Maximizing Fan Pages

Many marketers and novices alike have looked at Facebook and scratched their head and wondered what value it could possibly be to their business.  Many have dabbled with Facebook, set up accounts, added friends, gotten on Friend’s lists, and still don’t see the value of it.  I’ve been there, done that and wondered myself.

It wasn’t until I discovered fan pages that I realized there was some real value in Facebook. Before fan pages, Facebook was nothing more than a place to lose a few hours when you were bored or to catch up wuth old school friends you hadn’t seen for years.

When you set up a fan page for your business you can instantly keep in contact with your potential customers and with your actual customers and clients. It gives you the opportunity to tell them about what you are doing (relating to your business), new products, services and other things that are of interest to them.

With several hundred fans you can very quickly make sales of any new product you launch and you can promote and earn as an affiliate from any new product launch by anyone in that niche.

Through your fan page you have instant access to the Facebook feeds of all of your fans. This means whenever you update your fan page it updates their feed and they see it … instantly.

This is an incredibly powerful feature that will help you to keep in touch and to promote your business.

Setting up a fan page isn’t difficult, but if you don’t know how to set one up properly for maximum effect (and it’s not child’s play) then you will struggle to recruit fans and earn your full potential from Facebook.

We began offering Fan Pages a few months ago on a limited basis, and now, as Facebook continues to grow by leaps and bounds, have added Custom Fan Page design to our regular menu of services we over.

Take a minute and visit us on our Facebook Fan Page. http://FB.com/GetACustomFanPage

I hope you’ll LIKE our page while you’re there, and grab the free download we have up once you LIKE the page.

See you there.

Ed

Start 2011 With Change on the Inside

In the days and weeks ahead I would encourage you to Start 2011 With This Kind Of Change:

Everyone works on change on their outside, weight control, stop smoking, add exercise. But this year in your meditation or making 2011 your BEST ever year, think about change ON YOUR INSIDE.

Happiness– know what makes you happy and do more of that stuff.

Inner PEACE– do whatever it takes to secure this in your life and you will be miles ahead of everyone around you and at near self mastery

Health– make it on your to do list to check INSIDE your body – blood test, blood pressure measurement, and colonoscopy, health screenings as age appropriate.

Social– check your attitude toward others and put Mr. or Miss Grumpy out to pasture. Say in your mind you have mellowed out and that agitated old self of yours has been put out to pasture and you are going to walk around with a lot more smiles on your face and keep your mouth shut to much negativity. The world will start working a lot better for you with people in your life.

Mental– Try something novel and get better at it, like a foreign language or musical playing. At the end of 2011 you will have something you don’t have now.

Look INSIDE YOU with resolutions this year, and from the INSIDE OUT make a better you in 2011. Life is short. Don’t delay.

Happy New Year 2011 !!


Largest Microsoft Patch Ever Coming Soon!

Next Tuesday will be Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday for the month of October. For IT admins this means it’s time to clear your calendar and prepare to address a record-setting 16 security bulletins addressing 49 different identified vulnerabilities. This breaks the current record of 14 security bulletins that were issued back in August 2010.

Most of the updates plug security holes that could allow malevolent internet users to inject malicious code into the users’ computers. As these holes are usually in features not switched on by default, Microsoft usually labels them as Important (the most critical updates are labeled Critical).

It’s a long list of affected software that includes: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 3, Office 2003 Service Pack 3, Office 2007 Service Pack 2, Office 2010, Office 2004 for Mac and 2008 for Mac, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, SharePoint Server 2007, Groove Server 2010, and Office Web Apps.

These patches are considered important as we head into the last quarter of the year, a time when many businesses have a heavy volume of online shopping. This period sees many financial and retail companies going into lockdown mode where they don’t update their systems.

Microsoft will release the 16 updates at approximately 1 p.m. ET on Oct. 12.  I think I’ll take that afternoon off and turn off my phones.

Ed

How To Create A Strong Password

Many websites require a user to register a user name and password in order to gain access and privileges on the site. Any type of financial institution (bank, credit card, etc) certainly requires a password to gain access to your account; this provides protection against identity theft and fraud. A strong password offers you greater protection against a hacker trying to gain access to your information.

My first recommendation would be to use RoboForm. I’ve personally used it for years, and don’t know how anyone who has to remember a lot of different log in and password combinations can work without it. I’m hoping you don’t rely on your browser to memorize your passwords for you. That’s a disaster waiting to happen!

If you’re insistent on doing things the hard way, here are some suggestions for creating strong passwords:

1 Keep your passwords private and do not share them with others. It may seem very elementary but if you must share a password with someone, anyone, remember to immediately change it to something else.

2 Pick a password that is meaningless to others. Choose a password that you can remember (or use a password manager like RoboForm) but make sure the password is completely meaningless to anyone else.

3 A password should be a minimum of eight characters in length. Many banking websites will simply not allow a password less than eight characters in length and some are even switching to 16 characters or more.

4 Don’t use a password containing all of the same characters. Choose a password that contains numbers, letters, and symbol characters. Y@Tery2ya! is an example of a strong password.

5 Create a password with both lowercase and uppercase letters. This makes it more difficult for hackers and thieves to utilize more common methods of password cracking such as automated dictionary hurlers.

6 Never send your password via email or provide it over the phone. If you absolutely have to, always remember to change it once the recipient has finished doing whatever it is they needed the password for in the first place and no longer needs it.

7 Try to create a password that is not a dictionary word. These passwords are easier to hack and to plainly guess. Yahoo recently reported that the most commonly used password is actually “password”! Do not do this; it is a ridiculously easy password to guess and your accounts could be compromised.

8 Never use your telephone number, zip code, address or portions of your social security number.

9 Passwords are not foolproof. Do not rely on a password alone to protect sensitive information. Monitor accounts closely to ensure that security is not being breached.

10 Use a sentence or common saying that you will remember to help you create your random password. For example you may use ‘I really love the Lexus SC-430!’ and your password would appear as IrltheLS-43! which is a much more difficult password to guess or crack than using simply lexus430.

Hopefully you have secured all of your log in and passwords with something more secure than an easy to guess word or birthday. Remember, you only have one identity… protect it!

Until next time…

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Ed