Facebook has made ‘Send email notifications’ as the default setting for any new groups where you are added. This means that when any new group members join the group, new posts get put on the group wall or people comment on those posts – you get an email for everyone.

One neat feature about this is that if you want to join in the discussion or welcome a new member, you can simply reply to that email and it will be automatically posted in the group.

But if you belong to an active group you may not want to get all those emails. Here is how to change your Facebook Group Email Settings to your individual preference.

First click on the little down triangle in the upper right-hand corner and choose ‘Account Settings’.  You can do this from any place in Facebook. You do not have to be in your group at the time.

On the ‘General Account Settings’ page look in the left hand column for the menu.  In that menu you should see ‘Notifications’ – you can click on that.

From there you will enter the ‘Notifications Settings’ page.  You can scroll down past your recent notifications until you find the section titled ‘All Notifications’.

In this area you should see ‘Groups’ listed and over to the far right side of the page click on ‘Edit’.

Now a new section will open that allows you to set some overall group settings related to key group activities.  Adjusting these setting is up to your personal preference, but allowing notifications for these settings will not overload your email inbox unless you belong to a great many groups.

After you have set your General Group notification settings you should click on the link to ‘Change email settings for individual groups’.  A pop-up window opens that shows all the groups you belong to.

Here is where you can set whether you get all those emails for every activity that happens in the Facebook groups you belong to.

Simply check the boxes of the Facebook groups that you want to receive all the notifications from.  And un-check the boxes where you DO NOT want to receive any email notifications.

Now click ‘Save’ to your new notifications settings and you are done!

Hope that helps,  .Jack

P.S. One other tip – why not get a free email account from one of the many online services (Hotmail, Gmail, yahoo, etc) and use it for all your social media accounts.  Then it won’t plug up your main email account (and devices like your smart phone) with emails that you don’t need to deal with on a regular basis.

Facebook can be a useful marketing tool, I am not denying that.  But it is becoming harder for businesses to use this tool, and even harder for people to promote and find new customers using their personal profiles.

Facebook controls what everyone sees on the ‘Wall’ – that area where the updates come from all your friends and business pages you have liked.  Many don’t know it but you only get a small fraction of the activities that you possibly could be shown.  Even less if you are using the ‘Highlighted Stories First’ option which Facebook offers people via default.

Therefore if you are putting out any kind of marketing related message – it is only going to a very few people.  Therefore the likelihood of new people seeing your message is very low.

Facebook can be used very effectively to connect with existing customers and to prospects that you already know.  It is also an excellent research tool if your target market is active on Facebook.

But as a new lead acquisition tool – it has lots most of it’s power.  If your trying to build up your customer base and need to find brand new prospects – I would find a new strategy other than Facebook.

Therefore, Facebook has designed a process to show each user the optimum updates on their unique wall.  The process that regulates what you see on the wall is called EdgeRank.  EdgeRank rates each item (update, photo, comment, etc) and then shows each user the ones with the highest ranking.

Facebook has two settings that allow you to have some control of your wall.  You can choose to use time as the major factor to determine what shows up on your wall – by choosing recent stories first.  This does not mean that time is the only factor, it only means that time plays a more prominent role in the sorting of stores you see, and that all stories are sorted by when they were posted. Or you can choose to have the best (as determined by EdgeRank) stories show up, regardless of time, by choosing Highlighted stories first.

Regardless of whether users choose recent stories or highlighted stories – the items with the best EdgeRank will show up more consistently and more often on the wall of your fans and friends.

Therefore to get the your message out to your Facebook Fans and Friends, thus engaging those friends and fans – you need to increase the EdgeRank.

Creating your E-Marketing strategy begins – like any other marketing strategy – with your target market and your USP.

From there you have to determine your customers buying behaviour related to the internet. How do they interact online? What actions are they taking – related to the internet – that leads them to purchasing your product or service.

The review of the online buying behaviour should allow you to determine which online tools will be most impactful to your target market.  This is where you determine if you are going to use banner ads, paid search, social media, search engine optimization, email along with your website to draw your customers in and move them along the buying chain.

From there you move to the tactical level of E-Marketing strategy.