How a Small Business Should Use Facebook

I didn’t write this … but you know how I feel about this question!  Geek=Cheryl!!

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?

Social Media Marketing – 3 key points

Since it is Saturday, this will be short. To wrap up this week of posts on social media marketing today’s guest article by Frank Kenny is:

Sites come and go but human nature remains.

What I have found from training and interacting with more than 200 chambers and countless entrepreneurs, is that success in social media marketing really isn’t about the sites but about mindset.

What I mean is that no matter if we are talking about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any of the other sites or tools, it really comes down to:

• Caring about other people. It is about them, not you. Yes, you can share your exciting news. But mostly, it is about getting excited at your customers or prospects news and trying to help them be more successful. There is so much we can do for people if we have a Give Gifts. Be Generous. mindset.

• Building relationships. It is much better to be consistent on one or two sites, or platforms, rather than inconsistent on many. If you are at your best and most loving on Facebook, then interact with your target market on Facebook and build relationships there. Some people will tell you to use whatever site your prospects are on. I disagree. Use the site where you shine as a person and search out your target market there.

• Provide tremendous value. People want to have their worries relieved and their hopes and dreams fulfilled. If you want people to be your customer, provide them value first. Through blog posts, reports, white papers, video, audio, what have you, give away everything you know about your field. Pour it out on them. The key here is that some of what you know is exchanged for their permission to email them with more value and an offer from time to time. Once people are convinced that you know your stuff and have their best interests at heart, they will almost demand to be your customer if you can help them relieve their worries or fulfill a want/need. It takes time to build that confidence and comfort level.

What do you think? Is it the site or the way you approach it?

And from me, the last word on the week. This week I tried something new:  one topic for the whole week and the vast majority of the meat garnered by guest experts.  What do you think of this idea?  Should I do this again with another over-arching them or should I go back to my giving you whatever shiny passes in front of me?

Hope your weekend is wonderful!!

Four what!?? 7 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Take a Look at Foursquare

I’m going to be brutally honest and admit I’ve really struggled with Foursquare.  A few days ago when blogging about Twitter, I shared the reason we’ve used the Chamber logo instead of my photo at Twitter is because I don’t want it to be about me.  Foursquare, to me, was the ultimate in “all about me.”

If you don’t know what Foursquare is, I’ll give you my thumbnail description:  Foursquare is a self-identified personal “where are you now” service.  Kind of like “Where’s Waldo” without the red striped shirt.  You check-in where you are, Foursquare tells everyone and, well, stuff happens.

If I didn’t get Twitter at first, I *really* didn’t get Foursquare.  Honestly, if people don’t care that I’m getting coffee, then they definitely don’t care I’m getting it at Luna Cafe! Plus, I love my Blackberry and have no immediate desire to get an iPhone (though I love my MacBook Pro and seriously covet an iPad2!) and with Blackberry you have to proactively login to Foursquare and check-in each time you go somewhere.  Typically, I have seventeen things going on in my head at the same time (remember the shiny I mentioned yesterday about blogging?) and having to *remind* myself to tell the world I’m at the grocery store is JUST not a priority.

BUT!  BUT! As I keep saying, it isn’t all about me and there are some really good reasons to use Foursquare, both personally and for business.  Today’s guest article explains it FAR better than I can!  The article comes from ducttapemarketing.com another hidden gem of  site I found via Google.  (No!  I don’t own stock … don’t I wish I’d be that smart!?)

From John Jantsch:

In an end of the year prediction post I wrote for OPEN Forum, I listed location aware social media tools as something that would get big time attention in 2010. (See: 5 Trends that Will Shape Small Business in 2010)

The idea behind location awareness is that people will use the GPS capabilities in today’s mobile devices to check-in, tweet, review, and refer and add their location while doing so. Today I would like to talk about what I think is one of the first location aware services that is already beginning to impact small business.

The service is called Foursquare and while it’s receiving lots of hype from the bleeding edge social media types as the next Twitter, it may be totally foreign, or at least nonsensical, to many small business owners. While I want to use this post to introduce you to Foursquare, keep in mind that my primary point of view is that of the small business marketer and what I believe Foursquare has to offer, and not really the Foursquare user per se.

Having said that I do first feel the need to give you an overview of Foursquare.

The big picture

Foursquare is a location enabled service that allows users to “check in” when then stop at a bar, restaurant, park, bookstore or really anywhere they want to list. The service further allows users to connect with friends and alert them of your location if you choose. There are other services that have tackled this basic function, such as Loopt, Brightkite, Gowalla, and even Google Latitude, but Foursquare also turned this activity into a game: a point that I believe led to its current role as a leader in this evolving space. (I’m also keeping an eye on Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s location play in private beta called Square)

Foursquare is self-described as – “Think: 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.”

Users compete with check-ins to earn points for their city, badges for various types of activity and to become mayor of frequented spots. Just like Twitter back in early 2007 none of this makes much sense until you play with it a while and until you have some folks to follow and connect with. (In fact, it doesn’t really make that much sense then, but there’s something sort of addictive about it.)

Users also add and update information about businesses, write tips and make suggestions for anyone to consume. This rating and reviewing function treads on the turf of services such as Yelp! and acts as another data point for people trying to locate a good pizza on the Upper East Side for example.

Foursquare is set-up around cities and enhances the kind of neighborhood, hyper-local, branding and community building that is so important to local type small businesses. The service is currently available in a growing list of cities and is driven by iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps. Check out the Foursquare help page for some more detail.

OK and now on the real reason I’m writing today. I’m not ready to suggest that every business rush to Foursquare as the next red hot thing, not yet anyway, but I do want to point our a handful of reasons that many small business should start paying attention to this growing force, even if you don’t get it.

Below are seven reasons why I think Foursquare may hold promise for small business

1) Hyper local, tech savvy, evangelists – Foursquare user are people that really love their neighborhoods, getting out and evangelizing the businesses they love. This tech savvy, early adopter is exactly the kind of consumer business should kill for as they often influence large circles. Embracing Foursquare and giving these tech leaders the tools to promote your business is just plain smart business.

2) Online offline – I’ve been writing a lot about this lately, but Foursquare is yet another way for local business to use the efficient online tools to drive more in-person, offline activity. People are physically checking in to your business and talking about online in what can turn into a tremendously effective one-two punch.

3) Make offers – On a recent trip to Chicago I checked into my Marriott on Foursquare and immediately received notice that three nearby businesses had a special offer for me. Currently Foursquare allows just about any business to use their platform to offer deals and promotions to users. You can visit the Foursquare business page to get your business signed up. It’s free for now, but I’m guessing this is big revenue piece for them in the future.

4) Track and reward – Foursquare’s gaming functionality allows businesses to create special promotions for mayors and badge earners and in effect setting up a competition among their most loyal fans. The image below comes from a special promotion hosted by blynk organic, a restaurant in North Carolina. By creating and communicating Foursquare’s tools and platform you can begin to educate customers and create Foursquare advocates for your business. Some bars and restaurants routinely promote free offers for mayors.

5) The power of making it a game – One of the most intriguing aspects of Foursquare is the game. It’s amazing what some folks will do in order to win a game, come in first or, in this case, be the mayor of a popular spot. Gaming and entertainment are huge money winners (video games rival the movie industry in sales) and any small business that can find ways to add gaming elements tied to patronizing a business may just find a real competitive edge.

6) Automated CRM data – So many small businesses have little of no way to track customer behavior. A coffee shop may have a patron that comes in daily for years, but they have no way to track anything other than a face and friendly smile. Every business should find ways to capture everything they can about a customer. Obviously email is a great tool and can be very effective for follow up marketing. Foursquare usage however goes far beyond that. Foursquare can provide business owners with check-in stats for users. What this means is that the customer that comes in every day can now be tracked and even incentivized to get a free cup of coffee for every tenth check-in. It’s like the digital/social version of the loyalty card. Please tell me you see this as huge potential.

7) Sync with Twitter and Facebook - Like all good social media platforms Foursquare understood the need to integrate with platforms that others already use. Foursquare users have the option to tweet or add a Facebook status update every time they check-in. What this means is that a Facebook user with a few hundred friends might expose your business by way of a Foursquare check-in to thousands of Facebook walls. While many of those folks on Twitter or Facebook may not be in your part of town, I’m thinking it’s still a pretty good thing for the brand.

While I’ll caution again that Foursquare might not be the highest priority for many businesses, it’s something that is coming and will be put to use by businesses outside of the retail and entertainment world (I can already imaging how real estate agents could use this.) Businesses that get how to use, stimulate adoption and promote Foursquare now could hold a significant advantage when and if Foursquare becomes the next Twitter.

A word from your sponsor… okay, it’s just Cheryl again!  Changing voice when writing and everyone is in the first person is tricky!!  I am VERY sporadic with Foursquare and really only use it well when I’m on vacation, probably because my “to do” list in my head is much quieter then.  I do have some other reservations rooted in privacy and personal safety, but, I’d say be smart, be judicious .. but check it out. You may love it personally, there are deals out there to be found and if you are a retail, bar/restaurant or other consumer based business that needs word-of-mouth and foot traffic; you *really* should check out Foursquare!

The last post for this week of social media tomorrow will be on overall social media marketing essentials & strategies.  See you tomorrow!

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!

Top 10 storm?

The weather men are saying this storm will rank in the top 10 storms to ever hit Wisconsin and there is some storm strength index that says it is the equivalent of a Cat. 2 hurricane.   That tells me I’m glad we canceled De Pere at Dawn for tomorrow – but I hope they are right about this being a big storm.  I get a little worried every time they predict a “big one” and it turns out to be nothing much.  “Crying wolf” comes to mind.

Had a great, great day at the New North Summit and working with the New End folks.  Tami, Cindy, Mark, Amy & Greg were great and Alex is such a good guy that I’ve already let him off the hook for getting my organization name wrong!!   The hour just flew by, TweetChat was zooming on the screens and I’m told with all we answered, we only got to 10% of the questions posted.  If any of you were there, or were tweeting to us, and we didn’t get to your question, I hope you’ll let me know here via comments or @DePereChamber on Twitter and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll get it to you!

Speaking of questions, I have one for all of you.  A week from Friday, I’m the keynote speaker for the Titletown Help Desk Institute on the topic of Leadership, Motivation and the Customer Experience.  Leadership & motivation I fee like I’ve got some good resources and words for – but, “The customer experience” – I need your help.

What is the ultimate Customer Experience?

What is the worst Customer Experience?

What do you expect during your Customer Experience?

What do you consider essential elements to be delivered during the Customer Experience?

Give me some Customer Experience anecdotes.

Thanks y’all and bundle up! Be safe.

It’s all about social media

Tomorrow (Tuesday 12/8), I’m speaking as an “expert” on a “Social Media 2.0″ panel at the New North Summit The New End(#newend). It looks to be a lot of fun with a bunch of techno-geeks like me on the panel (except for Alex Kowlaski at the Alta Exchange Group who didn’t know a hashtags and user names at Twitter … *winks* at Alex) and I’m thinking the audience will learn a lot from my fellow panelists: Cindy Herbert from HoffmasterGreg Linnemanstons from Weidart Group @WeidertGroup; and Mark Gehrke from Mandela Life Media

(#newnorth) for @kalalea and I think I will as well. I know it will be fun!

A shout-out to Tami Pederson at VC Connex @TamiatVCConnex for inviting me and getting me hooked up for this panel and for the great conversation at the VIP reception tonight.

So! I completely overprepared for the panel tomorrow and I have a presentation ready to go – I will summarize here.

We have the following social media venues:

• Our website – www.deperechamber.org  … the homepage will be new and fresh by the first of the year!
• Our blog (yes here!)  www.deperechamber.org/blog
• Twitter – DePereChamber (@DePereChamber or twitter.com/deperechamber)
• Facebook
• Our weekly e-newsletter, It’s a Date – bottom of page to sign up
• As well as our page at LinkedIn

But, here are my key takeaways:

Decide your strategy for WHY you are moving into social media (hint, it is NOT for immediate ROI – that comes later);
Decide who will be your voice (hint, it can not be a short term position or an intern. Who would you rely on to be your corporate spokesperson. Take that much care!)
Commit to whichever media you chose. It can’t be hit or miss. Make sure you don’t commit to too many venues to be able to follow through. That is important.
Be authentic with your followers, fan, etc.
Don’t panic about negative reaction or feedback; just make sure you deal with the issue openly and honestly as soon as you possible can. The resolution doesn’t need to be immediate, but the response to it must be.

Figure out WHO your audience is?

For the De Pere Area Chamber: our traditional audience is reach via our print and e-newsletters as well as LinkedIn and for new outreach and a new audience, we use Twitter, Facebook and our blog.  We also reach out to potential customers for our members to expand the benefit of membership.

In short .. social media – you can’t ignore it, you really can’t staff it out, you just have to look at your audience, your goals, your strategy and then start with one media at a time.

Do it.

Goldman Sachs launches $500 million “10,000 Small Business” plan

As part of my purpose to get businesses information and resources to help them sustain and grow their businesses,  I found this today:

10,000 Small Businesses is a $500 million investment to help create jobs and economic opportunity in the United States.

The initiative will unlock the growth and job-creation potential of 10,000 small businesses across the United States through greater access to business education, mentors and networks, and financial capital.

10,000 Small Businesses will contribute $200 million to program partners, including local community colleges, universities and other institutions, to provide scholarships to underserved small business owners and build educational capacity. A pragmatic, skills-based curriculum will include accounting, marketing, human resources management and other practical business skills

Goldman Sachs will invest $300 million through a combination of lending and philanthropic support to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). The investment will increase the amount of growth capital available to small businesses in disadvantaged communities and expand the capacity of the CDFIs to deliver enhanced technical assistance to small businesses. In addition, 10,000 Small Businesses will provide technical assistance to graduates of the program to help them access other sources of capital.

Selection criteria for owners of small- and medium-sized businesses will be based on criteria of comparable successful programs and tailored to the specific community in which the 10,000 Small Businesses program operates. Broad characteristics of business owners targeted include, but are not limited to:
• Business revenues between $150,000 and $4M in most recent fiscal year
• At least four full-time employees
• Business operations for at least two years
• Business model that could scale to create more jobs
• Predominantly in underserved markets

Please email your inquiry to 10000SmallBusinesses@gs.com

NEXT!

On December 8th, I’m on a panel on Social Media at the New North Summit at the KI Center as part of the NEWEND (the Northeast Wisconsin Entrepreneur  Networking Day) #the_new_end A Taste of Entrepreneurship and I’m honored to have been asked!

Prior to our panelist meeting this week, they sent us a link to a list of 25 Social Media FAQ’s to which the answer is NO!  A few of my favs are below – remember, the answers to these are NO!

• Can you (my agency) do this all for me?
• Will I see results in 30 days?
• Can I expect to have thousands of fans for my B2B professional services firm on Facebook?
• Can’t this just replace traditional marketing, advertising and PR? OR: Can this be separate from our public relations efforts and strategy?
• Can’t I just tell my employees there is a strict no-social-media policy?
• Is blogging once a month or so enough?

And last NEXT for today:

I got a link to this in my ACCE (American Chamber of Commerce Executives) newsletter and I really liked it, I thought some of you might too.  It comes from the newsletter Small Business Success: Practical Tips for Small Biz Owners.  The article talks about the freedom and success of doing JUST.ONE.THING.AT.A.TIME.  (something I’m horrible at!) The article starts:

I’m just like you — just like every entrepreneur I know. I have a million ideas and I want to do them ALL right away!

But I learned an important and enlightening lesson last year that I’d like to share with you. By focusing all my attention, energy, time and resources on one big project, I increased my income (even during a recession), and more importantly I was happier and more relaxed.

I WAS HOOKED!!

Enjoy… and have a great day!