If you’ve got a Facebook account you use to stay in touch with your friends and family, good for you. If you’ve got a Facebook account you use to market your ADR business, good for you again (assuming that’s where your market hangs out). But if you use the same Facebook account for both, maybe not so good for you.

Facebook blunders that can hurt your career or business aren’t just the purview of teenagers. When your best high school buddy from 25 years ago posts an, um, let’s say inelegant photo of you from your wilder days, well, prospective clients you’ve befriended will see it too. Unless, of course, you’ve tweaked your privacy settings properly.

In 5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook, the New York Times says,

Unbeknownst to most mainstream Facebook users, the social network actually offers a slew of privacy controls and security features which can help you batten down the hatches, so to speak. If used properly, you’ll never have to worry about whether you should friend the boss and your mom. You can friend anyone you want while comfortable in the knowledge that not everyone gets to see everything you post.

The problem in implementing these privacy options is that they’re just too confusing for most non-tech savvy people to handle. And often, folks don’t want to bother to take the time to learn. To simplify the process, we’re offering five easy steps you can take today to help make your Facebook experience safer, more secure, and more private.

Read the full article at 5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook, then go implement those steps.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.com.

This post is written to supplement comments I’m making today during the Online Dispute Resolution Cyberweek panel hosted by Jeff Thompson and including me, Diane Levin, Victoria Pynchon and John Ford.

In my remarks I promised to post links to the applications I recommend for using social media effectively.

Twitter and Facebook Applications

These applications help you participate in Twitter and/or Facebook from an application on your desktop or iPhone, and, particularly in the case of Twitter, make using the site far easier.

Seesmic – one app for using both Twitter and Facebook simultaneously, both PC and Mac
Tweetie – simple, streamlined Twitter app for the Mac and iPhone
TweetDeck – another crowd favorite for Twitter, both PC and Mac
Birdfeed – simple, powerful Twitter app for the iPhone

Do you have questions you didn’t get a chance to ask during the panel presentation? Use the comment box to ask away! (If you’re reading this in your email, click on the article title to go directly to the page; comment box is near the bottom

Many thanks to Jeff for organizing and moderating our merry band, and to my colleagues for their wisdom and sharing.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.com.

“The days of ‘have a website and advertise’ are over. It’s too expensive to be noticed on an Internet that’s already full.”

That pretty much nails it.

In Why you have to engage in social media, even if you don’t want to, Jason Cohen makes the case for getting involved in social media and ceasing to rely on a traditional, static website for your mediation marketing and career development. He says,

Social media is already changing the rules of the marketplace, just like the web did a decade ago. It’s still early of course and no one — not even the experts – knows where all this is going. But it’s clear that times are changing again, and those that don’t jump in will go the way of print media.

It’s worth reading his entire post.

The value of a healthy web presence for mediators

If you’re new to Making Mediation Your Day Job, here are a few past posts that add to topic:

• Social media: join the shift from monologue to dialogue
• 4 reasons online networking is valuable even if your market is local
• Prospective clients are googling you: what are they finding?
• Twitter 101 for mediators
• All aflitter about twitter: answers to your social media questions

What’s making you hesitate to jump in? I’d love to hear so please leave a comment.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.com.

My assistant, Kathy, was doing some upkeep on my websites and emailed me to let me know that the reading level on my sites is for an audience with at least a college education.

“The lower the score,” she reminded me, “the more understandable the content will be to your visitors.”

This is a great example of situations where knowing your target market and your website’s intended audience matters.

In my case, my markets and audience all have college degrees and most also have graduate education. So both of my sites, the one for my ADR clients (ConflictZen.com) and the one for my fellow mediators (this one, MakingMediationYourDayJob.com), should have reading levels with the higher scores Kathy found.

Does your website’s copy match the reading level of your intended audience and target market(s)? You can find out if there’s a discrepancy by using the site Kathy recommends, Juicy Studio’s Readability Test.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.com.

A landing page is any page on your website to which you send visitors in order to encourage a certain action. Visitors find your landing pages via links you provide directly to those pages. Examples of landing pages include:

• The registration page for an event
• The subscription page for your newsletter or blog
• The product page for a downloadable e-book
• A services page intended for a specific audience

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of the Marketing Experiments research and education team says there are three short questions that every landing page on a website should answer:

1. Where am I?
2. What is your offer?
3. Why should I participate?

Do your landing pages answer those questions? Would your visitors agree? Here’s a quick way to find out:

1. Find 5 friends willing to give you 5 minutes each, in person or by phone (if by phone, they need to be have a web browser open in front of them while they talk to you). These need to be friends who are willing to speak their mind honestly with you.

2. Load a landing page from your site. Ideally, it should be a page to which you regularly send visitors or use as a page to promote a service or product.

3. Ask your friend each question, one at at time, jotting down their answers, which you aren’t interrupting.

4. After you’ve done all 5, look at the collective responses. Are those the responses you’re aiming for?

If yes, stand up, do a little happy dance around your office. If not, then you have some work to do and know, from your friends’ responses, where to start.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

SOBCon, the biz school for bloggers, has announced its 2009 conference dates: May 1-3 in Chicago.

I’m a huge fan of SOBCon – short for Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference – and have attended each year since its creation. It’s been one of those rare conferences that was worth every penny of my registration fee and every second of my time.

SOBCon is for you if:

• You blog and want to learn how to get better at it.
• You blog and want to increase the ROI on your time and energy.
• You’re thinking about blogging for business and want to ramp up your readiness to start.
• You like hanging out with and learning from other small business owners from around the world in an informal and human-scale environment.

Need even more reasons? Gah! You’re a tough nut to crack. Well, ok. See my 10 reasons for attending SOBCon 08.

And believe it or not, registration for SOBCon 09 is already open. There’s a before-the-end-of-2008 special rate and since they limit attendance number, it’s smart to consider holding your space now. This is a popular conference with many folks returning for more.

Chicago’s lovely in May. And you couldn’t find a better group of folks to hang with and learn from.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.