Anyone who reads this blog knows I’m a big fan of Twitter. (Done the right way.) And although I myself sort of dragged my heels at first, I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to social media for business, a Facebook Page is a necessity.

The problem is, many small businesses are overwhelmed by social media and find the Facebook Page a bit confusing.  Not to mention they aren’t quite sure how to use it.  So rather than deal with it, they throw their hands in the air and say “Bah! Facebook is the devil.”  Enter this post.

Below are a few simple tips and hints to help you utilize the power of Facebook for your biz.

Profiles vs Pages:  The most confusing thing about Facebook just may be the whole Profile/Page confusion.  First, your profile is what you get when you sign up for Facebook. It’s personal, all about you, not your business.  So basically, your Facebook profile is your base “account’.

Pages are something that you can add to your ‘account’.  A Page is totally separate from your profile pages and wall. Items posted to your personal wall do not show up on your Page and vice versa (unless you choose to share them there).  Your personal friends do not get added to your Pages, they must ‘Like’ them like anyone else.

Types of Pages:  Facebook has several categories for Pages.  The choices are:

• Local Business or Place
• Company, Organization or Institution
• Brand or Product
• Artist, Band or Public Figure
• Entertainment
• Cause or Community

So you can build a page for your business and/or for your new bestseller or product.  As you can see, you could easily end up having several pages for different reasons.

What Do You Do There?  A Facebook Page is all about creating a community of people who like your business or product.  Ask yourself, “What do I want to share with my community about my business?”  Perhaps you want to announce book signings or public appearances. Or you could share news about what’s going on at your biz, including new projects, faces, products or services.  Does your community have questions about your business?  Let them ask on the page and provide answers for them.  Of course, you don’t have to limit it to just one of those options, you can combine several or all of them.   And don’t forget, if you have a blog you can connect it to your page so that new posts are announced on the Page wall.

Add an Admin:  Facebook allows you to give someone else access to your page administration.  So if there is someone else in your business that is going to take charge of the Page you can give them access.  See, you don’t have to do it all.

How do I create a page? Check out the short video below:

Even though the thought of creating a Facebook Page may be a bit scary at first,  it really isn’t so bad.  The increased exposure your business will receive because people can now find you on one of their favorite places to hang online makes it well worth the time and effort involved.  Now go create that Page!

As a Virtual Online Technology Assistant and a small business owner who has had a good deal of success using social media I’m often asked by others about how to use social media successfully for their own businesses.  Often I feel I have disappointed them when I explain why I feel social media has worked for me because it doesn’t include auto-tweets, sales pitches or using a Twitter following or Facebook Page friends as advertising targets.  These are all items that have gotten them excited about social media, so they are stunned when I tell them that none of those items are what helped me and my business.

It seems so much easier to have someone schedule sales pitch-y tweets or wall posts or a constant stream of inspirational quotes than to do what I tell them I did.  What did I do?  I allowed people to get to know me. I shared information I myself found useful. I helped others when I could and connected them to someone I thought might be able to help when I couldn’t.  The people connected to me on social media could tell by my updates and my responses that there was a real person paying attention to them behind my username.

There it was. I just gave you the secret to making social media work for you and your business. What? You missed it?  Let me try again.

There was a real person paying attention.

You know why that one thing makes a difference?  Let me share something with you to help you understand.

Charter provides my high-speed internet service as well as my cable television.  They aren’t perfect. In fact, in the two and a half years I’ve had them I’ve had more technicians here than most people.  Frustrating? Of course it is. But I’ve stayed with them because I’ve gotten some really great customer service…through Twitter.

Just last week I was having some major issues with my internet connection.  Since my business depends on my internet connection I have a cell phone with a built in private WiFi HotSpot, and although it’s not the fastest, it allows me to work when my main internet connection goes down.  What it doesn’t let me do is make a phone call and access the internet at the same time.  I had a feeling it was an area outage but couldn’t find the spot on the Charter website that could give me that information.

I didn’t want to interrupt my work to call the service line so I tweeted the following:

A minute or so later I received this tweet in response:

Followed by :

What that Charter tech did might seem like a small thing, but to me it was priceless. He was paying attention, identified what my need was and provided what I needed.  And he didn’t even actually fix my service; my internet wasn’t restored for another few hours.  But I was satisfied that someone knew about the problem and was working on it.

The next day I received:

Charter has been wise enough to see how they could use a social media avenue to connect one on one with their customers by using the @Charter as a sort of ‘bat-signal’.  Their support specialists are quick to respond, and not just with a scripted answer, but with real, individualized responses.  (Something they really should extend to their phone support)

And this isn’t the first time I’ve received Twitter support from the folks @Charter.  I’d say it’s probably the reason I’m still with them even when other services offer me over the top deals to switch.

You see, when you feel like someone is paying attention to you it makes you feel connected to them.  And that connection is what your goal should be when it comes to using social media for your business.

2010 could very well be called the year of social media. With over 500 million users on Facebook and over 100 million users on Twitter, smart businesses realized that it’s far from a fad that will fade. On the countrary, social media and mobile applications (or apps) are obviously on the rise.

Don’t believe me? Check out this infographic at digitalsurgeons.com.

However as more and more people log on to these social media giants, it’s not good enough to simply have a presence. As with any ‘marketing’ strategy, you should always have some sort of plan. Some plans work better with social media than others.

What doesn’t work:

Message overload: Old school snail mail marketing gurus will tell you that it takes ‘being seen’ between 3 and 7 times before someone will act on your mailing or advertisement. Many businesses are applying this to social media by sending out repetitive updates. Newsflash: It’s a whole new marketing environment out there and no one wants to be spammed with the same old marketing message a dozen, or even a half dozen times.

Just being there: Simply being able to say your business has a Twitter account or Facebook Page does not equal social media marketing. In the same way, just having a static website doesn’t work either.  And if your blog hasn’t been updated for months it may be doing more harm than good.  It’s not good enough just to show up for the social media ball, one needs to dance.

Automation: While I do believe there is a use for automated tweets and updates, it is extremely limited. Automating the majority of your social media posts is sort of like sending your followers to voicemail. And although voicemail is fine on occasion, if people never get to interact with the real you they are going to give up on interacting with you at all. It may seem to make social media easier to manage, but it can actually kill all of the benefits.

What does work:

Connecting with people: Look at your blog, Twitter and Facebook as starting and having continued conversations with your audience or market. And I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I gave an overt sales pitch in a face to face conversation. Just sayin’.

Being authentic: Sure, we want to be thought of as a professional businessperson, but that doesn’t mean we have to be cold and impersonal. Let your personality shine through. People want to get to know you, so let them. Just make sure you don’t cross the line with the personal information.

Sharing: Are you using an awesome invoicing tool or did you read a blog post that rocked your world? Share it with your audience/followers. If you’ve learned something useful, gotten a great deal or have an awesome tip chances are one of your followers or a member of your audience will benefit from it too.

I can’t count the number of people that have told me they tried social media and it didn’t work for them or that they don’t seriously believe it has value for their businesses. I think those people are closing their eyes to the future of business marketing and client/customer relations. People used to say that the Internet was a fad too.

If you let 2010 pass you by without getting your business involved in social media then maybe it should be on the top of your resolutions for 2011

I’ve talked about Twitter Do’s and Don’ts before. Today I want to talk about making sure you’re not a Twitter menace.

So just what is a Twitter menace?  Those people that are using Twitter as a bullhorn rather than a communication device. Are you guilty of the following?

• Hourly auto-posting of advertisement type tweets
• Responding to every instance of a keyword you’re following
• DM-ing ‘opportunities’ to purchase your latest product
• Including people (@’ing) when they have nothing to do with your tweet, but they seem to have Twitter clout.

If so, you may be in danger of being labeled a Twitter menace.  And you also may be wondering why I believe you’re better off not to have a Twitter account at all if you are doing them.  Let’s take them one by one.

1.      So you discovered scheduled posting, either through Tweetdeck, CoTweet or some other Twitter help service.  They are great if they are used correctly.  They are just irritating if you set up tweets to go out every hour on the hour with your latest ‘special’ deal.   If you must use auto-tweets, do so sparingly. And don’t forget, when you auto-tweet you always run the risk of people asking you questions or responding when you’re not around to address them, making you look like you don’t care.

2.      I advocate the use of Twitter search to follow keywords that have to do with your business. For example, I follow the term virtual assistant.  But please, please, PLEASE don’t set up an auto-tweet or even live tweet to every person that uses those words in a tweet without reading them first.  Take the following tweets that I received in response to a couple of my own updates:

This first one was the day before thankgiving when I was baking, note that not only is the response inappropriate, it’s irritating.

This second one was just a few days ago in response to my tweet responding to someone else.

In both of these cases it is painfully obvious that the tweeter hadn’t even read the content of my tweet. For crying out loud, it’s only 140 characters or less, take the time to read it.  It keeps you and your business from looking like a complete ass.  Needless to say, not only didn’t I click on the link, I blocked the tweeter.  It’s Twitter spam, plain and simple.  And nobody likes spam.

3.      Another form of Twitter spam –the DM’s (direct messages) that are offering me an amazing ‘opportunity’ to purchase their latest product or attend their latest webinar.  Look, it’s great to offer these things on Twitter, but do it in your general stream.  Direct messages are for personal conversations, not for selling me something.  If I want what you’re selling I’ll DM you and ask for more info. Really.

4.      Have you ever gotten an @ tweet that had absolutely nothing to do with you or anything you’ve said?  Now I doubt any of you reading this would ever do it, but there are actually people out there that will include an @ just to get the name of someone who is popular or engaged in a currently trending conversation into their tweet and thus pull their own tweets into the thick of things.  It might seem innocuous, but it’s sort of like having a passerby jump into your conversation by saying something completely off topic.  It’s confusing, irritating and makes you look …well….stupid.

I really hope you’re not guilty of any of these activities. But if you are (or the person you’ve put in charge of your Twitter is) stop now!  The real value in Twitter is humanizing your business to others.

Do you disagree?  Do you think any of these items should be taken off the Twitter menace list?   Do you have something that you feel should be added? Let’s talk about it in the comments section.

I hear you out there. Those unspoken responses to my previous post. You know, the one where I said that getting clients wasn’t about price?  Yeah, that one.  And you’re thinking,  “Those points are well and good if you have clients already, but how do you build trust in the beginning. You know, when you’re just starting out?”

It’s still about building trust, even when you don’t have satisfied clients to give you glowing testimonials.

How?

You have to let those potential clients get to know you.  That used to mean attending local networking events week after week, robotically spouting your elevator speech and handing out business cards that likely never got out of the pocket they were tucked into.   Even then, it was difficult to build trust, it was more a meet and greet than a chance to really get to know anyone.

Social media has changed all of that. It’s leveled the playing field for those of us who never felt comfortable in those sweaty handshake situations and it’s given us a way to show others what we can ‘do’ not just how well we can give a sales pitch.  Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and others allow us to open ourselves up to the world and let them see what we’re made of.

Are those groans I hear?

Are you among those service providers that have been dragging your heels about joining Twitter or building a Facebook page?  Did you feel vindicated when you read some article about social media being overblown as a marketing weapon?  I hate to break it to you, but social media should be a service-based business’ best friend.

You see, the key word in social media is social. It gives you a way to introduce, interact and inform your target market about who you are and what you can do for them.  And more importantly it gives you a way to build trust.  There are three things your potential client needs to be confident of before they can trust you with their business needs.

• They know you. Meaning they are confident that you are who you say you are.
• They understand what you do.   The details, not just the overview.
• They perceive that you are competent at what you do

In order to accomplish these things you need to use your social media accordingly.  Use your photo, not a logo as your profile picture and allow your personality to show.  Just be careful about what you share for personal information.

Use status updates to share not only what you do, but how you do it.  For example, look at the Twitter tweets below.

There is a big difference between sharing what you do with your social media followers and telling them what your industry can do.  There is absolutely nothing personal or social about the tweet above, nor does it show anyone what  you do or how you do it.

How much more personal does it feel if you say:

Can you feel the difference? With the second tweet you’ve made it much more likely that someone curious about using a virtual assistant now sees an item you could help them with and also introduces them to a tool that you use to do so.

When done right, using social media can help your potential clients get to know you, better understand what you do and give them the perception that you’re capable of getting those things done well.  In effect, it can be a tool to build trust in you and your business, even when you’re just starting out.

“Start Blogging Today can give you the tools and the steps you need to use social media and a blog to market and promote your business online. Whether you are a brand new to blogging or you have an existing blog, Start Blogging Today will put you on the right path.”

I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve used blogging as a primary means of marketing.  My business is proof that a blog can be effective in finding and signing clients.

And how did I manage to make my blog work for my business in a virtual sea of blogs?

It was a combination of things, but by far the biggest thing was learning what worked for others.   In fact, I’m still learning, still tweaking things in order to make it work even better.

I’ll be honest with you though, I put a lot of hours into searching for the stuff that really works.  Time spent searching, time spent testing out ideas and lots and lots of time finding out what didn’t work.  And trust me, there was plenty of information out there that didn’t help me, my blog or my business one little bit.

Not too long ago, I wondered what it would have been like if I’d found the stuff that works first.  How much time (and yes money) would I have saved?  And how much sooner would I have built success for my business?

And what if all of that stuff that works could be found in one place, and was accessible to me whenever and wherever?   What would that have been worth to me and my business?

I’ve had the opportunity to become part of  a project that can do just that.  We call it Start Blogging Today and it’s a comprehensive six month program that allows you to benefit from people who really know about blogging.   In fact, it’s already being called ‘the best blog training around’ .

It’s also an incredible resource for those that have been blogging for awhile but want to kick it up a notch.  It’s everything from soup to nuts that you need to know about blogging and making it work for you.

And you get to learn these things from the people that I’ve learned the most from…all in one place.

Grant Griffiths, Michael Martine, John Haydon, Danny Brown, Paul Coughlin, and Dr. Patrick MacNamara … and even me.

Enroll now in Start Blogging Today!

Click below to join and get an all-access pass to everything, including the weekly lessons, members forums, live Q&A and video tutorials. Or you can get more details by visiting the Features Page or the Training Page.

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I recently saw a commercial for Intuit quick and easy websites. Their sales pitch was perfect, promising that anyone could use their templates to build a great professional looking website in no time. They even offered a free trial for 30 days. After the 30 days you’d be charged $4.99 a month. Still, $60 a year doesn’t sound bad for a website does it? Wait. Have any of you listened to what I’ve had to say about a ‘static’ website?

The secret behind the ease of building a website with Intuit (or any other template based website service or application) is the fact that you choose a template.

tem?plate [tem-plit]

1. a pattern, mold, or the like serving as a gauge or guide

2. anything that determines or serves as a pattern; a model:

The word in this definition of template that jumps out at me like a big red flag is ‘mold‘. It brings to mind a production line of perfectly identical items.

Some of them are painted different colors or different patterns but underneath it it all each one is exactly the same as the others.

Now that businesses are discovering the necessity of having an online presence, it’s becoming more and more important for your website to be unique and stand out from the rest of the crowd.

And that’s not the only drawback to using a templated website. Because of the nature of templates, there are limitations as to what you can add, adjust and do with your website.

For example, recently a local magazine decided they wanted a blog added to their website. They wanted a blog that not only featured a new post each week, but that readers could add to as well. Unfortunately, their business site was built on a template service very similar to the Intuit one I saw on tv. After speaking with the support department they received the following options. They could make a ‘forum’ where they could post a new topic each week and allow reader interaction in the ‘thread’, or they could link to a blog hosted somewhere else. They had no ‘blog’ template. In fact, for me, someone used to working in a blog framework, adding anything to the website was downright cumbersome. Even just adding copy and formatting the text was like slogging through molasses compared to what I was used to.

My immediate thought is why would anyone choose a template website for their business when they could choose a blogsite? Are they under the misconception that they must maintain an active blog on a blogsite?

Not true.

I think a business blog is the single most effective online marketing step you can take.

But, if you truly aren’t ready or don’t want a business blog, you don’t have to. With the ability to create pages and not just posts gives the user the ability to not only have individual webpages for your site, but to create them quickly and easily.

Besides the ease of use, another benefit many business owners see in using a templated site is the cost. Compared to the cost of having a web designer build a business website for you at anywhere from $1.200 to $6,000 or more depending on the level of customization, a mere $4.99 a month sounds great!

But think about just what that $60 a year is getting you. A website that just sits there on the web and pretty much does nothing. The dreaded static website. Sure, it may show up in search engine results like they say, but does it keep those visitors coming back? Or better yet, turn them into clients?

If you’re a little bit tech savvy you can build a blogsite yourself and using a ‘theme’ personalize it with your own logo, graphics, etc. You can use plugins and/or sidebar widgets to do just about anything you might want.

Sound a bit too technical for you? No problem, you can still have a great, easy to update blogsite built for you for much, much less than the thousands of dollars a traditional website might cost you.

And remember, no matter how ‘easy’ they claim building a website is, it’s going to take time and a good deal of thought to build an effective website.

I’m surprised at the number of business people who have admitted to no longer adding content to their blog because they are now on Twitter. I’m not sure where or why these folks got the impression that Twitter is a substitute for blogging.  Perhaps it has something to do with the following 5 reasons to abandon your blog for Twitter?

1. You don’t care about sharing quality content. 140 characters does not allow for adequate sharing of important information. Sure, you can share links to other people’s quality content, but what is that saying about you and your business? That you’re not unique, that you aren’t an expert in your field yourself?
2. You aren’t interested in getting new clients or staying in touch with your current ones. Chances are your target market/clients/ customers are not following you on Twitter. Although Twitter is gaining in popularity, there is still an huge segment of the population who isn’t buying in. A portion of that segment does however read blogs and visit websites.
3. You could care less about adding value to your customers experience. Twitter streams don’t equal the added value to clients/customers that blog posts do.
4. You want your website to stay hidden from search engines. Three letters..SEO. Your Twitter stream isn’t going to increase your website SEO, fresh content is.
5. You have no interest in ever compiling blog posts into an information product. Think of a blog as a depository of useful information. Since it’s your information, you can choose to re-purpose it the way you choose. Older blog posts can become articles, special reports , e-books and more. Try doing that with your 140 character tweets.

By now you’ve figured out that the title for this blog post was rather sarcastic. If you’ve read my previous post, you already know that I consider a blog to be one of  the most important tools for growing your business. And if you’ve been reading here for any length of time, you also know I’m a fan of Twitter as well. As useful as Twitter is, it’s not a blog. Heck, it couldn’t even play one on TV.

Did You Know a Business Blog Can–?

• Increase Exposure for your business
• Reach more clients/customers
• Gives your clients/customers added value

Here are 10 reasons every business needs a blog.

1. As a service for your clients/customers- By providing your clients/customers with information they want or need they perceive that your adding value to your product or services.

2. To keep your content fresh on your website which increases search engine rankings. Just throwing a pretty website up isn’t going to automatically bring traffic to your site.  Search engines bring traffic, but search engines won’t rank your site well if the content isn’t fresh. Blogging continually gives fresh content for the search engines to pick up on.

3. To add tags, categories and keywords to increase SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on your site.   By having words that your target market are searching for in your blog copy, tags and categories you’re more likely to be found when they do those searches.

4. To reach millions of potential clients/customers.  The Internet reaches more people than any print advertisement every could.

5. To gain expert status in your field. People write about what they know. Writing about your field will immediately give you credibility as someone who knows their stuff.

6. To give clients/customers a way to keep in touch.   Give them a way to interact with you by commenting on your blog posts.

7. Allow you to keep in touch with your customers/clients.  It goes both ways, blogging allows you to see what your clients/customers have to say, what they want and how they want it done.

8. It’s a relatively inexpensive marketing tool that far outweighs print ads and the Yellow Pages in it’s effectiveness.  Blogging is free.  Sure, if you want it set up on your own website under your own domain name, you’ll have to pay to have it set up, but after that, all it costs is a bit of time.  And the ROI (Return on Investment) is much higher than a costly Yellow Pages listing.

9. It gives your business a face and voice, rather than simply being an entity. Writing and sharing your knowledge, thoughts and expertise shows customers/clients that there is a real person behind the business.  This is becoming vitally important to business success in the current business environment.

10. It gives you the ideal place to run special deals, contests and other promotional events.  When you have a blog, you can advertise special deals or create special deals just for blog visitors.  Encourage more people to visit by running a contest or build excitement for a promotional event.

What excuses are you using for not having a business blog?

• I don’t know how to build or maintain a blog
• I wouldn’t know what to blog about
• I don’t have time

They may sound like valid excuses, but there is plenty of help available to you.  If you want to do it yourself, find someone to provide blog coaching or consulting.  If you’re not the do it yourself type, hire someone to do it for you.  I think you’ll find it a much better use of your advertising budget.

As you can see, a business blog is a vital component in promoting a business.  Can you afford not to have one?

You get it. No one needs to tell you the importance of having a business blog on your website.  You’ve got yours up and running and keep that new content flowing the way all the experts tell you to do.  And it’s working.

Maybe it’s increased inquiries by potential clients or perhaps your current clients are loving the valuable information you’re sharing with them there. But did you know that same blog could be doing more for your business?

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating great content for your blog, so why limit that information to your blog only?  I’m talking about Blog Re-Purposing.

What exactly is Blog Re-Purposing?  It’s the act of taking your original blog content and using it again in another format.  Maybe you can pull a set of blog posts from a particular category together as an e-book?  Or submit some of your best posts to an online article site like E-zine Articles?   It’s possible you could even build an e-course or e-class from some of your material.

Why just leave your great, original material in the Archives section of your blog to gather dust?  Make your blog work for you in more ways than one.

[And yes, Blog Re-Purposing is one of the services I offer as a virtual assistant, so you don't even have lack of time as an excuse. ]