Joanne Burgess' Blog

Facebook Business Page or Group – 3 Major Differences

Feb 5th, 2010 by Joanne

Duking it Out

As a Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant, I have clients asking me to help them clarify between a Facebook Group and a Facebook Business Page. For many they appear to accomplish the same thing…but do they? Here are 3 major differences between Facebook Business Pages and Facebook Groups.

Before I begin however, let me mention as I have in previous posts, that Facebook frowns upon anyone using their Facebook profile page to do business. If reported, Facebook will shut down your account if they find you abusing their terms of use, so it makes sense for anyone doing business on Facebook to have a Facebook business page regardless of the other factors below.

Findability: Facebook Business Pages allow that once you have 25 fans, you may apply for a ‘vanity url’ on Facebook. Logon to your Facebook profile and visit Facebook.com/username to explore this option. Until you reach 25 fans, your Facebook busines page url will have a string of what will appear to be ‘garbage’ attached to the end of it. Google for example, will have no idea what to do with this address and therefore you won’t be ‘findable’ in the search engines. Once you have your vanity url, there is a good chance that your page will be crawled and searchable. Facebook Groups are not searchable by the search engines. In my opinion, that’s Pages 1, Groups 0.
Purpose: A Facebook Business Page is recommended for anyone wanting to do business on Facebook. One can generate content on their business page that has no tie to your personal page. You many have unlimited fans and update them with no limitation. Business Pages are great for building your brand. Almost anyone can become a fan of your Facebook Business Page. However, the only limitation a business page owner can impose on their page with respect to fans is age and location. Facebook Groups of less than 5000 members can send email blasts to their members. A Facebook group can be a little like a private club and are intended to be more personal and on a smaller scale. Group administrators can set their groups up whereby the group owner can control membership. Many people use Facebook Groups to rally people around a cause. So for example, if you wanted to create a group to rally support around the crisis in Haiti, a group would be a good choice here. Groups are tied to your personal profile. So depending on what you want to accomplish, the score here for me would be Pages 1, Groups 1.
Functionality: Facebook Business Pages allow you the much the same functionality as your personal page. In other words, you can upload photos, video, use applications like HTML or Facebook Markup Language (FBML) to create areas on your page to include things like opt-in boxes or link someone to your e-commerce site. There are some applications however that you cannot install on your business page but that is becoming less so and the possibilities are almost endless. Many people are now building exciting landing pages for the business page to really make it shine. Facebook Groups allow you to use links, upload photos and video and that’s about it. In my opinion, that’s Pages 1, Groups 0.

Overall in my opinion then, it’s Pages 3, Groups 1. I believe Facebook Business Pages are more functional and effective than groups. There has also been another issue around groups lately that you should be aware of. It appears that Facebook had a breech a while back whereby a fringe group seized control of many Facebook groups that had no administrator assigned and used these groups to push forward their agenda. Facebook has shut down the ability now to recapture administrator status on a group that is unassigned. And, without administrator status, there are things you cannot do such as delete your group if you so desire.

Whatever you choose, if you aren’t sure about how to set these profiles up properly, you should consider using the services of a Social Media Specialist to help you through the process. Customizing and optimizing these sites is key to your success.

I would love to hear about your experiences with Facebook Business Pages and Groups. Tell me what works for you!

For all you bloggers out there, you’ll love commentluv here on my blog. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog. But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave me your comments! I want to hear from all of you!

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

Tags: Business, Facebook, Facebook Business Page, Facebook group, Joanne Burgess, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Virtual Assistant

Posted in Brand Management, Business, Marketing, Outsourcing, Social Media, Social Networking, Virtual Assistant | No Comments »

Blog As Your Hub is ‘Where It’s At’

Jan 19th, 2010 by Joanne

Putting My $$ Where My Mouth Is

Well, I did it! My static website has now been incorporated into my WordPress site. It took a little doing to make sure all my links stayed intact but I’m here.

As a Social Media Specialist VA, I coach my clients to use their blog site as their hub so it was time to put my money where my mouth is. It’s so much easier for me now to maintain everything pertaining to my business here on my WordPress site than on my blog and my static website. More importantly, it’s easy to communicate with my prospects and client base right here with the comment section so I am looking forward to lots of interaction! It is already reinforcing the discipline to be in the moment – present and authentic. A blog site is an ideal place for you to build intimacy, trust and loyalty with your followers.

You’ll notice that a ‘Services’ page has been added here along with a ‘Need Help?’ page so everything you need to know about me and my services is easily accessible. I have all my links to my Social Media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter so you can communicate with me where-ever you are most comfortable hanging out online.

I still use my LinkedIn profile as my “About Me” page because I keep it up to date with all the current information and that is where my testimonials are housed. To me, showcasing testimonials on LinkedIn rather than a traditional website is more ‘authentic’ because they are generated by the recommender themselves.

It can be a bit of a challenge keeping up to date with this rapidly changing Social Media environment, but I am confident that with this transition, I will be able to keep my readers abreast of what’s happening with my business and be able to share fresh, relevant information all in one place.

I am keen to get some feedback! How many of you have made this transition?

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where I live with my family, as a VA, I’m virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

Tags: Blog, Business, Facebook, Joanne Burgess, LinkedIn, Marketing, outsource, Relationship Building, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, VA, Virtual Assistant

Posted in Brand Management, Business, Marketing, Outsourcing, Social Media, VA, Virtual Assistant | No Comments »

Google Analytics – 3 Ways to ‘Measurable’ Success

Jan 12th, 2010 by Joanne

Starting the Year on the Right ‘Track’!

As a Social Media Specialist, I always install Google Analytics as part of the profile setup on my clients’ blog sites but I also recommend that they have it or some other tracking device installed on their website as well. This is particularly important for clients who have e-commerce on their site/s.

While I keep track of what’s going on on these sites for my clients, we meet once quarterly (or more often if required), to go over these stats and ascertain what is working as a strategy and what isn’t. These are some of the factors to consider when analyzing your or your client’s’ data.

1. Visitors:

Benchmarking: Choose the category that your business fits into and Google will run your stats against other businesses in that category of a similar size. There is no point in measuring yourself against the whole world. Compare apples to apples.
New vs Returning: It’s great that you have 1000 new visitors! But how many of these visitors are returning to your site.? The objective here is to build loyalty. Your blog, for an example, is an ideal place to build intimacy and trust with your prospects and clients. When your returning numbers continue to rise, you are on the right track.
Map Overlay: The map overlay tells you where your audience is coming from geographically. This may be of particular importance depending on your business. You’ll want to know which locations are driving the most amount of traffic to your site and where you might need to focus more attention. If your product were for example, woolen underwear, you would want to make sure that places like Alaska and the Territories were a good source of traffic for you. Of course as a Canadian in the middle of winter, I’d be watching those Canadian numbers too! LOL

2. Traffic Sources:

It’s important to take a look at where your traffic is coming from. If you have invested considerable time in your social media sites, you should find that profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., are great sources of traffic to your blog and to your website. You might also find, if you are pushing your blog posts out to the social bookmark sites, that places like Digg, Delicious and Stumbleupon for example are also a source of traffic for you. You will be able to see pretty quickly which sites are the ones that are working best for you and it is here that you should devote a little more time and attention.
It’s also important to keep track of the organic searches from places like Google or Yahoo. If these organic searches are not sending considerable traffic to your sites, you may need to take a closer look at the keyword/tag choices on your blog or your website.
For those of you involved in e-commerce, you’ll want to make sure that you have installed the proper Analytics code on the appropriate pages of your website or blog. Google will provide that code and you or your website support person can install it. You will be able to ascertain where in the buying cycle, people may be opting out. You can then focus more attention on that page/s to encourage buyers to complete their purchase. Of course if you are involved in e-commerce, you’ll want to make sure that you use the ‘Goal’ portion of GA to set some objectives and measure your success.
If you have embarked on an Adword campaign with Google, you’ll want to carefully track the adwords and how they are working for you. There are a myriad of ways to find the right kind of keywords to use to drive traffic to your site. As an Internet Marketing/Social Media Specialist VA, I am able to do the kind of background work necessary to find the right ones.

3. Content:

While content isn’t a category on GA, it does directly correlate to your pages/visit and length of time on the site. The key here is to remember that CONTENT IS KING. If you have great content on your blog or your website, then your readers will continue to return and spend more time there. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure that one out.

The last thing that I’ll talk about here is the Bounce Rate. Some people get all hung up on bounce rate. There are many reasons why your bounce rate may be high. You will want to visit GA and go to the help portion and key in Bounce Rate to find the reasons why your bounce rate might be high. The goal of course, would be to try and get that bounce rate as low as possible but in some cases (like a brick and mortar business who only does business locally) where your bounce rate may be higher than average.

These are of course, deeper levels of Google Analytics for those who are so inclined. I have outlined the major categories that you should be evaluating on a regular basis.

How about you? Are you using Google Analytics or are you measuring your sites’ performance in some other way? Tell me what you’re using. For all you bloggers out there, you’ll love commentluv here on my blog. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own blog. But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave me your comments! I look forward to hearing from you.

While physically located in Newmarket Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Joanne

Tags: Business, Google Analytics, Joanne Burgess, Marketing, Measurement, outsource, Social Media, Tracking, VA, Virtual Assistant

Posted in Business, Marketing | 2 Comments »

2009 In Retrospect – Top 5 Things I’ve Learned

Dec 16th, 2009 by Joanne

Santa on Twitter? What a Cool Idea!

Looking back over the last year, I am pleased and amazed at the growth in my business. Social Media has played a huge role in this success and I am grateful to all those clients who have put their faith in me to help them build their business using these incredible tools.

Here are the top 5 things that I have learned this year about Social Media and the role it plays in building your presence online whether you are doing it for yourself or potentially as a Virtual Assistant like me, doing it for your clients..

Search Engine Optimization. Social Media sites are very heavily indexed by Google. If you want yourself (or if you’re a VA, your clients) on the front page of Google, an investment in the Big Three (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) is a great way to get them there. Before February of this year, I was lucky to have 1 or 2 listings on the first page of Google. Now, if you key in my business name, Virtually Yours, Joanne Burgess, I basically own the first 3 pages of Google. That’s expensive real estate. If you key in just my name, (and believe me, there are a lot of Joanne Burgesses out there), I still have 5 entries in the top 10 including the first two spots. This never would have happened if not for Social Media!
Links are Key. No matter what Social Media sites you are using, you need to have your sites inter-linked. Personally I have almost doubled my Facebook Fan page by having a fan box on my blog site. Making it easy for people to find you and follow you is key. People don’t have time to search all over the place for you. Time is precious. Make it easy for your prospects and clients to find and connect with you wherever they ‘hang out’!
Yes, brick and mortar businesses can make good use of Social Media tools. I automatically create a local business account listing for my brick and mortar clients. While this is not considered part of a ‘normal’ social media strategy, I have used the ‘keyword’ component to help drive up their exposure on Google. Google has recently incorporated Analytics on these profiles. You can easily see what search strings potential prospects and clients are using to find your client’s business. I then use these findings to help the client build great blog posts and generate great tweets. There are also new apps popping up all the time to help scope out local prospects.
Potential to find great resources. I have met the most amazing people by being involved in Social Media – not just other VAs (who are amazing), but leaders in the industry with whom I have shared great ideas and resources. Social media puts you on a level playing field like never before and grants you incredible access.
Consistency is KEY. It’s easy to setup profiles on Social media sites. It’s something else to commit to the process and stay the course. It’s a struggle many days to find the time to get on the sites and participate in the discussion… but as I tell my clients, a few minutes each day, gets you closer to your goal of being the person people think of when they think of your product or service and more importantly to show that you are an expert in your ‘field’ and an approachable one at that.

In summary, it’s been an amazing year for me. I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had, my amazing clients, the awesome people I have met and for the potential in 2010.

This will be my last blog post of the year. I will be spending the next couple of weeks practicing what I preach. I tell my clients that a blog site should be your hub, so I will be migrating my website content over to my blog. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, I would like to leave you all with my warmest wishes for continued prosperity in the coming year and for a safe, happy holiday season with your loved ones.

I will be spending the holidays close to home this year. Tell me how you plan to spend your holidays. I love hearing from my readers!

Kindest Regards,

Joanne

Tags: Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Relationship Building, Santa, Social Networking, Twitter, VA, Virtual Assistant

Posted in Business, Social Media, Virtual Assistant | 2 Comments »

Have You Heard About TwitterIn?

Nov 10th, 2009 by Joanne

LinkedIn and Twitter Get Cozy

Well it looks like LinkedIn and Twitter are making a similar move (following the Twitter/Facebook alignment earlier this year) and will be working together.

Over the course of the next few days, you will notice something new on LinkedIn. You will be able to tie in your Twitter account to LinkedIn and when you post a status update, you will be able to send that update to Twitter and vice-versa. And that’s not all. Click on this link to get a little more detailed information. According to Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter) and Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn), the two will work together like peanut butter and chocolate! Yum, I love that combo! Watch this brief video that shows you how this will be done.

Now all we’re missing is the ability to hyperlink from your LinkedIn account to your Facebook account and I’d be happy from an SEO standpoint.

While this is a welcomed union and hopefully one of many ways they find to work together, if I am looking to do a general status update, I still use Ping.fm which updates all my sites – FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all from one place and all at the same time, which for me, generally suits my needs. And if you look closely at Reid’s Twitter page in the video, you’ll see he’s been using Ping to update his status as well.

As a Social Media Specialist VA, I tell my clients that status updates are an important way to stay high in the search rankings of Google. Google likes fresh content! So I update my status on each of my profiles daily. It takes a little discipline but there is a big payoff in the end.

How do you do your updates? Give me your feedback. I’d love to hear from you. And here on my blog, I offer comment luv. Anytime you submit feedback, you can link back to your own blog which is another great thing for SEO.

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Tags: Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Virtual Assistant

Posted in Brand Management, Business, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking | No Comments »

A Case of Curiosity Killed This Cat’s…Bird

Nov 5th, 2009 by Joanne

Hackers Suck – Beware!

A few days ago, I received a DM (Direct Message) from a prospect on Twitter. I had had a couple of communications back and forth with this person about Social Media. Their DM said that I was in a video that they had posted. Well, curiosity kicked in and I wondered what they possibly could have said about me in this video so I clicked on it only to be taken to another site. I gave this person the benefit of the doubt and didn’t want to embarrass them by telling them they had given a bad link, so I just let it go. BIG MISTAKE! This person’s Twitter account had obviously been hacked and in turn these scoundrels sent out DMs to her followers with their own propaganda, which in turn, I allowed to affect me.

By a stroke of luck, I had been doing some other things online at that time creating links for myself with some Twitter applications and when I was done, I went about doing some cleanup. In the cleanup process I noticed a link that I didn’t think I had given permission to, so I ‘unapproved’ it which diminished this hacker’s effectiveness but obviously not in enough time for everyone. Not long after that, I started receiving my own DMs. It became apparent that I was now proliferating messages to my following, (by DM), to say that I was making many thousands of dollars a day online.

Thankfully, most of the people who sent me the DM said that they realized it must be spam and just alerted me to the fact that I too had been hacked, others said they clicked on the link and it didn’t go anywhere and another wanted to know why, if I was making that kind of money, would I be doing VA work?

Needless to say, this kind of hacking makes me furious. I have spent a lot of time developing serious relationships with my followers. Most know that I wouldn’t send out that kind of message and certainly not in a DM- it’s definitely not my style but for others who are just getting to know me better, I wonder how this might have affected a blossoming relationship. How many out there got the message and didn’t tell me? It’s not cool when this happens to a Social Media Specialist VA, now is it?! But I guess it shows that we can all be vulnerable to this kind of crap! So I’m human, go figure!

If you suspect that your account has been hacked, here’s what you should do.

1. Go to your Twitter account and be safe – change your password.

2. Go to ‘Settings’ on your Twitter account and on the top bar, click on the tab that says ‘Connections’. On this page, check the permissions to applications/sites that you have given access to your Twitter account. If there is something there that you don’t recognize, ‘un-authorize’ it. This will disable access.

3. If someone tells you that you have been sending out SPAM, check it out. Don’t ignore it.

4. Tell someone if you suspect they have been hacked and if you have done as I did and clicked on the link, there’s a chance your own account has been affected so alert your own following.

I have since told that person that they had been hacked and they thanked me for letting them know. This is a pretty novice user in the Social Media realm. What a welcome! I have also sent out a global message to my following to apologize for the disruption and if in fact they did click on the link, to check their own Twitter accounts. I hate hackers! How about you?

Feel free to let me know what you think about this. How do we as a Social Media community deal with this? Here on my site, I offer comment luv!…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Tags: Hackers, Twitter

Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

Social Media ROI – Show Me the Money!

Oct 29th, 2009 by Joanne

ROI x 2?

Social Media sounds great but where’s the Return On Investment, right? So many clients and prospects ask me how to measure your ROI. As a Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant, the first question I always ask my clients is: What tool do you use to evaluate your ROI in general? Often times, I am surprised when they tell me they don’t use anything at all! There are many clients out there who have had a ’static’ website for some time and no tracking tool whatsoever. Sometimes they have a tracking tool and don’t know it’s there or don’t know how to use it. The interesting thing is, that not only can you track traditional ROI for social media, there is a second ROI that is specific to Social Media, and that is a “Return on Influence”.

The tool I usually recommend for tracking the more traditional ROI is Google Analytics. This is a free offering and gives you great information with respect to the traffic that is flowing to your site, etc. You can break this information down and find the sources of this traffic which includes your social media sites. Once you know where the decent traffic is coming from, you can begin to fine tune your strategies. The same is true for your Blog if you have one. Make sure you have WordPress stats or Google Analytics installed on your WordPress site too so you can see how your blog is being received and where the traffic is coming from. You can get some very valuable information from this data. Please note however, that Google Analytics is only available as a plugin on Wordpress.org (Wordpress’ self hosted option) not Wordpress.com

The second ROI is Return On Influence. This is something that is easily visible from your interactions with your friends, fans and followers on Social Media and while this is a more subtle indication of your success in the SM realm, it is a valuable one nonetheless.. Here’s how it works.

The whole purpose of getting involved in Social Media in the first place is to build relationships. By building that trust and intimacy with your prospects and clients, you are further cementing your relationship with them which opens the door to doing business. In building your presence in that environment, you should be looking to showcase your expertise and try to become known as the person people think of when they think of your product or service. By becoming that ‘go to’ person, you begin to establish an influence in the marketplace, hence this ROI.

Once you begin to establish your presence on the social media sites (and this does take some time), you can begin to evaluate your ROInfluence. Look at things like the number of strategic contacts you are building into your SM community. Take a look too, at the number of fans that you are gaining on sites like Facebook. Is the fan base growing? What about Twitter? Is the number of followers in your target market growing? How about the conversation level. Are you engaging people and are they interacting with you? If the answer is yes to these questions, then you are beginning to take your place in your community and helping pave the way to doing business. People do business with people they trust.

Everything counts. In the big picture everything you do contributes to your success so it’s important to evaluate all these indicators! What about you? Have you measured your success this way? I’d love to hear your comments. And here on my site, I offer comment luv!…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Tags: Business, Marketing, ROI, Social Media, Virtual Assistant

Posted in Business, Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

Top 5 Ways to Invest in Your Social Media Sites Each Day

Oct 21st, 2009 by Joanne

Clock’s Ticking and You Haven’t Even Looked At Your Social Media Sites Today?

Prospects and Clients raise the concern about finding the time to commit to Social Media. After all, we are all busy professionals and many times it’s difficult to get done what needs doing in a day. As a Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant, I am here to help clients stay on track. For some of them, it requires setting up a blog, publishing and syndicating blog posts and ongoing maintenance. For others it’s a question of setting up social media profiles and optimizing them correctly. Some people just need mentoring sessions to give support and suggestions. In many cases, it’s all of the above. What I don’t do, is sit there and send tweets for my clients all day long. It is important for each and every client to jump in and share in the responsibility of promoting their own business. Why? Because your prospect and client base want to get to know who YOU are both as a person and as a business entity.

Personally, I choose to take the first half hour of my work day to personally work ON my business instead of IN my business. When it comes to my social media sites, here are my top 5 ways to invest my time each day.

Facebook

Facebook can be maintained in just a few minutes each day. So every morning, I log on and update the following things:

Change my status
Read and comment on other peoples’ status
Acknowledge birthdays
Expand my reach by fanning business pages or growing my friend list

In this way, I stay current in the goings on in my friend and fan base and stay top of mind in the news feed. This also helps to grow my own base. Of course there are the additional postings for my blog and other links that occur when appropriate.

LinkedIn

I try and grow my network each week. I visit the People You May Know area and request connections. I also update my status and ensure that my blog is feeding properly into the application and that any events that I might be hosting are up to date. I also take the time to scan over the discussion threads that have been posted to the groups that I am mainly interested in to see if I can add value to any of the discussions. This all helps to keep me in the news feed.

Twitter

I update Twitter several times a day. I use Tweetdeck as my dashboard and it stays open on my desktop. I use it as a water cooler. I pop in, check for and Re-tweet interesting links, answer questions people have asked and update my followers on what I am up to. And it’s not a huge investment of time. The important thing is to stay focused and Twitter has given me many great new business contacts.

Helpful tip: For all of these sites, ping.fm is my friend. I log on each day to update my status and ping.fm will post that updated status to all three sites with the click of one button. This is a huge time saver. You’ll want to check it out too.

Blogs

I try and read a few other blogs each day. I also try and comment where I can to add value and to increase traffic back to my own blog. I also blog once a week. Should I blog more? Probably. The recommendation is 2 to 3 times a week. I can only seem to find the time to blog once. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you try and stay consistent with the timing. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best time to post a new blog. So try and find a good day for you and stick with it!

Stats and Google

Each day, I spend a couple of minutes looking at my stats and at Google to see what impact my social media sites are having on my business. I like to know where the traffic is coming from and find out what is resonating best with my followers. I also check Google to see where I sit in the rankings. Being found is a major component of growing your business and it’s important to know how SEO works. The social media sites are very heavily indexed in Google, so investing in the right sites is key.

Overall, this might sound like a lot of time, but in reality, it doesn’t take long when you stay focused and get into a routine. A few minutes of your time each day should bring you many rewards in the Social Media realm. Could you spend more time? Absolutely! I could spend all day chatting and getting lost in the myriad of games and distractions on many of these sites. But if you understand what it is that you are trying to achieve with the use of these social media tools and keep them top of mind, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time. It doesn’t hurt to find a Social Media Specialist VA to help you establish a strategy, get properly set up and provide some ongoing support. That’s what we’re here for!

If you are new to Social Media and you’d like to get an overview of these applications, I’m running an information evening, Tuesday, October 27th at 6:30 pm at the East Gwillimbury Civic Centre for those of you who are in the north Toronto area. Please feel free to contact me directly (any social media site will do!) to register for this event.

So…What do you do each day to stay on track? Share some of your tactics! I love getting feedback, and you get a bonus! I offer comment luv here on my blog…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO Look forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Tags: Administration, Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, outsource, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, VA, Virtual Assistant

Posted in Business, Marketing, Social Media, Virtual Assistant | 6 Comments »

SocialOomph; Taking the Oomph out of your Tweets?

Oct 14th, 2009 by Joanne

Twitter Users – For Heaven’s Sake, Get Creative!

WOW! All I have been reading about today, seems to be people complaining about the stance that SocialOomph has taken with regards to repetitive tweets. It appears that Twitter is cracking down on applications allowing tweeters to publish the same tweet over and over again. After having read what the creators of SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) have said, it boils down to the fact that they are complying with Twitter’s policy of NO SPAM!

Folks, this is a good thing. I know I am tired of people repeating the same tweet over and over again. All it does is make people tune you out and worse, stop following you. They have not said that you cannot send out DMs acknowledging a new follow and they haven’t said that you cannot pre-’record’ a distinct tweet to be published at a later date. All they have said is that they won’t tolerate the same tweet being sent out over and over again.

As a Social Media Virtual Assistant, I counsel my clients to use Twitter the same as other Social Media sites and that is as a form of relationship building. This means conversation. Would you have a conversation with someone just repeating the same 140 characters over and over again? No! The whole purpose of Twitter is to build that relationship by sharing useful, interesting information – industry related info, links to interesting articles, blogsites, helpful tips, hot discussions in the news and yes, even the occasional tweet about your family! Surely you can find enough things to talk about without repeating the same thing over and over.

Personally, I am happy that they have taken this stance. The faster they can remove SPAM from my Twitter feed the better. It will make it much easier for me to pinpoint the important, interesting tweets that I want to spend my time focusing on. I don’t use SocialOomph that much myself. I also advise my clients to spend as much time as they reasonably can, being present and transparent on Twitter in real time. Nothing is more frustrating that responding to a great tweet, only to find out it was ‘pre-recorded’ and the sender isn’t there to participate in a discussion.

Does this mean that you should never use applications like SocialOomph? Absolutely not. Everyone knows that it’s impossible for you to be at your computer 24/7, but if you only send out tweets in this fashion, it’s like having a conversation with someone where you pre-recorded your side of the conversation. Doesn’t leave much room for dialogue, does it?

How about you? Are you upset with this change? How do you use Social Oomph? Leave me your reply below.

As a bonus, I offer comment luv here on my blog…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO Look forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Tags: Business, Marketing, outsource, Relationship Building, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, VA, Virtual Assistant

Posted in Business, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking | 8 Comments »

My Top 5 Tips On Using YouTube

Oct 6th, 2009 by Joanne

Video Trumps Text Every Time!

It should come as no suprise to anyone that video is extremely popular. Why? Because many people learn by what they see rather than what they hear. Video is usually more entertaining and satisfies both senses. So video is a terrific way for business owners to reach their audience. The best news is that for a very affordable cost, you can start recording and publishing your own video quickly and easily.

As a Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant, I encourage clients to use video wherever they can to drive home their message to their audience. Granted, video tends to work better in a Business to Consumer B2C0 environment rather than Business to Business (B2B), but it is still an extremely powerful medium. And since YouTube is owned by Google, your SEO (search engine optimization) rankings will be very high since Google heavily indexes its own sites. YouTube is ranked as the #1 video web brand.

Here are my top 5 tips on using YouTube:

1. Get yourself your own ‘channel’.

By creating an account on YouTube you are setting up your own channel and it’s free! This allows all your content to be stored in one place and easily accessible. Make sure you fill out the profile completely which includes adding a picture of yourself. Try and use one that is consistent with your other social media sites. As always the objective here is to develop a relationship with your audience so invite comments!

Helpful tip: When allowing comments on your videos, select the option that allows you to ‘pre-approve’. This will help you manage the comment stream and keep things on a professional level.

2. Style To Suit Your Needs

There are different types of videos that you can post:

Sitting in front of the camera talking to your audience,
Demonstration style where you actually show your audience how to do something,
Educational style using powerpoint slides/screen captures to demonstrate your material
More enhanced videos with a more professional feel which usually requires more experience and a few more sophisticated tools.

Choose the best type to suit the message and experiment with the different styles. It’s also important to practice, practice, practice in front of the mirror and then with the camera to get comfortable. Get someone to critique it for you so can get some feedback as to how you come across on screen. Pay particular attention to the lighting, your background, your posture, gestures etc. A smile can go a long way.

Helpful tip: Using a product like the Flip Mino makes it pretty easy to start filming and posting quickly. The nice thing about this camera is that it has the usb plug in already on the camera making it super easy to plug into your computer and begin the upload to YouTube! Make sure you use a tripod because even the best hand will shake under pressure! If you want to see someone who’s a whiz with video, check out Lou Bortone.

3. Content

As with the other social media sites, content is king. Make your videos entertaining and provide value. YouTube allows videos up to 10 minutes, but honestly not many people will sit through a 10 minute video unless your content is really compelling. The recommendation is about 3 minutes. Facebook for example has a limit of 2 minutes, so the idea here is short and sweet.

Helpful tip: The other key thing to note is that there are only certain filetypes that these sites will accommodate. Make sure you check YouTube or Facebook first to know which filetypes they will accept and film accordingly. You don’t want to have to start with file conversions. That’s why I am suggesting the Flip Mino. It’s format is acceptable to sites like YouTube.

4. Keywords

Using keywords in YouTube is the same as using keywords on your website or on your blog. Choosing these keywords carefully will increase your chances of getting found on sites like Google and YouTube.

Helpful tip: If you don’t want to allow your video to be embedded on anyone else’s site, make sure you inhibit the embed option when you upload your video to YouTube. However, in the spirit of being open, authentic and the possibility of greater viewership, you may want to allow your video to be used by others. This might even open the door for joint venture partnerships. Just make sure that you brand your video somehow, either by embedding your url directly onto the video, or by wearing your logo’d material in the video – something that protects you and your video.

5. Syndication

Once you have produced your video and posted it on YouTube, don’t forget to link to or embed it into your blog, on your facebook page and even your website. Consider posting it to other video sharing sites like Metacafe or Google video. This further promotes you and your business.

Helpful tip: Last but not least, don’t forget to evaluate your success. YouTube actually will give you stats on your video, how many times it’s been viewed, commented on, and even how many times it’s been embedded on other sites. In this way, you’ll know which have been your most successful videos!

So those are my top 5. If you feel daunted by the idea of using video, there’s help out there for you. Consult your Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant for help.

I’d love to get your feedback. Use the Reply option below and tell me how you use Video in your business!

As a bonus, I offer comment luv here on my blog…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO Look forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….