It's taken years to learn to keep some balance in my life. By nature I become a work-a-holic. So I need to schedule in fun. Today I want to take a moment out to ask you which 25 year old Bridesmaid's dress I should wear for the dirty Girl mud run. That's right! The pictures are a blast. Take a look and tell us which dress you would wear in the mud run!

http://ow.ly/6pgFZ

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…

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?

Last night I was at an event where an attorney spoke about internet marketing laws. I asked her this very question and she responded about how there was no good legal guideline in tort law established yet. But, based on the new FTC Endorsement Rules, you should somehow disclose your relationship (if compensated for it) when endorsing something via a tweet or status update.

Then, this morning I received this email from a company with whom I am an affiliate. From a business owner perspective, I actually think it is a pretty good policy and guideline for people to follow when posting an affiliate link to Twitter or social media networks so I am posting it here for others to learn from.

Dear Debra Zimmer:

XXX.com will be updating their program terms to include guidelines for advertising in the social media space.  This update was due to recent FTC rules and regulations that XXX.com and its affiliates must comply by.  We encourage you to read through the information below and make the necessary changes to be compliant.

1.     All social media messages must adhere to XXX.com content standards. http://www.XXX.com/affiliate/contentstandards.asp

2.    Affiliates linking to XXX.com on social media sites must disclose their relationship as an affiliate. Reason: We require this so that all affiliates will be in compliance with FTC regulations. If you are recommending a company or product by sharing a link that can potentially earn you revenue, you must disclose this to your followers, readers, fans, etc.

Example of compliant message:
Need dental care savings? XXX.com has 30+ discount dental plans to choose from (affiliate link) http://bit.ly/GoodExample

Example of NON-compliant affiliate message:
Just saved lots of money using my plan from XXX.com. You should get a plan too. http://bit.ly/BadExample

3.    Affiliates linking to XXX.com on social media sites must state in their bio or in the link that they are an affiliate and not a XXX.com employee. Reason: While we welcome affiliates to use social media, we do not allow affiliates to act as official spokespeople for our company.

Contact Information
Have a comment or question about this update? Call or email your Affiliate Manager.

I haven’t seen anyone on twitter or other social media sites using a disclosure statement yet, have you? Have you been seeing tweets and status updates that say “affiliate link”? I would bet that it would make it a lot harder for affiliates to make money. Is it just me or does it seem that the affiliate industry is taking a beating recently?

The Federal Trade Commission has finally issued an update to their guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials as used on the internet and social media. The last update was in 1980, well before the influence of websites, blogs and social media.

If you are a blogger, affiliate marketer or internet marketer, you need to be aware of how these revisions affect you and your business. You may want discuss these changes with your attorney and make adjustments to your web site, blog or social media campaigns.

The full text of the press release is available here.

The full text of the Act is available here.

In summary, the clarifications to the FTC Act are:

1) Advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect.

2) “Material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. So, Bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

3) Celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.

It’s a good idea to ensure your web site, blog and social media strategy are following these new guidelines for the use of testimonial advertising and endorsements.

Business networking is used to create opportunities through like-minded people.

The goal of business networking is to build new relationships and thus generate business. It can be more cost effective than other forms of marketing. Social Networking is one form of networking, but offline business networking is often more effective.

People do business with people they like and trust. Like and Trust is easier to achieve in a face-to-face format. That is why professional networking is still so popular among small business owners.

.

Tips:

• Get out and talk to people.
• Meet with everyone you know to share what you are doing and ask them for referrals.
• Always think about how you can help the person you are talking with.
• Ask for a business card. Give them one of yours.
• Connect with them online. Ask them to subscribe to your mailing list/newsletter.

Resources: Places to Network & People to Network with

• Chambers of commerce
• Alumni Groups
• Friends and family
• Twitter meet ups
• Career fairs
• Religious groups
• Parents of your children’s friends and classmates
• Neighborhood groups
• Professional organizations
• Networking organizations

How do you measure the success of your social media campaigns?

Social media marketing actually encompasses a broad range of tactics, goals and strategies. Let’s look at the metrics as a function of what social media can do for you…

1) Establish a Presence

Do you have a presence everywhere your customers hang out on the web? How do you measure this quantitatively? Make a list and check it off.

2) Build Awareness and Drive Traffic.

This is directly measurable through your website analytics. Look at the source of the new traffic.

3) Capture Names and Build Lists

Well it just so happens that you can measure this directly from social media. Your basic metric is the quantity of new connections, followers, fans & subscribers (email and RSS).

4) Build Relationships and Trust

Ok, this is where social media can really shine. And, it is the most difficult to measure. Some suggestions for metrics are the number of interactions with your customers. How active are they in communicating with you? How many comments on your blog post? How many referrals to your site? How many retweets? Are you adding value? The number of inbound links to your site and any improvement in your search engine rankings (as compared to your competition) will also show the quality of the relationships you are building.

5) Conversion to Sale

When you make a special sales offer, you can use your web analytics to track conversions. But often conversions come through time with the increased relationship. It is often not one outlet that led to the sale but a series of exposures over time. Still, you can use web site analytics to trace the source of the sale. You can use surveys (how did you hear about us?). The metric is the increase in sales and revenues. Look at the dollar value of the new customers and its source (from analytics).

6) Upsell or Re-sell

How well are you getting additional sales from your existing clients? Measure this based on where the existing customer came from when they clicked through to make a purchase.

To get to ROI, you’ll need to know your sales income (by referring source) and your expenses (time/money spent on social media, opportunity loss, outsourcing costs, etc.). Again, social media is about building relationships, so the ROI should be increasing over time as you build those relationships. That’s another metric to look at. Look at results as a function of time, not just individual campaign. You should see an improvement over time of the cost of sale.

A social networking website facilitates community building among people who have something in common. They provide a means to connect with people you know through school, work, or activities. They also aid in the creation of new friendships.

Ways to using Social Networking to Grow Your Small Business:

• Find directories related to your specific industry and add your company profile or link. You can do this by going to Google and typing “my industry directory”.
• Post and comment in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature.
• Yahoo Answers - Answer questions in your niche. Only answer questions related to your product. Include a direct link between the question and your link in the source box if you don’t want to get banned.
• Create a Google Notebook and include your site’s link.
• Create a presence on the leading free social networks. It’s another way for potential customers to find you, it’s free, and it can drive more customers to your website. The links back to your website help to give you a higher page rank in the search engines. Popular social Networks include:
  • LinkedIn – LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals.
  • Ning – Ning lets you create and join new social networks for your interests and passions.
  • Bebo – Bebo is a popular social networking site, owned by AOL/Time Warner, which connects you to everyone and everything you care about. It is your life online – a social experience that helps you discover what’s going on with your world and helps the world discover what’s going on with you.
  • Facebook – A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.
  • Myspace – Young demographic and with strong interest in music.
  • Ecademy – A Business Network. Create new contacts and find friends, Market your business and get found on Google, Share knowledge, opportunities and do more business
  • Biznik – Biznik is an award-winning community of entrepreneurs and small businesses dedicated to helping each other succeed.
  • Nexopia – Canada’s largest social networking site for youth. With over 1.2 million members, and hundreds of new accounts created every day, Nexopia is quickly solidifying its reputation as the online place for teens to connect and express themselves.
  • StudiVZ – Germany language social networking site that is popular in Germany.
  • orkut (popular in Brazil) – orkut is an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating. orkut’s social network can help you maintain existing relationships with pictures and messages, and establish new ones by reaching out to people you’ve never met before.
  • Hi5 – hi5 is the most globally diverse social networking site in the world, with over 80% of our users from outside the US. The hi5.com site was designed for this global audience from the beginning, and was the first in-language social networking site in many countries around the world. The site has been translated to over 40 languages and dialects (with more than 60 planned by the end of 2008).
  • Xiaonei – Chinese – The most real effective Social networking platforms, in-depth to meet your social, entertainment, information, and many other needs.

Note: To get more marketing lists such as this, go to the sidebar and download our Free Report: “187 FREE Ways to Explode Your Business!”