Posts Tagged ‘facebook’
Looking for some social media tips for your small business? Schedulicity is coming to the rescue with some strategic advice, particularly for your Facebook fan page.
So whether you are a budding entrepreneur or an established small business owner still trying to make social media work for you, read on for some practical advice that will help you drive the results you need on Facebook.
1. Start Using Social Media Now
Schedulicity recommends that you don’t wait to begin using social media tools such as Facebook, blogs and Twitter. Instead, create your personal brand from the moment you consider starting a business. Having a solid online presence will allow professionals to:
- Gain access to an audience that will read and comment on your social media content
- Begin collecting and storing hundreds of e-mail addresses for e-mail marketing purposes
- Listen to what’s happening professionally in communities
- Monitor other competitor pages along with industry pages to stay abreast of current trends
2. Choose your Facebook fan page name wisely.
After your page collects more than 30 fans, you can’t change the name. You can choose something a little more generic with a keyword in it, like stylist or hair pro, along with your name, so it will remain relevant no matter what you might change your actual business name to.
3. Keep your personal page and business page very separate.
A professional Facebook business page will tell a prospective client that you’re a pro and can act like one. The types of posts that you put on your Facebook fan page are much different than what you would post to your friends.
4. Spotlight others on your Facebook business page.
Give credit to employees and clients. These people will in turn ‘like’ your page and share glowing review, a powerful resource when attracting new clients.
5. Let people know you’re socially connected.
Many businesses, big and small, know that they need a social media presence but they’re unsure how to get started. By already having that experience, you will have an advantage not only for your professional skills, but your social media skills, as well. Being an integral part of any business’ social media presence will ensure a lasting place within that business and a successful career.
6. Engage your audience.
In other words, make it sticky. Create an ‘interest list’ with all the different topics that may interest your target audience. Topics a business may want to consider are:
Talk about tradeshow events you’ll be attending (before, during and after).
Share lots of real-time photos on your Facebook business page.
Review something, such as products you carry, shows you watch, your new boots, anything that might interest your target audience.
Share videos, whether funny, informative, educational. Hint: About.com is a great resource for videos.
Act on impulses and share that info on your Facebook fan page.
Search for interesting topics on Twitter and share that with your fans.
Share business tips of the day or the week. Hint: Look for these by using the term ‘business tips’ on search.twitter.com.
Think two months down the road and prepare specials based on upcoming holidays.
Showcase your community. For example, let a local artist hang art in your business and take lots of photos or offer price-reduced services to all police, fire and emergency service professionals in your town.
7. Use social media as a platform to market yourself!
Use a professional Facebook page as an easy, attractive medium of communication to potential and current clients. But most importantly, make it super easy for them to schedule an appointment with you. After all, the main goal is to grow your business.
Check out this YouTube video for additional Facebook fan page tips:
Have you always wanted to try Facebook advertising but aren’t sure you want risk your limited marketing budget on a new vehicle? Need a few tips to get you started? Then read on.
First of all, if you use American Express then you undoubtedly rack up membership rewards. Now you can use them to pay for Facebook Ads.
American Express is tapping into a trend. The company’s research reveals that 35 percent of entrepreneurs are using Facebook to promote their business to new customers. That’s up from 27 percent six months ago. What’s more, Facebook is the most popular social media site for small business owners.
If you want to cash in on the deal, here’s how it works: Cardmembers can redeem Membership Rewards points for Facebook Ads in three steps either on Facebook.com/Open or membershiprewards.com.
1. Log in and Choose Your Amount: Access your Membership Rewards account and choose Facebook Ads denomination
2. Get Your Code: American Express sends unique Facebook redemption code via e-mail
3. Load Your Account: Create your ad and enter your Membership Rewards redemption code to pay.
Now, all you need is a few tips for launching Facebook ads:
- Write a catch title. You only get 25 characters so think creatively.
- Enter your URL. When people click on the ad, that’s where they will land.
- Write a snappy message. You get 135 characters (a few less than Twitter).
- Target your ad: Think about your core audience and use keywords that would likely relate to their profile.
- Optimize your bidding: Facebook will suggest a bidding rate. You can get a good number of impressions for less than half of what they suggest.
For more Facebook ad tips, watch this YouTube video:
Earlier this week, we looked at how small businesses are using social media marketing to raise awareness of their products and services. Now, let’s take a look at one strategic method of driving more fans to your Facebook page: Facebook page design.
By creating landing pages—pages that new fans land on when they first call up your Facebook fan page—you have the opportunity to encourage visitors to sign up for your newsletters, buy your books, or take some other call to action.
“Internet users spend hours on Facebook to view their friends’ news feeds. By having Entrepreneur Package, business entrepreneurs can give an attractive look to their Facebook pages created for business purposes. A custom Facebook page design will allow them to get engaged with the visitors for long time thereby receiving higher traffic for their business,” says the owner of My Facebook Page Design.
My Facebook Page Design is one of a growing number of companies out there that offer packages for your small business. Those packages may include designing a welcome page with customized layout, designing options to upload video or flash movie, customizing a profile image or banner to put on your Facebook wall or other interactive tweeks to make the Facebook user experience more productive and covert more visitors to fans.
Also, check out this video on Facebook Page design tips:
Social media marketing is officially a top contending small business marketing tool. A whopping 73 percent of small businesses are using social media to market their business—and usage is trending upwards. So says a new study from Constant Contact.
What’s up with the 27 percent of small businesses that aren’t using social media to market their businesses? Well, they are beginning to open their eyes to these tools as well. Specifically, 62 percent expect to start using social media marketing in the coming year. What’s more, 81 percent of small businesses that are already using social media marketing plan to use it even more this year than they did last year.
“The value proposition that social media marketing offers to small business makes it a no brainer for time- and resource-starved small businesses. They simply need coaching and know-how to use those tools in the best way possible,” says Gail Goodman, CEO of Constant Contact. “Our assessment of this data is that more education will only improve small businesses’ results with social media marketing.”
Facebook Reigns Supreme
Of the small businesses that are engaged in social media marketing, 80 percent have used the tools more in the past year. And, not surprisingly, Facebook is the most popular way to get their message out. Ninety-five percent of small businesses that use social media marketing are using Facebook compared to 63 percent a year ago. Eighty-two percent find it effective today compared to 51 percent a year ago.
While Facebook rules, though Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Vimeo are getting some action from small business marketers. But how effective is it? Forty-seven percent of small businesses using Twitter and LinkedIn find it effective while 73 percent of small businesses that use YouTube and Vimeo found these video options effective.
Mixing E-mail and Social Media
OK, so where does e-mail fit into this picture? Small businesses still turn to e-mail, Web sites and event marketing. Indeed, the Constant Contact survey results reveal that social media marketing complements rather than replaces other marketing activities. Despite the growth of social media, other marketing tools aren’t seeing any usage decline:
- 91% of small businesses use e-mail marketing
- 95% use Web site marketing
- 77% use print advertising
- 69% use online advertising
- 53% use event marketing
In fact, respondents also reported that e-mail is the first—and most frequent—tool that small businesses turn to when trying to connect with current and prospective customers. Eighty-three percent report that e-mail is the first tool they check when going online for their business each day and 72 percent check their e-mail six or more times a day. By comparison, 13 percent check Facebook, 6 percent check news sites, and 4 percent check Twitter more than six times per day.
“We’ve seen our small business customers improve their results by integrating tools, such as e-mail marketing with social media marketing,” says Goodman. “Email is still the most obvious choice to make sure your message gets out, and social media puts that message in front of a wider audience. We like to say that email lights the fire, while social media fans the flames.”
A living object lesson for entrepreneurs. That’s what Forbes columnist Steven Berglas is calling Charlie Sheen.
“With his foray into monology Charlie Sheen has become a living object lesson for entrepreneurs. In a matter of months he took a product, himself, responsible for the success of the #1 rated CBS-TV sitcom Two and a half Men, and destroyed the grip he had on a thriving customer base,” Berglas writes.
Of course, we know the story all too well. We also know how Sheen became an overnight social media sensation. Sheen is still making some news headlines by crashing Drew Carey’s improv show and heading out on his own tour. But his hit series Two and a Half Men, the series from which CBS fired him, ran for eight years and helped revive his celebrity. There’s no gaurantee of winning as he goes out on his own with his new attitude.
But as Berglas sees it, Sheen imploded—and there’s lessons in it for entrepreneurs. What were those mistakes? I’d recommend reading Berglas’ column to get the full story, but here is the take away in a nutshell: Sheen violated Peter Drucker’s marketing laws.
Here are some quotes from Drucker to chew on:
- “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
- “The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”
- “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
- “Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.”
- “Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”
- “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”
Check out this video where Sheen denies he’s bi-polar. He says he’s bi-winning.
Think what you want about Charlie Sheen. He’s dominating social media right now. The outspoken actor has surpassed Lady Gaga and President Obama in the realm of social networking followers.
Yes, Warner Bros. may have fired Sheen from his star role on “Two and a Half Men,” but the son of Martin Sheen is blowing up Twitter, mastering video and emerging as the talk of the Facebook world. Is there a social media lesson in all this for entrepreneurs? You bet.
Tell the world. At the time of this writing, Sheen has more than 2.3 million followers on Twitter—and he generated that number in a matter of days because he let the media world know he was tweeting. Your world may not be as big as Sheen’s, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell your world you are on Twitter. Post your Twitter handle or the little birdie on your Web site, your e-mail, online ads, and anywhere else you communicate with the public. Then tweet wisely.
Use hash tags. Sheen has got the hash tag game down pat. He promotes his videos on his tweets using the #Fastball hash tag, for example. A hash tag helps people searching Twitter find you based on the topic about which you are tweeting. If you are tweeting about a shoe sale, for example, you would put “#shoesale” at the end of your tweet.
Engage with your followers: If you want to build a relationship, you need to do more than push out social media messages. You need to talk back when people talk to you. That means you need to monitor your social media accounts.
If you don’t have a Twitter handle yet, get one now. Your brand name may already be taken, so you may have to get creative in choosing something that speaks about your brand. And, if you are too busy to keep up with your social media, do what Charlie Sheen is doing: hire an intern (or a virtual assistant).
You’ll find plenty of other blog posts with social media advice from Davinci Virtual Office Solutions with a quick search in the box above. And here’s a video with some more tips.
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