Marketing Your Business: It's Not All About Facebook

Okay, so you’ve finally gotten on the social media bandwagon. You’ve been putting it off and putting it off, but now you’ve finally made the move. You’ve decided social media is where its at and you’ve not only launched your business on Facebook but you’ve paid someone to design a snazzy new custom branded Facebook Landing Page.

Your new Landing Page is the place newcomers to your Facebook Page will ‘land’ when they visit. It’s cool, it’s branded for your business and it even has links to your business website. You’re confident that as soon as people see it they will ‘like’ it!

Now you’re waiting for that big pay off - more customers to discover you and the fantastic services and products you provide! After all, isn’t social media, in particular Facebook, where it’s at these days?

Before you get too excited about social media - and you should be excited! - remember the wise old saying: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

While it is important for you to expand your business reach and reputation through the use of social media, and there is no place better for that than Facebook, at least at this time: don’t for a moment think that Facebook alone will do it all. It won’t - at least not for most of us.

With roughly 800 million on Facebook  (and growing daily), and in Canada more half of the population, the opportunities Facebook provides for you to grow your brand and business are huge.

That said a significant portion of the population is still NOT on Facebook. And of the ones that are, many are periodic users checking in only weekly or even monthly.

So too, the demographics of those who use Facebook less frequently may be more like your target audience - at least right now. And even if they’re not, it rarely makes sense to use only one marketing medium to reach your target audience.

For small business owners with a limited budget, whether on Facebook or not, attractive, concise and well-written emails are another way to help market your business. They can share helpful information, special promotional deals and news with clients and those who have ‘signed up’ for your mailing list. And, they are another way to keep in touch, especially for those who are not on Facebook.

In fact, in recent social media findings (US) published by foreseeresults.com, an international online customer satisfaction firm, 64% of the 12,000 visitors to top e-retail websites surveyed indicated they prefer to hear about sales and promotions through ‘Promotional emails’! Only 8% indicated ‘Social media websites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) as their preferred choice. Click here to request a copy of  the report from Foresee.

LinkedIn's Latest Update

It is no secret: LinkedIn is the largest professional network available on the Internet. As of August 2011, LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, could proudly verify that the global network had over 120 million member profiles – with approximately half of these users located in the United States. In addition to individual user profiles, LinkedIn also offers company profiles. Over 2 million public and private corporations are listed on the network, and this number is growing as small businesses begin to make use of the platform.

In the past, company profile pages were a passive communication tool. Individuals would flock to the listings to pull information and statistics – which proved to be especially advantageous for job seekers.


The addition of the "company follow" feature two years ago provided further value, as individuals were able to become more engaged with the companies. Knowing exactly who their followers were in terms of demographics, companies published content that appealed to their audiences. Alternatively, the users that chose to follow provided social proof of the companies' value to them.
Now, LinkedIn has again stepped up their level of engagement. Company pages have added a new feature: company status updates.


These updates are a great marketing tool to begin to utilize. Companies can now directly communicate with their audience by posting corporate news, product releases, promotions and other relevant information. The updates are automatically directed to the followers' homepage news feeds, where the users can choose to engage by commenting, liking and sharing the content with others on their networks.


Updates are a great way to build engagement with current customers, potential employees and prospective clients alike. Many of us have learned to leverage the power of status updates on other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. When utilized properly, this dynamic information sharing can lead content to "go viral" – an ambition that all marketers share.


Even more good news: LinkedIn has given us two metrics to monitor these conversations. Page administrators can see the number of impressions (the amount of times the update appears on various users' news feeds) and the level of engagement (the percentage of users that decided to click, like, comment or share the content). Using these numbers we can see which content posts users best respond to.

There is one limitation. Status updates can only be posted by the administrators of a company's LinkedIn page. However, if you are not an administrator already it is easy to become one. Connect to one of the current page administrators, and once the connection is made they are

Why You Should Accept My Facebook Friend Request

I often have clients that need advice about separating their personal and business contacts, especially onFacebook. However, I also advise against a big ‘separation.’

While I understand the need for privacy, I’m also an advocate for getting to know people.  It’s that human connection that allows people to get to know you, like you, trust you… and yes –eventually–buy from you.

When I meet someone at a networking event or I engage with them online, I often invite them to join me on social channels, including an invitation to friend me on Facebook.  Most accept my request.

However, I still have a good number that send me a private message and tell me one of two things:

1. I only connect with personal friends and family on Facebook, not business contacts. I hope you understand.

2. I’ll accept your friend request, but I like to keep my Facebook page separate for people I don’t know. I prefer to engage with business professionals on my fan page, which you can like here…..

My response to #1: Yes, I understand. Thank you for letting me know.

What I really think about #1: I do understand, but it makes me sad that you don’t get it. You’ve labeled me as a business contact and nothing more.  Guess I won’t get to know you enough to “like you, trust you, and buy from you.” 

My response to #2:  Thanks, Jane. I am a fan of your page, however, you haven’t updated it since June, so I thought we could engage here.

What I really think about #2: Way to blow the first one-on-one connection we have with each other.

For those of you who aren’t aware, you can create friend lists and filter your connections. You can allow them to see what you want them to see and you can post updates specific to friend lists. (More on lists)

For those of you who make the privacy argument, the bottom line is still this: don’t post anything online – personal page or otherwise – that you wouldn’t want plastered where the ball drops! 

It’s the internet –whether you are aware of it or not–you’re everywhere!

Ken Mueller said in a recent Q&A for my blog, “I DO care what you had for breakfast. I’m building

5 Simple Tips to Make Your Facebook Business Page More Likable

There are a multitude of blog posts and articles on the Internet on everything from how to create your Facebook Business Page to how to use third party applications, how to manage your page to how to get more likes. This is not one of those posts. This is a quick and dirty low-down on five ways you can make your Facebook Business Page more likable – today. Not next week. Not when you get around to hiring a app creator or buying Facebook ads or finding a social media intern. Today.

If you have 1 hour, you can do this yourself, today, and then sit back and pat yourself on the back.

Tip 1: Your profile photo.

Take a look at the profile photo on your page. Make sure it’s a good quality photo. If it is pixelated or blurry or out of date, then you need to change it. Hold your cursor over the photo and the words “Change Picture” will appear; click on “Change Picture” and follow the instructions to upload a new photo.

If your profile photo is a photo of yourself or your team, make sure it’s a current photo (as in, within the last two years) and that all team members in the photo are still on your team. Here’s a quick litmus test for your profile pic: If your picture is older than two or three years, it’s time for a new photo. If there’s a possibility that I could see your photo online, then run into you in the grocery store and not know you are the same person from that picture, it’s time for a new photo. If your clothing or hairstyle in your photo date from the last millennium, it’s time for a new photo. (As an aside, this goes for your business card photo, too. Come on, you know who you are! Get the to a photographer, STAT!)

Tip 2: Your info.

First look at the section labeled “About” under your profile photo. This is your opportunity to tell your page visitors – at a glance – who you are and what you do. It’s a great place to put a link to your website, a brief idea of your market area, and even a little bit about who you are. There is a 255 character limit, so you will have to be concise. If you don’t see an “About” section under your profile pic, then you simply haven’t filled it out yet. Click on “Info” under your profile pic, find the “About” section and get to it!

While you’re in the “Info” section, take a look at your options and opportunities here. Do a quick diagnostic check:

• Do you have your phone number and email listed? You want to be sure that you can be contacted if your page visitors have inquiries. Make sure they are accurate!

• Do you have your websites listed (all of them – including your blog)? Many consumers like to check us out before making direct contact – give them a chance to do that!

• Do you have all of your locations listed? If you are a broker or have multiple office locations, list the main one under address and then list ALL of them in the area marked “Description”. (For a great example of this, visitwww.facebook.com/thecorcorangroup.)

• If you are a broker or you are only available during certain hours, do you have your office hours listed? (NOTE: Many REALTORS® may not want to fill this in, since we work nontraditional hours and are often available outside of our office hours. However, if you are managing a page for an office, be sure to fill in accurate office hours so consumers don’t visit and find your door locked.)

Tip 3: Your photos and videos.

Consumers love visual content, so why not give them what they like? It’s a chance for you to create a connection between your clients and visitors – giving them a chance to get to know about you, your

Social Media Presence More Important Than Social Media Ads

Yet marketers have concerns with the communities they've built on social sites

Social media marketers feel that having a presence on social sites is more important than advertising there, but there are still challenges related to keeping a community running online.

In July 2011, Microsoft Advertising and Advertiser Perceptions surveyed social media marketers in six countries around the world and found that 74% of them thought it was very important to have a presence on Facebook, but only 57% felt the same way about advertising there. On Twitter, presence also carried more weight, with 47% of respondents saying they thought it was very important. But in Twitter’s case, there was not as much of a difference between presence and advertising, at 42%.

Of the marketers surveyed, 72% agreed that measuring return on investment from social media was too hard, an oft-cited challenge of social media overall. More specific to having a brand page or account, 56% of marketers said turnover was too high and 52% said their fan or follower base was not target-appropriate.

Looking at social media budgets gives more insight into how marketers are keeping their communities engaged online.

Social media marketers reported that 48% of their budgets are used to attract new members to

Marketers struggle to harness social media - survey

Oct 11 (Reuters) - Marketing chiefs feel overwhelmed by the growing volume of customer data on websites like Facebook and Twitter, and while they realise its potential value they consider themselves ill-equipped to harness it, an IBM study found.

Only 26 percent of chief marketing officers track blogs and just 40 percent track any online communications, while 82 percent still rely on traditional market research to shape marketing strategies, according to the study.

A few top consumer brands, such as Coca-Cola , Nike and Starbucks -- are using high-profile social media campaigns to great effect to find out what their customers want and to communicate with them.

But most CMOs are struggling to prove that investments in social media marketing would yield returns, according to the survey of more than 1,700 CMOs published on Tuesday and carried out in face-to-face interviews from February to June.

"The perfect solution is to serve each consumer individually. The problem? There are 7 billion of them," said one CMO at a consumer-products firm in the survey.

Some 82 percent said they planned to increase their use of social media over the next 3-5 years.

IBM, along with other technology firms and big advertising agencies, is seeking to capitalise on the need

Use The Power Of Facebook to Catapult Your Web Presence

Currently Facebook has over 750 million active users. This means the Facebook community is over 2.4 times the population of the United States and it's growing rapidly every day. The marketing potential of this site is just incredible. If you are doing any kind of online marketing for your business and are not using Facebook then you are missing out on thousands of potential customers.


It is very easy to begin marketing on Facebook. If you already have a personal Facebook profile with a reasonable number of friends, then you already have a head start. For your marketing purposes though, it is usually a good idea to create a separate fan page for your business. If you use your personal profile for marketing purposes, chances are many of your Facebook friends may not be interested in what you have to offer and may eventually "de-friend" you if they feel like they are getting spammed. By having a separate fan page, your friends have the option to either "like" your fan page or not but you can still keep them as a friend on your personal profile.


Suggesting your fan page to your friends may be a good start to developing many Facebook followers but it shouldn't end there. Here are some other methods for increasing your Facebook fan base:

• Add a link to your fan page from your personal Facebook profile page.
• If you have a following on Twitter, you can link your Twitter account to your Facebook fan page.
• Add links to your fan page from your website and on all emails you send out.
• Add a Facebook "like" button at the end of your blog posts.
• Create videos related to your niche, add them to your fan page and your website or blog.
• Use custom Facebook applications to draw people to your fan page.
• Give free gifts for becoming a fan. This could include a free report, eBook or instructional video.
• Entice people to become fans by entering them into a drawing for a prize giveaway.

Marketing your products or services on Facebook can be very effective but you have to be careful with your approach. Keep in mind, most people do not come to Facebook to go shopping. They come to socialize and keep in touch with their friends. If you are too aggressive with your sales tactics, you may turn away some of your fans who think you are spamming them.


The best way to market on Facebook is by building the trust of your followers. Send them what they want by posting useful information, tips and videos about certain topics relating to your niche. Make sure to promptly respond to comments and messages from your fans. They need to

5 Ways to Manage Your Social Media Time

Social media can be an effective tool for connecting with other Internet users and to promote yourself and your business online. If you don't put some strict limits in place, you can find yourself spending far too much time on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. To get the benefits of these sites and continue taking care of business, you need to effectively manage your social media time.


1. Set up a schedule (and stick to it).
Once you start checking out tweets and status updates online, it's very easy to lose track of how long you have been on these sites. By all means respond to comments on your pages promptly, but you may find it helpful to set aside a particular time of day for these activities and to limit the time you spend doing it.


2. Decide what you want to accomplish and make a plan.
You won't be able to reap the benefits of using social media sites if you don't have a clear idea of why you are using them. Make a list of sites that you would like to use and determine exactly what results you want to generate from each one. Make sure that you are setting measurable goals for your social media efforts so that you can track how well this strategy is working for you.
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3. Set up a checklist to keep you on track.
Once you know what you want to accomplish with your social media time, make a list of exactly

Website Creation and the Eye of the Spider by Scott Buresh

Picture, if you will, a Rocky-style montage. A team is involved in website creation from the ground up. A driving, inspirational song begins. The first scene is a highly contentious meeting, with a sweating and nervous marketing executive frantically drawing away at a whiteboard in front of a hostile audience. Flash to copywriters, fingers cracked and bleeding, churning away at their keyboards. Jump to web designers, sporting blurred eyes rimmed with dark circles, peering into their monitors in obvious discomfort. Finally, we see signs of it all coming together. A beautiful home page briefly appears. The music ends. A bell rings. And…
Nothing happens. The website would seem to have tripped over its own shoelaces and fallen right through the canvas, disappearing into cyberspace. The credits roll, to the eternal shame of those whose names appear.


What went wrong?


The team engaged in website creation without any regard for the role of the search engine spider. You see, there is quite a difference in what is seen by humans on a website and what is seen by a search engine “spider” (a program that routinely combs the Internet indexing websites). There are an untold number of expensive websites out there that are beautiful to behold from a human perspective, yet all but invisible to search engine spiders (and thus searchers), just as there are untold numbers of expensive, beautiful yachts silently and pointlessly resting on the ocean bottom in the Bermuda Triangle.


What follows is a small list of common website elements, broken into two categories: what search engines can see, and what they can not.


Three Things a Search Engine Spider Can’t See
Graphic text – Most professionals involved in website creation take great pride in their work, which is obviously a desired trait. Occasionally, however, this can present problems. When a web designer decides to use text in a graphic form (meaning that the text is actually an image), the search engine spider can not read what that text says. A common reason for a designer to use text in a graphic is because he or she wants to use a rare font that most visitors won’t have on their machines. Another reason is that the designer wants to have absolute control over how the website text renders. When faced with the choice over which kind of text to use, it is important to weigh the aesthetic choice against the potential loss of search engine visibility.


Images – As touched upon above, a search engine spider is not yet able to look at images or pictures and determine what they are (although you can and should attach a tag to them which the spider can read – commonly referred to as an “alt” tag). A spider will skip directly over your logo and masthead, any pictures, and most other graphical elements.


Flash – Search engine spiders will not read through the text in any Flash animation on your site (or any other animation). This does not mean that using Flash elements will render your site invisible; it merely means that you should not count on the text that appears in any Flash animation on your website to be indexed. If the team responsible for your website creation decides to build the entire site in Flash, however, you will encounter unique problems. While some search engines are getting better at trying to index websites built entirely on this platform, it is still an overall rankings killer. If you must have a website created entirely in Flash, it is wise to also have an alternate HTML version for search engines and people who prefer HTML sites.


Three Things a Search Engine Spider Can See
HTML text – A search engine spider relies heavily on HTML text to determine what a web page is about. Spiders, therefore, index HTML text and will even make distinctions between differences in how the text is presented. For example, text that is in a headline or is bolded is assumed to be slightly more important than regular text.


Links – Outgoing links on your pages are easily understood by the spider, especially if they are text links. The wording of these links (or the alt tags attached to them) can, like HTML text, give the spider an idea of what your page is about. However, there are certain types of links that are not easily indexed. If your website creation team embedded your links in a pull-down menu that utilizes JavaScript or other scripting language, most search engine spiders will not see them.


Tags – There are many kinds of tags, but not all are important for search engine optimization. Meta tags include the “keywords” tag, which should list key phrases that describe the page. Another meta tag is the “description” tag, which should be one or two brief sentences that describe the page. Another tag, which is not actually a meta tag, but which has significant importance to search engine rankings, is the “title” tag. This tag contains the words that you will see in the blue bar at the top of your web page.
This list is by no means comprehensive – there are many other attributes that aren’t mentioned in this article. The primary message here is that companies should do their homework before engaging in website creation. There are thousands of resources available on the Internet that can answer your questions about any element you are considering adding before you build (or redesign) your site. Take the time to study each so that you can be sure you aren’t sacrificing your search engine rankings for the sake of something largely unnecessary.
As for the downtrodden website creation team mentioned earlier in the article, let’s remember that Rocky has been known to get beat down in the first fight but then to pull himself up from the floor and triumph in the end. The team will go back into training and eventually understand the Eye of the Spider. Cue the music


Scott Buresh     http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/sem/website-spider.htm/

How To Use Social Media To Promote Your Small Business

You have a small business and you haven’t bought into the social media craze? Guess what? Silence is no longer an option. People are online talking about your company as you read this, whether you like or not.  If you don’t engage in the conversation, you risk losing your customers. But maybe you don’t have a choice as many small airports do in the State of California and across the United States. Many are owned by cities who don’t give them a dime and yet take money whenever they please. Those city managers force their airport managers to jump through hoops and political red tape to be able to promote their facilities. These airport managers have their hands tied in dealing with counties which just recently decided to launch a website, let alone a social media marketing strategy. So, I was asked by Michael McCarron, Public Information Office for San Francisco International Airport, to speak to the managers of small airports through California about the benefits of having a social media presence, so that they can convince their ‘bosses’ to allow them to open Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts, as well as to create blogs.

Here’s part of my presentation. I hope it helps you with your online social media strategy. If You have more ideas, please share them in the comments section at the bottom of the post. The more ideas, the better.

30 imagesGallery: Social Media Overachievers

1. ASSESS YOUR ASSETS: The first action you should take before engaging in online marketing or social media marketing and engagement is to look at what are you’re trying to promote. What are your assets? Who are your target customers? It may seem obvious. But, A Bay Area airport had small planes for rent. But business was slow because they were simply targeting pilots trying to rack-up hours. Turns out there was a larger audience they could target through social media, tourists looking for aerial Bay Area tours. Business took-off.

2. SIGN-UP FOR SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn. Facebook allows you to create a business page.  Make sure you read the rules for businesses first. You can even ‘create a page’ through your personal account, if your business allows you to do so. That makes it easy for small business owners to manage it. On LinkedIn, every employee becomes your best advocate.

3. FIND A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: Managing multiple social networks is daunting. So, before you start posting content, requesting friends and adding followers, sign-up for a social media manager such as Ping.fm and HootSuite. It allows you to manage all of your accounts on one site and schedule your messages to deploy so you don’t have to sit over it all day. It also allows you to review the success of the tweets real-time with click-through statistics. And you can gather all the mentions of your brand, industry or search terms on Twitter through it as well. That’s for the free version. I suggest trying that first. As you get more involved in social media, I prefer SproutSocial.com. You have a choice on plans for nine-dollars to $49. There’s a 30-day free trial to make sure it works for you. What I like is that it allows you to take all of those you follow and the followers and create contacts out of them which you can manage in the system and track engagement. It also has one inbox for all of your messages from all the networks. Plus, it allows you to track check-ins at FourSquare and Gowalla.

4. POST UPDATES: It’s important to have content on your social media pages before you start

5 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Page

Are you maximizing the marketing power of your Facebook page?  Want to know how?

Keep reading…

There are several lesser-realized features on and around your Facebook page that can be optimized to best reflect your brand.

Let’s break down your page visually into 5 major parts to understand best how to optimize your Facebook page:

The tips below will encompass advice about how to optimize areas #1-5 shown above, including taking a look at the featured photos, left-side links panel, impressions and feedback on the wall, featured likes, and wall tab display.

#1: Featured Photos

Any photo you upload to your page automatically flies up to the featured photo feed, a row of 5 photos that will change position every time a visitor lands on the page. We’ve seen examples of some brands getting creative with this panel and using it for branding. But because you have to account for the pictures changing order each time the profile is refreshed, you might need to come up with branding imagery that remains consistent no matter what order it’s viewed in.

Because any pictures you upload automatically go into the strip, including wall photos that you upload as part of a status update, the only way to remove photos is to manually delete them from the strip as you see them appear. This will not remove them from your albums, only from the top of your profile. User-uploaded photos will not go into the strip.

It’s worthwhile to consider how you want the strip to appear to your visitors. A collection of random photos of people in the distance may not grab visitors’ attention. Optimizing the photos in the strip and selecting only closeup shots of your employees or your products may give you a new opportunity to engage visiting users.

Let’s look at some examples of interesting uses of the photo strip by brands:

Hanes uses their photo strip as advertising space to promote a giveaway on their page. This serves to grab attention of users visiting the wall and works any way the pictures get ordered. It also promotes further activity within the Hanes page—telling users to click on another tab on that page in order to participate.

Steve Madden's fan page also gives special treatment to the 5-photo strip. Here, the photos are used to depict new items from that season's collection, as well as a 30% off sale that's happening. Again, it's worthwhile to note that no matter in which order the pictures appear, the message in the strip remains clear.

#2: The Left-Side Links Panel

All Facebook pages have a panel of links on the left-side navigation which, when clicked, open the application in tab view, right in the fan page.

Every fan page comes with 3 default applications native to the Facebook platform: Wall, Info, and Photos. Of those 3, only Photos is removable—Wall and Info are mandatory to maintain a page.

You can install as many other applications to your page as you want, of course. Most will either be third-party applications like promotions or applications you create yourself using iFrames.

It’s important to note that there is a concept of above or below the fold within the links panel: only 8 links are visible to visitors at first. To see more, users need to click “More,” and that’s something we can’t always count on people to do. For this reason, you want to make sure you’re displaying the most important tabs above the fold, in the top 8 links.

Below is an example of a page, for the North Face, where some of the most interesting tabs are hidden below the fold, a result of which may be that scores of users might not stick around long enough to find and engage with them:

This is the North Face page for all new visitors. The first 8 left-panel links are displayed, along with the "More" function to display the rest.

On expansion of the links panel, we can see that North Face actually has 3 additional custom applications hidden below the fold.

When the “More” button is clicked on the North Face page, 3 additional tabs are revealed, all of which are custom-created, including the one pictured above. This tab contains a well-designed interactive page with video.

While there have not yet been studies conducted to see how many users click “More” when viewing rows of links in a panel, we can assume there would be significant dropoff, leading this page to have lowered exposure, and become a marketing effort lost on many users who never see it.

The good news is that it’s very easy to change the order of how the links appear in the panel. When you’re logged in as administrator of the page, you’ll see an option to “Edit” right underneath the links. Once you click, you’ll notice that the editable links gray out and can be dragged up and down to change their placement, or deleted outright from the panel.

#3: Rolling Feedback

When you’re logged in as an administrator of your page(s), Facebook displays handy rolling feedback with every post you make. This makes it very easy to see trends of interaction on your page by content type, time of day or frequency. This also makes it easier for you to assess how you’re doing over time (rather than analyzing these particular traits inside “Insights,” which doesn’t show what type of message it was, like a post with a photo, or a post containing a hyperlink).

The numbers won’t show for approximately 12 hours after you post, as the EdgeRank algorithm is still working to determine how much reach your post will get. Once a baseline reach has been determined, according to the initial hours of popularity your post has garnered, the numbers will show up and can change over time as more (or fewer) people interact with your page.

Let’s assess some trends I can learn about the fan page I administer for Wildfire Interactive in the