-social-media-sites

Here’s a site that lists social and bookmarking sites by category – very handy. http://traffikd.com/social-media-websites/

Neither of these are definitive but they’ll give you a handy quick start.

Let’s go back to the 3 best tips for using LinkedIn.

Here’s the catch. The most important thing is how to prompt your reader to promote your page or post – oh, yeah…

When you do a new post or page you get to choose whether you want the ‘sociable’ option to display. Sometimes it might not be appropriate, like on a thank you page. All you do is just tick the radio button, it’s that simple.

So – back to prompting your reader. The ‘share and enjoy’ is just not going to cut it. You need a strong call to action – your actual tag line will depend on your clients and target market – but don’t be shy!

I have a client who runs a back-packer hostel. He might say – “Help Share Planet Inn With the World – Click Your Social Fave Site Below”

If you’re a Mortgage Broker, Coach or Consultant you might say “Referrals Are the Greatest Compliment – Click Your Social Fave To Share and I’ll Love You Forever” or whatever. Just don’t use a pathetic line – if you’re boring it won’t get shared.

The tag line I’m testing is “Reap, Sow… Click Your Social Fave Icon To Share and It’ll Get Shared Back”.

I want to try and prompt people using networking as the psychological trigger. If you think that might work for you feel free to plagiarize.

The last couple of settings are simple.

• Post – yes
• Pages – yes, it might be a squeeze page – would you like to see that up on Facebook or LinkedIn? Um, yes.
• And the last setting is ‘open in new window’ – I set it to yes.
• Click ‘save changes’ and you’re good to go.

Presto –all ready for social and viral marketing – It’s a beautiful thing.

Let’s have a look at what actually happens when the facebook icon is clicked on.

It will take them straight through to their facebook profile. They’ll get to choose a thumbnail image direct from your site and they’ll also get to make a comment. It places an excerpt of your ‘post’ to their facebook profile complete with a link back to site – all within seconds. That means that their friends will now see your post.

What makes this so powerful is that ‘what others say about you is infinitely more powerful than what you say about yourself’. It’s very powerful and so underutilized.

So, if you want people to do it on your posts then do it on other’s –

“Reap, Sow… Click Your Social Fave Icon To Share and It’ll Get Shared Back”

If you enjoyed this tutorial, hit your social fave icon or three and the universe will see it’s returned.

I hope this was helpful.

Next time around I’ll be showing you a really simple but powerful way to get back links to your site. Why would you want that – hey, the more people looking at you the more the Google Gods will smile upon you?

So, go to it. Start sharing and make sure you don’t miss out on the next vid by hitting the blue button on my site or just sign up for the weekly website prosperity tips.

I was just in checking my stat’s stuff for my sites. This is why I love our “Smart Mortgage Marketing WebSites” model.

I can quickly and easily check a whole gambit of stuff that helps me reach more people and get more people to find me but more on that later.

Not only can I tell how many visitors I’ve had, and on a daily basis, I can tell how long they stayed and which pages they went to and from.

A big thing is what keywords they used to find me in the first place – that is huge. It means that I can then tweak and refine the keywords my site is known for and increase the visitors to my site… exponentially.

Another big thing is where did they come from? Did they type my name in? That’s known as ‘direct’ traffic or did they see a link somewhere?

There are only 3 ways people are going to get to your site –

• Direct traffic
• Referring sites
• Search engines

Does that seem techy to you?

It’s not… If you can use Microsoft Word then you can do this stuff, it’s dead easy.

Actually, you don’t even have to ‘cause that’s a part of what the “Smart Mortgage Marketing WebSite” package does. We not only optimize your site but we monitor it ongoing… test and measure… and refine what gives results.

And that’s what our members enjoy… results!

This is the exciting news. I’ve been talking about setting up your profiles more effectively on ‘Facebook’ and LinkedIn’.

After checking my ‘Stat’s stuff’ this morning I found that I’m getting checked out via both Facebook and LinkedIn. Yup, the stat’s tell me exactly where and how many. I’ve had 9.8% of traffic through Facebook and a bit less through LinkedIn. Not bad considering I’ve only refined my profiles recently.

What is most interesting for me is the mix between the 3 primary sources of traffic – direct, referring and search engines. You don’t think I’m going to tell you the rest of my stats do you?

Our clients love the fact that they now understand it all – or is it the fact that they don’t have to understand it is what they love? Hmmm, I’ll have to ponder that one… you can enjoy it too – go to Smart Mortgage Marketing to find out more.

Have I made any money or picked up any clients as a result of this already?

No, give me a break… its early days yet but the extra traffic and exposure is always a good thing. All this will increase your favour and standing with the ‘Google Gods’. It’s also increasing the ‘authority’ of your site along with increasing the chance of other people picking up my content and referring people to us.

You’ll be amazed who and where other traffic will come from, but that’s another post… If you want to enjoy this lap of luxury in website world go to Smart Mortgage Marketing NOW! and look for yourself.

Committed to Generating “Highly Qualified” Leads and Making You More Commissions,

Peter B Butler.

Finally: A lead generation and marketing system that runs alongside even the best referral systems and generates an independent stream of “highly qualified” clients for brokers that’s self managed so they ‘own’ it and positions them as the experts in their area and ends all those lame, frustrating and sometimes costly prospecting methods.

All those in favour of that say ‘AYE’!

To find out more go to Smart Mortgage Marketing or go here to get your FREE Marketing and Website Audit! valued at $350.

You do need to build up your connections. Check your friends ‘connections’ too and ask for the introduction to like minded people.

It is a valid networking and lead generation tool and I’ve generated 1 hot lead through it already so I’m good with that. A friend even had a job offer last month too!

Here’s the share on a few tips and tricks that will help.

First up is your Public Profile URL… Edit it.

The default link looks something like this – http://www.linkedin.com/pub/XX/xxx/XXX which is pretty ugly and random.

What makes a lot more sense is to use the word or term you want to ‘rank’ for with the search engines. So change it to something like this http://www.linkedin.com/in/thepeterbutler but it could be your business name if you like.

It will help in Google World. Your name should still appear in the search results regardless but if the text link contains the actual words, like your name or business then that’s all the better for the search results.

Increase Your Public Profile!

I’d also recommend placing this as a link on your website. The more links on your site to other sites about you will increase your overall profile on the internet.

A point to consider, when people click on that link and they’re redirected to your LinkedIn page the sexier URL will appear in the address bar, much more professional rather than some generic random line.

It’s easy to edit. Just hit ‘edit my profile’ and click on the text. Your name might be taken already so be prepared to slip in something that sets it apart. You can use a digit or perhaps ‘the’ as a differentiator.

I have both my LinkedIn and my Facebook profiles as links under a category link ‘social media sites’. My take is this, people want to do business with people and this shows them that humanness side. You should have decent profiles set up on both Facebook and LinkedIn.

Your Own Personal Built In Website Feature!

This is huge. Click on ‘Applications’ in the left navigation bar and you have 10 applications at this point ready to ‘plug in’ to your profile.

The biggest for me was the Wordpress plug-in. This feature means as I make a post to my site it appears in my profile automatically. So my last 3 posts are sitting in there with no effort, getting more exposure and all the while telling my story and adding to my credibility. That is a very cool tool.

Yup, it has a Built In Slide Show Presentation too…

The Slide Share Presentations will be my next set up – this will be a real boon for a lot of people too. I show my wares via Power Point so this will work particularly well for me.

What plug-ins will suit you?

Depending on the nature of your business as to which other plug-ins will be most useful to you. This is the short list of other tools – Google Presentations, Blog Link, LinkedIn Polls (cool), Trip-It, Reading List by Amazon and some online collaboration tools.

It seems the issue for most people is time, to learn how it all works or committing to ‘building that network’. It’s the same for me so my take is to do this stuff in my ‘slow’ time or at least not my ‘peak’ productive time. I’ve even sat there with my laptop while I catch a TV show to get through it.

So, go to it and get LinkedIn!

While your there let’s get connected too. The more ‘connections’ we all have the better.

Here’s my public profile link:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/thepeterbutler

See you on LinkedIn!

Committed to Generating “Highly Qualified” Leads and Making You More Commissions,

Peter B Butler.

Finally: A lead generation and marketing system that runs alongside even the best referral systems and generates an independent stream of “highly qualified” clients for brokers that’s self managed so they ‘own’ it and positions them as the experts in their area and ends all those lame, frustrating and sometimes costly prospecting methods.

All those in favour of that say ‘AYE’!

To find out more go to Smart Mortgage Marketing or go here to get your FREE Marketing and Website Audit! valued at $350.

Is it really going to make one iota of difference for you in business?

I’m sure you would have heard about the supposed benefits of social media marketing. I’ve had a Facebook site for a couple of years now and didn’t do a lot with until quite recently. I didn’t really ‘get it’ – how I could leverage it but now it’s starting to gel.

I also set up a “LinkedIn” site about a year ago. It was pretty dormant until I started to make it work for me too but more on that later.

The Facebook site I attended too a little more often simply ‘cause of the friend requests I was getting. Then as my ‘friends’ base grew, some of these I don’t even know but maybe they’re a friend of a friend, and then it started to get a little interesting. One part that was surprised me was the blasts from the past, some of which I’d rather forget and am in total denial about – “That must have been another Peter Butler, wasn’t me” – but the point is this…

In Facebook I started to read and track the dialogue on the wall, if you know nothing about Facebook, that’s the ‘posts’ on the page – ‘wall’ and saw some interesting dialogue and started making comments. Just in the last 2 weeks I’ve made contact with 2 people that will lead to a venture or at least an introduction to ventures.

Now you need to get this, my interaction on Facebook hasn’t been all about flogging me or my wares. I posted some photos of how I broke my $20,000 swimming pool 2 days before Xmas, and I mean broke it, like the Xmas that was only 3 weeks ago but that’s another story, it’s in the photo shoot on Facebook. A sad story and we don’t talk about that anymore…

This is about making you known and real to people.

Like I’ve said many times before “People want to do business with people” and it’s great to show our weaknesses, our strengths and most of all our ‘humanness’.

Facebook is a great platform to do that, getting personal but from a distance.

Now you can also plug what’s happening for you in business. Using the “What are you doing now” feature is one way to go about that. I try to be more factual than do the ‘sell’ bit. Some people are really ‘in your face’ but they don’t do it for long. Remember, nobody wants to be ‘sold to’.

That’s the ‘social’ side of Facebook but the side spin is you’re also creating a name for yourself too.

Here’s the sexy thing for business. You can post video’s, straight from YouTube, you can post links direct to your website and you can create a specific ‘page’ for your business too.

I’ve posted my video to my personal profile and I’m just posting it to my business ‘page’ as we speak.

“Groups” can be created, something like ‘Smart Mortgage Marketers’ or whatever Your Niche Is, but I simply haven’t had time to set that up as yet. I’ll keep you posted on tips and tricks with that too.

Want To Get the Google Gods To Smile Upon You?… Yet Again.

You can also customize your Facebook link to reflect you or your business that you can use in on your website. This can be a good thing with your profile showing up with the blessing of the Google Gods. Think about it, your name is in the URL link. It will show up in all the search engines.

When I search my name I’m now on page 1 in Google and nearly fill the page. Two of those links are my Facebook site. Not bad considering I only showed a single result on page 5 only a few months ago.

I’ve got my Facebook social link as a link on my main website too.

My Facebook URL is http://profile.to/peterbutler/ and I’ve also got this set as a link on my Smart Mortgage Marketing site under ‘Social Links’.

There’s a whole host of stuff you can do to promote yourself using Facebook but it does need to be in balance time wise as there are other “social media” marketing sites out there and other ways to promote yourself.

Is Facebook worth the time? So far it’s been useful to me, just got to manage the time aspect, it’s very easy to get side tracked.

I tend to do the techy stuff like the video’s and stuff in my “primetime”, my most productive time, but I leave the chit chat and “friends’ list building for when I’m fatigued later or in the evening.

Have I made money from it yet? Not yet, but I most certainly will. When I check my Google Analytics I can see that traffic has come direct from Facebook so it is definitely working already. The more traffic the better always.

So what about “LinkedIn”?

As I said I also set up a “LinkedIn” site about a year ago but I certainly haven’t valued it as I should have. I’ve now invested time and started to make it work for me but that will have to be in the next post.

You’ll love the “toys” they’re adding that can help give you leads and also to improve its functionality.

Because “LinkedIn” is a professional platform there seems to be a high level of integrity too with protecting clients from abuse and the making “friends” or “connections” process.

I’ve generated 1 hot lead through it already so I’ll share that in a later post.

PS: My apologies if you’ve recently been getting random mostly empty emails from me, I’ve been doing some updating on the site and the automatic posting feature sent out an email with every minor tweak I did, woops, sorry about that!

Committed to Generating “Highly Qualified” Leads and Making You More Commissions,

Peter B Butler.

Finally: A lead generation and marketing system that generates a stream of “highly qualified” clients for brokers that’s self managed so they ‘own’ it and it positions them as the experts in their area and ends all lame and frustrating and sometimes costly prospecting methods.

All those in favour of that say ‘AYE’!

To find out more go to Smart Mortgage Marketing or go here to get your FREE Marketing and Website Audit!