FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language which was the required method of use for creating landing pages on your Facebook Fan Page. There was an app for FBML that had to be installed to create a landing page and hundreds of companies and solutions sprouted in recent years around the use of FBML. Many of these solutions will soon be rendered useless.

Starting March 11, 2011, businesses will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app.

FBML itself is not difficult, but it does pose limitations to marketers and so in its place, Facebook will now be supporting iFrames, which gives more control and flexibility to marketers creating landing pages for Facebook. In the long run, this is probably a good move for everyone, but the immediate repercussions will not go unnoticed.

If you have FBML pages on your Facebook Fan page then you will need to take action and convert those to iFrames before too long. Even though existing tab pages won’t be destroyed, you will still have to come up with a new plan for creating new ones. HubSpot did a couple of posts that get into detail about this change from FBML to iFrames and also about the recent changes to Facebook Fan Pages which you can read for specifics, but consider the fact that Facebook can and assuredly will make decisions in the future that can have immediate detrimental effects on your business.

You have the release of Facebook Places, and then you have the general effect Facebook has on brand sites such as Starbucks and Coca-Cola. With so much on which to chew, you must give heed to the fact that Foursquare and Booyah have been mentioned in this mix too.

Internet marketing is not just about search engine marketing anymore. Location-based and relationship marketing are becoming more and more digital and mobile now too. This presents new technology avenues  for people and and challenges for businesses to tackle age-old marketing objectives.

Local advertising is nothing new, but giving people and businesses the ability to do this using mobile phones and devices opens up new space in the technology marketing front that shows promise for future generations.

Foursquare is one of numerous new applications available today for location-based customer experiences to occur and with the recent roll out of Facebook Places, some people have expressed concern for how this might affect Foursquare. Facebook’s Zuckerburg was genuinely humble about the fact that the local market is a “big space.”

Much more will come out of this arrangement of players in the years to come, with new ones likely too. The need for mobile apps will increase, the ability for businesses to adapt to new technologies will improve, and service providers will be able to flourish in the new capabilities that are created. It’s a beautiful thing, but not without it’s own worries and challenges.

Look for more information from us about how your company and brand can be affected by these growing technology trends by signing up to receive and email alert each time we update our blog. Our goal is to bring timely topics and events into perspective to help you make informed decisions about today and tomorrow, plus to train and equip you with tools and technology that solve real business and organizational problems for you.

This month’s AC Video Webinar continues an ongoing exploration of various online video publishing possibilities and while Facebook is not out to be the premier publisher in online video, there certainly is a lot of potential in sharing your videos on Facebook.

As with all your content on Facebook, videos you publish can be LIKED by others and also SHARED with others, and you can specify who can and can not view your videos. This makes Facebook a viable destination for publishing personal video materials to the web and videos you use for work and other purposes.

AutoConversion would like to welcome back our friend and colleague Roger Stix from Atlanta Business Video as our guest presenter who will share with us some useful tips for getting your videos onto Facebook. Roger is the chief Producer at ABV and has extensive experience in video production, publishing, and syndication.

Stix will give us insight on formatting your videos properly for use on Facebook. He then will walk us through the process of….

• Publishing videos to your Facebook Profile
• Making your videos appear on a Page
• Making your videos appear in a Group
• Sharing your video with friends and lists

Please join us for this insightful look at the use of videos on Facebook this Thursday April 29 at 11:30am EST. We will begin with a brief orientation of the AC Webinar series and registration process before handing the controls over to Roger for his presentation which should last about 30-40 minutes.

To register for this event use the button below. If you are already registered with the AC Video Webinar series then there is no need to re-register. Likewise if you have an interest in video but can not make this particular webinar, click here to view our schedule of events or sign up to receive email and text alerts for all upcoming webinars.

For questions or assistance with AC Webinars contact Ryan Gerardi.

You know the LIKE button that appears near wall posts, photos, videos, etc.? Well

What does this mean for you as a Facebook user? Equally as important, what does this mean for you as a digital marketing firm.

You probably remember way back when you set up your Facebook account, that you entered a number of personal details in your Information section. You entered things like your contact information, your interests, your activities, even your political and religious affiliations.

Did you know that Facebook actually uses this information to target advertising to you? The ads that appear on the pages you see are sent to you based on your personal information.

In a quick survey of my friends’ profiles, I have noticed that many people enter a great deal of data in these areas – some of it real and some of it meant to be funny.

The news here is that now when you LIKE a Page, this piece of data will be kept as part of your personal profile, in the same way that your other interests are kept giving Facebook a larger and more up-to-date arsenal of data with which they can use to target advertising to you.

It will now be easier for Facebook to tailor the advertisements that they display for you to see, because when you LIKE something, you are effectively updating your profile data.

What’s your take on this change? Do you think people will be scared of it? Should they be?

For me, I prefer targeted ads. They remind me of the fact that the world is watching us, studying us, and adapting to us. That’s good if it is not abused. It’s also inevitable too isn’t it?

For a more in-depth look at this top, see Ed Dale’s blog post FACEBOOK BOMBSHELL – How DID EVERYONE miss this!

Some people struggle with the idea of a single system being utilized for both personal and professional use. Many people do not understand the intricate sharing capabilities of your information on Facebook, that you can post information to be shared with only the people you choose.

For instance, you may want to post commentary on an article that only your Real Estate buddies might enjoy, but your family or bowling league friends might not need to see that. Maybe you want to post pictures of your kid’s birthday party but you don’t want ALL of your Facebook friends seeing it. Only family members and people that were there.

These are common situations we all have and fortunately Facebook is designed for you to share only what you want and with whom.

One way to achieve this is by using the Lists feature in the Friends section. The List feature enables you to create a variety of lists for various purposes. For instance, you could create lists for people you went to school with, people you work with, people you don’t know well, whatever you feel the need for you can create a list for that. You can associate the same person to more than one list and you can create as many layers and combinations you like.

For instance, I have a list called “Pic Friends” which I add friends to when I am comfortable that they would see photos I post, like of my kids especially. I also have a list called “Virtual Buddies” which are people I have never met and do not know much about, but somehow became connected. I don’t need pics of my kids in the browsers of people I do not know well, but I may still want to share harmless fun with them. Lists are perfect for this.

Later this week in our AC List Builder Webinar series we will be exploring the basic use of Lists in Facebook. In this free webinar we will cover…

• How to create a list
• How to add Friends to lists
• How to share Wall Posts with lists
• How to share Photos with lists
• How to send Messages to lists

These core functions in Facebook are highly useful and with a little bit of effort can prove extremely useful, especially when you want to send a message out to more than 20 Friends. By keeping your lists limited to 20 people you can more easily send messages to large groups of the right people.

Join us LIVE this Thursday April 15 at 11:30 am EST by registering for the AC List Builder Series. If you are already registered then you will receive an email reminder from GoToWebinar with your access to the training session. If you are not registered then click here or the button below to receive your private link. By registering you will receive an email for each webinar within the AC List Builder Series which is about every 6 weeks. There is no obligation to attend this or any webinar within the series and you may remove yourself from the series email at any time.

From this conventional marketing approach, the impact of such cross-promotion is recognized by the number of times one of your marketing pieces comes into your place of business as a result of being displayed in a nearby venue. If you are smart you marked or tailored each piece to be associated with each different venue so you can know right away from where it came. If you fail to do this then you may know that your cross-promotional efforts are having an effect, but from which sources and to what extent you may not know.

With the advent of Facebook, the idea of cross-promotion can (and in most cases probably should) be carried into this medium, but with added benefits. Considering the more intricate offerings of Internet technology, local businesses can not only expect to benefit from an increase in patrons coming into their place of business, but also from increased website traffic, more Facebook fans, and more email subscribers. Essentially, by using Facebook, you have more conversion goals and capabilities to consider in your cross-promotion efforts than just phone calls and walk-ins.

The one thing that comes to mind for me when helping local businesses to cross-promote with one another using a site like Facebook is “monetization”. Interestingly, this word does not appear in a dictionary, at least not at dictionary.com. It does however appear on wikipedia.com and is defined as, “the process of converting or establishing something into legal tender.” Monetizing is a common word in the blogosphere that typically equates to the practice of using your blog to generate revenue. I tend to use this term more loosely on the basis that there is a monetary value for every activity you perform and that in most cases you want to associate your efforts online to that monetary value.

For instance, a new email subscriber may be worth $25 to you and a new Facebook fan might be worth $1, so if you launch a marketing initiative that results in 25 new email subscribers and 10 new Facebook fans then you know that the monetary value of that initiative is equivalent to $635. If you spent less than that to launch the initiative then you essentially have made (or saved) money.

All this said, when doing cross-promotions, particularly online with a site like Facebook, the possibilities go farther than just leaving comments on the walls of a venue’s Facebook page. There truly is potential to connect with people one-on-one and in groups. Defining and massaging the monetary value of your activities is key to your success. You want to go beyond just publishing information and going through the motions. You want to make real connections and have real conversations. This is easier said than done, but the rewards are there for the taking.

The exercise for this webinar will be on how to create a custom page on your Facebook Fan Page using the Static FBML application. The Static FBML application enables you to add advanced functionality to your Fan Page using HTML or FBML, like we did this year for our special holiday offer to create our fans and customers a custom page for their Fan Page. The webinar should be short and sweet, probably around 20-30 minutes.

FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language which is exactly what it says, a markup language specific to Facebook. We will not be getting into the use of this markup language, only showing how to add it to your Fan Page and then how to insert HTML into it to create your custom page.

To utilize this application, click on the Applications tab that appears at the bottom left corner of your browser when logged in to your Facebook account. You will most likely also have to select to “Browse more Applications”. From there, do a search for ‘fbml’ in the search box above the application category types. Now you should see the static FBML application. Click that and then from there look for a blue box labeled “Go to Application”. Once you click that then you will be propositioned to “allow” this application on your Fan Page. Once that is done then go to your Page admin and “edit” the application by inserting your code and you are done.

You can visit the Static FBML application page on Facebook for more information or to become a Fan. We will be recording this webinar so after it is complete and we polish up the recording we will then notify everyone who was registered when it is available on our Viddler group.

Earlier this week we posted a video about this to our blog which you may want to watch as well. It’s in the post labeled A Big Bang for SEO and Social Media.

For the webinar we will start by going through a slide show that was put together by Peter Caputa over at HubSpot. It’s a short slide show so we will also journey through his commentary of the subject on the HubSpot blog. All-in-all we expect our webinar to last about 20-30 minutes but we may open it up for discussion if there are not too many people attending.

To register for this webinar, click here (or the button below) for the AC List Builder series, fill in the required information and then expect to receive instructions for connecting to the webinar at 11:30 am EST on Thursday November 12. By registering you will automatically be included on all future AC List Builder/Social webinars (once a month) plus you will receive access to our webinars archive where you can watch and listen to past webinars at your leisure.

Here’s how.

When you have an account at Facebook, you can build up a list of friends with whom you have something in common. These “friends” are people that you typically communicate with through the website. You share your preferences for products and read their blogs and other posted communications.  Each Facebook member has a homepage where photographs and updates can be posted.

But now, you can go even a step further. Facebook recently began selling advertisements that you can purchase. When you do, your profile photo appears next to commercial messages that your Facebook friends can see.

Let’s say, for example, that you rented a movie that you particularly liked from Blockbuster.com. The website will then ask if you’d like to have your movie choice advertised to all of your friends on Facebook. Your friends then receive the message in addition to an advertisement from Blockbuster.

And because Facebook’s millions of existing members already use the social media networking site to tell others about the things they like, there isn’t much of a change with this new offering. The only difference is that your messages may be accompanied by an advertisement when you tell others about the things you like.

This is just another great way to get your name and your brand noticed. If you have a Facebook account set up for your brand, your logo or your face can accompany each of these messages to embed it further into the psyche of those with whom you are networking.