Late in December, Facebook announced it would start adding “sponsored stories ads” in your news stream, starting in January 2012. Sponsored stories came about in January 2011 and are some of the most exciting ad options for a long time, as they are based on your friends endorsement of a brand. Currently they appear on the right hand column of your newsfeed or wall but will soon be appearing to you in your newsfeed as a post. Facebook claims that because sponsored stories are based on likes, comments and check ins, these activities could show up in your feed anyway.

What do you think of this change?  I can see the benefits to marketers, but wonder if it will become too intrusive for the everyday user?

With Timeline rolling out on Facebook, many marketers are seeing great opportunities for you to promote your brand. Now there is a service called moo.com that will create business cards for you using your new Timeline profile picture. Simply go to your Timeline page click on “about” then scroll down to your contact info and click on the little business card icon there. This will open another window where you can preview your new business card and make changes before ordering. The good news is the first box of cards is free from moo.com. While you are there, check out the rest of their great products!

No super big announcements this week… check back here next week to see what happens in

Social Media this week!

 
2) Have a plan about what you are posting – it happens to us all sometimes, you’re working away and realize you haven’t checked your Twitter or Facebook yet and so quickly jump on them and try to think of something to say. Is it a random thought that is disconnected from your mission for being on social networks? Sit down once a month and think about what you are doing on these networks and create a plan, even go as far as writing your posts in advance to make sure you have a momentum to them.

 
3) Be interesting – people may be interested in what the Khardashian girls are having for breakfast (are they really?) but most people probably aren’t that interested in what you are eating, unless you are a famous foodie. So be selective about what you post, be creative in how you post it and be brave enough to be daring; say the unpopular, challenge the status quo, be different (just be sure you can take the heat of this kind of commentary, because it will get you attention).

 
4) Be more interested in helping others than promoting yourself – back to your purpose, how can you help someone today? How can you make their life a little easier, is it about selling your product or service? No, it’s about being as human as possible with every given moment even on some of the most impersonal places. People will remember you for caring or for pretending to care, so make sure you are being authentic.

 
5) Be consistent – this is almost worse than NOT having a presence at all. Don’t get hit with the bug to post, go crazy for a week and post multiple times a day and then disappear, that kind of inconsistency will come back to bite you in the long run. It’s like finding a restaurant that makes the best breakfast, but every second time you go there they are closed, how often would you check back? Make sure that when you post something interesting (see #3) that you stick around to respond to comments that come, otherwise it’s a monologue, not a conversation, and you can’t build a relationship with a monologue.

No matter what your business resolutions are for 2012, social media is not going away and is quickly becoming a must-have to any marketing plan. Make sure you do it right to get the most impact for your business. If you are overwhelmed or don’t have time to do your own social media, don’t be afraid to outsource this service to a social media professional.

What are your social media resolutions for 2012? Comments welcome below.

Happy New Year!

What does the new Timeline mean for you? Well first you can now upload a very nice large “cover” image on your profile page. The sizing has been a point of discussion on the web but for best uses make sure that it is at least 720 pixels wide. Now, the marketer in your will probably be thinking of creative ways to use this cover image to include business info for your new Facebook friends. Well although nothing overt is mentioned on Facebook’s help or terms and conditions, they do have this nice pop up when you upload your picture that says:

Choosing your cover photo

Pick a unique photo from your life to feature at the top of your timeline.

Note: This space is not meant for banner ads or other promotions. Please don’t use content that is commercial, promotional, copy-write infringing or already in use on other people’s covers.”

This makes it pretty clear that Facebook doesn’t want you to use this new cover picture for business, so pick something personal you want to share. It’s important to note that this picture will be visible to anyone who views your profile page, friend or not, so select your image carefully with public consumption in mind.

Timeline is intended to provide users with a “scrapbook to your life” as Mark Zuckerberg called it at a recent F8 conference, where Timeline was introduced. You can use this feature to share any content about your life, with strong encouragement to use pictures from your birth to present day.

Converting over to Timeline is only optional until Dec 21, after that we will have a scrapbook of our lives to some extent or other, depending on how you use it.

Other news this week:

Air France KLM announced this week that starting in 2012 you will be able to make your seat selection for your upcoming flight on popular social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn using their social tool called “meet and seat”. This will be an opt-in tool that is still in development so few details are available at this time. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Microsoft announced the release of its new social networking site called So.cl (pronounced Social) meant to combine the power of Bing search with some of the niftiest parts of Twitter and Facebook. Lili Cheng, the Microsoft researcher who led development of So.cl, says, “So.cl is really an experimental research project focused on how social networking and search can be used for the purpose of learning.”

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops, the real question is; do we need another social network to add to the mix?

There is always so much to keep up with each week, stick with us to keep up to date on all things social media with our new weekly social media in review feature.

Yes it’s out there for all to see… so should you just ignore it and let for everyone see it and quietly step around and whisper about? Not in my opinion, you should pick it up and take the time to talk about it and fix it! Respond to the poster; thank them for coming to your page to tell you about this, they didn’t have to after all. Then ask them for more details or just offer up a solution right then and there. Take the bull by the horn and face it head on! We all screw up sometimes; we all have grumpy people to deal with sometimes, no big deal. I always like to ask someone who is complaining how I can make things better for them… maybe they just want to be heard, maybe they want their money back or a coupon for a future visit… if I find out what will make them happy then I’m much more likely to be successful. If they wanted their money back and you offer them a coupon for a future visit, they probably won’t be satisfied with your solution.

When you deal with this situation with an open heart and with a sincere interest in helping to correct a problem, then you can’t go wrong. The original poster will see your effort and you might save an existing client but you have another opportunity here, you have an audience for your efforts… and you might just make some new clients because they are impressed with your efforts. It’s a win/win.

So in summary, we all get complaints occasionally, it’s how you deal with them that matters:

1)      Reply quickly

2)      Reply openly and honestly

3)      Ask questions

4)      Offer solutions

5)      Don’t give up!

And never, ever, ever, ever remove the complaint from your wall. It’s been posted, someone, somewhere has seen it… removing it just makes you look bad.

Have you had complaints on your Facebook fanpage wall? How did you deal with it? What was the outcome?

Well it’s an easy fix.

Scroll down to the bottom of the news feed on your home page. You might find that it bounces up and you have to scroll for a bit as more content loads. Just stick with it, eventually you will get to the bottom.

Click on “Edit Options”

Click on “Show Posts From” 

Change the setting to “All of your Friends and Pages”. 

Click “Save”.

Your home page will reload and now you will be able to see posts from all your friends and the pages you like, whether you’ve engaged with them recently or not.

Maybe you were so busy running your business that you asked Social Media Minder to do it for you.

But now you check your fanpage multiple times a day to watch your fan base grow and you’re shocked! There are not hundreds and hundreds of people banging down your door to like your page!!

Well I’m sorry to tell you that “build it and they will come” does not work on Facebook. So here are my top 5 suggestions for building your fan base: 

1)    Put your fanpage box on your website: if you don’t know what that is, there is a spot when you set up your page that allows you to create a lovely looking box, to put on your website. This allows people visiting your site to “like” your fanpage without having to leave your site. 

2)    Invite all your personal friends that you have on Facebook 

3)    Ask them to invite their friends to join your page 

4)    Put it on your Twitter profile and include it in your welcome to new followers there 

5)    Send it out in your newsletter

Try these tips (or get Social Media Minder to do it for you; we have many very economical programs) and watch your “likers” grow.

Like this article? Please share it with your friends and leave comments and your own suggestions for building your Facebook fanpage below!

Thanks for reading!

Socially Yours,

Sherri-Lee Pressman

Your Social Media Minder

Here are some tips to help you get going.

It’s overwhelming when you think of all the sites out there that offer social media for you. When I googled social media, I found sites listing hundreds of social media sites; the choice can be overwhelming. It would be impossible to join all these sites and manage them adequately to realize any return on your investment. So it’s important that you know what you want from social media and have a plan.

1)   Join – Pick two, maybe three sites to join; don’t try to do more initially, because the learning curve and the time to build your connections can be overwhelming.

2)   Create – Profiles. It is important to fill out the profiles as fully as possible. This is your introduction to new prospective friends and clients so give them the info they need to respond to your requests.

3)   Picture – Make sure to include a profile picture. This lets everyone know what you look like, obviously, but it’s more than that. In social media we are striving to connect to people in a way the internet has not previously made possible. We want to make FRIENDS, we want to know you, and having the visual of a picture makes that much easier.

4)   Find people – Think of someone you know that is on these networks. This could be a friend or someone you know from networking events. Search for them within the social networking sites you are on. Hopefully they will have their social networking info on their business card and it will be easy to find them.

Do this with as many people as you can, start to build your connections and then remember to comment on what they are saying in a meaningful way and contribute with your own valuable content.

This is a start and by no means everything you need to do. We’ll get into that more in future posts.

If you are still finding it overwhelming and just don’t think you will have the time to learn this new, very important way of marketing your business, why not ask The Social Media Minder to assist you with your online social media presence? Contact us at info@socialmediaminder.com or 604 341 3387 to talk about how we can help you.

Now where are you going to wear it? You need to go someplace where there are new people to meet, people who don’t know the old you, who will see you in your new outfit and just KNOW that it’s you. You want to meet new people who have no history with you; who might end up being your new best friend; who might introduce you to someone new; who you might make a difference to; who might end up being a new business partner for you. Who knows? Anything is possible.

You quickly realize you need an invite to the A list party of the 21^st century.

Let The Social Media Minder arrange for your invitation. Are you a woman who owns a small business but hasn’t set up her Facebook and Twitter profiles yet? We can teach you how to set up and use these amazingly powerful tools to help you build and support your business.

Check out our new in-person training session coming up on Oct 23, 2010 or contact us to discuss one-on-one sessions to help you manage your social media and arrange your invite to the party.

by Sherri-Lee Pressman – The Social Media Minder for you!

Surprisingly, new clothes shopping is incredibly like social media. How, you ask?

Remember the last time you went clothes shopping?  You wanted a new look perhaps and were all filled with hope and anticipation of the new colours and styles coming out for the upcoming season. Then you stood in the middle of the clothing section, amongst all of the racks and racks of shapeless clothes, jammed so tightly that you can barely tell where one stops and the other begins. You could feel the panic starting to grow in your belly… your breathing jerks up a notch and you bite your lip as you slowly look around hoping to see something familiar that will comfort you. Your hand slides down the sleeve of a soft fabric that you admire, but the neck is all wrong. You look at a pair of pants but you’re worried that the waist will sit too low. You start to doubt your decision to come shopping; really, your wardrobe will do for another year, won’t it?

Then one of the store sales people comes up and asks you if you need help (you are looking completely lost after allJ). Hesitantly you say yes, that you are looking for some new clothes for the upcoming season and bravely mention that you were thinking of trying something new. She smiles, looks you up and down and is off, choosing clothes off the rack and chatting up a storm with you. You feel yourself getting caught up in her enthusiasm and saying yes to trying on things you would never have looked at on your own.

Suddenly you are alone in the dressing room with hangers of clothes and she is closing the door, telling you to call if you need different sizes and to be sure to let her see the clothes on you.

You take a deep breath and start trying on the first thing you see. Some things work, some don’t, some you would never have chosen, some are more familiar. Then you get to the skinny jeans. Never in a million years did you think you could wear skinny jeans but you throw caution to the wind and with a deep breath slowly slide into them. You look in the mirror with a bit of terror in your eyes and what you see you just can’t believe. You turn this way and that… you even use the dreaded rear view mirrors and you are absolutely blown away. They look GREAT! You are thrilled and amazed and strut out to show your new best friend (the sales girl) how great the skinny jeans look on you!

You end the day with a great haul of clothes. You take them home and lovingly hang them in your closet, all except your new skinny jeans, which you put on and strut around your room in. You have now made friends with skinny jeans… who knew?

How is this like social media? Well, in social media you have the opportunity to meet many, many different kinds of people, most you would never have had the chance to meet if not for your Twitter or Facebook pages. Approach them the same way the sales lady does… they are all worth trying on and giving a chance to because you just never know when one will fit you perfectly and a new friendship or business partnership might be formed.

Let The Social Media Minder be your favourite sales girl. We’ll introduce you to all kinds of new friends and business partners.

Sherri-Lee Pressman, would love to be YOUR Social Media Minder. Email her at info@socialmediaminder.com to ask for a free consultation for your online presence.

Are you on the guest list?

We all hear about social media daily.

Twitter this, facebook that, you tube this etc. It’s in everything we do, from ads on TV, to signs on the side of a bus.

But what does it mean and how can you be part of it? Businesses are jumping on the social media band wagon with both feet, even Pepsi pulled out of the Super Bowl advertising frenzy this year in favour of putting those dollars into their social media campaigns.

If you own a small business, then you know you need to be hooked up to the social media thing and if you can’t or won’t do it yourself, then you need someone to do it for you.

Sure you can do it yourself, head over to all the major sites: facebook, linkedin, twitter, you tube, start-up accounts on all of them.

Fill out all the profile and brand them with your company’s logo. Then you need to be on them daily… at least two to three times a day to get involved, get engaged, “follow” other people, get people to “follow” you and generally take the time to make new friends who will eventually become new clients.

Sound time consuming? It’s not that bad really, but if you are a small business owner trying to do all the parts of running your business, then it might just be one more thing on your already over full agenda.

That’s where your Social Media Minder comes into play for you. Hire someone to do the leg work for you, to maintain your profiles and your images, to build relationships for your brand and to get your message out.

Let the Social Media Minder help you move your business to the next level of play.

Contact us to help you info@socialmediaminder.com