Short cautionary tale …

A “don’t let this happen to you” story from Frank Kenny

Small Business Social Media Case. Business Page versus Personal Profile.

Be careful that this doesn’t happen to you.

A business came to me with this issue. The employee they hired to do the business’ social media and Internet marketing created the business’ Facebook page as a personal profile, not as a business page. Then, when that personal profile had enough “friends”, he named the profile with the business’ name.

The employee has since left the business but refuses to delete the profile and release the URL.

What a hassle for the business. You can’t have duplicate URLs so the business has a problem.

This is what the business should have done from the start.

• Have a signed policy in place stating that social media accounts created for the business remain the businesses if and when the employee departs. Those friends, followers, and fans are valuable and belong to the business. The employees can build their own FFF but not take the business’.

• The company should have adhered to Facebook’s term of service. Never create a business page as a personal profile. I am seeing this all the time still. Don’t do it.

• Once the business page is created, add a second administrator so that the business can quickly transfer the control to another employee.

What do you think the business should do at this point? The ex-employee refuses to delete the profile or release the URL.

Grow your Life and Business Through Social Media

I love guest articles!   Today’s is from Frank Kenny

How can you use social media to grow?

It begins by helping others.  Help others to be successful and you will be successful.

Set a goal of helping 10 others each and everyday. Here are some ways to do this:

• Go to LinkedIn and write a recommendation for a deserving colleague.

• Share a friend’s post on Facebook with your friends.

• Retweet a post on Twitter to your followers.

• Wish someone a happy birthday on Facebook.

• Click the “like” button on Facebook on posts you enjoy. Do this several times.

• Read someone’s blog post and share it. AddThis works great.

• Comment on a picture or video someone uploaded to Facebook.

• Reach out to a friend through Facebook’s email and thank them for their help and support.

• Write an email to a colleague or fellow chamber member just to say hi.

• Checkin at a deli or restaurant. That is a gift of your endorsement. Social proofing.

I know these sound simple. They are.

And it doesn’t take much time once you make it a habit.

Guess what happens? You plant seeds with each and every one. Over time, the crops come in.

Give to get.

Once you have planted seeds and dozens or hundreds of folks know, like, and trust you, you will be amazed at how they go out of their way to help you.

The generous man will be prosperous, And he who waters will himself be watered. – Proverbs

What else should folks do as a way of giving gifts?

Facebook for Small Business and Business Association

Keeping with our social media theme this week, today is Facebook!  And today, I bring you another guest article from Frank J Kenny:

Simply put, you and your organization must have a Facebook presence.

Facebook for Small Business and Associations

Here are some statistics from Facebook to prove my assertion:

• Entrepreneurs and developers from more than 190 countries build with Facebook Platform
• People on Facebook install 20 million applications every day
• Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites
• Since social plugins launched in April 2010, an average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day
• More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook, including over 80 of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites

Nearly every participant in my small business audiences say they use Facebook. Why? Not only are their friends and family on Facebook, but so are their customers.

You must be where your customers are.

From dozens of interviews and consulting interactions here are some lessons and observations for your marketing through Facebook:

• Consider your goals. Branding/awareness and retention/loyalty are perfectly suited to Facebook. But very few businesses are using Facebook successfully for conversion. If you are expecting significant conversion of strangers to customers from simply being on Facebook, you will end up disappointed. Once you have decided on your goals, hopefully the prior over the latter, decide on a few metrics to judge your progress. Keep this simple. Don’t get bogged down with spread sheets but do try to correlate activity with results.

• For most small businesses and associations, according to the statistics and my observations, you will find your target market on Facebook. Search them out and engage them. You are not really doing social media for business right if you are only engaging family and friends (unless they are in your target market).

• You need both a personal profile and business page. They will overlap. Don’t even try to keep your personal profile void of info on your business. Same with your business page. For entrepreneurs and business executives, what you do for a living is a big part of your life. Trying to keep them separated is not a sustainable strategy. It only leads to diminished effectiveness and hurt feeling (I share a story at my seminars on how I friended a colleague only to be told that the colleague doesn’t like to mix business with personal. But when I looked at her Facebook profile, she had many of our colleagues as friends. Separation of work from personal is an unworkable long-term strategy. I advocate for 90% of your posts on your profile to be personal, 10% business. Vice versa for your business page.

• Encourage all your employees to use Facebook and the other social media sites to promote your business and engage your customers. Those relationships and promotions lead to better branding and loyalty. Have a policy written up to protect both the business and employees.

• Don’t use RSS or other automated means to duplicate your posts across sites and platforms. If you want to share your info widely, take the time to post them site by site.

• People cherish access to people in authority or higher positions in your company. You do not want to relegate your social media marketing to an intern. Everybody, especially the top people, should be doing it.

• Have consistency. Post at least once everyday to both your profile and business page.

• Answer all comments and posts same day. Engagement is golden.

• If you have separate divisions (niche, target market) set up separate pages.

• When somebody follows your page, send them a thank you Facebook mail and build the relationship without being pushy.

• Promote your page in all your marketing and advertising.

• Provide value to your target market – how-to videos, articles, info, news, etc.

• Help your customers by sharing their posts. Planting seeds of reciprocity each day.

• DO NOT create your page as a profile. Not only is it against Facebook’s terms of service, but makes people mad that you are gaming the system.

• Clean spam from your walls. Few things shout “I Don’t Truly Care” more than spam covered walls.

• Be strategic about the images in your image bar. Think about your brand and story.

• Post photos and videos, not just text. You will find that photos and videos have much higher engagement levels.

• Display signage that encourages your customers to become a fan. Give them an incentive, such as a discount for our fans or specials available only to our fans.

• Encourage Facebook checkins. Few things are more powerful than social proofing. 95% of people are followers.

• Think of yourself and your business as a media outlet. You can have immense reach today if you build up your friends, followers and fans. Huge reach at little expense.

• Experiment with a private Facebook group if you have customers and prospects that would love a chance to interact as a group.  It will need to be nurtured but with a few strong adopters, you might find a unique value proposition here. This will create a velvet rope. People want what they can’t have.

• Create Facebook events and promote to your friends that might be interested. Don’t blast it out indiscriminately.

• Put your friends into groups early. It makes it much easier to keep track of your friends when they are categorized. My groups include college friends, North Mason County Chamber folks, family, folks from the speaking tour, speakers, and political contacts. Do this early because it is a lot of work later.

• Be real and human. Post funny pictures or observations. The more your customers and prospects simply like you, the more effective social media marketing will be for you.

• Tell your story. Tom Peters said the story is more powerful than the brand. See the free ebook chapter on story if you don’t know what I mean.

• Fancy Facebook landing pages look nice. If you have a big budget, feel free to have one created. But don’t think it is critical.

• Don’t hesitate to reach out to people you don’t yet know very well. If you have a slight connection you can simply send a friend request with something a simple as, “Hi John. We haven’t met face to face yet but we sure have a lot of friends and business contacts in common. Are you open to another Facebook friend from the industry?”

• Be transparent and open. The more info and communication you share about your business, the more your customers and prospects will get to know, like, and trust you.

• Keep it fun and don;t take yourself too seriously. It is not social advertising. Post 10 non-promotional pieces for every advertisement. Wishing people Happy Birthday, that counts as 1. Liking someone’s good news, that’s 2. Posting a funny photos that makes people laugh, that’s 3.  Once you reach ten, on average, don’t feel guilty about saying you have just realeased your new book or are having a sale on Saturday.

• Post the photo of the social media poster, not the business logo. If you must have the logo, inset the photo of the person doing the posts or sign the posts. Anonymous posts are not nearly as effective.

Back to me again! I learned a few things in this article and I hope you did too. First is I do need to post a picture of myself, not just the Chamber logo.  I’ve struggled mightily because I neither want, need nor think it is healthy to have it “be about me,” however, I understand that relationships are not formed between individuals and organizations, but between individuals & individuals AT organizations.  So, I’ll give up, admit I was wrong (yes, someone should tell my husband I said that!) and talk to you as myself, not as “the Chamber.”  The Chamber is NOT me, but I am the voice behind the curtain.

Hi!  I’m Cheryl Detrick and I’m your social media conversation captain!  Buckle in and let’s all enjoy the ride!

Tomorrow, we continue on our social media journey with LinkedIN!  <—–  That’s my profile page, add me!

18 Twitter Tips for Small Business & Business Association

This guest article is from Frank J Kenny’s blog.  It’s Monday, so time to get set for the week!  This week’s focus will be social media and tips on it’s use.

This blog post is focused on using Twitter to create awareness and build loyalty (retention) with the folks in your target market.

As I have written many times before, there are 3 goals available to you in social media and Internet marketing. Let’s concentrate today on the first two.

1. Awareness
2. Retention
3. Acquisition

Notice that I wrote about folks in your target market. It is important to keep your target market in mind. That isn’t to say that you can’t use Twitter to stay in touch and build stronger relationships with your friends and family. But if you are serious about using social media marketing for business, it is imperative that you know your target market and that you search them out.

In no particular order, here are some points to consider when using Twitter for small business and association marketing.

• Don’t Twitter as a business, association, or logo. Twitter as a person. See http://twitter.com/#!/michaelhyatt. Relationships are between people.

• Create a fun bio that shows you have a personality but also expertise in your niche. If you are an accountant, include that you are a CPA but also say that you love skiing or your grand-kids. The bio is critical. Play with it a bit. You will find that once you have a fun and fresh bio that establishes your expertise more people will follow you.

• Follow people in your target market. Many will follow you back. Don’t think that you must know them personally. And don’t worry about following too many. Too few is a bigger problem than too many.

• Think of Twitter as broadcasting on the radio. Sure, not everyone will see your tweets. That is OK. Not everyone hears a radio broadcast. Feel free to post the same general thought or link a couple of times in a day. The people on Twitter come and go, just as listeners to radio stations.

• If you are running a business association, follow all of your members who are using Twitter. RT them often.

• Check out the “followers list” of your contacts. Follow those in your target market or industry. Build up those counts.

• ReTweet (RT) folks as a gift. Give Gifts. Be Generous.

• Use TweetDeck. Organize your contacts into columns.

• Put you Twitter I.D. in all your email signatures and marketing pieces.

• Build relationships by engaging. Ask people how they are. Say good morning. See http://twitter.com/#!/NancyMyrland

• Use a photo that makes you likable. For more on being likeable, read my chapter in the free ebook.

• Watch your spelling and grammar. People will have little to judge you on in the beginning so make sure you are at your best in this area.

• If you don’t have a link to share or something fun to offer, post a quote. People love quotes.

• Make your posts short enough for retweets. I see this mistake all the time. You only have room for 140 characters, including the RT and URL. Use a URL shortener to save room. TweetDeck does this automatically for you.

• Use the # symbol when you when you want to make sure groups see your posts. See http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23WACE

• It is nice to create a custom background but not necessary.

• On Fridays, do the #FF and promote people in your target market or industry. By helping them stand out, you stand out.

• Don’t automate your tweets. Social media is all about relationships, not advertising. We have got to get out of the push advertising mindset and into the Give Gifts. Be Generous. mindset.

BACK TO ME TALKING!  Quite honestly, it took me a while to get my head around Twitter.  I just could not see beyond momentary updates and let’s face it *I* don’t care that I’m going to get more coffee – so why would anyone else.  But, after Pat Olejniczak from the Kress Inn messaged me several times and then harassed me in person with, “Hey, Cheryl!  DePereChamber is still available on Twitter…”  I finally signed up to get him to stop already!  But, then … thank you Pat!  I *got* it.  This was a way to develop relationships with people who really only want & need quick hits of information about the Chamber, our doings, our members and news from the De Pere area.

Yes, I have told Pat he was right all along yet he never tires of hearing it!    Try it, follow these tips – use it well & wisely and believe me, you’ll be thanking him too!

Tomorrow … Facebook!