A few weeks ago we held our 2nd annual Maverick Business Insider Summer Extravaganza event for Maverick Global Intrepid members and Maverick Business Insider newsletter subscribers. This 1-day event covered the maverick philosophy of make more, have more fun and give more. (If you weren’t there – you missed out!!)

(I’ll be posting some of the highlights and fun pics including a chicken suit skydiving experience)

Now one of the all-new presentations I delivered at our 1-day event covered 6 profitable online trends to pay attention to right now. And this is part of what we talked about for the first trend…

Plugging into the Facebook Network:

This is one trend that cannot be ignored, the Facebook juggernaut is growing bigger and bigger. That’s not really a surprise, but what is trend-worthy is integrated with the wave & using it for your own benefit. One of the easiest things you should consider integrating is the Facebook “Like” button.

In just a few months of being released it’s already spread to hundreds of thousands of sites. And why not? It’s cool and helps you get tap into social traction. If you haven’t seen it yet here’s an example from the Levi’s site:

So if you’re shopping (or anywhere) you can just hit “like” and if you’re logged into Facebook that action will get logged to your wall so your friends can get alerted (creating awareness and traffic). I was playing around with this before my presentation and my Facebook friends saw that I liked toddler’s jeans. Hmmm

Another variation of the like button is to show your friends faces who like the page. This has been tested to have people hit the LIKE button 4x as much as just the thumbs up icon. I also really like the way when posting a message the Facebook setting is automatically pre-checked to post to their wall. So now if I leave a comment on a blog it will show up on my wall and once again alerting my network and creating a viral effect.

We’ve been testing the ‘like’ button with comments on one of our upcoming Maverick Business Adventures Covert Ops bootcamp and it’s already got at least 1 new qualified attendee we wouldn’t have seen without this (Almost $10k – so not bad for adding a bit of code).

And then at the bottom of the page we let people post comments via their Facebook profile. It’s interesting to see the conversation there:

Exponential Social Proof

You can add even more heat to fire when you when you allow your customers to share with their network the action they just took. Here’s what I saw from one of my friends on Facebook after he bought an item from Groupon. (Notice how it created a small conversation and interaction about their brand.)

One person really blowing this up in a big way is my buddy, Mike Filsaime. He’s got a launch for his new AffiliateDotCom program with Chris Farrell and it’s just amazing how they’ve incorporated the Facebook multiplying effect.

Throughout the launch they’ve had their videos available for comments by people through their Facebook account. (We already covered why this smart since it creates the conversation and virally propels it.)

You can see the videos here

Side note: I totally recommend you check them out on 3 different “tracks”. 1) For how they’ve created them – you can see how much proof they’ve put into their videos. 2) For the Facebook viral elements I mentioned and 3) For the content. (The material is really killer especially video #2 and #3. I think you’ll have to opt-in to get in there but do it – well worth it.)

What I really loved that Mike and Chris has done is adding in the social proof of comments from buyers on the final sales video. I guarantee this helped convert some skeptical or ‘on-the-fence’ prospects. When I wrote this post they had over 1,500 people who “liked” their product after buying and have 5 pages of comments from new buyers. That is really, really powerful! You can only post on this particular wall if you’ve purchased. It has a big call-out that says “Look Who Just Joined Only Customers Can Post on this Wall” (WOW!)

This is a powerful concept you should consider applying to your own business. Here’s the link for Facebook developer tools if you want to add this to your site.

And if you want to see some of the other cool things Mike & Chris have been doing with Facebook – watch those videos. I was blown away with the concept with a simple “sidedoor” to finding the right audience for your product or service. Now if you want to get involved in their program, I think it’s closing down tonight at midnight.

I’d love to hear what you’re doing with this idea or anything cool in Facebook – leave a comment.