September 2010 Archives » Social Media Marketing Made Easy

Make New Friends, But Keep the Old

September 27, 2010

Perhaps you are the type of person (I know I am) who obsesses over friend or fan counts on your social profiles. I am not ashamed to admit that much of my morning is spent checking Facebook and Twitter for any significant changes in Likes and—Heaven forbid-severe drops in body count.

By now you’ve probably read dozens of articles on how to engage social media users to keep your numbers high—interesting posts, incentives, direct communication—but rarely do I see assurance that if your Facebook and/or Twitter aren’t populated with a legion of fans, it’s not the end of the world. At the end of the day, your main site statistics and conversions will reveal your success or point out a need for improvement.

Further Your Reach

Do you have a YouTube account? Even if you don’t have a camera to record promotional videos, an account at YouTube can prove useful if you take advantage of their free Google Search Stories to create a place card clip for use elsewhere. From there, too, you can build a network of YouTube “friends” with whom you can communicate your ideas and content.

When you think of YouTube as more of a community than a simple video search engine, you’ll discover you can make connections that lead to goal conversion. This doesn’t necessarily mean plaguing the comment boxes of related videos, but you can dress up your channel page to link to your other sites and networks, favorite relevant videos for a feed to use to your advantage, and connect with accounts close to your topic to share your ideas.

Do you use social bookmarking as a means of promoting your sites and links similar to your line of work? You might wonder about the value of having a Digg or StumbleUpon account if it appears you are the only one marking your URLs, but think for a moment about what you can do with these accounts. While you might think people are more likely to Digg the HuffPo article on Lady Gaga’s best outfits (or worst), take a deeper look into your profile. You can connect with friends here, too. You can find like-minded people apt to share the information you post, provided you show how friendly you are by digging what others are sharing. Some might criticize this method of mutual admiration as ineffective, but ultimately two Diggs on a URL are better than none.

Using such accounts to build a repository of links relevant to your topic solidifies your reputation as an authority in your line of work. As you Digg and Stumble links, comment on them, and connect with other users to share your feedback.

Once these other profiles are established, of course, you can cross-pollinate with your Facebook and Twitter and draw traffic to existing profiles. Find that proper balance between promoting your own activity and sharing outside knowledge with your fan or friend base, and you may find a natural growth in interest all around.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist with Spider Writers (http://www.spiderwriters.com), a Virginia Beach-based firm assisting tourism, retail, and B2B clients with social media marketing and content writing. She welcomes new friends to her Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/spiderwriters.

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How To Set Up & Schedule A New Webinar Using GoToWebinar

September 23, 2010

Read the Transcript ▼

[0:00:00]

Hi this is Laura Roeder from GetTheDash.com and today I am showing you how to create a new webinar using GoToWebinar. So when you first want to go to webinar, it likes to confuse you by taking you to the my meetings screen, you don’t want to create a meeting, that’s for a very small group, you want to create a webinar. So the first step is to click on my webinar on the left hand side. There is a little blue floor next to it and click on schedule a webinar. It’s going to take you through a three step process; I will explain what everything means.

The first step is just to enter your webinar name and description and then schedule the webinar right here, choose your time zone, choose if it’s reoccurring and then you will choose your audio options. This is the audio for how your listeners are going to attend. You can choose telephone meaning people call in or VOIP, Voice Over IP meaning your listeners can use their computers and microphones and speakers. I like to use both to give people the option or if you are more advance and high tech you can provide your own conference call number. Both is the easiest solution. This is where you check if you want to require a password, you can skip this panelist thing in most cases save and continue.

Now here’s where you design your webinar theme and waiting rooms, they have a few options for you here business, basic, PR, sales, training, I like the training one, it’s got a nice green design. You can also click here to upload your logo or click here to upload a custom image; it will also allow you to customize your waiting room where people are waiting for the webinar to start with some custom colors. You can also enter your name as a presenter here, this is totally optional. Another optional thing is to enter your welcome message that attendees see when they arrive. You can preview this by clicking preview themes and preview waiting room, again this entire section is optional, you don’t have to customize anything under to branding and theme. You will hit save and continue and move on to the final step three which is registration.

The default requires a lot of information from people from webinar attendees. I see a lot of webinars requiring a full address and I think the reason is, it’s just the default go to webinar. But you probably don’t want to require this much information. So go ahead and hit clear all. The more info you require from people, the less people are going to sign up for your webinar and you probably don’t need their mailing address, you just need what’s required, the first name, last name, email address. So I recommend that you hit clear all and only require these top three things. You can also use these fields to create your own questions, either a check box, question with answers or a longer question down here after registering, you can let people register automatically is probably what you want to do or you can approve them manually which means they sign up for the webinar then you say yes I approve and they can attend. You probably want to choose automatically. You can also type a URL here some sort of thank you for signing up page that you create if you want to send people to a custom page or you can leave all these stuff as the default. Then you are done, you are going to hit save and email me the invitation.

Go to webinar, we will email you the invitation and I used to think that I had to click email me the invitation whenever I wanted that link. So your invitation contains the link that you are going to send people to sign up for your webinar but there is an easier way to get the link, you can actually get it right from the screen by clicking on this little yellow button. It is much hidden I am not sure why. But you click on the yellow button that is next to the start time of your webinar and it will give you the registration web link. This is the link that you copy and paste to send people to sign up for your webinars. So you go through, you create the webinar and then the way people sign up is that you provide them this link right here, the registration web link. Again you can find it by clicking on the little yellow arrow, little yellow plus sign next to your webinar. Again this is Laura Roeder with GetTheDash.com.

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Open Wide: Using Your Mouth To Promote Your Social Media Presence

September 20, 2010

Guest post by Lisa Kalner Williams

Small business owners seem to travel two paths when it comes to promoting their social media presence. Those that travel the first path pull out all the stops: they place Facebook ads, tag others in their posts and tweets, and decorate their Web page with icons of all their social media outposts.

Those on the second path know that having a solid social media presence is important for their business, but feel that they don’t have the technical expertise, time, or resources to make their presence well known.

I’d like to address these “second pathers.” It can be daunting to learn how to best promote your social media sites. If you’ve gone on the Internet for help, you might have become more overwhelmed by the suggestions found there. Many of these solutions require skills or time you might not have.

So let me provide an alternative. This option is free, requires no technical expertise, and can be completed within 15 seconds.

Try it with me now. Open your mouth and say the following: “Come join us on Facebook.”

How did that make you feel?

If your hand is still on the panic button, it’s time for me to reveal the most compelling reason to use your mouth to market your online presence: you can customize your message to meet the needs of each customer you speak to. Let me tell you a personal story of how simple words made a difference to me as a consumer. In the 1990s, I was a size zero. Every month, I’d go to the mall in vain looking for clothes that fit. When salespeople shouted over through the dressing room door, “How are you doing?,” I’d tell them my sizing woes. Smart salespeople at a few of the chain stores seized this opportunity to tell me that I could find smaller sizes on their Websites. This was brilliant. With this quick bit of information, they helped me find clothes that fit and helped themselves by making a sale … and a loyal customer. During those “slim days,” I bought my clothes almost exclusively from those Websites.

Talking about the presence and benefits of your Facebook or Twitter accounts is just an extension of this anecdote. If you sense that a customer is skittish about your prices, tell him “We give out monthly coupons to our Twitter followers.” If you know a particular customer seeks the latest and greatest product in your niche, tell her “We announce our newest goods regularly on our Facebook page. Look for us and join us there.”

If your business is more event driven or you have less time to interact one-on-one with your customers, you can still spread the word. Here are two examples of people who I think do this well. First is Diane Rehm of The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio. This 74 year-old, raspy-voiced talk show host has her system down. She ends her introduction to each show with “You can join us on Facebook or send us a tweet.” It warms my heart every time I hear it. (And by the way, she’s up to 11,500 followers on Twitter.)

Ben Rudnick and Friends is a rootsy-folk children’s band based in my slice of suburbia. I’ve seen a bunch of his shows — and at all of them, he never fails to announce “Thanks for coming. Come find us on Facebook and YouTube.” The kids could care less, but the parents are listening — “A Frog Named Sam” has over 20,000 hits on YouTube and his Facebook page has over 300 fans.

Although I’ve offered these tips for the “second pathers,” they should not be overlooked by those businesses cruising on the first path. Sure — the first pathers know how to work their tags and landing pages — but they shouldn’t underestimate the power of using their mouths.

Lisa Kalner Williams is the founder of Sierra Tierra Marketing, a social media consultancy that helps businesses grow using social media and online marketing techniques.

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What’s The Difference Between a Facebook Official Page & Facebook Community Page?

September 16, 2010

Learn my proven strategy for bringing in business with facebook here.

Read the Transcript ▼

[0:00:00]

Hello, hello. This is Laura Roeder of getthedash.com and today I’m going to show you how to create a Facebook aka fan page and more importantly what type of page you should create. Should it be a community page or not?

So to get started, you’ll need to log in to your Facebook personal profile and then click ads and pages here on the left hand side. From there, you click create page. Since I already have a page, it will go straight to that interface for me. For you, this first thing might look a little different but you just want to find create page and then it’s going to give you all these confusing choices that I want to explain. So you want to create an official page for your business, not a community page. Whatever you do, don’t create a community page for your business. The reason for that is the whole idea behind community pages is that they can be taken over by the community and as a business, you definitely don’t want to lose control of your own Facebook page.

So the community page, the idea behind that is that’s truly for fans. So if you’re a big fan of Snickers bars, you will create a community page for other people to discuss that official Snickers page. So for your business, you definitely want official page and just choose the closest most accurate category whether you’re a local business, a brand or a public figure. Choose whatever is most accurate. Your page name is important because you cannot change it. I would recommend that you use your name if you have a personal brand or your business name, either one works depending on what you want to promote. Don’t try to get clever here, just enter your business name and then if this of course is your business, you want to check this box. It says I’m the official representative and then you just hit create official page. You don’t want to create a group to promote your business as it says right here, groups are better for people who share a professional interest or hobby. For marketing on Facebook, you want to create a page and again, you want to do an official page, not a community page. So again, this is Laura Roeder of getthedash.com showing you how to create your own page on Facebook.

End of Audio

[0:02:29]

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How to customize your Facebook page to get more “Likes”

September 13, 2010

Guest post by Anne Dorko

There’s a big new way to make your brand more effective online, and everybody is talking about it: Facebook Pages. That’s great! Now what? Well, that’s the problem – you’ve been told to get one and what your strategies should be, but no one told you how to go about actually making your page all that it can be.

That’s all about to change. Here we will go over the “What” of adding interactivity to your Facebook Page, and give 2 detailed examples of the “How” that you can use right now.

Facebook + HTML = FBML

The Facebook Markup Language (abbreviated as FBML) is the language that Facebook created to allow users to add custom tabs with functionality onto their Facebook Pages. FBML allows you to include HTML and CSS, so you can essentially create mini-websites – also known as “microsites” – right on your Facebook Page!

Why is this important? FBML gives you the opportunity to use a bunch of great interactive features, customized to match your branding!

The Power of FBML

FBML allows you to do add a lot of native Facebook functionality such as:

Share button
You can add the “Share” button anywhere on your Facebook page, which allows users to post anything you designate on their wall.
Comments
You can add as many comment boxes as you want, it can be one generic comment box for the page, or create comment boxes for multiple items that you have on your page (example: an e-commerce page might have a list of items, each of which could have their own commenting section).

(you can see an example of this on our facebook page under “FBML Examples” tab. Click here)

A few other powerful tools it provides is the ability to:

Embed video
You can embed generic video sources such as YouTube or Vimeo, or you can directly include a video that you have uploaded to Facebook!
Embed Flash widgets
This is an amazing ability, as there are so many useful flash widgets that you can take advantage of – a Flickr slideshow, for instance!
MP3 Players
This allows you to let your visitors play MP3s right on your Facebook page! This functionality is great for anyone with sound clips to share.

Enabling FBML For Your Page

The following will assume that you have already created a Facebook Page, or have been made administrator of the Facebook Page you are working on.

Facebook has provided an app called Static FBML, which is the portal through which you use FBML for your page. You can add the app by clicking on the “Add to my Page” link underneath the picture on the Static FBML Facebook page.

A pop-up box will appear, asking you to designate which Facebook Page you are an administrator of that you would like to add the app to. Click the “Add to Page” button next to the correct Facebook Page.

Now, visit your Page Manager. Under the page title, click the “Edit Page” link. You will see the basic administrative options at the top of your editing page – scroll down to the Applications section until you see the FBML 1 box, and click “Edit”.

Take a deep breath, and make yourself a drink (you earned it). This is where the magic happens.

Adding FBML To Your Page

I’m going to walk through 2 examples of how to use FBML here: the Share button, and the Comments section.

FBML: Share Button

This is going to be complicated, so hold on tight. Ready?

<fb:share-button href=”http://example.com” />

That’s it! If you copy and paste that code into the text box of the FBML app, all you have to do is modify where it says “http://example.com” to your domain, Facebook page, or whatever URL you would like to share. You can change the way it’s displayed by using the following:

<fb:share-button href=”http://example.com” type=”icon_link” />

By adding the “type” section to our code, we can define what the Share button will look like when it shows up on the page. You can change icon_link to any of the following:

box_count
button_count
button
icon

If you hit save, open your Facebook page up and click on the FBML tab, you can see the new Share button you just created!

FBML: Comments

Adding a Comments section to your page is pretty tough, too! The code looks something like this:

<fb:comments xid=”XXXXXXXXXXXXX”></fb:comments>

You will need to replace the X’s with a unique string of characters so that Facebook knows that it’s just for you and won’t show comments from other people using the same FBML tag.

Here are a few customized versions of the comments you can play around with.

Immediately shows the commenting box, instead of the “Click to comment” link:

<fb:comments xid=”XXXXXXXXXXXXX” showform=”true”></fb:comments>

Immediately shows the commenting box, and removes the outer white box from the commenting section to enable better custom styles:

<fb:comments xid=”XXXXXXXXXXXXX” simple=”true” showform=”true”></fb:comments>

Again, by copying and pasting that code to your FBML text editor (don’t forget to use a unique ID instead of the X’s!) you can click “Save” to see your beautiful new commenting section.

Pat yourself on the back

Congratulations! You just started building your very own Facebook page. You can learn more on the Facebook Developer site if you’re interested in finding out the nitty-gritty details of customizing your Facebook page.

Anne Dorko helps people (whose primary job isn’t to run a website) learn how to strategize and manage an effective website. You should subscribe to her Web Tips newsletter or her Web Tips videos to stay up to date.

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Tweet From Your Phone

September 2, 2010

Tweeting from your phone can make keeping up with twitter much easier, and provide a little relationship-building fun while you’re waiting in line at the post office! Since we’re all a little short on time and stuck waiting in traffic (or long lines!) I wanted to show you how to set up (or update) twitter from your mobile phone.

Most people think that you need a smartphone like an iphone to tweet but that’s actually not true! As long as you have text messaging capabilities you can tweet.

Here’s how:

- Sign into your twitter account and click on “settings” in the top right corner
- From there click on the “Mobile” link in the blue bar
- From this page, follow the instructions to link your cell phone to your account if you have not already, then
- Look for the line “Send Tweets using text messages with this phone. Just send your tweets to _____” Take note of that number (it’s 40404 in the US) and add it to your phone’s address book under the name “twitter”
- When you want to tweet on the go, simply send a text message (make sure it’s under 140 characters!) to the “twitter” contact you saved in your address book

If you have a smartphone, go ahead and install an app for even easier tweeting on the go. Here are the best apps for the various mobile platforms:

Blackberry : UberTwitter ( http://www.ubertwitter.com/ )
iPhone: Twitter for Iphone (http://itunes.apple.com/app/twitter/id333903271?mt=8 )
Palm : Motweet ( http://www.mitreo.com/motwit_twitter_palm_os/ )
Android : Twitter or Android – Just scan: (http://blog.twitter.com/2010/04/twitter-for-android-robots-like-to.html) or

Now – send me ( @lkr ) a tweet from your new setup and let me know you got yourself all set up!

Since I’m all about sharing useful information that you can use immediately, let me know if you have suggestions for other Twitter mobile applications. If you use one that isn’t on this list, and you think it’s the bomb, leave a comment below so everyone can try it out!