Archive for the ‘social media’ Category

Build Your Business Brand on LinkedIn with Company Pages.

LinkedIn has quietly been adding features to Company Pages. At first you could just get your company listed, as if in a big directory. Then they added the ability to create a company profile and add products. Then you could get those products reviewed. And now you can post status updates and engage with your clients.

So how is the best way to get started using these features to promote your business?

Well, as always, if you are a coach, consultant, trainer, healer, solopreneur or other helping professional, you will want to start building your brand with your profile. If you feel you've done that pretty well, you will want to branch out and add in the company pages.

Here's how to get started, step-by-step:

1. To start you will want to create your company profile.
2. Then add some products or services.
3. Ask some of your past or present clients to write a review for your products. This creates "social proof" and adds to your company credibility. The more positive reviews, the more evidence potential clients have that you are likely to satisfy their needs as well.
4. When you add a product or service, you can then share it to your status update, your groups or your connections. Here is a new piece of content that you can share with others to get some buzz going.
5. When you create the product or service, you can create a promotion to go with it. The promotion shows up in the bottom right side bar. Its a great opportunity to add photos or video to promote a program or launch.
6. The newest addition to the company page is the addition of the status update. This lets you get Facebook-like interactions with your LinkedIn followers. The downside right now is that the integration with automation tools like Hootsuite is not yet available. So you would have to manually post every update yourself or outsource your social media. Personally, I'm going to wait until the automation tools become available.
7. Optional: Run a paid advertisement. This will get you visibility amongst your target demographic fast.

So that's it. It's pretty easy to get started using Company Pages on LinkedIn.

Let me know below how it goes for you and if you have any tips to offer others starting out.

Here's a new development in the Facebook Custom Fan Page world. If you are using an application or have created a custom tab that points to a server, off of Facebook, that server must have an SSL certificate. What does that mean to most of us?

1. If you have used an existing 3rd party Facebook application, like an iframe app, chances are they are already hosting your custom page on a secure server. Check with them to be sure. Ask them if the server that hosts your Facebook Custom Fan Page has an SSL certificate. If the answer is yes, you're OK. If not, they will either have to get one, or you will have to move to a new server or hosting company that has one.
2. If you self host on your own web site, you will need to ensure you are on a secure server. There are a couple ways to do this. 
   • First, you can purchase a SSL certificate for your site. There are many places you can get one. Your hosting company may offer them. Or, you can order from GoDaddy.com. You will also need to have your developer follow the rule found here.
   • You can host the content in your iframe on a secure site like an Amazon S3 account. Another is to post files in Dropbox.
3. If you are using Facebook.com apps or tabs, you should be fine.

Don't you love these un-announced changes?

You may have noticed that little button show up on your Facebook profile that says "Subscribe". If you are like me, you may have glanced and said, "I don't get it" or perhaps "I don't have time to figure that one out". You are not alone!

There were a lot of other changes that popped up at the same time, and this one got little press coverage. However, it is a BIG DEAL for celebrities, athletes, speakers, coaches and any individual one who is a public figure or wants to be one! Actually, this one little feature can be a game changer in the way a public figure uses Facebook.

Prior to Facebook Subscribe, as a public figure, you could only accept 5000 connections to your personal profile. Those connections include both friends and pages you like. So once you hit that limit, you had to create a fan page. The problem is that now you had to administer two things, a profile and a page. Often your clients would want to connect with you personally, and not with your page. It was harder to create relationships with your page likes than it was your friends.

That just changed.

Facebook just broke out a new feature. It's something you've gotten all along with your friends. You've always been subscribed to your friend's updates. Now you can click on the Subscribe button to filter what you see from each friend. Tired of their Farmville updates? You can filter that out but clicking on the subscribe button.

OK, so that's not so new. But what is new is that now you can subscribe to hear what celebrities, journalists, speakers and public figures have to say without becoming their friend. You simply click on the subscribe button on their profile and their public updates will appear in your news feed.

(If you don't want non-friends to subscribe to your public updates, then you can turn it off so the subscribe button disappears.) To turn on Subscribe follow these directions.

So why is this a game changer?

Well, you don't necessarily need a page anymore to break through the 5000 connection limit for your profile. More people can follow your public updates and feel intimately connected to you without you having to create and administer a page.

When is a page still valuable?

You want to move to a page when you need multiple people to administer it. Or for using custom tabs and applications. A page you can promote with ads and sponsored stories. And you get detailed metrics on demographics and fan activity with your page. So if its just you getting started, using your profile with the subscribe button is the best option. Once your business grows beyond you, you want to conduct advertising, or you want to start adding in fancy apps, then you will want a page.

Now, if you are afraid of having too much information in your news feed and thus are wary of subscribing to peoples updates, here's how to avoid that problem. You sort them into lists and save them to your favorites. Facebook created a great little guide for that. It's called Creating a Subscriptions List.

Lastly, you need to optimize your profile to get found by subscribers. Fortunately, Facebook has put together a short tutorial that shows us how to Optimize Your Profile for Subscribe.

If you are a public figure, coach, consultant, celebrity, author, or perhaps you want to be, then go ahead and turn on subscriptions and subscribe away!

This week I'm quoted in an article on "Business News Daily" that talks about  "5 Quick Ways to Boost Your Facebook Fanbase". Here are some of what you'll learn if you read the full article…

Provide compelling content. — Even though your Facebook page is up and running, you need to get people to like and trust you. According to Debra Zimmer, The Expert Marketing Coach, one way to increase that trust is to provide compelling content.

"Basically they need a reason to 'like' your page. They want to know what's in it for them. When they come to your page, they want to see that you consistently post something of value to them," Zimmer said.

Zimmer suggests one way to post compelling content is with a "tip of the day."

"You can sit down once a month and jot down 30 things that would help your customer transform their life. You then use a tool like Hootsuite to have those tips post for you automatically once a day. And you have created a reason for people to 'like' you. They do it to get those tips," Zimmer said.

And,

Build a chain of communication with your customers. — Facebook isn't all about business, so it's important to make sure that you're entertaining your customers. Zimmer said that you can do so by asking some questions.

For example, Zimmer asks her followers what tip topics they would most like to see from her.

"That starts getting people engaged. And when they comment on your post, it shows up in all their friends' news feeds. With the average Facebook user having 130 friends, that number of people who see your post multiplies quickly," Zimmer said.

You can read the rest of the article here…