Choosing Social Networking Sites Carefully

Everyone knows how big social networking is for business owners these days.  Social networking was originally intended to make it easier to maintain personal relationships, but businesses have made social networking a priority as well.  Premier sites have made it possible for businesses to grow their contact lists, manage their relationships and created the concepts of viral marketing.

Businesses of all sizes have taken part in social networking to promote their business in ways that they could never have dreamed of fifteen years ago.  Executives from all Fortune 500 companies promote their business on LinkedIn and companies with no marketing budget have the opportunity to make themselves front page news all over the country.

In order to make the most of social networking, businesses must learn to manage their social networking resources carefully.  It requires an investment of time and sometimes money just like anything else.  If a company wishes to benefit from social networking they must manage these resources carefully.

One of the mistakes that entrepreneurs often make is choosing the wrong social networks to invest in.  They end up spreading themselves too thin rather than focusing on the most appropriate sites.

Facebook is still the most popular social networking site and it’s free.  However, entrepreneurs must be careful not to make the mistake many others make investing all their time there.  Currently Facebook users are made up predominantly of people aged 25-54, with another 25% being 18-24.

In recent years more emphasis has been placed on business networking through Facebook.  Nevertheless, it is not as effective for professional networking as sites like LinkedIn, and Twitter is just as good a platform for many viral marketing programs.

A number of new sites other than LinkedIn have been created for business networking.  Some of the more popular sites include Xing and Ryze.  Xing is a great platform but it is difficult to get much of it without paying for the premium services.  Ryze is a good social network for new entrepreneurs, but it is not as popular as it was when it was first introduced.

These sites still can be worth joining even for users who aren’t interested in paying for premium memberships.   However, if they have a hard time finding and connecting with other users with the free plan, they should be careful before they invest a substantial amount of time and energy using them.

Businesses especially need to be concerned about the number of paid business networking sites that are almost completely inactive.  They exist only to continue scraping membership fees, mostly from new clients who don’t know what (or how little) they are actually getting from the services.  I won’t name any of the sites I have joined here, but I have run into a number of them.

The best rule of thumb is to focus on either the most popular networking sites or those that are most specifically targeted to a niche audience.  New businesses must always keep in mind that benefits from social networking only come with hard work.  They must approach social networking just like any other business strategy and look for the best return on their investment.

About the Author: Kalen Smith is the founder of Engineer-a-Business, a provider of business-to-business services and informational products for developing technology businesses. Read more about Kalen here.

Flickr - The Best Kept Social Networking Secret?

Chances are good that when you think of social networks, you think of Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, and when you think of Flickr, you think photo sharing.  We recently posted an article on paid and free image sites, in which Flickr was included (with a few caveats) as a great source of free images.  And this is, for the most part, the extent to which entrepreneurs see Flickr as useful to their businesses.  After all, you can’t use Flickr for marketing, right?  Well, actually, you can.

First, think about the stats: Any site with over 40 million users, an Alexa rank of 32 (23 for U.S. traffic), and over 4 billion photos uploaded, is worth taking a closer look at.  If there is any way at all to tap into that kind of user base, it makes sense to do so.  The good news is that there is a way.

Because Flickr results are heavily indexed in search engines, often surpassing other non-image links, Flickr can be a powerful SEO tool.  However, Flickr is one of the least-utilized SEO tools around.  Part of the reason companies overlook this powerful resource is because of the time it takes to set up and maintain a photo-stream in such a way that optimizes SEO and social media results.  But again, if you can access the power of this tool, it’s worth the time.

Tagging, descriptions, and grouping of photos
For each photo you upload to Flickr, you can create custom tags and descriptions. These can include pretty much anything you want, so can be optimized to ensure your company’s photos are found in searches relating to your chosen keywords.  Descriptions can also link directly to your website.  You can create picture sets within your account as well, further optimizing search results and providing an additional opportunity for detailed descriptions with links.  Additionally, Flickr gives you the ability to geo-tag your content - an important feature for any business with physical locations.

Ongoing maintenance and optimization
An important part of optimizing your Flickr account, both within the Flickr community and for the search engines, is through activity in some of the thousands of Flickr groups.  Posting pictures in relevant groups is vital for proper optimization, so it’s a good idea to post your pictures in groups that will serve to enhance your position, such as industry-specific or product-specific groups.  Because pictures get buried quickly within groups, and (unless you have a pro account) a picture can only be in ten groups at once (and many groups have rules about how many pictures you can post in their group at any given time), ongoing maintenance should include moving your pictures on a regular basis for optimum exposure.  You’ll also want to monitor activity on individual pictures and adjust your efforts accordingly, ensuring search engines and Flickr users are easily finding your account.  Perhaps the most important part of Flickr though, is the potential for network building.  Flickr is, after all, a social network, so connecting with other users is critical to a successful Flickr campaign.  With this in mind, build a network of connections through “favoriting” others’ works, adding contacts, commenting within groups and individual photo-streams, and responding to comments on your account.

If you work it right, you can effectively be seen as an industry leader within the community, and that, more than just about anything, can have a dramatic effect on your business.  Of course this all might sound like a lot of work, but really, once your photos are uploaded, an hour a week or so should be plenty of time to devote to Flickr.  It’s not like Facebook and Twitter, where an account without a comment for a few days is seen as dormant.  In any case, it’s one more possible tool in the ever-expanding bag of tricks that is social network marketing, and one that just might pay off big!

Image attribution: EXKARRAVELHO via Flickr.com

How to Make Your Facebook Page Work!

Getting visitors to your Facebook page isn’t that hard.  Using basic Social Media techniques, connecting with people - on Facebook as well as Twitter and anywhere else you can - will get people visiting your page.  Once they get there though, the trick is to get them to keep coming back.  Facebook, like all social media, is about interaction and building relationships.  So to make the most of it, you’ve got to grab and hold people’s interest long enough and significantly enough so that they want to interact with you and your company.  How do you do that?  Glad you asked!  Below are 5 ways to make sure your Facebook page is working hard for your business.

1. Say it with pictures. People love to look at pictures, so use them to tell your story.  If you have a store or products, take pictures of them and post at least weekly.  If your business is just you - if you’re an expert and are blogging, writing, speaking, etc. - then post pictures of yourself doing what you do.  One great idea, if it suits the kind of work you do (restoration, web design, cleaning, etc.), is to post before and after pictures of your work.  Posting pictures regularly will help your fans get to know you, and you’ll be able to showcase your work too.

2. Say it even better with video. It’s no secret that if people love pictures, they really love video!  So take the picture idea, and turbo charge it by adding videos to your Facebook page.  Keep them short (3 min or so), and make them informative, fun, and instructional.  Remember, the goal is to get people coming back.  If you post videos that help or entertain, you’ll accomplish that goal.

3. Create a custom landing page. In case you haven’t heard, you are now able to create custom landing pages for your business.  This tells your page visitors you’ve got your stuff together and gives them an overall positive impression of your business - if it’s done right.  To make sure it’s done right, you have a couple of options.  You can learn FBML (Facebook Markup Language), or you can hire it out.  If you know HTML, you can probably learn FBML, but if you don’t want to take the time or aren’t interested in learning it, check out sites like Are We Connected or Social Identities.  For a great example of what a landing page can look like, check out Vaynerchuck’s page at Facebook.com/gary.

4. Offer something special. Any time you can make people feel like they’re part of an exclusive club, you’ll get people wanting to be in on it.  So consider offering sneak previews or discounts exclusively to your Facebook fans.  This definitely gives them a reason to keep coming back.  Not only that, but they’ll be likely to pass on your page to their friends.  People love sharing the inside scoop!

5. Engage! This is probably the most important tip of all.  Again, social media is about engagement, interaction, and building relationships.  So monitor your Facebook wall and engage with your followers.  If someone asks a question, get on it right away.  If someone posts a compliment or (God forbid) a complaint, address it appropriately.  The more people see you being a part of the conversation, the more they will want to jump in.  And if you can make it light and entertaining, many will just come to watch.  But don’t think that’s not valuable.  People who start out as observers often end up as buyers!

Remember, these pages are a great marketing opportunity - if they’re used properly.  So there you go.  Five fairly easy-to-implement ideas to make sure your business’s Facebook page is all it can be.  Do you have a Facebook page for your business?  Share it below.  We’d love to take a look!

How to Deal with a Damaged Online Rep

If you have any kind of online presence, customers, readers, followers, or whatever you call them, are talking about you.  Whether it’s comments on your blog, tweets about your business, or reviews and feedback on sites like Yelp or Epinions, the Internet has made it easy for everyone to make their views known.  And that’s a good thing.  You want people to talk about your company, because the more people talk, the more recognition you get, and the awareness of your company grows, which of course is ultimately good for the bottom line.  So today, more than ever, it’s important for entrepreneurs to build and maintain a great reputation.  But what happens when the things being said about you or your company are less than flattering?  What if they’re down right negative?  A bad reputation can spread quickly online, and it’s imperative to get a handle on it before it harms your business.

If a former employee, angry customer, or even a vendor who’s mad that you switched suppliers decides to let loose with an attack on your company’s reputation, even if it’s unjustified, you’re going to have a very difficult time erasing it.  When someone posts something about you online, their motives are hidden, so no one knows if their statements are legitimate or underhanded.  And the worst part is that the comments can have a long half-life in search results, well beyond the day they were first posted.  So what can you do to protect your reputation and perform damage control when necessary?

1. Have a plan. It’s important to have a program in place to seek out and deal with customer complaints head on.  Rather than being surprised that someone has aired their grievances online, expect that it will happen and be ready to deal with it.  The key to protecting your reputation is a speedy, well-thought-out response.  It’s also a good idea to have a plan to use customer feedback to adjust your products, services and policies.  While there are still situations where companies hire focus groups, the Internet has created a massive focus group, free to anyone who decides to use it properly.

2. Fight fire with fire. If there are going to be negative statements about your company online, one tactic for dealing with them is to make sure they’re outnumbered by positive statements.  Launch a strong offensive that includes a targeted campaign of positive publicity on every network you can access.  If you have employees, get them to help you.  Be careful though.  If it’s obvious that biased comments are coming from internal sources, you can do more damage than good.  Take steps to make sure this isn’t the case, while always being honest.  In other words, don’t say a comment is a testimonial from a customer if it isn’t.  Instead, if the comment is coming from the company, keep it more general.  If a customer provides a recommendation or compliment, get permission to quote them, and get it out there for all to see.

3. Follow up with your customers. This is just good business in general.  If a customer has a concern, it’s always a good idea to address it right away, regardless of the fact that it can affect your online reputation.  If you’re seeing a pattern in negative comments, you clearly have a problem that needs to be address.  So be thankful you’re getting the feedback, and take care of the issue before it grows bigger.  Then communicate honestly about the problem and the solution you’ve provided.  These days transparency is key.  Don’t be afraid to admit mistakes and shortcomings, as long as you’re also showing a willingness and ability to address them effectively.  But be aware of one danger when responding directly to comments on many sites:  your responses can serve to keep the thread alive and drive it up in search engine rankings.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’ve very effectively addressed the situation, but it could serve to bring attention to what, for some people, was an otherwise unknown problem.

4. Be proactive. Rather than waiting for negative feedback to happen out in the online public, actively solicit feedback from your customers and give them an opportunity to easily provide you with their complaints, compliments, and ideas.  Then follow up on all the communications promptly to avoid frustrated, public message board rants.  Again, this is good business anyway.  Soliciting feedback from customers allows you to get better and deliver what people want, which ultimately goes right to your bottom line.

Bottom line: The more popular your company, product, service, or blog is, the higher the chances that someone is out there spouting off negative stuff about you.  It’s a part of the user-built Internet that we have to accept, and in many ways, it’s a positive thing - for consumers and for companies.   But while preventing any negative comments is unrealistic, dealing with them effectively can be as easy as following the above practices.

“Promoted Tweets” Twitter Ads a Game Changer? Oh Yeah

As you might have heard, Twitter has finally initiated a revenue model.  Earlier this week, they rolled out “Promoted Tweets”, their new advertising program.  What does this mean for Twitter and their millions of loyal users?  To some extent, it probably means a shift in the atmosphere on Twitter, but they’re taking some interesting steps to ensure it doesn’t shake things up too much.

The Promoted Tweets Program

For now, Twitter’s new advertising program only displays promoted tweets when users search for keywords that advertisers have purchased to link to their ads.  The sponsored posts show at the top spot in the search results, just as with any sponsored search engine results.

In time, Twitter plans to show promoted tweets in the stream of posts, based on their relevancy to a particular user.  Yes, that means you’ll see sponsored posts even from companies you’re not following, and yes, that is significant.  If it’s done right, and few doubt that Twitter will do it right, this could be an overall positive thing, even though it’s certainly a change in what we’re used to seeing on the site.

An indication that they will in fact make this change a positive can be found in the way they’ll decide which ads you see.  When ads are posted, Twitter plans to measure what they call “resonance,” which takes into account nine factors, including the number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links.  If a post doesn’t reach a certain resonance score, Twitter will no longer show it as a promoted post. That means the company will not have to pay for it, and users won’t see ads they don’t find useful.

The reason this is important is that it keeps advertisers accountable.  They have to come up with ads that are interesting, compelling, and, most importantly, relevant to your needs.  If they’re not adding to the conversation in a meaningful way, their ads won’t just be ineffective, they’ll be pulled altogether.  This is even better than the existing stream of garbage some amateur marketers are sending through the stream now.

Reactions

If you do a search for “sponsored tweets” or “promoted tweets” on Twitter, you’ll find a wide range of reactions to this newly announced program.  Here are a few that are representative of the overall feelings out there:

• @jaymeslangrehr If Twitter wants to make $, why not just slap in contextual ads like Facebook & call it a day instead of selling sponsored tweets?
• @andrewspong: To me, ‘promoted tweets’ are the antithesis of open convos
• @vagabonn I don’t mind promoted tweets actually. Sometimes they might be relevant and so far they don’t seem too obnoxious. Twitter’s gotta make $$$
• @cmsexpo Sponsored Tweets = Twitter finally gets their business model, and we get marketed to bloody hell.
• @LukasC hurrah! Promoted Tweets should increase in visibility over time. Just getting started.
• @marcinators Curious about the launch of Promoted Tweets - wary of effects on our tweeting experience
• @JadedSkeptic Sponsored tweets. A bold progressive idea.
• @rymccoleman I think promoted tweets are an interesting idea, but the promoted tweet shouldn’t stay at the top of the search when you refresh.

A few reactions were very strong, saying that if Twitter moves forward with their promoted tweets plan, people will jump ship and say good bye to Twitter forever.  The question is, how long did people expect the company to continue without generating revenue?  And without charging users for an account, how else should a revenue model play out?  The suggestion that ads should just be placed alongside the stream, as on Facebook, isn’t much different.  The ads are on your page, and whether they’re on the side or integrated into your stream, you have the option of reading or ignoring them.  The preferable part about having them as part of your stream, again, is that this model measures an ad’s relevance, which is good for marketers and consumers.

Bottom line is that the model has been rolled out, and it’s likely here to stay.  As information is made available about pricing and other specifics, we’ll see if the program is for everyone or just the big players, but it’s likely that there will be some sort of opportunity for everyone.  Twitter has proven to be a sensible company to date, and they’re liable to remain such.

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