CompuKol Connection » Facebook

Building Your Social Media Connections

Marco Giunta — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Social media websites are a phenomenon today. Websites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Orkut, YouTube and Blogger are some of the most accessed websites on the Internet. It, therefore, becomes important to leverage the widespread popularity of these websites and develop top social media strategies to expand your business.

The following are top social media strategies that can be considered:

Objective – The objective of your social media campaign must be pretty clear right from the start. Branding, consumer awareness, reputation management, lead generation, sales, marketing, etc, are all activities very much achievable using Social Media Optimization (SMO); however, they require separate initiatives.
Picking the right battles – There is no dearth of social media platforms available out there to begin your campaigns. Picking the right battle ie, selecting the websites, will hold the key to your success. You cannot be all over the Internet because constant engagements on every such forum would require a mammoth effort.
Meaningful connects – Try spamming and the results will not be encouraging at all. In order to make the most out of your social media initiatives, consumers will have to relate to your business in some way or the other. Work toward building long lasting relationships with people in your network and the results will be rewarding in the long run.
Web 2.0 – The term was first coined in the year 1999 by a consultant of information architecture. Today, it goes beyond the realm of only aesthetics and graphic design. Rich web 2.0 features, if included in your social media campaigns, will facilitate active information sharing and collaboration.
Human analytics – There is a wide variety of tools available today to support and track social media initiatives. Their utility cannot be undermined. However, no tool will be able to analyze the emotional relationship between the brand and the consumer. Human intervention is required to correctly analyze trends, data and defining key strategies.
Blogging – Start blogging about your business and create a genuine footfall of people wanting to seek information about your industry. Keep it information-driven and subtly introduce commercial elements to it such as customized signatures leading to your principal website (Calls-to-Action) at the end of every post.
Trend Capture –Website analytics are often the most ignored aspect of a social media strategy. The amount of effort that you put in on various social media platforms can easily be analyzed using tools such as Google Analytics that provide statistics on website traffic.
Encouraging Participation – Overdoing information dissemination can backfire and may not yield the desired results. The interaction has to be a 2-way process and you must encourage strong and sustained participation from your target audience to drive forward your objectives in an organic manner.
Leveraging Full Features – Vertically extending the Facebook profile photograph of your business page to its maximum permissible size of 200 x 600 pix, customizing the twitter image background and actively participating in question/answers on LinkedIn.com are some of the most underutilized yet effective ways to catch the eye of your target audience.

Conclusion

Incorporating top social media strategies in your scheme of things has become a must, especially if you are responsible for the growth of a business. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve a wide variety of business objectives and a must try. You must be extremely cautious with the way that you delegate this critical aspect to a third party. Doing due diligence about the strength of the company in executing social media strategies can go a long way to ensuring profitability for your business.

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Effective Marketing With Facebook

Michael Cohn — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

So many people are using Facebook for business and pleasure. People are spending huge amounts of time communicating through Facebook every month. Knowing that, it is critical for you to make sure that you are marketing with it effectively.

If your business strategy did not include marketing with Facebook thus far, you need to make sure that you include it in your strategy immediately. The place to start is with your target market. It is essential that you understand how your target market uses Facebook (among other social media channels) so that you can take advantage of the opportunity to connect with them on their own territory (so to speak). Remember that it isn’t effective enough for you to just have a profile and a Facebook page, a page where you post content once in a while when you feel like posting something. You need to work your strategy and work it hard!

Facebook as an incredible tool for your business

It is high time that you think about Facebook for your business as it deserves to be regarded. Your use of Facebook must be a calculated, well executed, precise strategy that helps you to attain more and more success for your business. There are many different ways in which you can use Facebook to advance your business. First of all, you should connect directly with your clients through Facebook. The more you interact with your clients and prospective clients, the stronger the relationships will become among you. When it comes to a business strategy that includes Facebook, you shouldn’t think about as a replacement for other marketing tools that you have been using for your business so far. You should use it along with other online tools. One thing that is certain is that your clients and prospective clients are spending time on Facebook. Most likely, they are using it a great deal of the time.

The following are tips that will help you to improve your marketing strategy using Facebook:

Customized tabs

When you first set up your Facebook page for business, you will notice that it comes with a certain number of standard tabs. These tabs include a Wall, where you can put comments and other postings and an Info tab, behind which you can put general information about your business. However, Facebook has additional capabilities that you should take advantage of, such as a Welcome tab, which can include links to all sorts of products and services as well as a large amount of content.

What purpose does your Facebook page serve?

It is very important (before you do any marketing with Facebook) to understand exactly why you want to use Facebook for this purpose for your business. You must have a clear definition of your marketing objectives and develop your marketing strategy around those objectives. The chances are very good that your target market will have a very positive reaction to your use of Facebook for your business. Remember that Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool for business as long as it is used sensibly and appropriately.

Change up the order of your Facebook tabs

You should arrange your tabs in an order that makes the most logical sense to you and your business. The order will not be the same for everyone or for every business.

Post consistently and frequently

It is very easy to set up your Facebook profile and Facebook page and then completely forget that you have done that. If you ignore your Facebook presence, it will be the kiss of death for your business. If you do that, your online business associates will assume that you don’t care. It is very important that you are truly committed once you have established a presence. If you aren’t sure about your commitment, don’t start with it. It just won’t be worth it.

Facebook as a platform for content

It is widely known when it comes to online business success that content is king. In other words, the more high-quality content you share with others, the stronger your reputation will be and the more credible and trustworthy you will seem to other people. Not only should you write and publish your content often but you should also syndicate it to as many different (appropriate) places as you can. You never know where your connections with other people will come from.

Conclusion

It is critical for your business that you understand the importance of Facebook and that you use it as intelligently as you can. Facebook has amazing potential for your business. It allows you to literally have the world at your fingertips with the mere click on the keyboard. As is the case with all of social media, Facebook helps you to build and strengthen relationships, which will allow your business to grow. Facebook is a resource and a tool (in one) that you should take full advantage of whenever possible. If you don’t, your competition will and you want to be the one to leave the other person in the dust, not the other way around.

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Turning Fans and Followers Into Clients

Michael Cohn — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Anyone who is in business knows that it isn’t always easy to convert social media fans and followers into actual clients. Sometimes, it is a lot less difficult to acquire fans and followers than to turn them into clients.

The degree of difficulty

It seems as though the degree of difficulty is not the same with every industry or niche. Depending on which products and/or services you are selling will determine how difficult it is to convert your people into paying customers. If you are offering a product or service that people feel they need (it is a necessity, not a luxury), you will have an easier time of converting them and of selling more. If, on the other hand, your offerings are deemed less of a necessity by the people doing the buying, you will have a more difficult time of selling. In each case, you should develop (or have developed for you) a strong and effective web presence. You need to give your fans and followers a chance to get to know them and for them to get to know you. Only after you have successfully built a relationship together with a solid foundation will you be successful at turning them into clients.

There are many people who have developed relationships and have gained customers solely through their online connections. It is critical that you share valuable content, have meaningful online connections, are sincere in your efforts to help other people. Once they see that your goal is to help them and not to help yourself, the relationship will flourish because they will begin to trust you and to have confidence in your credibility. People (in general) love to be offered content that allows them to learn new information on a regular basis. The more value that you are able to give other people, the more they will appreciate who you are and what you have to offer. As some point in the relationship, your fans and followers will pursue a conversation with you that involves buying something from you.

Compel them to return to you over and over again

If you can get people to keep coming back to you, they will eventually become loyal customers. Loyal fans and followers = loyal customers. You should bear in mind that it will most likely take people more than one or two interactions before they decide to buy something from you. It will probably take them seven, eight, or even more interactions. You need to be patient and allow them to do it in their own time. The most effective way to make them feel comfortable is to continue to draw them into your discussions and make them feel that they are an important part of the conversation. You need to make them feel that their opinions matter to you. It has been proven,over and over again, that many positive things come out of social networking and online social interactions. It is very important that you use the right tools effectively. If you do, you will experience a great deal of success for your business.

Persistence and consistency

One of the two most important ingredients when it comes to converting fans and followers into clients are persistence and consistency. You need to interact often, make sure that you post content a consistent number of times (and on specific days), and continue to communicate with other people as often as they communicate with you. It is extremely important to make sure that your fans and followers understand how much value you hold and how important your contributions are to them professionally. Once you have established relationships with people with whom your connection started online, there will be a time when you should get to know them face to face. Both types of interactions are extremely important and both are necessary for a successful relationship overall.

The quality of your content

I am sure that you have heard the expression “Content Is King.” That is absolutely correct. Without your content, you have nothing. Because of the fact that the success of social media is based on successful relationships, your content must really be of the highest quality possible. You are relating to people through your content and what you write will make them decide whether they want to continue to build a relationship with you. It has to be as perfect as possible.

Conclusion

Turning fans and followers into loyal clients seems like a daunting task as a whole. However, when you approach it methodically and deal with one step at a time, you can succeed at building relationships with people, getting them to trust you and to believe in your credibility and trustworthiness, and to truly want to do business with you and to be loyal clients for many years to come. If you put the right list of ingredients together in order to become truly successful, you will see that your efforts will pay off and will keep paying off. Make sure that whatever you offer to other people, they are benefitting in some way. You want to try to make sure that when they need what you are offering, you are the first one to come to mind.

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Doing Fabulous Facebook Marketing

Michael Cohn — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Millions of people use Facebook for business and for pleasure. You realized long ago that Facebook can be leveraged very effectively for business and you have reached out to many people through Facebook. People who are worth the interaction.

Before you go any further with Facebook for your business, it is very important that you do some serious research on how your target audience is using Facebook. Once you have come to understand who is involved with Facebook, you can start to interact with them. You need to have a strategic plan that will work effectively for you and your business. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it is enough for you to merely create a profile (even if you fill in all of the possible details on that profile). The real work (and fun) begins once you have finished with that initial step and you start to have interactions with people that are meaningful and valuable.

The importance of Facebook for your business

As you are giving a great deal of thought to your social media marketing strategy, you should understand that Facebook is a wonderful tool from which you will get a great deal of mileage. Once you have your strategy in place, you should carry it out as precisely and meticulously as you can. It is a well-established fact that relationships are at the heart of social media’s success. As you are developing relationships, a great place for interactions is Facebook. Because of the fact that so many people are connected on Facebook, your chances of interacting with top-quality people are excellent. There are so many opportunities that are waiting for you through Facebook. A huge number of businesses have established accounts on Facebook and you just need to connect and start interacting. Many businesses have Fan pages. Unlike a personal Facebook page, you don’t need to be approved if you want to join a Fan page. It is as easy as pushing a button.

Different types of marketing for your business

If you decide that you are going to build a part of your marketing strategy around Facebook, it doesn’t mean that you have to give up other marketing strategies that you feel will work well for your business. You should think of Facebook as a complement to the other marketing strategies. Getting people to notice and really get to know your brand and your offering is very simple on Facebook. People are interacting so frequently that if you reach out, there is absolutely no doubt that you will succeed in building a strong and lasting relationship that will be of mutual benefit.

There are many different ways in which to approach your Facebook marketing strategy. You should consider them all and then decide which approach (or approaches) works best for you and your business.

Post frequently: If you don’t share content frequently and consistently, you will be finished before you even begin. As was already discussed, it isn’t enough to create a profile. That is only the beginning. You need to use your profile to establish your presence and to let people get a sense of who you are as a person. However, the real relationship won’t happen until you interact and get to know people (and allow them to get to know you) over time. If you aren’t sure how frequently to share content, you might want to try once a week in the beginning. If you find that that is an easy pace and doesn’t require too much effort, you might want to consider increasing the frequency to twice (or even three times) a week. You just need to see how it goes.

Give people a call-to-action: If you don’t give people a call-to-action, you will never have an opportunity to connect with them. You need to get them to opt in and give you their contact information. The reward that they will get from you is that you will give them something (some discount, a free Ebook, etc). It’s an incentive and it works.

Offer an incentive for “liking” your fan page: When a person “likes” your page, they are essentially agreeing to formally connect with you and your business. If you give them a good reason to do that, they will feel really good about connecting with you.

Have a conversation: If a person is kind enough to leave a comment or a question for you, you need to be polite enough to respond to him or her. It is no different than answering your phone when it rings. It is not polite to ignore people.

Share updates: When you have something that you feel is worth sharing as an update, share it. Other people will definitely appreciate it. Remember, however, that you shouldn’t do that too often. You don’t want to annoy anyone. You just want to keep them interested.

Integrate your marketing efforts whenever possible: There is no doubt that you are making a tremendous effort when it comes to your marketing campaign. If you are marketing on several social media channels, you should try to make the look and feel the same throughout. That is your branding and you want people to identify with that as easily as possible.

Conclusion

Facebook marketing for your business is one of the smartest things that you can do. You potentially have millions of people at your disposal. The pool of communities and community member is so rich. Facebook is a very powerful and effective tool for business. You need to take as much advantage of it as you can. So, grab what is front of you and start networking and interacting on Facebook. The next thing you know, you will be forming more relationships than you ever thought possible.

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Social Media in the Mainstream

Michael Cohn — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

When social media was first introduced, it was on the fringes. However, it started to gain momentum very quickly and before you knew it, it was in the mainstream. At this point, it is on everyone’s lips.

Every time you turn around, there is some new tool or application (app) connected to social media that is being introduced. People are forming new social networks and the interaction level among people is astronomical. It is almost as though they are living, breathing entities. One of the main reasons that social media has taken off in the way that it has is because of people. People are at the heart of its success. As has been discussed numerous times, social media won’t work without human beings sharing relationships. Relationships are at the center.

If you think back to the time before social media existed at all, people would interact with each other in person. They would network at various events and form and maintain relationships in that way. Social media has given people the opportunity to take those relationships and build upon them. In the beginning of online exchanges, everything and everyone was anonymous. As time went on, people became less and less afraid to come out and say their real names and give some personal details, which enable other people to really get to know them as people. After all, it is not really possible to know someone who is faceless. At the same time, being anonymous made people feel as though they could behave in ways that were a little too free. In their minds, there would never be any consequences to their actions. Nowadays, of course, there are rules and regulations that govern peoples’ online behavior just as much as their in-person behavior.

Greater honesty: Of course, one of the most popular social media channels is Facebook. Facebook has really made it easy for people to see the truth about other people with whom they are connected. Now, more and more people are connecting with social networks as themselves. They are using real details about their personal and professional lives. Of course, that makes them more discriminating about what they actually share with other people because they have a lot more to lose. If their reputation is on the line, it is important to ensure that nothing is said that could hurt them in any way.

Collaborate and cooperate: With much stricter rules in place, if people want to be a part of social networking, they are forced to play nice. They have no choice but to defer to whatever the majority has decided. There is now a much greater understanding that the content that is being shared on social networks is out there to educate, add value, and provoke meaningful thoughts. People are connected for the purest of reasons.

Don’t allow yourself to be distracted: It is pretty easy to get distracted with all of the new technology that is constantly being offered. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is no obligation to use all that is offered. You should pick and choose whatever works for your business and whatever makes sense for you. You will still be able to take advantage of plenty and many tools and apps, etc, will be able to enhance your business.

Ownership and responsibility: It is important to remember that each and every person must be responsible for what they do and what they say. This concept applies to interactions online and interactions in person. Each person must own their individual part and work with others to make it a success.

Sharing content: One of the largest contributors to bringing social media into the mainstream is content. Sharing valuable and educational content has really brought social media’s success to a whole new level. There is so much wonderful information that is available and there truly is something for everyone and the potential is tremendous when it comes to the ability to solve people’s problems.

Conclusion

Social media is everywhere around us and it is truly necessary for us to be involved in order to take your business to the next level. Online interactions are just as critical to your success as in-person interactions are. They are both necessary in tandem. Social media is here to stay and as you look around and consider all of the technology that is available to you, you most probably are wondering how you ever did without it.

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Retaining Your Personality in Facebook

Michael Cohn — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0000

Facebook is critical for the success of your business and maintaining professionalism is vitally important. On the other hand, you don’t want your Facebook persona to be dry and devoid of personality. You want it to be you.

In all relationships, and that includes face-to-face and online relationships, you need to connect with people on a human level in order to successfully establish, nurture, grow, and maintain the connection. In fact, without the personal aspect of the relationship, you won’t get anywhere in business. You need the emotional part to create a lasting connection. When using Facebook for business, if you post information that you feel people will relate to, they will start to interact with you and continue to do so. Of course, at the same time, you need to make sure that whatever you are posting is relevant and appropriate for your specific business. Nobody ever said that business topics have to be dull.

Analyze what people like and try to mimic that: If you take a close look at topics (and particular postings) that are very popular and if you can manage to figure out why they are as popular as they are, you can apply that formula to your own content. At the same time, make sure to pepper your content with some humor and other personal gems of information that you feel other people would enjoy reading. It is an experiment (and an effort) that is worth pursuing because it will most likely pay off for you and your business in the end. Whichever business you are involved in, your angle must be connected to that niche. Your goal should be to offer content that people will like so much that they will automatically want to share with others. At the same time, you need to make sure that you share some of yourself in your online offerings. That is exactly what people will relate to.

Make sure that your content matches your ultimate goal: It is very important that the type of message that you are sharing is a perfect match for the end result that you have in mind. In other words, whatever you are selling, it is critical that your content eventually leads to that sale. Of course, a great deal will need to happen before you get to the the ultimate goal. First, you will be building your relationships and strengthening your credibility and reputation. In that process, you need to interact with people in a way that makes them feel that they are really getting a great deal out of the relationship with you. You need to allow them to know you on some level. The selling part will most likely not come until sometime down the road. It is ok to deviate to a point from your typical topics; however, you need to always make sure to maintain some tie to what you are trying to accomplish and what you are offering. With each installment of content, you should make sure that there is a little more of what you are trying to sell (in as discrete a manner as possible). There needs to be a balance between hitting someone over the head with it and being so subtle that the other person will never understand what you are driving at.

Be selective about who you choose to connect with: There are generally two schools of thought when it comes to who and how many people to allow into your social media circle. There is the group of people who feel that the more connections you have, the better. It is not important if you don’t know all of your connections or if you ever speak with all of them. The other group chooses quality over quantity. In this group, you tend to allow people in with whom you have a genuine connection and with whom you feel that you will be able to share a relationship that is mutually beneficial. You will be able to help each other in your businesses in some way. When you have high-quality relationships through Facebook, your personality will factor into the relationship very decidedly. The more interesting the relationship is, the more fruitful it will also be.

Conclusion

From the reader’s perspective, there is nothing worse than content that is boring and with which you have no ability to connect. People will not connect with you (in fact they won’t be able to connect with you) if you don’t have something in common. It can be any number of things, such as an experience that you both had, a passion, etc. Always remember to be sincere and to let who you really are shine through when you are interacting with people on Facebook. Your business will gain tremendously through that approach.

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Facebook Contests – Using Them to Expand Your Audience

Carolyn Cohn — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 09:00:00 +0000

The concept of contests through social media to build business has been around for a long time. The murky part is exactly how you leverage the contests to work effectively for your business. Getting people to participate is no problem.

With that in mind, it is worth discussing the mechanism of action of Facebook contests and how they can be used most effectively. Another important thing to discuss is what is true and what is false about contests and potential difficulties that you might run into when it comes to Facebook contests.

Contest versus sweepstakes

The first thing that you need to decide if you are going to go in that direction is whether you want to offer a contest or a sweepstake. If you are simply giving something away as a result of a contestant making very little effort to win what you are giving away, it is a sweepstake. If on the other hand, you are having contestants compete against each other, it is a contest. There are applications (apps) that can assist you in running contests. You should do some research and check out the different apps that are specifically designed for Facebook. It will make your work when it comes to setting up your contest much easier and smoother. The apps will give you a list of what you can and can’t do when running a Facebook contest. The guidelines are very important and you have a responsibility to follow them religiously. It really is mandatory for you to read the guidelines before you begin.

Some of the more popular apps for contests and sweepstakes are Wildfire, Votigo, and an app platform that is made by Webtrends. If you are going to run a contest or sweepstake, you need to really make it exciting and appealing to other people. Unfortunately, contests and sweepstakes seem to be going through a trend of not being as popular as they were once. The reason for that is most likely because there is so much that is now offered that getting involved in a contest or sweepstake is no longer a new thing. People will become disinterested quickly if they try to enter contests a few times and continue to not win anything, There are websites on the Internet that are specifically dedicated to finding contests and sweepstakes and with the high volume of people who participate, the traffic that you are getting may not be of the highest quality.

Choose the prize carefully

Before you choose the prize that you will award to the winner or winners of your contest or sweepstake, make sure that it is extremely relevant to your business and your brand. You don’t want to give away a generic prize (such as an iPod or iPad, for example). You want the winners to think about your business every time they use the prize. There is a lot of potential value in running a contest because it will cause at least some of the people with whom you interact through the contest to build a relationship with you and your business and hopefully, they will become loyal customers at some point in the future.

How businesses are using Facebook for contests

There are many different ways in which businesses are using contests to increase their brand awareness and other aspects of their business. Different types of contests produce different results. For instance, sweepstakes generally produce less audience engagement than other contests where there is actually some effort and thought that needs to go into reaching for the prize. This also ties into the viral aspect of the contest. If there is high engagement from others, there will also be a much greater chance that the contest will go viral.

Conclusion

There are several good reasons for using contests as a part of your social media marketing campaign. First of all, contests are an excellent way to increase your fan base. Second, contests give you the opportunity to engage your audience. Third, contests give the audience members the ability to help you to market (by telling their friends, who tell their friends, etc). Fourth, you can acquire data from contests (names, addresses, Email addresses, etc). Contests and sweepstakes are a great tool that will help you to increase business and allow you to connect with even more people online.

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How to Engage Your Facebook Audience

Michael Cohn — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:00:00 +0000

You have become more heavily involved with Facebook for your business. Your approach is consistent and methodical. You share content with your Facebook fans three times a week, every week, on a regular basis. Now they need to be engaged.

You understand that the success of your involvement with Facebook for business depends on your audience: the way that you connect with them and the way that they respond to you in return. The relationships that you have with your Facebook fans take time to form, cultivate, and grow. You must nurture those relationships over time and the key to the success of your interactions with your fans is completely based on what you can offer them that is valuable and that will compel them to keep returning to you over and over again.

Your fans need to feel that they are spending their time wisely with you and that they are gaining something from the interactions. Additionally, the interactions must be mutual and meaningful. There are several ways to accomplish this with your Facebook fans if you don’t feel that you have achieved as high a level of success with the interactions yet that you would like to achieve.

Pose questions

As a business owner, you are constantly coming up with ideas and angles to improve upon what you are already offering. A wonderful, thought-provoking approach to getting more of your fans to engage with you online is by asking questions that are on topics of interest for both your fans and you. If you ask, there is a great chance that others will answer.

There are several benefits to this. First of all, you will get answers to your questions. The chances are great that the answers that you receive will be creative, interesting, and innovative. Second, you will have started interesting and valuable dialogues with your fans. This will make your fans feel that you value their opinions and that you really want to engage with them. Third, you will be gaining extremely valuable feedback that you can apply to your business and which will serve to improve upon what you are already doing.

Provide value

Your postings must always be informative, helpful, and relevant to the issues that your fans are experiencing. You want to continue to strengthen your position as a subject matter expert (SME) and once they believe in your credibility, you will be the first person to whom they will turn when they need answers. You provide even more value to them by providing them with helpful tips and advice that will solve their problems and make their lives easier.

Be approachable

Make sure that you engage with your fans in a way that allows them to get to know you and what you believe in. You should make sure that the scope of what you offer is not narrow. The wider the variety of information you offer, the more people you will attract and the more people will want to interact with you.

Update your Facebook status on a very regular basis

Many people who are connected to Facebook check their profile on a very regular basis. With that in mind, an excellent way to gain and keep their attention is by updating. You will want to add new status messages, upload new videos and/or photos, contribute new and exciting content, etc. As is always the case with your online presence, consistency is very important. You will be able to establish a rhythm based on the needs of your fans. Even if you aren’t sure about exactly what to share, you can still contribute content that you find interesting at least once a day.

Consistent voice

You have a voice that only belongs to you. Your voice causes you to stand out in the crowd. Always remember how important it is for you to retain and maintain your voice over time. Your personality should come through your voice and it should be present in everything that you contribute. You will see that other people will react favorably to your consistent voice and will grow to depend on it and on you.

A unique style

As you are working your social media marketing campaign, you must understand how critical aesthetics are to your success. After you have written and uploaded content to Facebook, you need to be aware of how important it is to have a distinct style. It is more important that you have a style than the actual style itself. People will react to your style and you can hone and develop it more and more over time. It is a fun thing for everyone.

Have fun

Creativity is key when it comes to your having a successful Facebook fan page and the success of the relationships that you share with your Facebook fans. You can do fun and creative things, such as contests (photo contests, for example), or other creative contests that engage your fans and cause them to interact with you. The more you reach out to them, the more they will be excited about engaging with you.

Conclusion

Engaging your Facebook fans and constantly coming up with exciting and creative ways to do it will keep your fans coming back for more over and over again. The more you are willing to give to them, the stronger your relationships will be with them and the more they will be willing to respond to you.

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Converting Friends Into Fans

Michael Cohn — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Social media encompasses both business and personal relationships and interactions. There is a lot of crossover at times between the two that happens naturally. However, what if you want to turn some of your friends into customers?

An important thing to remember, always, when it comes to online connections, is that it is all about relationships. It is often said that mixing business with pleasure is not a smart thing to do in life. However, when it comes to relationships that we have either established through social media or that we established through face-to-face environments and then continued online, it isn’t always a bad thing to allow your friends to become your clients (or vice versa). An important thing to remember, in either case, is never to give anyone the hard sell.

There is a certain order to the progression from friend to client. The middle step, which must happen, is the “Fan” step. To go from friend to client without any sensitive transition may be problematic. Once you have gotten your friend to become your fan, you will see that he or she will opt in to support what you and your business are offering. Opting in may be literal or figurative. Your fans may opt in by agreeing to be a part of your mailing list. Of course, there are several other ways in which your fans may opt in.

Joining your blog community: If your friends join your blog community by leaving comments on your blogs, forums, etc, they are opting in to become fans.
Referrals: If your friends refer you and your business to other people, they are opting in to become fans.
Promoting your offerings: Friends who push your offerings through social media, without your asking them, are opting in to become fans.

However, you can’t assume from the fact that your friends have opted in to become fans that they will necessarily end up buying what you are selling. On the other hand, you can feel more comfortable about discussing your business with them once they have become fans without a fear of offending them. If they are already fans, you won’t stand the risk of losing them as friends. It is well known that people who own a business don’t usually have a great deal of success when they try to sell something to one of their friends. It becomes extremely uncomfortable if there is money that is owed that is not paid in a timely manner.

Friends may not necessarily have the ultimate goal of seeing your business succeed. Fans, on the other hand, do have the goal of seeing your business succeed. They want to to enjoy interesting and mutually beneficial online interaction with you. Because of your fans’ desire to see you succeed in business, your relationship will mature and you shouldn’t be surprised if those fans eventually end up buying what you are selling. The more you build the relationship, the better your chances of turning those people into clients eventually.

Conclusion

Before you try to convert any of your friends into fans, it is important to understand which friends you should be converting and which you should not. If you try to sell your products and/or services to your friends, you will end up working very hard and may very possibly not reap a great deal of benefits. You also could be risking the friendship. You need to proceed slowly at first when it comes to cultivating new relationships or new versions of the same relationship. As always, the relationship is key. If you don’t build strong connections with other people, your business will not succeed the way that you want it to. It is always about the people. If, on the other hand, you turn your selling efforts to your fans, most likely, you will have greater success and your relationships with your fans will continue to flourish.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.

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How to Generate Revenue With Social Media

Allan Berger — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:00:28 +0000

You’ve built your fan base on Facebook and recruited followers on Twitter. Can you generate revenue for your company from those—or other social media—channels? Here are five suggestions for using social media as a sales tool.

Post or tweet a promotion. Offer a discount or a freebie to your fans and followers. Offer a free soda with a meal, a discount on shoes, a free consultation, white papers on products, an exclusive gift—anything that you think will be of interest and will entice users to act. Use a specific promotional code to track and measure the effectiveness of the promotion.

Create a contest. Advertise a contest to win a gift certificate or fun prize. Provide users with a link to register at your website or email an entry. Clearly spell out the terms of the contest and how the winner will be selected. Be creative. You might want to ask people to upload a pertinent photograph (like a favorite pet photo for a grooming business) or write a short paragraph answering a relevant contest question. To make it easy on yourself, specify that submissions become the property of your business and are not returnable. Make sure to post the winner(s) on your website so the participants know the contest is legitimate.

Announce new products and services. Roll out new products and services on social media and forum boards and include a link for people to respond directly to a page on your website. You can always keep the web page hidden from your site navigation to keep it “exclusive” to social media users and their referrals. Specially worded contact forms on that page can help you to discern customers who email you as a result of your Facebook or Twitter announcement. More specific information and a mechanism for customers to “act now” on that web page can help close the sale. If you have a good analytics program in place, you can gauge how much traffic you generated from the announcement.

Experiment with ads. If you have a Facebook business page, advertise your company to other Facebook users. Pay for impressions or for click throughs. Fine-tune the social demographic you are seeking to solicit, and select a specific dollar amount you want to spend daily on the ad. You can select specific days, or a range of days for the ad to display. If you opt to pay for click throughs, even if nobody follows through to your Facebook page or your website, thousands of impressions will help make you more visible to users. View reports to determine the success of any given ad. LinkedIn also offers the ability to advertise—to other professionals. You can create up to ten ads which will rotate and fine-tune demographics (including by industry and management position). Select the maximum daily amount you wish to spend, minimum bid per click or view, and end date. You can cancel the ad at any time. Like Facebook, you can view advertising reports. See which ads were the most effective, and pull unsuccessful ads from rotation. Twitter is rolling out the ability to advertise too—worth a look!

Reward referrals. Ask your followers to refer others to your business. If you have a small or manageable following, it may be easy to reward a follower for a referral with a discount or small free item if the referral becomes a customer. (A more complex response mechanism will likely be required for those with a larger following.) At the least, you can give a public “pat on the back” by writing a post or tweet directed to your follower thanking him or her for the referral. This acknowledgement will also spur others to direct referrals your way.

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