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.

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?

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!

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…

Here are some tips from Mona Elesseily, the VP of Online Marketing Strategy at Page Zero Media
and Jennifer Sheahan from FBadsLAB.

The three types of images that convert best on Facebook ads are:

1. Happy Women
2. Colorful Logos
3. Headshots

Happy Women

The best performing images to use in Facebook advertising are of happy women. Women who look overjoyed, free and are looking directly at the camera convert best. Also, try images of women who joyfully have their arms in the air.

Colorful Logos

Try logos that are colorful and engaging. If your company’s logo is boring or bland, make look colorful by adding a colorful border, background or text. Definitely avoid blue and white as the colors blend too much with Facebook’s colors (think contrast to capture attention).

Images with text on them (calls to action) convert better than images alone. In general, ads with a “reason” convert better than ads with no reason. So don’t just tell people about your accounting services but include a reason like: 1) end of tax year special or 2) an online promotion with savings available for 3 days only.

Note: product images do not convert as well as straight up colorful logos.

Headshots

Happy pictures where people are looking directly at the camera work best. Close up pictures work best.

Facebook Advertising Tips

In addition they shared some general tips to help you get the most of your Facebook advertising.

1. Use a sense of "urgency" with your Facebook ads. Don't run them too often or for too long. The reader should feel like they have to take action now or the opportunity will be gone.
2. Distract the user from other tasks.
3. Include a purpose or reason they need to take immediate action. Tie your ad to a a promotion, discount or compelling report.
4. Test images and call to actions.
5. Expect low conversion rates averaging in the 0.02% range. You’re doing well if you see conversions above 0.4%.

Do you have any tips to share? Is there anything you've experienced with your Facebook advertising that works really well?

(You can read more details at http://searchengineland.com/3-types-of-facebook-image-ads-that-work-80162.)

If you are like me, I've heard that Facebook shares help get you ranked higher in search engine results. Now, there's data to prove it. According to AllFacebook.com,

There’s a high correlation between Facebook shares and ranking well on search engines, particularly Google U.S. rankings.

That’s according to the latest annual report by SEOmoz called “2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors.”

In the end, SEOmoz says it cannot prove that Facebook shares cause high search engine rankings. The study will only say that there’s a strong correlation between the ranking and Facebook shares.

What does this mean?

Delivering high quality content on Facebook gets your content shared more often. More shares influences a lot of factors which in the end result in higher Google rankings.

What do you think?

Vincenzo Consenza created this animated series of images that shows the statistics on the popularity of social networking sites on all the continents over the past 2 years and overlayed it on a world map.

Pretty cool, huh?

When a customer or potential customer comes to your website you want a way to greet them and invite them to "like" your page. When they 'Like' your page, you can then continue the conversation with them off your page and in their news feed.

Your Facebook Fan Page should have a 'landing page' in the same way that every online marketing campaign would have a unique landing page to inform and convert customers.

To create a landing page on your Facebook Page, you will need to add a "Reveal Tab". By default your Facebook Page will have a Reveal Tab for your Wall, Info, Photos and a few other default applications. If you want to add some custom content that is unique to your page, you will need to create a new Reveal Tab for that content.

When you create a Reveal tab,  you are in essence adding another page to your Facebook Page. That page is going to act like a picture frame. It will have a tab that you name and then a blank page. The blank page is actually a placeholder for your content. Think of it as a picture frame and your job is to put in the picture (or text, video, etc.). the frame is called an iframe, and your job is to add an iframe to your page and fill it with your unique content.

There are 3 main ways to create and fill that picture iframe and create your custom page.

1) Install an Iframe application from the Facebook App Center

You can go to the Facebook App Center and download an application that someone else created. These apps usually have the phrase "static html" and "iframe" in their description. Once you install this, it typically will have the name "Welcome". You can change that name by going into your page edit features, going to the apps, then clicking on that specific application.

Once the tab is installed,  you will find that you will need to know html in order to put content in it. If you know html, this method is the fastest way to get started. If you don't know html, you will need to find someone who does if you want to use this method.

The Pros: Fast, Easy, Free.

The Cons: Requires HTML knowledge

For a list of suggested applications in this category, please visit my Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/DebraZimmer

2) Use WordPress for Facebook

The second "free" option does not require that you know HTML to create your content. However, there is some setup required. With this option you create your own iframe application from the Facebook Developer Center, and then point your iframe to a self-hosted WordPress site that is formatted with a theme that fits inside the iframe. For this method, you will need to create the application which is not terribly difficult, and you will need a new wordpress installation using wordpress.org and NOT wordpress.com.

I like the simplicity of WordPress and love that I can add another WordPress site for free on my website self-hosting account. You can see an example of my WordPress for Facebook website on my Facebook Fan Page "Debra Zimmer".

Using this technique, you will create the tab and then link to a wordpress site that is formatted to fit in the iframe (500 pixels wide).

There are 3 ways to integrate WordPress as your content management system for your Facebook Fan Page.

1. With this I created a set of WordPress templates formatted to blend with Facebook and I sell those for $15. this allows you to show multiple WordPress Pages inside the one Facebook iframe and the color palete matches that of Facebook so it will work for any business.
2. If you have an existing WordPress site and just want to link one of the pages to it, you can use the "Fanpage Connect" Plugin for WordPress. This plugin will format your WordPress page to fit inside the iframe restrictions of Facebook Pages by stripping out the formatting and sticking the content only in the Facebook iframe. Please note that this only allows you to show one WordPress Page in the iframe and I found it difficult to understand the directions.
3. Design your own WordPress theme.

Pros: You can use the familiar WordPress content management system to create and update all  your custom content on Facebook. One iframe contains multiple pages of content. Free if you already have a self-hosted WordPress website.

Cons: Takes some setup. You may need technical assistance for setup.

More details on these solutions are available at http://www.facebook.com/DebraZimmer

3) Get a Facebook Application with Templates

The third option to create your customer Facebook Fan Page is to register for a 3rd party software application. These require no programming skills. No installation required. However, they may require a fee.

You can see the ones I've used and tested by 'liking' my fan page. And, a complete list of applications is available at http://www.facebook.com/DebraZimmer

Are you using any of these techniques to customize your Facebook fan Page? What tools do you like most and why?

You see, it all started while I was teaching the social media segment of my Be Found Bootcamp. I turned to my husband and said "this is all changing so quickly, I can't keep up with all of it. Facebook alone has gotten so huge! It's become such a great resource for small business owners to reach their customers."

Once it was out of my mouth, I had to stop. Every good marketer knows you need focus. You need to focus in on something, grab a foothold and build from there. Was this my new focus?

Did I just perceive a demand or was there really one there? So I tested the demand for it. I went talked to some clients and said "I'm thinking of offering a Facebook for Business class, what do you think?" The answer, "When?"

Then I asked my hair stylist who had just opened up a new salon. I asked her "I'm thinking of offering a Facebook for Business class, what do you think?" The answer, "When?"

I tested it with some more of my clients. Same question, same answer. I went to a meeting of a group of which I am a member (so they know me). Same question, same answer.

I went to some more networking groups. I stood up and said "I'm holding a Facebook for Business class and if you are interested please contact me after the meeting." The result? 25% gave me their cards.

Now as an experienced business person I know that with no preparation, no flyer, no introduction, no sponsor, basically, no one in that room had ever heard of me except for my 2 minute self-intro, that these were amazing results. 25% of people who had never heard of me were interested in learning more about my product. Now, THAT made me stop in my tracks. I found a really BIG need in the market. I thought "Let's go serve it".

So that's what I am doing at the moment. Serving the needs of my market.

I'm sharing this because I want you to see the process. It's really simple to do some market research. You get an idea and you ask for feedback from your audience. You tweak and you get more feedback. It's OK to not get it right the first dozen times. Just keep going until you find the right words, the right need and the right audience.

Market research doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just requires a few simple steps and opening yourself up to indifference, possible rejection and eventually you find the sweet spot.

The key is to find a demand for something. It's so hard to try to sell something that people don't understand they need. It's much easier to find something they want, then give them what they need. I've heard that phrase before, but didn't understand that what they want and what they need could be 2 different things.

Please use the comments section below to share what has worked for you. What have you found that your market craves? How have you tweaked what you offered to match that? What are some simple ways you've tested your products or services with your market?

If you are in interested in learning more about my Facebook for Business classes., or perhaps you want me to teach an online version, or you want me to speak on the subject, please let me know (give me some feedback). Click here to learn more…

Are you having trouble getting any activity going with your social media accounts? Not finding them to be particularly productive? Here are some pointers as to how to break through the noise and get some value out of your social media time.

Build Relationships

Your first priority should be building relationships. If you are posting and no one is responding, then you aren’t building relationships now are you? Just think about how you behave at a cocktail party. OK, well that might not work for everyone, but some of you will get that the conversation should be 2-way. You should be talking about 50% of the time and listening 50% of the time.

But how do you get that conversation started online?

Broaden your network

I found that social media really came alive for me when I became an open networker. That means that I will connect, friend or follow anyone who requests it. Okay so I did once decline someone whose entire stream was porn. But in general, if you aren’t a spammer, I’ll connect.

How has that helped? Well, I have thousands of people in my network rather than a few hundred. Now I have people that I haven’t personally met, but they understand the principles of networking which are “I help you and eventually you will help me”. Many of these open networkers are more active in social networks and more productive connections than the people I know in the offline world that aren’t active & open online networkers. Also, as an open networker, people can connect to me without fear of rejection. All are welcome.

It was a bit scary making the transition to open networker at first. I was afraid of spammers and yes, I do get unsolicited communications. Some are valuable, some are not. I sort through and trash the bad ones and act on the good ones.

I’ve had to refrain from sharing information about my family and children that I used to post and share more openly. Not knowing every person who connects to me requires me to be a little more protected of personal information. Other than that, I have found it to be a positive experience and have enjoyed the new friends, colleagues and partners I have made.

So how do I broaden my network?

Join groups and forums with people of similar interests or potential customers. If you are on LinkedIn, join the Open Networkers group and you will get a list weekly of open networkers you can connect with. On Facebook you can ask to connect with anyone you went to high school or college with, anyone in your address book, etc. You can connect to friends of friends. With Twitter there are lots of directories and tools to help you find connections that have similar interests as you or follow people you want to follow or who tweet from a location you want to target.

Be patient

Building relationships takes time. It takes more time online than it does in person. I believe that online is more leveraged and will help you scale your business, but it doesn’t replace the face-to-face contact. When you are first getting started in your business, face-to-face will get you more valuable feedback quickly so you can adjust your messages and style.

When you take your networking online remember it can take 6 months or more to develop a productive network, depending on how much time you attribute to it. Yes, you can get followers quickly, but you will not have a relationship with most of them so they will not immediately buy from you or refer you. They will trust someone a friend referred them to first, or someone they met in person, because it is easier to trust and communicate when you can also assess the non-verbal cues. But, you can only meet so many people in person. It’s easier to get your message spread more widely and to build a bigger list online. Online is where you build leverage and scale.

Provide Content

The best way to get people to connect with you is to provide great content. Content ideas include:

• Tips
• Information
• Blog posts
• Quotes and inspirations
• Promos
• Other people’s content, quotes and inspirations, blog posts, etc.

Engage your audience

The most important piece to energizing your social media networks is to engage them. What does that mean? It means you need to interact with them as you would in a face-to-face conversation. You need to:

• Respond to comments they make to you
• Comment on their posts
• Answer their questions
• Post your own Questions
• Compliment others when appropriate
• Be a person. Share who you are, your quirks and brilliance.

Notice that sending out promotions is only a small part of the content you are able to provide. The more you give the more you will get. Remember to give others a chance to shine and give them credit. People love to be complimented.

This all may sound overwhelming but there are ways to automate some of this and to systematize your processes so you can keep it in line with the time you have allotted. I spend about an hour and half on email and social media each day. I consider the two to be linked as many of my social media accounts shoot me an email when I need to respond to something.

Prioritize you networks

You can’t be super effective at managing 15 social media accounts unless it is your full time job. Feedback shows that most people can only effectively manage 3-5 accounts. The top 3 have become (not in any order):

1. Facebook which is great if you have a consumer audience,
2. LinkedIn which is super if you are b2b or looking for tips and support to build your b2c or b2b company, and
3. Twitter which is great for live streams of information and making connections with people with similar interests (then the relationship often moves to a different forum for more in-depth conversations). It’s great for live event recording, customer service, timely announcements and other time-sensitive information.

There are a myriad of other social media platforms and which ones you choose to focus on should be based on who your target customer is and where they like to hang out.

Remember to bring your own energy to your social media communications. Share your expertise. Share who you are. Be genuine.

I know it’s a bit weird at first when you start communicating with a big black void. But there are people out there and you will be heard. You can be shouting at them, selling them or engaging them into a two-way relationship with you. Which one do you think will be most effective, most productive and most energizing for all parties?