I hate to be the one to break this to you

Sam & I have to accept some of the responsibility because we encouraged you to get started, to join the main networks and to actively engage with people. We also introduced you to lots of automated tools to make life easier.

Unfortunately in a desire to be helpful, we may have misled you as to how best to use each of the main online networks and the automation tools, so you get good results for your business.

Here’s what we mean:

Too Much Too Soon

Using an automated ‘welcome’ tweet to direct me to your Facebook page or profile is irritating and inappropriate. Just because we’ve just connected on Twitter doesn’t mean I want you in my LinkedIn or Facebook network as well. Give me time to get to know you better first!

Social networking is not a numbers game. 

If I met you for the first time at a networking breakfast, you’re not very likely to invite me round for lunch on the following Sunday, are you? And yet you expect me to become a ‘friend’ or link to you as a fellow professional before I’ve had a chance to find out if I really want to.

Overdoing the Automation

One of my personal pet peeves is visiting someone’s Facebook or LinkedIn profile to find nothing on their wall but a long list of tweets. This happens when people link their accounts together and delegate their updates to the automation tools. I’ve even seen people using Twitterfeed to broadcast updates from authority sources and doing nothing else!

That’s a bit like sending someone else to attend all in person networking events on your behalf, and expecting that will build personal and business relationships.

Social networking is about being ‘social’ with your connections. You need to take part, and that means listening as well as broadcasting.

Updates Should be Different Depending on the Social Network

Your communities on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are very different from each other and need to be treated accordingly.

Twitter is fast moving and ‘in the moment’ which is why it works so well for breaking news. It’s also useful for sharing snippets of information and links to useful and interesting stuff.

Facebook is much more friendly and has become a place for publishing, sharing and commenting on personal observations, inspirational quotes, videos and photos.

LinkedIn is known as the network for professionals and provides opportunities to connect with fellow professionals. I classify small business owners as professionals too.

If you use Google+ you’ll know that ‘Circles’ allow you to differentiate what you share with whom, but the same feature doesn’t exist (yet) for other online networks.

You wouldn’t share exactly the same information with each of your family, friends, colleagues, networking contacts and prospective clients. Nor should you send exactly the same updates at the same frequency to all your social networks.

Further reading: 

Sharing on Social Networks – How Often is Too Often?
10 Powerful Tips to Increase Fan Engagements on Facebook

If, like me, social networking tends to go to the bottom of the list every day as there are 101 things you’d rather do or have to do, then these tips will at least keep up your presence and give you some ideas as to what you could share on your profiles.

1. Follow/connect with interesting people who share interesting things, then you have information you can share with your followers.

2. Make sure you automatically update your profiles with your latest news or blog posts. This can be automated by using applications such as Twitterfeed, RSS Graffiti for Facebook and ensuring your blog is linked to your LinkedIn profile.

3. Share photos particularly if you have a business where visuals are important, although any business can benefit from sharing images. Apps like Instagram or Twitpic for Twitter make this much easier.

4. Update more than one profile at a time with your latest news. Use some of the tools above, or if you use an application such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, make sure your social networking accounts are linked to it so you can update multiple accounts at once.

5. Pre-schedule updates – again if you use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, you can pre-schedule updates to go out even if you’re away from the office or on holiday.

If it’s ideas that you lack, then the following may help you find interesting things that you could share with your network:

Reading blog posts or articles on what’s happening in your industry sector and sharing them (this is probably what we do the most). If you use Google Reader or Feedly to subscribe to your favourite blogs, it makes life much easier.

Share your thoughts and opinion on something that’s happening in your industry.

Share information about your favourite hobbies or things you like. This means that information you share isn’t just about work, but people get to know you a bit better too.

Participate in discussions that really interest you as you’ll be able to contribute in a meaningful way, rather than just posting because you feel you ought to, or making a comment for the sake of it.

If you want to find out a few more tricks and best practice techniques on social networking, then the following resources are some of the best ones around, certainly the ones we read regularly to make sure we’re as up to date as possible.

Social media examiner  -  always has excellent articles on getting the most out of social media.

Mari Smith  - Although she has positioned herself as an expert on using Facebook she also writes useful posts on other aspects of social networking.

Econsultancy – one of the leading UK resources on internet marketing generally, with plenty of insight on social media marketing.

Social media agency Simply Zesty has a very popular blog and often posts excellent content on social media.

What are your tips for finding the time to network online?

Image: Clock by Dave Stokes, on Flickr

Social Media Marketing is still relatively new and we’re all still learning how best to use it for our businesses.

The Profile Photo Faux Pas

Sam recently wrote a very comprehensive post on the importance of completing your social network profiles. I’d like to add a plea to use a profile photograph (also known as an avatar) that gives the message you really want it to. Cute animals and family groups are fine, but only if you don’t intend to use that profile professionally. And while logo avatars are suitable for company pages, owners of small businesses might be better off using a photo of themselves if they are the recognised ‘face’ of their brand.

I’ve been using the same avatar on all my social media profiles since I set them up back in 2007. While I may not look exactly like that photo any more – people still recognise me from it when I meet them at networking events for the first time. Would they recognise you from your avatar?

The Lack of Consistency Clanger

In order to get good results from social media marketing, stay on message and deliver tweets and updates on topics relevant to your audience. While it’s certainly a good idea to voice your opinion on occasion, try to avoid using your blog as a platform to post too many personal rants. We’ve spoken many times on the need to publish blog posts and email newsletters regularly. This can be made easier if you have a plan and use an editorial calendar, not only for blog posts but for all your social media updates.

Having a plan would result in fewer profiles being hastily set up on the latest networks and promptly abandoned. Or perhaps an initial flurry of activity followed by nothing at all for weeks or even months. If you aren’t ready to use a particular social network, then don’t publicise it on your website or blog. That’s almost worse than not setting up a profile in the first place.

However, it’s important not to become too noisy either. Tweeting or updating every few minutes will annoy your followers. No-one has that much good stuff to share, nor do people have that much time to read it all.

Other Assorted Social Media Clangers

Self promotion and little else becomes a turn-off after a while. For example I find that the links shared by some people always go through to a website home page, sales page, an ‘under-construction’ page, or to an error message. Their links don’t lead to content of value to my followers, so I rarely feel inclined to share them.

Tweets which are too long to retweet won’t be retweeted as often. It takes time to carefully edit them down to be within the required character count. If you want people to be able to retweet you, make it easy for them. Keep the character count down to 110-115 to allow for your RT @name and any link to be included.

Too much automation and not enough conversation. While many social media tools are free, that doesn’t mean everything should be set up to run automatically. You still need to work at social media and chat with people if you want to form any kind of relationships online. Being ‘social’ means sharing, liking and commenting on other people’s stuff too. It’s a two-way street.

A lack of social share buttons on a blog can mean missed opportunities. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to read a really good article, want to share it with my online followers, only to find no social sharing buttons to click. Fortunately I have Buffer and Hootlet (from Hootsuite) installed on my Chrome browser, but even the free WordPress.com and Blogger platforms both provide sharing options, so there is no excuse!

What are the biggest mistakes you’ve seen small businesses make using social media? 

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigdrumthump/3214172131/

However, times have moved on and it seems that whether you like social networking or not, if you run a business, you really need to be using these sites. We’ve gone through the benefits of networking in previous posts, and I’m sure you know what they are too.

Despite that, for many of us, social networking doesn’t come easily, even with the daily ‘what shall I talk about?’, ‘will people find me boring?’ worries, finding the time is even harder – and it probably always goes to the bottom of the list if you don’t enjoy it anyway!

I’ve battled with it for several years now, particularly as there are so many internet marketers on the social networks, just sharing the same stuff seems a bit pointless. If I talk about more personal aspects of my life, then I’m sure that’s not going to really interest people either and I never remember jokes, so that’s no good!

I have found that some networks are easier to interact on than others. I confess that I hardly use Facebook and am connected to just a few friends and family. LinkedIn is much easier as you can choose to contribute to ongoing discussions and you’re not limited to a certain number of characters. Google+ is also reasonably easy to use, share and discuss shared information. My main obstacle is Twitter as the conversations move on so quickly and you can’t really have a proper discussion in 140 characters – in fact it’s quite overwhelming. In my opinion, Twitter has become more of a broadcasting platform than a place to interact and network, although I’m sure some of you will disagree.

If you feel a bit like me about social networking, then these are my tips to get the best out of it:

Don’t feel you have to go onto these sites every day. We all have lives offline (well, some of us do anyway) as well as businesses to run, so prioritise your time.

But make time each week. Once you start using these sites and connecting with people, then you do need to commit to it and keep up a presence, so perhaps aim for putting aside some time 3 times per week. Even 15 minutes should be enough to post and interact on the sites you have accounts with.

If, like me, you’re in an industry with a prolific number of social networkers, then perhaps share things you personally like or are interested in rather than just the same industry news, which everyone else is sharing.

Automate some of it. Louise has written a post about automation, specifically using Hootsuite, and it means you can be seen to be there even when you’re not: Using Hootsuite for Business.

Don’t worry too much about it. If other marketing activities are working well for you, then don’t feel pressured into spending too much time on these sites. You need to enjoy the marketing activities you choose, you’ll come across as more sincere, and probably get better results from it!

What tips do you have for the reluctant networker? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments! 

Here’s one reason why you might want to - 

In January 2012, Pinterest sent more traffic to websites than LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, AND YouTube put together – according to Shareaholic.

If that startling fact doesn’t get your attention, how about this one? 

Daily Pinterest users have increased by more than 145% since the beginning of 2012 – Mashable

In my opinion, there are two main reasons people are flocking to use Pinterest. First, it is undeniably attractive to look at and browse through. Second, it’s incredibly easy to use. You don’t have to read or write much at all. And at a time when we’re bombarded with so many pages full of words, it’s a refreshing change to be able to simply look at and share lovely images. Videos are popular as always.

Will it work for your business?

I have hesitated to suggest Pinterest before because I know you have enough to do already! However, the continued growth of this new social media darling means you really cannot afford to ignore it.

Although we haven’t opened an account for Savvy Marketers, both Sam and I have set up individual accounts so you can have a look to see what we’re up to, and of course we’d be delighted if you’d follow us.  (Sam is at pinterest.com/vintagetrading and I’m at pinterest.com/louisebj)

From personal experience I warn you now that Pinterest is incredibly addictive and can consume far too much time. You’ll need to be disciplined and keep it under control.

Plenty of articles have been written recently about using Pinterest, so rather than rehash what’s already out there, I recommend you read the following:

1. Apply for an account (it only takes a couple of days to be accepted) and then read this step by step post to get started. Be sure to set up your profile properly (as Sam writes in this post)
2. Watch this excellent webinar for some good ideas and tips [Video]
3. To help you add pins of your own, here’s a list of useful tools.
4. There are 56 Pinterest marketing ideas for your business in this post.
5. If you’re interested in more facts about the meteoric rise of Pinterest, this infographic (from Infographic Labs) has plenty of them:

Are you on Pinterest? Put your url in the comments below so people can find and follow you!

Perhaps you think the descriptions you add won’t have much impact, but I disagree. Getting this part right can bring plenty of benefits and is where your networking all begins. For starters, telling people what you do succinctly, with a link to your website and a photo can go a long way to encouraging connections in itself. That doesn’t include other benefits such as making sure your profile gets found in a search, either within the network itself or even in the search engines. The better connected, the more active and influential you are will also help towards your profile being found nearer the top of the list than the bottom!

Twitter is one of the easiest profiles to complete as there really isn’t a great deal to fill in. You only have 160 characters to use in your description, but still use these words wisely. Be succinct and to the point about what you do. Vague descriptions won’t help and won’t encourage people to follow you. Don’t forget to include a link to your website and a nice profile photo. Louise has previously written about profile photos, which you can read here: What does your profile photo say about you?

Facebook page set up has changed a lot recently, particularly with the new timeline layout. Many of you would have had to update your page over the last month. If you’re in the process of revising your page, then make sure you check all of your page profile is completed as fully as possible and find some eye catching images for your new layout. Mari Smith has a detailed post about all the changes and what you need to do: Facebook Timeline for Business Pages – 21 Key Points To Know

LinkedIn is probably the most complicated profile you’ll have to complete but well worth taking the time to do so. LinkedIn is quite helpful as they tell you what percentage of your profile is complete, and which bits are missing. You really need to aim for 100% to get the most benefit from it. The other important thing to remember as you complete your profile, are the keywords someone could potentially use to find your skills. It’s advisable to include these keywords in key areas such as in your main summary, your experience, your skills and expertise, where you can list your skills as keywords. Other things that help you get found are how many connections you have along with recommendations, so it’s well worth actively connecting and building a good profile that may encourage new connections and enquiries. You can find more tips on the LinkedIn blog.

Although Google+ is new, Google profiles have been around for a while and these are used to create your Google+ profile. To set up your Google+ account, use an existing Google login, then create your profile. It’s not particularly complicated but there are few key areas to complete such as the tagline which is a short summary of what you do, and is followed by a longer introduction, so complete these fully and sprinkle important keywords throughout your text. You don’t have to complete every field, but if you’re using Google+ for business purposes, then I would complete your occupation and employment. Make sure you link to your website and/or blog and any other sites you contribute towards, along with your other social profiles. It’s also worth linking to your author page on your blog. This helps Google to determine which blog posts you write. You may have seen images of people appearing next to articles they’ve written appearing in Google’s search results. There’s more to it than just linking to your author page, but this does help. You may find this post from Devonwebdesigners.com useful for actually setting this up properly: Rel=Author Step By Step Tutorial For WordPress. Finally, with recent changes to the profile layout, you can add some eye catching images, so make full use of this (you can see I have yet to do this myself).

Pinterest is as easy to complete as Twitter. Make sure you complete the description of what you do in about 200 characters, sprinkling in your important keywords. Add in your web address and a nice photo. You can connect your Pinterest account to Facebook and Twitter, to make sure this is enable too (if relevant).

The more attention you pay to completing your various online profiles, the more benefit you will have from simply being there. Then read our posts about how to use them to actually get your desired results!

What tips do you have for completing social profiles? Please share them here!

It’s almost 4 years since I started blogging, using social media and other “technology” apps and tools to further my business. I’ve been thinking about it as Sam asked me to write a blog about my experiences with social media and I pondered about a variety of things.

It’s not just at New Year that one should revise their strategy, update their thoughts and perhaps even change their game plan – business wise. I do it on a regular basis – and with the help of social media and all the applications I have come to use, rather quickly. I guess that’s the beauty of all of this – as a small business I can change my marketing, change my strategy or update my website in the blink of an eye! Or can I?

Well yes, it means I am more in charge than ever before, instead of relying on people to do something for me, pay them and hope to god they do it right, I can now just get on with it myself. But of course this all takes time – nothing ever gets done with NO effort – people seem to forget that! And I have had to spend time learning about the technological ins and outs – and as time goes on brain cells do struggle! But I do enjoy it and I feel very good that at the ripe old age of 45 I was an “early adopter”!

I do think that people do think this takes no effort – and when they find out this does work they still think it’s a waste of time.

On one side you have the “twitter scorners” as I call them. They know nothing about it or might have just tried it for a few weeks and just don’t get it. On the other side you have the “new evangelists” – the ones that have tried it, stuck with it and now feel it’s their confessor and best friend rolled into one.

I went through both those stages – I think we all do. I thought I was way too old to mess with the kids on Twitter until someone explained the business strategy behind it and gave me a case study. The same with Facebook and LinkedIn – didn’t know how to really use them although had been on them for years and years, but I was sceptical and thought them a waste of time. But I have always prided myself on being open minded, so the case studies gave me a light bulb moment. That’s how I function, I need examples. Many people aren’t shown examples, so they become “Twitter scorners” forever. Some people of course use social media purely for fun and that’s ok.

I did not quite get into being an evangelist – I always thought telling the world your troubles and being negative was never a good thing for anyone, least of all me. But I did wax lyrical about social media because I did have some rather early wins with it – I was introduced to famous people in my industry, I even blog for one now. And I got £37,350 (T/O) worth of business in my first 6 months. Rather exact right? That’s because even though these are “newish” technologies, applications and business tools, it doesn’t mean you should not apply old world style business processes – like measuring ROI.

So almost four years into it and I have made some strategic changes to how I put myself out there.

For me, social media is part of my business toolbox – it’s marketing, PR and strategy rolled into a bundle that gives me direction to develop my business. It takes time, it takes effort and it takes dedication. But then if you want your business to succeed – doesn’t everything? I still don’t know it all, no-one ever does. The best part though and the one thing that makes me chuckle, is that I get approached by “Twitter Gurus”, “Social Media Supremos” and people that I met 6 months ago who knew nothing about it then and all of a sudden are giving social media workshops for £500/day and would I like to come along?! These people want to help me develop my social media – but first things first – check me out and see what work I do and how active I am before you start promising a myriad of wonders for me. And can I just say that most of these people did not even start out as marketing professionals. You can tell I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this!

Well I do, because it’s a learning process that takes time, and to begin with you really need to understand business and business development, marketing and brand development. Old fashioned business adages, but they do apply – they are the foundation to your business. It’s not about just sending out a few tweets and a few blogs out into the ether. I come from a business background and so feel very comfortable with all that stuff and having nearly 4 years of active non-stop social media work behind me, I feel rather confident about the things I have learnt. The good and the bad.

So a few tips and they’re FREE by the way!

Do not broadcast non-stop about what you do. It’s boring, it’s arrogant. Who wants to listen to anyone drone on about how good they are or about their products and services.

You want to be seen as THE voice of honest good reputation on your speciality – so share industry information you have found with others, showcase other people’s work. This makes you look like an authority – people start to trust you.

Meet the people (for real!) you have formed a good relationship with – collaboration is exponential, it feels good, it brings money in and gets your name out there.

Do show off your work or share your blog, but not every 5 minutes. For every one of your own work share 5 others. It’s a good balance.

Do create a strategy – what do you want to achieve in social media? Brand recognition? Get more clients? Meet other industry professionals? Whatever the goal is – develop it as you would offline.

Never ever comment on a client’s work – as sure as night follows day, they will read it and they may not like it! So keep negative comments to yourself.

Enjoy yourself – stay focused – stay positive – because oddly, online chats give people a very good idea of what you are like!

Lastly, remember – think twice about what you put out there – if you hesitate, don’t post it. A thoughtless or nasty comment will get out there and stay there!

Françoise Murat is a degree qualified Architectural Interior Designer and Garden Designer. Eco but not Loco! She specialises in: Architectural interior design for domestic clients, bars and restaurants and a garden design service for the domestic market, property developments and urban landscapes. Visit Françoise’s blog, Rendez-Vous Deco & Jardin. 

Although Facebook introduced the Subscriber feature last September,

Intended primarily for ‘public figures’ like celebrities, journalists and political figures, the Subscriber feature is also a boon for those small business owners who ‘are’ their brand. Indeed when I joined Facebook back in 2007, I used my personal profile for business as well as private contacts because there wasn’t another option. Until Pages came along.

I believe one of the reasons for business owners’ understandable reluctance to set up and manage a Business Page is the extra task of keeping it regularly updated, attracting people to ‘Like’ it and the effort involved in building a community. This is all additional time to try and find in an already full day.

In the past we’ve always advised against using a personal profile as a business marketing channel, not only because Facebook frowns on it, but also because using a Business Page provides so much more visibility (as a unique web address which can be easily found by the search engines as well as on the newsfeed of all ‘Likers’).

Another advantage of having a Business Page is that you can have multiple ‘Admins’ to help maintain the page, post updates and respond to comments, so for our Savvy Marketers page this is the best option.

However now, while a personal profile should still be set up as a personal account, enabling the Subscriber function means you can be more selective about who you connect with as a ‘friend’, keeping to only close friends and family. What’s new is that you can now also connect with more casual business acquaintances, for example fellow networkers, by inviting them to become Subscribers to your personal profile instead. One benefit of this is the increased reach of your profile updates which can be seen by all subscribers in their newsfeed (and on the ticker).

You do have to turn the Subscriber button ‘on’, the default is ‘off’.

So, should you enable ‘Subscribe’?

It’s certainly worth considering if you’re nearing or over the 5000 friend limit, because there is no limit to the number of Subscribers you can have.

It may be a good alternative to a Page if you are the only person in your business, and have already connected with other businesses via your personal profile.

A few points to consider before you click to allow the feature

Subscribers will be able to see everything you share as ‘public’ or to ‘everyone’ so it’s important to check your privacy settings BEFORE turning the feature on. Make sure you’re happy for all your photos (or albums) to be seen by everyone and make any changes if you aren’t.

Look through the privacy settings of your contact details carefully. For example, is your mobile phone number set to public? That may be fine for close friends, but do you really want everyone to know it? I don’t mind who contacts me on Facebook but deliberately keep my other email addresses and phone numbers private, as you can see by the little padlock symbols in the screenshot below.

Once you enable ‘Subscribers’ you will automatically be subscribed to all your friends as well. You can choose between receiving ‘all’,‘most’ (the default setting) or ‘only important’ updates to avoid being bombarded with too many.

Anything you post as ‘public’ on your personal profile wall will be seen by your Subscribers in their news feed. The screenshot below shows that ‘public’ is my default for sharing updates but you can opt for ‘friends’ or ‘custom’ by clicking through and changing your privacy settings. You also have the option of selecting who you share individual updates with too.

Do you have the Subscriber option turned on? Do share your experience or opinion in the comments below – we’d love to know what you think of it!

Last week saw another major change in Google search

In my opinion, this recent move seems to be a double edged sword, which I’ll explain.

It’s no wonder many small business owners hesitate to get started with social media marketing

Social Media Marketing is not a replacement for traditional ‘offline’ marketing – but it is an excellent addition. Here’s why:

Connect

Social Media helps you to reach out to and connect with many more interesting & influential people than if you don’t take part. At a time when the majority of phone calls end up in the voicemail zone, using the social networks can be a more successful way to make that initial contact.

It’s surprising to find that quite senior decision makers and buyers are personally involved. You will find big business thought leaders, early adopters and big brands on Twitter or with Facebook Pages. OK, so they probably don’t send out every tweet themselves, but they will be kept informed of trending topics and notice people of interest.

Communicate

An important factor to remember with Social Media marketing is that it replaces the one-way message of the old, static, brochure-type website and enables you to communicate two-way and even multi-ways with your clients and prospective clients. You can find out what they really want, instead of merely guessing. Many large brands are discovering a whole new box of customer service tools in the social networks (those who get it are anyway).

You can send out your message to reach hundreds or thousands of people in an instant at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising or direct mail, and receive a response just as quickly. Your customers and prospective customers are getting used to having their say.

Consistent

With traditional marketing activities, you wouldn’t expect to do something only once or twice for it to bring you good results, would you? That would be like going to one networking meeting or mailing out one letter, and then sitting back waiting for the phone to ring. Instead you’d plan out a campaign of activities to take place over a few months or more. You would visit the networking groups regularly and send out a series of mailings – and follow them up too.

With Social Media marketing you need to commit to doing it consistently & correctly for it to work for your business. If you’re going to be on Twitter or any of the other online networks, you have to show up often to see any return. And if you have a blog, you need to post something at least once a week, every week.

Whether your prospective clients are parents, students, young mums, the retired or redundant or they are sole-traders or business tycoons, there is a way to connect and communicate with them using social media marketing.

What would you add? Please share in the comments below.