I was reminded of a great Facebook tip for driving more fans and engagement whilst watching a video hosted by Mari Smith recently.  It was her final tip that reminded me that this was something that I really don’t do enough of.  The tip came up again at the KLCK Bloggers Meet-up on Monday.  So what was this top tip?  It’s a simple as sharing your Facebook Page posts directly to Twitter and asking for feedback.  But how do you do this?

You can automate this process but I’ve just disconnected this feature for Spiderworking.com.  Why?  Well when I looked through my newsfeed I found that the posts looked automated, they often clashed with similar posts I was making on Twitter and it prevented me from personalising these tweets.  So today I’m going to show you how to link to a specific Facebook post manually. It’s really easy, it will bring you more engagement and as people have to ‘Like’ your page before commenting or posting it will also bring you more Fans.

1. Click the timestamp underneath the post you want to share

2. Copy the complete link from the address bar of your browser

3. Shorten the link by pasting it into a service such as www.bitly.com

4. Paste the link into a tweet asking for feedback

You can use this same method for finding a direct link to a specific tweet or Google+ post too.

A Facebook username or url makes it easier for you to direct people to your Facebook page.  Once you have 25 Likes on your page you are able to create a unique url that works like a web address.  All usernames start with www.facebook.com/  you can then choose what you want to appear after this.  Ours for example is www.facebook.com/spiderworking.

I’ve encountered a few people recently who have had problems setting their Facebook username.  The interface is a little confusing and It’s easy to end up setting your business username for your profile page and visa versa.  Follow the steps below to set your business page username and remember that once it’s set you can’t change it.

- Make sure you are logged into Facebook

- Click this link www.facebook.com/username

- The next page gives you the option to change the username for your personal profile and for your ‘Page’

- Underneath ‘Each Page can have a username’ Click on the drop down menu next to ‘Page Name’

- Choose the page that you want to set the username for (you must have 25 Likes on a page before you can set username)

- Depending on your browser a box will open up next to or underneath your page choice.

- Type in your desired username – like a web address this should contain no gaps and be easy for others to spell and remember

- Click ‘Check availability’

- If the username is available double check the spelling and click ‘Confirm’. Once you have completed this step you can’t change or edit your username, you are stuck with it so be very sure you have it right.

If you have accidentally set your username for your profile

Facebook allows you to change the username for your personal profile once, so if you have accidentally set your Facebook page url for your profile you have one chance to change it.

- From your home page click on ‘Account’ on the top right hand side.

- Click ‘Account Settings’ from the drop down menu

- On the next page click ‘change’ next to ‘Username’

- Type in your new personal username into the box underneath ‘Username’

- Click ‘Check availability’

- If it is available and you are happy with it click ‘Confirm’

This will free up the original username for you to use for your business page. It can take a while for Facebook to release the username but you will soon be able to reclaim it for your business page.

Have you had problems setting your username?  What else has you stuck on Facebook?  Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Once you have set up your Facebook page it can be hard to direct people to it.  Facebook give you a very long url for your page containing lots of numbers and text, even if you could remember it passing it on to other people could be quite a task.

Here are two ways to create an easy web address for your Facebook page.

1. If you have 25 ‘Likes’ on your page

Once you have 25 Likes on your page Facebook allows you to set a personalised username

• Go to www.facebook.com/username
• Choose the page you want to give a username to from the dropdown menu
• Enter your desired username into the box, it doesn’t matter if you use caps or not but don’t leave any gaps.  Make sure this is the url you are going to stay with as once it is set it cannot be changed.
• Click ‘check avilability’

• If the name is available click ‘confirm’

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• Your username is now set and you can direct people to www.facebook.com/yourusernamehere
• For example the Spiderworking.com Facebook page is here: www.facebook.com/spiderworking

2. If you don’t yet have 25 ‘Likes’ on your page

You can set a temporary link for your Facebook page using a link shortening service such as Bit.ly.  Sign up for an account so that you can use all the features.

• Go to your Facebook page, refresh the page as Facebook tends to adds other information into the url, this will disappear if you refresh.
• Copy the address from your address bar

• Go to your bit.ly account
• Paste the long link into the box ‘shorten your links and share from here’
• Click ‘Customize’

• Change the part of the link in red to something memorable.

The nice thing about creating a custom link through Bit.ly is that you can also measure how often it has been clicked.

Linkedin has just introduced a new way to share links and interesting news stories using the status update function.  This allows you to share links in a similar way that they are shared on Facebook.  Links become far more clickable as you can add a picture.  It’s straightforward to do and should result in more click thrus to the links you post.  It is important to remember though that Linkedin is not Facebook, it is a professional network so be very aware of what you post!

Here’s how to do it:

• Log in to Linkedin and scroll down to your status update box.

• Click ‘link or news’

• Add your link
• Type a comment in the box above
• Click ‘Attach’.  Choose a picture from those on offer

• Choose who you would like to see your update ‘everyone’ or ‘connections’

• Click ‘Share’ and your update will appear.

• You will notice the ‘Share’ button appears underneath your post.  This means that you or others can easily share the content both with groups and with their connections.

I posted a few weeks ago about how Facebook users could hide updates from Farmville.  It proved very popular!  However if you are a user of Farmville or any of the ‘noisy’ applications it is possible to stop them updating your Facebook status and it’s very simple.

• Log into your Facebook account and click the ‘Account’ tab on the top right hand side of your page.

• From the drop down menu choose ‘Application Settings’.
• On the next screen scroll down until you find the offending application.

• Click ‘Edit settings’.
• From the pop up window select ‘Additional permissions’ and uncheck the box ‘Publish recent activity (one line stories) on my wall.

• Click ‘OK’ and updates from that application will no longer auto publish.

It’s important to update your blog on a regular basis.  SEO experts believe that after time search engines will get used to how often the content in your website is updated and will visit accordingly.  So once you have decided how often you are going to blog it’s important to keep to this schedule.

Sometimes however it’s impossible to keep to your blogging schedule, what about when you go on holiday?  If you have a meeting? If you simply don’t have time that day? One of my customers asked me if it was possible to schedule posts for the future.

The good news is that yes you can write your blog posts when you have time and schedule them for later:

• Log in to your wordpress account and click ‘New Post’ on the top right hand side of the screen.

• Create you blog post as usual but instead of clicking ‘Publish’, choose ‘Edit’ next to ‘Publish immediately’ on the line above the publish button.

• Add the date and time that you want the post to publish.

• Click ‘OK’

• Click ‘Schedule’

And that’s it, simple!

These two excellent free web applications allow you to monitor your brand, competitors, industry or any topic online. Simple to use, they search the social web for mentions of any keywords you choose to search for.

Social Meniton: The most comprehensive social media search tool we’ve found that not only throws up results but measures sentiment and other data relating to your key words. It also allows you to download a csv (excel) file so that you can track progress over time.

Who’s Talkin: Not as detailed information but it’s faster to throw up results and allows you to switch quickly between one network to another.

For more video tutorials and social media videos subscribe to our YouTube channel.

This week we show you two applications that allow you to post short video’s to twitter.

Bubbletweet which posts popping bubble shaped video.

and

YFrog which posts regular video.

This week Amanda from Spiderworking.com demonstrates a cool web app for videobloggers. Trying to remember what it is you wanted to say can be a challenge when you are a video blogger. Easypromptor is a autocue / telepromptor device that you can use on your own computer.

If you like cool social media tools become a fan of Spiderworking.com on Facebook where we help blow the Monday Blues away with a weekly “Monday Morning Cool Tool”.

If you’re a blogger did you know that you can feed your blog automatically into Facebook. In this weeks video blog we show you two ways to do this:

1. Using the existing “Notes” application
2. Using Networked Blogs:

If you want to know more about some of the coolest social meida applications  join our Facebook page, where every Monday we feature a “Monday Morning Cool Tool” last weeks tool turned text uʍop ǝpısdn.