As you sit there, slogging away at the social networks, has something titilated your brain? Have your senses been “tweaked” alerting you to some unseen element? You may be an unwitting victim of social media ruining your mind.

That’s right, you read correctly, recent studies may have revealed links tying social media to all manner of ills. Not only could your ability to multitask and your focus be adversely affected by your incessant networking, so might other cognitive functions. As the infographic from Assisted Living Today below shows, science may have once again found fodder for hazard warnings and labels, this time maybe on Facebook!
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Facebook and blogging, if both are done right, can be a powerful combination. Linking up your Facebook Page with your blog is a great way to get your blog readers more involved with your Facebook community, and it’s also a great chance to let your Facebook fans know what’s going on over on your blog.

It’s not difficult to link up your Facebook Page and your blog, in fact some of it can be set once and then will automatically continue to work for you. It’s just a matter of getting the pieces in place so that both your blog and your Facebook Page are communicating with each other and your people can easily connect with you where they are most comfortable interacting.

Let’s start with some things you can do on your Facebook Page.

Automatically Post Your Blog Updates

Every time you write a new blog post, you can have Facebook automatically publish that on your Facebook Page. This is a great way to let your fans know that there is new content over on the blog, and they can get a quick sneak peek to see if it’s something they want to check out or not.

All you need is a Facebook Page app that posts from an RSS feed. RSS Graffiti is a good example of one that is completely free and easy to set up.
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The social component is thought by many to be the true spirit of what we obsessively hear called as the Web 2.0. Not the round font logos, nor pink or blue gradients.

The need for more human interaction and developing an online identity has lead to the apparition of thousands of social networks and social media platforms out of which only a few managed to get the blessing of the masses. What set them apart from the rest? What made them turn from social experiments to successful businesses? The user, their biggest asset.

Power to the people

During development stages and also while growing in popularity, these social media platforms understood the need to focus on what users wanted or needed:

• The means to connect with people who they shared interests with;
• The means to discover content based on their own interests;
• The means to become an important part of a community.

Driven by such needs, some members of these social networks turned into what we call power users. They were the most prolific users of each platform, gathering masses of other users around them, sharing the most content and most times acting like evangelists for the services they used.

The idea of one day becoming one themselves, of wielding the power that such users have, attracted more and more people to these social networks, giving them the boost required to reach mainstream and go beyond, turning them into the multi-million dollar businesses we know them to be today: Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter.
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In yesterday’s post I have shared some light on two of Facebook’s most attractive features for bloggers, the Facebook Like and Facebook Share buttons. While the decision of which one of the two use is your own (though the general answer seems to point to “Like”), today I’m going to talk about another feature that Facebook has improved and re-released back in June: Facebook Insights.

Through Facebook Insights you can gain free access to a whole bunch of highly useful information about your users’ behavior, their like/share habits and pretty decent demographics analytics, since Facebook uses their own user profile system to provide the information (and we all like to fill in our profile info, right?).
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Soon after one starts blogging, the fact that just posting the entries and waiting for an indefinite “them” to come is not really working well hits you. Posts need exposure, especially for new blogs that don’t have an established readership. Even when we’re talking about a well known blog, the audience has its preferences when it comes to where they like to receive the latest updates. And Facebook is one of those places where you can reach a lot of new or returning visitors.

As it happens with any other social media channel, the blog author’s connections are limited. But their readers come with their own friends that might be interested in what the blogger has to say. So making it easy for them to share your fresh stories on Facebook is important. You’re faced with two options – going for the Facebook Share button or choosing the Facebook Like or Recommend button that’s so popular right now.
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