Blogging is a key component in a social media strategy. You are not bound by 140 characters or limited by your Facebook Business Page fan base.  It is an ideal platform for you to disseminate great content around the world to your readership and start to become known as an authority in your field. The goal should be to become the person people think of when they think of your product or service and it’s important to use ‘big picture’ thinking.  It’s also important that your blog site contain the right elements to maximize your success in this environment.  Here are my top 10 blog must haves for 2012:

1. Self-hosted

Having a blog on WordPress.com or Blogspot.com is not ideal. They are fine if you are publishing a personal blog but if your blog is business related, then you should be self-hosted. This means that you manage your blog on your own domain name rather than something like yourname.wordpress.com.  The implications of self-hosting are that you own your own content and have accessbility to the myriad of templates and plug-ins out there to really make your site sing. The analogy here would be renting vs owning your own site/content. My personal preference is WordPress.  For more information or to start a new blog, click here for more information.

2. Content

Content is King on the web. The more valuable information you provide, the more attractive your site becomes. What goes around, comes around in the social media space. By sharing great content, you share your expertise and become known as the go-to person in your industry. You may even become known as a thought leader!  I usually advise your post contain between 500-1000 words and a weekly blog would be ideal for most small business owners.  The reality is, people will only spend a few minutes on your site, so it’s important that your content be engaging and provide great value. Here’s a tip for those of you who like to include outbound links to video in your posts. Use the embed feature on YouTube instead of just providing the link and embed the video right into your post. In this way, you keep people on your site. If you give someone a link to YouTube, there is a good chance they will become distracted and never come back to your post.  Additionally, any other links you provide on your post, should open in a new tab so that readers can easily navigate their way back to your post.

3. Branding

You will want to make sure that your blog site is properly branded. By this I mean, if you also have a ‘static’ website, the logo, colours and general feel should be repeated on the blog site (and everywhere else on the web including your Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Channel). What is a ‘static’ site?  If your website does not provide a vehicle for people to engage you on the site, has no blog and you don’t refresh your content on a regular basis, your site would be considered ‘static’.  The reality is people are gravitating in droves to user-generate content sites where they can start to build rapport with you and add their own input hence the popularity of Social Media and sites like WordPress.

There is good news if you are already using WordPress as your vehicle to blog because you can also use this site as your main website. Your content can be easily moved from a static site to your WP site.  One site means easier maintenance for you, less confusion/navigating for your prospects and clients and no doubt less expensive. If you are determined to retain your static site, your hosting company does not support WordPress and you wish to start blogging, you have a couple of choices:

1. Move your domain and site to a Host provider who does support WP and set up a blog that runs in a subfolder.

2. Get a secondary domain name and hosting on a host provider who supports WordPress and just run your blog there. You will want to ensure that your static site can connect to your blog and vice-versa.  A domain name and hosting fees can generally be setup for less than $100/yr depending on your requirements.

4. Reliable Host

It is important that you choose a reliable host for WordPress. You’ll want a hosting company that has a good understanding of this platform, keeps its server capabilities in line with the ever changing upgrades on WordPress and has a great up-time record. There is nothing more frustrating than slow load times for sites and errors in the back end of WordPress when you are an administrator. My personal preference is Hostgator for a number of reasons – not the least of which, is that they are a ‘Green Hosting’ Company. You can check out a recent post for more information by clicking here.

5. Plug-ins

There is a list of must-have plug-ins that I install for my clients. Among them are:

• A firewall
• Spam protector
• Login protection against hackers
• Comment vehicle to aid with backlinking (great for Google). Also, remember to respond to valid comments in a timely way. Treat this like customer service.
• Email subscription capability – most readers still prefer to subscribe to content via email rather than RSS
• Syndication buttons – very important to be able to push your content out over the web rather than hoping people will find your post
• SEO (search engine optimization) capability
• Analytics

6.  Render to Mobile

With the rapid growth of smart phone sales, it is important to consider the fact that people might be accessing your site on their mobile device.  If your blog site or static site relies heavily on Flash players for images for example, it might be time to revisit this and find an alternative method. You don’t want people getting to your site to find large blank spaces where the images or video should be, particularly if you rely heavily on these to promote your product or services.

8. Analytics

It is very important that you track your results using some form of Analytics.  In this way, you can review how people are finding your content (what vehicle, what referral sites etc.), what the most successful content is and what is and what is not working well.  It can also reveal some great key word strategies.

9. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It doesn’t matter how great your content is if you don’t have a tool to get yourself found on the net. Enlist the help of someone who understands what people are searching for and how to incorporate those metatags and descriptions on your site – not only as header tags but also in your blog posts. I use Market Samurai for site setup. It’s a great tool.

10. Structure for Google

Last but not least, it’s important to understand how Google crawls your site.  There are strategies one can use in your blog posts to help you get your content indexed higher in the search engines.

If you don’t already have a blog for your business, now might be a great time to start!  If you are unsure as to how to properly set up your site or need help with publishing and syndicating your posts, make sure you enlist the help of someone who understands this space to maximize your success.

Happy New Year everyone and Happy Blogging!

Until next time,

Joanne

While Joanne resides in Newmarket Ontario with her family, she is virtually yours, anywhere.

I meet with prospects and clients almost every day. Most people now agree that Social Media is not going away. They also recognize that it’s time to get serious about implementing and maintaining a social media strategy that will work for their business. Some are doing amazingly well. Others struggle.  So, as a Certified Social Media Specialist, what are the top 3 excuses I hear for slacking on setting up or not staying consistent with a social media strategy?

3. I Don’t Know What to Say

It’s rare that when properly coached, a client doesn’t have ongoing valuable information to share with their audience. Some are afraid to give away too much intellectual property, which is understandable, but you can give away just enough to entice your reader to want to know more.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, others feel that their content wouldn’t be of interest to readers. The fact is, you may end up sharing that one piece of information that is just the trigger needed to get that prospect to pick up the phone, email you or respond to your blog post or Facebook page entry.  Perhaps you have just answered a nagging question for them or you shared some personal information about a hobby that resonated with someone and they feel more connected to you.  Open up a little and share about who you are as a person as well as a business entity.  Success is in the sum of the parts….

2. I’m Worried About Who Will See What

So, the result is you do nothing! I find that people are mostly nervous about Facebook, and honestly, rightly so. Facebook is making a lot of changes and some of them are a blatant way to get more information from you so that they can feed their advertisers.  But, there are ways to stay safe on Facebook. Things like;

• Ensuring your privacy settings reflect who you want to see what content
• Instructing family members / unruly relatives to send you ‘emails’ on Facebook rather than write on your wall
• Monitoring the wall and removing inappropriate content if it does show up
• Setting up Facebook lists and then publishing information to the appropriate lists
• Enable the secure browsing feature

If someone wants to get information in this day and age, they will find a way to do so. Being conscious about what you put out there will help you.  If you can answer these three questions (thanks to Mari Smith for these), with a YES, then you are probably safe.

1. Would I be comfortable if my boss were to see this content?
2. Would I be comfortable if my mother/father/children were to see this content?
3. Would I feel comfortable if this content showed up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal?

And the number 1 reason?

1.  Not Enough Time!  …and by the way, I can be just as guilty of this as anyone else.

I recently read an interesting quote. It said: We all have the same amount of time in a day: 24 hours or 1,440 minutes. In fact, we have exactly the same amount of time that was given to Helen Keller, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.

Sobering thought. As entrepreneurs, we all wear many hats. But the one hat that can’t fall to the floor is being consistent in how we market our businesses. And, in order to successfully move people through the sales funnel, we need to build strong relationships. This makes it easier for people to want to do business with us.

It’s really a question of discipline and having a good strategy in place.  Know what you want to accomplish each week. Write a list of information that you want to disseminate and then use the appropriate tool to get the message out. Remember, it’s not about selling product/services, it’s about building those relationships and providing value.

Start your morning each day working on your business rather than in it.  It doesn’t take that much time to check your social media profiles, respond to people who are trying to connect with you and give them the information they need to say YES to you and your business. Ultimately, people buy from people they know, like and trust.

If you need help, then consult with a Social Media Specialist to get a strategy in place both in terms of where you should be spending your time online and what kind of content you need to be putting out there.

The key to success here is consistency. Stay focused, be diligent and keep your eye on the prize. It will pay off in the end.

What do you think? Share your tips with me. I love getting feedback. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. What a great way to leave a link back to your own blog!

Until next time,

Joanne

click image to enlarge

There are mixed feelings out there about the new Facebook Timeline that is about to be rolled out.  I installed the BETA version a few weeks ago and have been getting comfortable with it. As a Certified Social Media Specialist,  I need to be able to advise my clients on how to handle it when it is rolled out to the masses.  This release is one of the most significant changes Facebook has made to the personal profile in a long time.  And while Facebook wants to be at the centre of your online identity, many people find this new release to be intrusive and over the top. I found some great features in this and for the first time in a long time, I had to revisit my security settings on Facebook and make some adjustments to feel comfortable with the way information will be shared.  Here are 5 important points about Facebook’s new Timeline.  Please note that the new changes coming to Facebook affect only your personal profile. Facebook has not made any announcements or commitments regarding Facebook Business Pages.

1. Ticker

The ticker has already been rolled out and you will see this along the right side of your screen when logged into Facebook. It is essentially activity stories that get posted to the ticker.  By placing your curser over a specific item in the ticker area, you will get what they call a ‘hover card’ with more information regarding that particular activity. What I like about it, is that not only personal page but fan page activity shows up here. By paying attention to the ticker, I have been able to connect with some people and pages I might have otherwise missed.  You can also now streamline the activity you want to see from the people you are connected with and shut out some of the noise.  What I don’t like about it, is that you have to pay particular attention to each activity update you post to ensure the right people see it. You will also want to revisit your application settings and perhaps change the update status to be ‘only you’ that sees it or your app activity will also be shared in the ticker.

2. Lists

If you haven’t already put your friends in lists, now would be a good time to revisit this. You can create different lists and place your friends in one or more appropriate list; family, friends, business, etc.  (you can have the same person in more than one list).  On your home page, you will then be able to view the news feed from a particular list.  As before, you will also be able to send out Facebook status updates to a specific group of people (ie friends) or to a targeted list.  Facebook has also introduced smart lists.  You’ll see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you–like your work, school, family and city.  You will also be able to merge your existing list to an appropriate smart list.

3. Subscribe Button

This is relatively new on Facebook and in my opinion more designed for public figures. If you set this feature up on your Facebook profile, you can allow others to subscribe to your public updates.  This information will show up in peoples’ ticker and news feed.  There is a little overlap between having your personal profile with subscribe enabled and a fan page. If you are a business owner however, I still recommend having a Facebook business page over using the subscribe option. Your business page allows you access to custom tabs and applications, Facebook stats, you can have more than 1 page admin and you can promote the page with ads  etc. whereas the subscribe button does not allow any of these features.

4. Timeline (the Wall)

Timeline is the new term for your wall.  When you think about your current Facebook wall, you know that as you add new items, the old items ‘fall’ off the page. Many of the important moments of your life disappear into the archive. Facebook’s answer to this is the new timeline which is really scrapbooking on steroids.  You will be able to enter important moments in your life and feature them on a timeline that is easily accessible. It appears to have been designed for the younger demographic however. Many young people today will share just about anything.  When the new timeline is rolled out, you will see some of the events that Facebook encourages you to add. Some make sense, like the year you started work or opened your business, moved to a new city etc.,  but some of the other categories like ‘changed eating habits’, ‘got glasses or contacts’ or ‘broke a bone’ leave me scratching my head!   Facebook would like you to give them much more information than ever before.  Why? To be able to feed the advertisers of course!

I personally will not be filling out the majority of the information. There is a security issue here I would like to bring to your attention and it pertains to filling out exact dates.   If you plan on entering a timeline for the birth of one of your children for example, you will have to give them the entire date for it to appear on the timeline.  This is a security risk for identity theft.  So please be careful.

5. Your Cover

There will be a big blank space at the top of your new profile that you will be able to fill. It is a placeholder for an image and it’s called the cover. You’ll see it in the image above for Mark Zuckerberg’s profile. He chose to showcase his dog ‘Beast’.  There is a specific dimension for this image – 850×312.  Look to this as a great opportunity to brand yourself! Get creative! I have seen some fabulous ones and I had fun creating mine.  You won’t see mine though unless you have the beta version of Timeline until it has been rolled out to the masses.

There are other significant changes; things like the application directory and how Facebook will be working with developers to allow seamless integration. Unfortunately many of these applications are not available here in Canada yet, so I haven’t been able to test them. Stay tuned for more as they become available.

The bottom line here is not to be too excited when this new Facebook version arrives on your screen. Take time to check your security settings, be mindful of how much personal information you share and explore the new features to see how you can streamline it to make it work for you.  Don’t get me wrong. There is still a lot of merit to using Facebook, particularly if you are a business owner whose target market is on Facebook.  Feel free to ask questions or get help if needed.

I have adopted Mari Smith’s approach to putting information out there.  Ask yourself these three questions:

1.  Would I be comfortable if this information were to show up on the front page of the New York Times?

2. Would I be comfortable if this information came up in a Google search?

3. Would my mom be proud of this if she saw it online?

If you can answer yes to these three questions, then you are probably OK sharing the information.

What do you think? I love getting feedback. Here on this blog, you’ll get commentluv. This is a great opportunity to leave a link back to you own blog when you leave a comment.

Until next time, Joanne

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario, where Joanne resides with her family, she is virtually yours, anywhere.

If you are a business owner who is using third party applications like Hootsuite, Ping.fm etc., to engage in social media to grow your business, then this blog post is for you.  As a Certified Social Media Specialist, I work with small business owners everyday and counsel them on how to use Social Media tools for their business.

You will find that in general, I am not an advocate of using these third party applications to engage your audience.  I personally find it stilted and cardboard like.  To me, pre-scheduled posts lack a human touch. I guess I am a purist. If you are an educated social media user, you too can likely smell these from a mile away.  Furthermore, these posts/updates show the source of the post; another dead giveaway that they are pre-fabricated.  I tend to un-follow people if their content is strictly pre-scheduled.

I was beginning to think I was in the minority in my way of thinking but I came across this very recent post that tells me I may not be far off the mark.  EdgeRank checker is a free tool that measures your effectiveness on Facebook. And with one out of every 8 minutes being spent online being on Facebook, this is an important measurement to take into account.  This post implies that using third party tools like Hootsuite can kill your Facebook EdgeRanking.  Please click here to read the article.

So why are people using them? The biggest complaint I hear from business owners is that you ‘lack time’.  You likely started out your business because you had a great product or service to market. What you didn’t bank on was that you were going to have to be the Chief Cook and Bottle Washer. You probably didn’t appreciate just how much of your day this takes up!  You’re stuck because your business isn’t generating enough revenue yet for you to hire on help but you are so busy wearing all these hats, you don’t have enough time to get out there and market your product or service to generate revenue. Sound familiar?  I can relate because I am a small business owner and I’ve been there too.

But what I have come to realize and put into practice, is that if you are truly looking to engage your audience, particularly on Facebook, you need to be real and authentic and most of the time, in real time in this social media space. You need to schedule this activity into your day and be prepared to take responsibility for the kind of content you generate. This is called working on your business instead of in it.  It is not an easy thing to outsource either.  Unless that person/s knows you and your business like the back of their hand, it will be difficult to represent you.  No one knows you and your business better than you do. This is like handing over the reins to someone else.  The fact is, people want to get to know you both as a business entity and as a person and they want to engage with you knowing that you are being genuine and available.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t ever use these third party apps, however you need to be careful how and where you use them.   Finding someone who you can consult with to find out where your target market hangs out and when is your best strategy. Then be as authentic and real as possible.  It may take a little time, but it will pay off in the end.

Remember, people buy from people they like and trust. Part of trusting someone is knowing that they are there when you need them.

What do you think?  I love getting feedback.  Here on this blog, you’ll get commentluv. This is a great opportunity to leave a link back to your own blog.

Until next time,

Joanne

While physically living in Newmarket Ontario with her family, Joanne is virtually yours, anywhere.

3 Key Items to Staying in Charge

Having your own website and ranking well in the search engines is one of the most important pieces of real estate that a business owner today can own.  The reality is, people and businesses are gravitating to the internet in droves and technology is changing very quickly. Are you poised to be able to take advantage of these changes when they happen?  Are you ruler of your own domain?

Here are 3 tips to staying in charge of your own future.

1. Make sure you have registered your business name

Protecting your intellectual property and your brand is so very important. Imagine investing the time to become known in the industry as the ‘go to’ person in your field.  All the time you have spent getting ranked well in the search engines and then one day, you receive an email or a telephone call to say you must cease and desist using your business name because someone has put a copywrite or trademark on it and now owns the right to use it.  What would you do?  Contact the business development centre closest to you and find out what you need to do to protect yourself.

2. Make sure you own your own domain name and access to it

I am always surprised at how many people come to me and want to make a change over to WordPress but they don’t have access to their own domain name. They don’t know what the login information is or they have given the responsibility over to someone else, who paid for the domain name and invoiced them.  What this means, is that you run the risk of having to change your domain name if the person you gave that responsibility to won’t turn it over.  How costly would that be especially if your domain name matches your business name, marketing materials, your business cards, etc?  If you own the domain name and you cannot put your hands on the login information, expect the domain registrar to put you through a rigorous procedure to confirm that you are the legal owner.  It won’t be pretty.  I have seen both of these instances happen.

When I take on a new client wishing to engage in social media, I insist they own their own domain name. We use their credit card to purchase the domain and I ensure they have the access information. I also make sure the client is the person who is informed when the domain name and hosting needs to be renewed.  One word of caution. Don’t leave this info solely on your computer. What if your system crashed? Have your domain name registration and all other pertinent business related information printed off and stored in a safe place and keep it up to date.

3. Have access to your own website files

I know many business owners employ the services of a website development person or company. In many cases, the person or company will put your website files on their own server.  Most will not allow you access to those files in the form of ftp or a cpanel because of the security risk to their server.   What if something were to happen to that person? How would you get access? Now, your regular files can be copied without access but it can be tedious.  Personally, I register all my social media clients on a well established web host like Hostgator that supports WordPress.  Please click here to find out why I chose them. I give my clients access to their cpanel and ftp access if they request it.  It is your business and your files. If you paid for them, you should have access to them.   Don’t be afraid to ask your supplier where your files reside and how you can access them. Be wary about dealing with anyone who tries to hide this information.

Share your experiences with me. I love getting feedback.  Here on this blog, you’ll get commentluv. This is an opportunity to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time,

Joanne

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

Did you know… As of January 2011, LinkedIn counts executives from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies as members.  As of March 22, 2011, its hiring solutions were used by 73 of the Fortune 100 companies. With over 100 million members now in over 200 countries, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network and it’s totally business focused. Now, there are LinkedIn Company Pages.

For all you business owners out there, if you haven’t already done so, maybe it’s time to capitalize on LinkedIn’s announcement back in November 2010 of its Company Pages. More than 2 million companies now have a LinkedIn Company Page. Have you got a Company Page yet?

Company Pages allow you to bring your brand to life by showcasing your products and services.  They help you grow your company’s business virally through word-of-mouth – the most trusted form of advertising . You can also get endorsements in the form of testimonials on your company page and by displaying your strongest recommendations to your prospective customers, your Company Page can help you accelerate growth and trust in your brand.

In addition to product and service testimonials, you can post a job, display videos, featured product information and targeted ads on your Company Page to drive sales and interaction.  These features however, require you to have an upgraded profile on LinkedIn, meaning these are features you pay for. However, for some businesses, the ability to secure quality connections may be worth the investment.

In addition to company pages, LinkedIn also recently added more features for the personal profile. If you haven’t visited your LinkedIn profile recently, you might have missed the new sections that LinkedIn now allows you. Things like adding your specific skill set and certifications.  You can now drag and drop your profile sections in a priority sequence thereby allowing you to highlight the sections you deem most important first.  I still recommend that you have your Summary at the top however, as most visitors to your profile will look at your ‘job’ title first followed by your summary.

Take the time to explore all the features that LinkedIn has to offer.  For example, if you have written a book and it’s available for purchase on Amazon.com, then add the Amazon app to your profile and showcase your book! Import your blog and don’t forget to add your website, Facebook business page, a link to your YouTube channel perhaps and your Twitter handle.

5 Tips for your profile:

1. Make your title at the top of the page a show stopper.

2. Make your summary engaging. Speak in the first person and ‘talk’ to the person whose business you are trying to attract.

3. Ask for testimonials. Not only do they appear on your own profile, but on the profile of the person endorsing you. And, testimonials get flagged in the weekly summary of LinkedIn updates that are sent out to your community. This keeps you top of mind and this kind of endorsement can be key to securing more business.

4. If you are a business owner, create a company profile. Make sure you populate it with proper keywords so that the company search feature will pull your business into targeted search results.  Fill out all the pertinent information. Consider the paid-for options if appropriate.

5. Keep it up to date!  This is your digital resume for yourself and for your business.

I wrote a more comprehensive list of items and things to consider in another blog post.  Feel free to check it out here.  If you need help, engage the services of someone who understands this space.  As a Certified Social Media Specialist, I encourage all my clients to complete a LinkedIn profile and maintain it as part of the ‘big three’ in the social media realm.

Please feel free to comment! I love getting feedback. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. This is a a plug-in that gives you the opportunity to leave a link back to your own blog when you leave feedback.

Until next time,

Joanne

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

One of the things I love most about being a Social Media Virtual Administrator is the fact that I have some control on my carbon footprint. You see, I don’t commute to work every day, my clients don’t need to have additional workspace, equipment and spend extra on utilities for me to get the job done. I also use recyclable materials in my office and home wherever possible.  This is all great. But I do virtually (pardon the pun) all my work online and what was starting to weigh on me, was the knowledge of just what an impact computing has on the environment and so I began to consider green hosting for myself and my clients.

While I don’t pretend to know all there is to know about the subject, one thing I do understand and that is that the IT sector has a big climate impact and all those datacentres out there are using a huge amount of electricity not only to power but also to cool their servers.  So,  I embarked on a journey to find a host provider that had not only talked a good story about being green but one who put their money where their mouth was and appears to have implemented an environmentally sound program for their business.

It might have been easy enough to find someone whose servers operated solely on wind.  That would have been ideal if that was the only criteria I had to consider.  The challenge for me was to find someone who not only had a green solution, but one who is successful with a good track record, provides great technical support, supports WordPress (the platform that most of my clients use for their website or their blogging vehicle) and who is reasonably priced.  Working with small local business owners, cost is always a factor.

About a month ago, I moved most of my clients over to Hostgator.  I have been most impressed not only with the work they have done on going green, but also with the organization as a whole. Their ‘up time’ is really good, they have a sound grasp of WordPress, their pricing is reasonable and their technical support people are great. The only down side? I wish they were Canadian!

You should know that I am not an affiliate, nor am I getting any compensation for this testimonial. This is strictly me being really happy to have found a hosting company that has to date met all my needs and this includes a green focus. This is good news for me and for my clients and I now feel that I am being responsible to the environment.

How about you? Do you worry about your carbon footprint? I know there must be other good green suppliers out there and I’d love your input! Let’s get people thinking in this direction.

Here on my blog you’ll get commentluv. This is a plug-in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave feedback.

Until next time,

Joanne

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

Do you really understand your client? Very recently my husband and I spent 5 days in Barbados.  We were both in need of a break and I was celebrating a birthday so we decided to take a short holiday.  Normally, I do my own research and bookings but this time, I decided to ask for recommendations and we ended up using a travel agent we had never used before.

I was told that she knew the island like the back of her hand. She was a no nonsense kind of person and asked me point blank “what do you want to spend”? It took her no time to make her recommendation of an all-inclusive, deluxe ocean view accommodation we were in search of and we told her to proceed with the booking. In hindsight, she didn’t understand her client. She didn’t ask anywhere near enough questions and I ended cleaning up after her mistakes as best I could. It is now clear I didn’t ask enough questions either.

In addition to screw ups on the airline tickets, the hotel had its share of issues too. To be fair to the hotel, the room was indeed superior.  Ocean view however was approximately a 10′ view through the bottom of the trees a hundred yards or so away but it did also overlook a beautiful pool. The sound the waves was distinct and welcomed. The surroundings of the hotel were beautiful as well. Lovely courtyards, open and airy feel to the whole resort. Everything on the outside looked great but this is where the honeymoon ended.

view from the room - click image to enlarge

The hotel had many families most with  small children, many crying infants. The food was very disappointing – small portions, not well presented and desserts you would have to scour the plate to find. The liquor was watered down and the house wines were awful. Entertainment was virtually non-existent.

We made a point of attending the Manager’s cocktail party the evening we arrived. The Manager was quick to ask us what they could do to make the resort better. Having been there only a few short hours, I was only able to supply him with a couple of small things I had picked up on.  I would have had a lot more to share by the end of our stay.  He mentioned that that particular resort seemed to cater more to a North American market. Interesting, as there were only a few North Americans there during our stay – the bulk were from the U.K. not surprising as the pound would go a long way in Barbados – probably close to 4 to 1.  We talked to a few other North Americans at the resort and they were not impressed overall with the venue.

The whole resort seemed to lack infrastructure. It looked good on the outside but when you looked closer you could see that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. We tried on three separate occasions to cancel a birthday cake we never ordered! A few times I overheard the staff at the service desk being raked over the coals for bad customer service.  For a self-proclaimed 1st class resort, the proof was in the pudding.

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Why am I writing this post?  Am I being ungrateful here?  Did we have a bad time? No. The truth is we did get away and enjoy some real quality time together and get in some much deserved rest and there were some wonderful moments. A special dinner out on the night of my birthday at Champers Restaurant and the sunset cruise was worth the trip alone.  But I wanted peace and quiet, great food every day and the deluxe feel I was looking for.  I didn’t get that.

What this really drilled home for me from this experience was the lack of understanding of who the client is and what they want.  Interestingly I found this particular resort on Facebook but they indicate their page is disappearing in favour of the general page for the Chain. All their wall posts have been removed as well. Telling? Perhaps. As a Social Media Specialist, I tell my clients to make sure they have their ear to the ground when it comes to their brand – to listen to what people are saying about it and making sure they are engaging people, particularly those that have negative feedback and then take that information back to their organization and make positive change. And yes, I did post on the chain wall that we were less than impressed.  I am still waiting to see if there will be a response.

Do you really understand what your client wants?  Have you asked enough questions? Do you check back often to make sure your client is still happy? Are you all shiny on the outside but lack the structure to deliver on your promise? Are you what you say you are? Says who? Made me think about my own business. Does it make you think of yours?

Suffice it to say I have not heard from the travel agent to find out how our trip was. I doubt I will.  In the end it wasn’t all about the money.  It was about the experience. Had she asked more questions and I had probed more, we likely would have ended up somewhere else.  Safe to say the next trip, I’ll be back to doing my own homework and booking.

I’d love your feedback. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. This is an opportunity for you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time,

Joanne

While physically located in Newmarket, ON where Joanne lives with her family, she is virtually yours, anywhere.

Facebook recently announced a security setting that allows users to view content over a secure network (https) while they are in Facebook.   There have been posts recently by users to inform and encourage others to select this ‘secure’ form of browsing wherever possible. I thought I would share some information with you here that might influence whether you choose this option or not.

For example, as a Certified Social Media Specialist, I encourage my Facebook clients to have a custom landing page (Welcome Page) for first time visitors to their page. It is a wonderful way to welcome prospective clients and introduce them to you and your business.  We can incorporate images, audio, video, etc., and make it a great experience for those who visit your page. It definitely helps with engagement! I create other pages for clients too and customize them to your brand.

Until recently Facebook allowed these custom pages to be uploaded to their own servers and viewing these pages were never an issue.  Facebook has now taken away this ability.  They appear to be grandfathering the pages that are already there and they still work as they always have but any new pages that anyone would like to add to their Facebook Business page must now be added using another form of technology and herein lies the problem with the secure browsing.  Anyone putting up a custom page now becomes a ‘developer’ in the eyes of Facebook. As a developer, Facebook would like everyone to obtain a security certificate which costs approximately $50./site but supposedly gets around this problem although I see that there are still issues with this.  I should add here, that there are other issues with using secure browsing on Facebook other than just custom landing pages. You may run into problems with other applications that you might be trying to add or view on your Facebook page as well as some of the options that Facebook itself currently offers.

If you or someone viewing a tab on your Facebook business page is a Firefox user, you may get this error.

Or perhaps you are an Internet Explorer user, and you get this message:

If you are seeing this message or are informed by someone trying to view your new landing page that they are getting this error, then it is likely because you/they have opted for secure browsing.  If you remove the security setting, you will eliminate the problem. It’s as simple as that.

How do you opt for or remove this feature?

1. Go to the Account tab (top right of your Facebook screen)

2. Select Account Settings

3. Select change next to Account Security

4. Either check or uncheck the box that says ‘secure browsing (https)’ depending on whether you want to use it or not.

Personally, I have unchecked this box so that I can view everything without issue until a more satisfactory solution is achieved. There is a lot of buzz in the developer forum on Facebook around this issue at the moment.

I continue to modify pre-existing pages on Facebook under the old platform but I am now creating new landing pages for clients using the new technology that Facebook requires.

I am not a proponent of jumping on every new feature that Facebook releases. For example, if you have a Facebook profile and you have been using it to promote your business, Facebook has released the option to transform your profile into a Facebook Business page.  Don’t do it!  There are many wrinkles that still need to be ironed out here. You run the risk of losing your personal profile altogether along with your contacts, your images etc.

If you are using Facebook for your business, I would encourage everyone to engage the help of someone who really understands this space to advise you. Facebook isn’t perfect and can sometimes be frustrating.  Having said that, it is now the number 1 visited site on the internet, has close to a billion users and has a very loyal audience.  I use mine every day to meet new people and engage new prospects.

How about you?  I love getting feedback here on my blog and you’ll even get commentluv. This is a plug-in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time,

Joanne

While physically located in Newmarket, ON where Joanne lives with her family, she is virtually yours, anywhere.

As part of my Social Media services as a Coach and Consultant, I am always checking in with my clients and asking them for their next blog post, more interaction on their Facebook page, a new update on LinkedIn, etc. The biggest complaint I hear from my clients is, “I don’t have time”! This always makes me smile, because when you stop to think about it, time is really all we have. The question is, how well are you using it?  Here are my top 5 time savers.

1. Get clear on who your target market is…

Several years ago, I was marketing myself as having the experience to support cross industry businesses large to small. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  My efforts were being diluted trying to be too many things for too many people.  I came to the realization that my passion was to work with small local business owners in the health and wellness, fitness and eco-friendly industries. My, how that decision crystallized my thinking, my approach and cut down on the time I was spending elsewhere. I now attend one networking group meeting per week.  These networking groups are either totally dedicated to or have a healthy concentration of those business owners in those industries. What are your passions?

2. Spend time ON your business instead of IN it…

Lee Iacocca said: “If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got”. I like to spend the first 30-45 minutes of my day working ON my business instead of IN it. What does that mean? I have a strategy on how I want the day to unfold and what I expect to get out of it.   I start with updating my Social Media sites because I can reach a small group of targeted individuals or a wide range of followers.  I also look for new people to connect with based on my niche markets. The best part of Social Media is that your followers can also help you syndicate your content making your message much more viral.  What a great time saver!

3. Use the right tools…

In addition to your social media sites, consider using tools like conference calls or webinars as a more productive use of your time vs physically running from networking group to networking group or producing the more traditional forms of marketing materials.  Does this mean that creating brochures or face to face networking isn’t valuable? Absolutely not. Meeting people face to face is still important, but stop to think about the time involved in getting to and from the meeting and the time spent scouting out the important people in the room to network with. The same is true for marketing materials. In addition to the expense and toll on the environment, how long is it taking to get into the hands of the decision maker if they are at all? If time is of the essence, then it’s important to keep this top of mind and find ways to reach and communicate with that decision maker in a more time sensitive, eco-friendly and effective manner. Strive for a balance.

4. Get help…

So many business owners go into business with a great idea and little to no business experience and no idea of just how many hats they are going to have to wear. I counsel my clients to bring in help when they need it.  Hiring a Virtual Administrator, bookkeeping help, sales associates and the like will help you focus your time on what you do best and make you more productive. For me, I am looking for someone with great technical skills, social media and marketing experience so that I can free up my time to do more coaching, consulting and design work.  Anyone reading this blog post who is interested and thinks they have what it takes, should contact me offline so we can discuss.

5. Give your body what it needs to perform well…

This is probably the most important point of the 5.  Getting adequate sleep, proper nutrition, exercise, staying hydrated and taking small frequent breaks are my biggest time savers.  Everyone has their most productive time of the day.  Mine is first thing in the morning, so I make sure I get a great night’s sleep and then tackle my most important tasks of the day then.  I can usually get more accomplished in those first hours than at any other time of the day. Garbage in, garbage out. So make sure your body is getting what it needs to perform well. When is your peak time?

It is so easy to get up each morning and pour ourselves into the day without really stopping to think strategically about the 1440 minutes we have the luxury of spending.  For me, growing and developing my business takes about 720 of them and the rest is for everything else.  How about you?

I love getting feedback. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. This is a plug-in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment. But you don’t have to be a blogger to leave feedback. I’d love to hear from all of you!

Until next time,

Joanne

While physically located in Newmarket, ON where Joanne lives with her family, she is virtually yours, anywhere.