Here’s your last chance to save 20% on tickets to BlogWorld, being held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on November 3-5, 2011.

Save 20% NOW on BlogWorld and New Media Expo LA 2011 registration with the code “BWELA20″! Register now to save!

I’ll be a featured speaker on Friday, November 4th at 1:45 pm in room 518 to talk about The Rules of Netiquette: How to Mind Your Virtual Manners.

Following my speech, I’ll have a quick meet-and-greet and will head over to the Barnes & Noble BlogWorld bookstore to sign copies of The Perils of Cyber-Dating at 4:00 pm.

If you’re planning on attending, do connect with me on Twitter @JulieSpira during the conference.

For a sneak peek of my presentation, you can watch this video.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Julie Spira – Social Media and More from Julie Spira on Vimeo.

With all of the changes on Facebook, hangouts in Google +, and monitoring your SEO rank, it’s impossible to keep up with all of the trends. Find out in our video, why you need a social media marketing plan.

Just announced today, Facebook has partnered with Bing to help you read posts from pages in different languages.

In the past, we’ve enjoyed Google Translate from web entries in a foreign language.

Here are some simple steps to activate this feature:

1. Click on account on the top right hand side of your page and change your settings to View as a Page.

2. Click on Edit Page on the top right hand side of your page.

3. Click on Your Settings. You’ll have four choices to pick from:

• Admin, community, and machine translaters
• Community and machine translators (default)
• Machine translators
• None

Under each post, you’ll now see the options to Like, Comment, Manage Translations, or Share each for each post.

Need more help? Straight from Facebook, here are the details on how you can enjoy this new feature. Not every language is presently available.

Today we launched a new translation tool that enables people to translate posts directly inline on Facebook Pages through Bing Translate. With this service, we are making it even easier for people to enjoy Page content on Facebook regardless of the languages that they know.

When someone clicks on the translate button on a public Page post, a Bing translation will appear in a popout window. People then have the opportunity to submit their own translation by opting-in to using inline translations. After their generated translation has received enough positive votes, it will replace the Bing translation and will appear each time someone clicks on the translate button associated with the post.

Page admins can always control how their content is translated within the “Your Settings” tab in the Edit Page view.

Also, effective October 31, 2011, Facebook will eliminate the discussions feature. Their reasoning? They’d rather have you interact on posts and comments.

What languages will you translate your facebook posts to?

Julie Spira is a bestselling author, social media strategist, and CEO of Social Media and More. Connect with Julie on Twitter @JulieSpira and at Facebook.com/SocialMediaandMore

I’ve attended numerous events including BlogHer, Social Media Week, SXSW, the 140 Conference, as well as shows with a social media element including NAB, CES, and AdTech. When I attended BlogWorld last fall for the first time in Las Vegas, I was welcomed into the community with open arms. The amount of shared knowledge that I experienced over the course of several days was enormously helpful. The building of personal relationships with those you have either communicated with on Twitter or Facebook, or admired from afar is something you will easily accomplish by attending the BlogWorld and New Media Expo. BlogWorld’s CEO Rick Calvert really makes you feel at home, even with the thousands of attendees and exhibitors on site.

This year, I will have the honor of speaking and presenting The Rules of Netiquette: How to Mind Your Virtual manners on Friday, November 4th at 1:45pm. I’ll be talking about Internet etiquette during BlogWorld’s largest expected audience yet. Even for those who have mastered social networking, we’re all guilty of breaking the ever-changing rules from time-to-time.

I had the opportunity to meet some of the already announced featured speakers in real life at the 140 Conference and other social media gatherings including Peter Shankman, Liz Straus, C.C. Chapman, and Jeffrey Hayzlett. Their voices and experiences will help transform your blog and brand.  I look forward to meeting and mingling with the other speakers and attendees during the 3-day event on November 3-5, 2011 in Los Angeles.

The Social Media Business Summit is promising to be the world’s largest social media business conference. Monetization won’t be just a buzz word of something we hope to achieve at some point, but we will be educated on specific examples on how we can find an ROI on our tireless and passionate writing skills, master SEO, and engage through video and other social networking channels.

Whether you’re just using Twitter to chit-chat in real time with like-minded others, or are responsible for the brand identity of your business, information will be shared in November and I’m super-excited to be a part of it. From podcasting to sales letters, everything you need to know to be successful in Internet marketing will be covered at this event.

I invite you to join me at BlogWorld and New Media Expo – Nov 3-5 in Los Angeles!. And yes, I’m proud to be an affiliate of this wonderful conference. Prices go up on September 21st, so you still have time to get an early-bird ticket. I look forward to seeing you there.

~Julie Spira, CEO Social Media and More and author, The Rules of Netiquette

@JulieSpira

With all of the excitement of Google +, it’s not hard to feel frustrated about having a long profile user name.  As of now, Google is not allowing custom or vanity URL’s for their new social networking site, leaving us with a series of numbers that even most mathematician’s wouldn’t remember.

To let your friends and social media colleagues join you on Google+, there are a few great custom URL shorteners to select from.  In my digital opinion, I say grab them all to protect your brand name. All you need to do is type in your long Google profile URL. Mine is https://plus.google.com/114190935413397701623/ so look for the long series of numbers on your profile page.

Add in your desired custom user name on the list of shorteners below. I used my first and last name, juliespira, to be in digital alignment with my twitter profile, as seen below.

The only trick will be in remembering which of these shorteners you’ve decided to use to promote your profile on your facebook, twitter, linkedin, or other social networking page. I’ve been favoring Gplus.to, but they’ll all work just fine.

Link shorteners

1. Gplus.to/juliespira
2. Glpl.us/juliespira
3. Plusya.com/juliespira
4. Gplus.name/juliespira
5. gPlusNick.com/juliespira
6. GooPlu.com/juliespira
7. Myplus.name/juliespira

Feel free to connect with me if you’d like to hang out or join one of my circles. It’s an exciting time for social media enthusiasts and I look forward to seeing you there.

As the World-Wide-Web becomes more and more like the Wild-Wild-West with the addition of new social networks such as Google+ as well as the MySpace cyber face lift, it’s time to pause and take a look at how we are representing or mis-respresenting ourselves in the digital world.

If you ask any Hollywood agent, they’ll tell you there really aren’t any original ideas out there. To stand out in the crowded digital playing field, you need to have a unique voice and build your brand.

So what happens when you see your company logo on another’s profile on a social networking site? Perhaps they’ve found it on Google images or were just hoping you wouldn’t notice. Between Google alerts and your friends in the blogosphere, one can only hope that you’re keeping a digital eye on your brand.

Recently, I shared the story on Huffington Post of how my personal identity was copied on Twitter for the second time in two years. Twitter doesn’t take this lightly. They call it impersonation. I say, imitation isn’t a form of flattery.

In the first case, I notified Twitter. Five days later, the account of the copy-cat was suspended due to suspicious activity. In the second incident, I was fortunate that a social media friend spotted it upon first tweet. The person using my logo apologized and removed it from their profile.

Without further digital adieu, here are my recommendations on how to protect your brand identity.

• File a copyright registration for your logo at copyright.gov
• Create a Google alert for your personal name, company name, and tagline at google.com/alerts
• Create a search with your keywords on Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, or other social media software management tools
• File a trademark for your company name and logo at uspto.gov
• Take any digital dispute offline
• Report any blatant incidents to the social network

Social media attorney Adrian Dayton agrees with this approach. ”Social networks take identity theft extremely seriously, most people don’t realize that if they are a victim the first step is to notify Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook immediately,” said Dayton.

Dayton knows about this first-hand as one of his clients, an NFL player, had noticed that someone had used his name and jersey number to create a fake account and started tweeting critical messages about the team. “All it took was a single email to Twitter and the offending account was removed. It may take more than that if you aren’t somebody famous, but most social networking sites will take action,” Dayton added.

At the end of the digital day one can only hope that our friends become each other’s social media police. We need to keep looking out for each other.

Have you experienced impersonation of your company or personal brand? Comments are welcome.

The event, created by Mashable and held in 90 countries around the world, included 1400 meetup’s.  I was fortunate to have attended the Los Angeles gathering at CBS’s What’s Trending headquarters along with many of my social media friends.

Adam Ostrow, Mashable’s editor-in-chief welcomed us at the rooftop party with a 360 degree view of Hollywood. Shira Lazar, producer and host of What’s Trending gave us a tour of their studios, where Evan Lowenstein, founder of Stageit was performing and streaming live [video below].

Jeremy Pepper, Marsha Collier, Adam Ostrow, and Julie Spira

Guests enjoyed cocktails from Veev, wine from One Hope, a photo booth from Polite in Public, and snacks from Pop Chips and Pretzel Chips.

No social media event would be complete without a contribution to social good. HeadBlade, who provides razors and grooming products for the shaved head look, donated $1 for each tweet with the hashtag of #SMDayLA to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a volunteer-driven charity committed to funding the most promising research to find cures for childhood cancers and give survivors long and healthy lives.

Among the attendees were my social media friends Amanda Coolong, Marsha Collier, Curt Buthman, Michale Pilla, Heather Meeker, Matt Meeker, Melissa Rowley, Marla Shulman, Seth Shapiro, Calvin Lee, KW Low, AV Flox, Alana Joy, Robert Moran, Kevin Winston, and Andy Sternberg. Many thanks to Marsha Collier for taking the photos.

How did you celebrate Social Media Day? Share your thoughts and follow Julie on Twitter @JulieSpira and like us at facebook.com/SocialMediaandMore

It makes good digital sense to check on your privacy settings from time-to-time. Just today, I checked mine, only to find a new check mark next to a new setting that wasn’t there last week which said:

Let friends of people tagged in my photos and posts see them.

I know it seems sneaky of Facebook to automatically allow friends-of-friends to share or view my photos, but it wasn’t my intention, nor might it be yours.

It’s a simple problem to fix.

1. Log onto Facebook and at the top right hand corner, click on Account

2. In the drop-down menu, click on Privacy Setttings

3. A box will appear under Contact which is already checked. Uncheck it and click save.

Facebook Screen Shot

For more social media advice and conversation, like us at Facebook.com/SocialMediaAndMore

I first started studying what I call the “Social Media Obituary” when I started writing my second book, The Rules of Netiquette: How to Mind Your Manners on the Web. I had observed how friends of mine were reaching out to express their sadness when friends and family members were ill and passed away. I noticed how people connected on Facebook to advise friends of funeral arrangements. At first, I was uncomfortable with the “Social Media Obituary,” but have now that when handled in good taste, which is very individual, there is a place for a web page, site, updates, and a way to remember your loved ones.

In my article on the Huffington Post entitled, “The Social Media Obituary,” I went into great lengths to discuss not just it’s position as a place to hang your social media hat while mourning, but the responsibilities of friends on social networks when someone is crying out for help. The comments on my Facebook page were thought-provoking. They ranged from, “We must look out for  each other,” to someone who wished a school friend a Happy Birthday on Facebook, only to find out that the friend had passed away.

In the most recent case, Emily Longley, a single woman, was found dead in her home in the U.K. after posting a Facebook update saying she had a stalker and was scared. A memorial page was created in her honor on Facebook, which now has almost 16,000 comments from mourners and strangers. In other cases, teens and students who were cyberbullied took their lives. These tragedies might have been prevented if we took time to look at their Facebook updates and jumped in to help.

The primary focus of The Social Media Obituary are on tribute pages being created on Facebook. It’s become both a home for us to share our joys and successes, while dealing with real-life issues such as sickness and death. While our relationship status updates include, “Single” to “In a Relationship” to “It’s Complicated” to “Married” and “Divorced,” we don’t have a category to say, “Deceased.” Some profiles stay active on Facebook as a memoriam. Others remain due to lack of digital housekeeping. Tribute sites have been filled with inappropriate comments and have been pulled down. One thing that is known for sure, we now mourn and grieve with the help of our social media friends.

The full article can be found here on Huffington Post. I look forward to reading your comments on the issue. If you get a moment, do like us on Facebook.com/RulesofNetiquette where you can add your comments and thoughts.