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.

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…

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.

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.

There seems to be a lot of focus lately on local business owners -something that I find interesting. I have been focused on small, local business owners for a long time. There seemed to me, to be a need to help local business owners transition to online marketing and help them use cost effective tools like social media to grow their business. Here are 3 ways that your prospects and clients will do business with you in future.

1. Online Searches

If you are still investing in traditional hard copy directories to market your business, it is time to reevaluate. Most of your prospect and client base now do searches for products and services online. 20% of online searches now are ‘local’ searches.  A business owner today,  needs to understand how to properly tag their sites to optimize results.  You need to be ‘findable’ online using these keywords.  It is not enough to rely solely on your website address on your business card for people to find you and to drive traffic to your site.

2. Mobile

It is expected that by the end of 2012, mobile sales will eclipse PC sales. This means that people are accessing information on the go. What are the implications?

• Your website should be structured in such a way that it is easily viewed on a mobile device. (For WordPress sites, there are plugins that you can use to address this).
• People will be looking to applications like Facebook Places, FourSquare etc. to inform their friends of their current location and will be looking for incentives to do business with you. If you are not sure what an application like FourSquare is or how the incentives work, please contact me and I would be happy to share this information with you.
• Keyword Searches – if someone is on the road and looking for say, a restaurant to have lunch, they will enter keywords like restaurant toronto ontario for example.  If you are a restaurant owner in this area, try googling yourself using these keywords to see if your restaurant comes up.   If it does, take note where it comes up. Are you on the first page of Google and in the Google Places listing? (more on this below).   Keep in mind, people on the go will likely not leave the first page of Google or dig very deeply.  No matter what your business is, if you are a local business owner, go through this exercise for your own business and see what results you get.  It may be time to contact someone who understands this space and the implications well enough to help you.
• QR Codes are a new way for people to use their mobile devices to get more information.  You may choose to create a QR code and publish it on your marketing materials, put it up on a storefront window, or even have it placed on a company vehicle.  When someone scans this code (they will need a free downloadable application to be able to scan QR codes), they will be directed to whatever online resource you send them to. This could be a website, a special promo etc.  Get creative.  I expect this will really take off in the next couple of years.  Here is an example of what a QR code looks like.  This code for example will redirect you to Google.com

3. Google Places

This is a free Google application that every local business owner needs to explore.  Your business might already be listed on Google  and you aren’t even aware of it! Back in October of last year, Google consolidated the Google Places information with the general web searches. You will now generally find these local business search results on the first page of Google. You will be able to identify them by the red markers that coordinate to Google maps. If your business listing shows up and says ‘unverified’ next to it, it is time to claim it and take ownership of the information.   There is a right way to do this, so if you need help, you should contact someone who understands how Google treats this information.  This is something that I do for my clients when I set them up on the social media space.

Always remember, most users have a place that they are most comfortable ‘hanging out’ online.  It is no good to invest your time heavily in an online space if your target market doesn’t spend time there.   If you have a presence on more than one Social Media application for example, it is very important that these sites link to each other, so that, on the chance that a potential client or client finds you online in one place, they can easily slip over to their favorite application (like Facebook for example) and begin sharing information with you there.  All sites need to be consistently branded, customized and optimized for maximum benefit to you and the client.

How about you? Do you have your sites properly branded, customized and optimized? Do you know about these new tools?  I love getting feedback. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. That’s a plug in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time,

Joanne

Ducking the Issues

As a business owner, do you duck the uncomfortable questions or complaints that come to you via your Social Media applications or online in general? Do you screen the bad news and omit it from your comment feed on your blog or remove the comments on your Facebook wall so that everything appears perfect in your world?  If so, you might be missing out on a wonderful opportunity and doing yourself more harm than good in the long run.

Social media is all about letting people get to know who you are as a business entity and a person. People want to know if you stand behind your product or service or if you are just paying lip service to the idea.

The truth is, a happy customer is going to tell others about your product or service and you will get referral business. When this happens, you feel great, right? And so you should.  But the reality is, you can’t keep 100% of the people happy all of the time and no one is perfect!  And, these unhappy customers are going to find a way to voice their opinion.  Many now take to the online world to vent their frustrations.  This can have considerable impact on your business.  Negative press in the search engines can hang around for a long time – years in fact.  So, consider it a bonus when they actually send you the message rather than telling 1000 of their Facebook friends about their issue where you may or may not hear about it and suffer the consequences.

If you are at all concerned about reputation management, and you should be, then consider accepting these comments/criticisms you are receiving and deal with them right away. Thank the person for telling you about it, and encourage the conversation to continue to make sure you understand the issue and then deal with it – yes, even in a public forum and then ask for feedback. This demonstrates to that individual and others, that you take responsibility for your business and are willing to make concessions where need be and fix problems that might exist.

Does this mean that you should accept every comment and every criticism that comes your way? Certainly not, as we all know there are unreasonable people out there who are only interested in ruining your reputation not in fixing the problem. You need to evaluate these on an individual basis.  However, if you notice that there is a consistent theme or issue, chances are there are a lot of people out there with the same concern and these should be dealt with.

If you are smart, you will add Google alerts to your repertoire to make sure you know what people are saying about you and your brand. If you are a larger corporation, you may need something more robust and there are many applications out there to assist you. Feel free to ask me for suggestions.

I think it all comes down to confidence in the long run – confidence in yourself and in the fact that you have a great product or service to offer.  As a Certified Social Media Specialist, I encourage all my clients to look at this as a great opportunity to deal with the issue head on and potentially turn that customer and others around.

What do you think?  As always, I love getting feedback. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv.  That’s a plug in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time, Happy New Year!  I hope it’s a prosperous one for you all.

Joanne

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

Facebook Landing Pages – Why They’re Hot

Do you have a Facebook Business Page? Do you have a Welcome Page set up as a landing page for first time visitors? Why might this be important?

Have you noticed when you visit people’s business pages, you are bouncing back and forth between the info tab, the small bio under the person’s graphic and reading the wall to get a sense of who this person is and what their business is about?  I know I do.

Do you find you get more information on some people’s pages than others? Why is that?  That’s because not all business pages are created equal! By this I mean that the templates that Facebook offer you, are chosen based upon the industry that you are in (i.e., what you specify when you first set up the page. You should also know that when you choose the business name and the industry, these cannot be changed. You would have to delete the page and start over, so choose wisely).).  A brick and mortar retailer for example will be given the place to enter their store  hours etc., but not given any space to include who they are, what their business is, their mission or their objectives – this template is reserved for businesses that are more Consultative in nature.  So in many cases, when you visit someone’s page, you will either land on their less than informative ‘info page’ or on their ‘wall’ and right into the middle of the conversation.

So how does one create a welcoming environment so that you can tell people who you are, what you are about both as a person and as a business entity? This is where the Facebook Welcome Pages (landing pages) have become so popular.  Not only can you tell people in words, but you can incorporate video, audio and pictures to make the page more exciting. It’s another great touch point. In addition, you can set this up so that it is the default landing page for anyone new visiting your page. Once they ‘like’ the page, from then on, each time they return to the page, they will go directly to the wall.  It’s a nice warm welcome and people will gravitate to your page. In addition, this page should be properly branded to reflect your Facebook business page and all your other online sites.

This Welcome Page needs to be created using Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and this is an application that can be added to your page.  Unless you have the necessary technical skills, this isn’t something that most of you will tackle on your own, but thankfully there are people out there like me, a Social Media Specialist with training in Facebook Business Pages, who can help you set one up!  Please feel free to contact me or another qualified Virtual Administrator that you may know.

I would love your feedback on Welcome Pages that you have seen and admired, or even your own! You’ll get commentluv here on my site. That’s a plug in for bloggers. Leave a comment and you can leave a link back to your own site.

Until next time,

Joanne

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