A few ideas: How do you get more fans for your Facebook page?

As a thank you for creating my super cute blog header, I agreed to help my friend Andy get started on Facebook with his band’s Facebook page. By the way, you can find them on Facebook if you search StereotypeAtl.

With two days live, I haven't grabbed too many fans. The band's gonna have to track down their faithful fans. And the idea is that unless you're The Police, you're going having to put a little more effort toward building relationships with the fans at your gigs and other musicians. But here’s what I’ve learned from setting up a music fan page and it might help you, too:

• Send an e-mail out to your fan e-mail list and ask them to be a fan.

• Keep taking your e-mail sign-up list to all of your gigs and message new friends and ask them to be a fan. (But not at the same time, Facebook sees this as spam and will slap your wrist with a temporary freeze on your account.)
  

• Create an e-mail signature with a link to your Facebook page in your signature.

• Put the Facebook logo on all of your communications, print and pieces online with saying something like: You’ll find us on Facebook. Just type ______(the name of your band, or the name that would take them to your page) in the search box.
  

• Send some e-mails to your friends on my space and tell them you’re also on FB. Be careful not to send out HUGE e-mails, because you don’t want to be found guilty of spam.

• Build your own personal/musicish profile on Facebook and once you develop relationships online with your new friends, ask them to consider being a fan, too.

Anybody got more ideas? What else has worked for you?

Well, hello again!

The Online Marketer Blog helped me figure to ‘splain my absence on this blog. Click here for the post

By writing about why you haven't written, not only do people learn more about you, and what makes you human, you can promote the other cool things you’ve been up to.

So here goes:

- I’ve been thinking about what I really want to accomplish with this blog. That analysis includes reading more of what others write and figuring how I belong in this group of PR people online. I am still working on this.
- I begged my favorite graphic designer and friend Andy Meeks to help me with a better looking header. My old one was plain and was uninspiring. It's amazing what a little color and creativity can do.
- I’ve spent more time with my family. My parents are 50-plus and my dad’s been feeling a little puny as he lives with congestive heart failure. They live eight hours away so I’ve made two trips home and enjoyed being with them. This has done wonders for my emotional well being. I highly recommend reconnecting with your folks.
- Volunteering is something else I’ve slacked off on. And I’ve been working at a consignment shop (in addition to my full-time job) for mostly women and spending time with folks with developmental disabilities. This has also contributed to my overall health. Volunteering or reaching out to others is one of the essentials of life, especially for people with depression.

And now, I want to be connect more with you. What would you like to see me do better? What would you like to hear about?

Thank you Online Marketer Blog. I hope you aren't too mad about me stealing your idea.

Check out this perkier blog!

In hopes of having a better looking blog – I’ve asked my designer/music friend (www.myspace.com/stereotypeatl) Andy Meeks to help me out.

Thankfully he agreed and I agreed to help his band do a little social networking through Facebook. The idea is that this chick in this header represents me in my best form. Happy, thinking creatively and writing a lot. I think it brings energy to the page.

What do you think about it?

Facebook makes us nicer online

Maybe it’s because I have nice friends on Facebook but I think this Facebook thing is making people nicer online.

Know how much restraint it takes to not fire off a nasty e-mail because a friend is being just too much? And when we send an e-mail about a co-worker to a friend but actually sent it to the offender? That one is very hard to fix.

We self-edit with Facebook.
But with Facebook’s transparency, we self-edit the image we want to project to the world. That’s possibly thousands and thousands of friends, co-workers, maybe even potential love interests who can read any wall post, comment, and status update we write. Who wants to look like a jerk? We end up not calling out women who run off with our husbands or lashing out for someone doing other things that hurt us. We just focus our attention on other friends and they’ll write nice things on our walls.

Friends can help us, so we have to mind our manners.
See, having lots of friends on Facebook is the key for many and anything to jeopardize that is just stupid. Facebook has turned into a place where we not only stay in touch with friends and families but it’s a door to experts when you have questions, or even a pick-me-up after a bad day etc.

Let me know if you find examples that prove me wrong.

Here are summaries of examples of the closest things I could find to Facebook meanness lately:
- 2009 is a new year to start over and I don’t need some of you stupid people anyway.
- Mary Poppins, you are all that and a bag of chips, aren’t you?
- I have just had it with people, really.
- A colleague stole my idea and got credit for it. But I don’t want to say anything to him because he just lost his son. (Wow, think your other colleagues DON’T know who this person is? You sure are being nice, aren’t ya?)
- I am the alpha female and understand why certain women are jealous. And you know who you are.
- I am not working another extra hour or Sunday for The Man.

None of these are that bad.

One exception to this idea, however: A lot of Facebook pages are based on Super Heroes, fictitious people and TV stars, like this one: where some page owners write some gruesome stories about their characters and vent. But Facebook has been shutting down those pages.