I can’t count the number of contests I’ve seen where you enter by leaving a comment on a business’s Facebook page. It turns out that’s verboten. Uploading a photo to Facebook? That’s a no-no, too. If you read the rules strictly, even telling people to enter a contest by becoming your Fan (or clicking the Like button to use the new Facebook vernacular) is grounds for having your account deactivated.

Are these rules enforced?

No. Not based on what I see happening on Facebook. There are so many active accounts that it would be a monumental task to try to police all the “illegal” contests that are running, but the rules are officially on the books. So Facebook could drop the hammer any time without notice.

The good news is you can still promote a contest on Facebook as long as the action of entering the contest doesn’t occur on Facebook. So we’re running a contest right now where you leave a comment on our blog and you get a chance to win a free copy of Delivering Happiness by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. We had been considering allowing people to enter by leaving a comment on our Facebook wall, as well, but decided to comply with Facebook’s stated policy on contests.

So Facebook is useless for contests?

What we can do while still obeying the letter of Facebook’s policy is talk about the contest on our wall. We can invite visitors to click a link to our blog and leave comments over here. That let’s us still leverage our Facebook network and avoid the risk of offending the powers-that-be.

And of course our friends, clients, and business partners can talk about the contest on Facebook, too.

1. If you recall our post on the Social Media Landscape, you may remember that handy guide that lists out the top social media mediums and what they do best. YouTube had three green boxes, meaning it was a very good medium for customer communication, brand exposure and SEO.
2. Have some fun! Video is by far one of the more easy ways to add some fun to your marketing. Our video of me doing 25 push ups is our most viewed video. That obviously has nothing to do with marketing and a lot to do with fun. Clay’s April 1st video still has people laughing and talking. Fun is good.
3. Shoot for a “B”. When you’re starting out with a new medium, don’t set expectations that you’ll be perfect. Especially today and with video use. It’s totally acceptable to jump out of the gate with some less than professional production. Have a purpose and start your video. Accept that you will learn as you go.
4. Do buy the basics. We have learned that a camera with a mic is probably necessary for what we want to do with video. In the beginning, we just bought a flip and started out. We have learned a Flip works pretty well for the basic stuff, but if you want to interview others like we do on our Intimate Invasions, you’ll want to have an external mic to help boost sound.
5. Make friends, subscribe to others on YouTube and stay up on the new features YouTube has added to get the most out of your videos. This means checking in a few times a year at minimum, not that you have to commit to daily use. Just make sure you’re keeping up.

Facebook gives you an extra reach you don’t get with your website. That is one of the most general but true elements of why you would want to have a Facebook page. People that connect with you on your Facebook pages have a reach to others that you just don’t. If you want to have that kind of reach, you need to be where all those people are.

Creating your Facebook page is easier than you think. One of the things Facebook does well, that has allowed them to have the reach that they do, is they make a good majority of the things you want to do on there easy, i.e. setting up your facebook page. As you can see from the page below, they take you step-by-step on how to set up your page, even how to start advertising to reach more people who like you.

Now that you have your page set up, invite and share your page with those in your personal profile. Make sure you let everyone know through your regular channels too, like your monthly newsletter or in your email signature. Go really crazy and launch an advertising campaign!

Need help on what to put on your Facebook page? Read this guide from Clay on What’s on Your Facebook Page or check out our social media strategy services.

1. Problogger – This blog is for beginning bloggers, advid bloggers, money-making bloggers… you get the picture? If you’re looking to read up on how to improve your blog, this is IT! So check out the blog, get yourself subscribed and start working on your blog posts. If you’re really committed to improving your blog, consider his guide 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. I have looked through it and it has quality material.
2. Mashable – This blog has a slant toward technology and social media, but it’s still a groundswell of amazing information. How-to guides, the latest news on the iPad, what Google is up to and what videos are trending on the Internet are just some of the topics you’ll find.
3. Seth Godin’s blog – This is just another daily read on my list. He keeps his posts short and to the point, which makes it easy to keep up with yet adds a bit of zing to your marketing day. Typically inspiring, always informative.

To our RSS readers, here’s what you’re not seeing:

So now it’s easier than ever to let us know when you really like one of our blog posts. If you approve of what you’re reading – and you don’t have time to leave a comment – just hit the like button that shows up at the top of all of our blog posts.

This is actually only one of several changes Facebook has recently rolled out, but some of the other stuff gets a little heavy on the geek-speak. This is the new feature that you will probably be noticing the most as you browse your favorite websites in the coming months.

In real estate, you know there is that saying:  Location, location, location. In this presentation, you need to keep in mind the three “R”s…

1. Be Real
2. Be Regular (I typically use the word consistent, but as you know that word doesn’t start with an “R”!)
3. Be Relevant

In your Facebook fan page marketing, actually any marketing, being real, being regular and being relevant is key. The presentation goes ahead and shares ideas that could help you be real, regular and relevant.

If you would like a specific presentation for your organization or business, just ask us. We would be glad to help. Browse our list of services and see if we fit your needs.

My real point, though, is that your business has a unique opportunity to connect with your audience on April Fool’s Day. Even if the voice of your business is very formal and polished 364 days a year, you do have a chance on this one day to be irreverent. We’ve talked before on this blog about the value of using humor in your marketing. We walked the walk yesterday with our humorous video on our new design breakthrough. (Haven’t seen it yet? Head over to YouTube and leave a comment after the video to let us know what you think.)

The response to the video has been great. We connected with customers, referral partners, and other people in our network. The video was spread around to coworkers and friends. It was seen by people we’ve never met. Once we started getting some attention, we stoked the fire by adding a link for viewers to download a PDF of the actual charts we used in the video. We added the link into the comments on Facebook and added an in-video annotation over on YouTube.

We’re not the only ones who jumped at the opportunity to have a little April Fool’s fun. Here are some other great jokes from yesterday:

Have any favorites we missed? Sound off in the comments.

Digg has always been kind of a mystery to me. Sure the concept is simple enough. Everybody can give any page on the Internet a thumbs up. The pages that get a lot of thumbs up (referred to as being “dug”) are shown on the Digg home page. Those lucky pages get a massive surge of web traffic for a few days, crashing their previously obscure websites and driving their web hosting providers nuts.

Some very small percentage of the visitors from Digg stick around after the traffic spike, but for the most part they were just one-time visitors. I guess there’s a certain appeal to doing something like that, but I never viewed it as something to build a marketing strategy around. The social media graphic mentioned above, though, made me start to wonder.

Then I saw an article in Mashable talking about the new changes that Digg CEO Jay Adelson recently announced. Now there are a lot of changes discussed here. Integrating with Facebook and Twitter accounts is big. I think creating the means for a website owner to publish Digg comments right on their page sounds fascinating. But there was another change that really caught my eye.

It sounds like Digg is gravitating toward creating more niche communities of Digg users. Digg has some very broad categories, but nothing that could reasonably be described as niche. I love playing World of Warcraft. I don’t play other online role-playing games. I don’t even play many other computer games at all. I don’t own a traditional video game console. As I’m writing this the top dug page under the Gaming category is about Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I couldn’t care less. If I drill down to Gaming > PC Games the top site is another (different) page about Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I’m not even a little engaged in what’s going on here.

Now imagine that there was a category on Digg that was dedicated to World of Warcraft. Well, I would definitely be interested in the #1 page there. I’d also be interested in the second and third pages. In fact I could probably easily lose an hour checking out all the World of Warcraft pages that had been dug.

As a marketer this is exciting. Digg is embracing the long tail. I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to market a product or service to everyone on the Internet. That’s just too big of a group for me to get my arms around. What I can get a good, solid handle on is marketing to targeted groups of people with some similar interests.

And it sounds like that’s exactly what Digg is going to turn into over the next few months.