Workshop: Why Is Facebook Important?

A Beginner's Workshop Lead by John Van Dinther

A hands on beginners introduction exploring the why and the how of Facebook. How can it help your business? What will you get out of it personally? Facebook is simple and hugely popular, making it one of the best ways to reach your community either for personal use or to help grow your business. We will explore the pages, groups, events, profiles and posting tools. Learn how to post Youtube videos and promote your blog or website. We'll go step by step through the process. Bring your laptop or share with a friend.

Details:
$10 Donation / Nobody Turned Away
Monday, April 6th
7pm - 9pm
Hosted by: Avra Organic Spa
505 beach street
San Francisco

5 Steps to Making Facebook Useful

Ok, you are wasting time on Facebook already, mostly complaining about the new format change, or grumbling about how you've "...got to get away from the keyboard!". Amen to that Sister! But how about taking making your Facebook time productive?

Here's the first 5 steps to spreading the word about your business on Facebook.

1) Create a Facebook Page. A Page is like a profile for a business. It's free and everything you post on it goes to the wall of your page's fans. If you've ever "become a fan" of something on Facebook, it's just like you've become that page's friend.

2) Put some stuff up on your page. Pictures, videos, notes, anything useful that people like to see and share. The trick is putting up stuff that people will share with their friends. Add business contact information to your Info. tab and add applications that are useful to your fans. It's like you have a free website! How cool is THAT?!?

3) Invite your friends to become fans of your page. Post your Facebook Page on your status updates, invite people to check out the new place you made. Yoga Nexus posts great yoga poses and health tips. (Shameless Plug ahead) 2hats Consulting posts business advice.

4) Create a live event for all your friends and fans to come see your work and meet each other. One of my clients, Avra Organic Spa, has had fabulous success throwing parties, clothing swaps and workshops. It gets Avra's fans away from their computer and out meeting the Avra folks in person.

5) Track the page traffic. On the left menu, underneath the [more] button is an item called [View Insights] that shows you how many visitors you've had, and where they came from. Very handy.

Facebook or Twitter for Marketing?

My buddy Jon sent me this tidbit from TechCrunch, discussing an interesting survey of Social Media Marketers by Abrams Research:

If you were to ask “over 200 social media leaders” which social media site they would pay for if they had to, as Abrams Research recently did, Facebook would come out on top, with 32.2 percent saying they would pay for it. (Yeah, right). LinkedIn was second, Twitter was third, and MySpace and Digg tied for last place (with only 1.5 percent of respondents saying they’d pay for those services). But if you ask, which one would they recommend for businesses to pay for (if they had to), Twitter beats Facebook by more than two to one (39.6 percent vs. 15.3 percent). LinkedIn again comes in second. Why did Twitter come out on top... [more]

I'm skeptical. I think that Twitter can't match Facebook for marketing, though I get why the social marketers think it should. Twitter delivers concise messages, via mobile applications, to hungry audiences. But it's a should thing. Twitter just doesn't mix their media with video and images. There's also more contexts like groups, events and Facebook Pages, to spread the word. The marketers like Twitter's focus, but I like Facebook's mix of options.

Once Fbook goes mobile, the way Twitter has, that's the game for Twitter. Heck, Facebook could integrate Twitter traits (threaded status updates) within the year, then what happens to Twitter's position?

What sort of fool am I to cut against the masters of Social Marketing? Join the commentary below.

10 Steps To An Effective Web Strategy

1. Write 10 articles about your work
That's right 10. Go write them now... done yet? Just remember that you'll be writing about what you love to do. If you don't love what you do you're in the wrong line of work. You should think about keywords, but that's another article. Just be clear about what you do and the solutions you provide. Start with a list of topics that pertain to your field and that will be valuable for clients. Outlines are great for this sort of thing.

2. Start a blog on Blogspot
...or Wordpress, whatever floats your boat. Just go there and start an account. Pick a template, you can always change it, but start posting now. Remember, you can delete stuff and you can change stuff whenever - so get it going and think about details later. You don't need any web skills or anything like that.

3. Post articles weekly
The big rule is to start now, to post often, and to get all that rich content out there. Remember to add labels (sometimes called tags). I strongly recommend you get someone to look over your stuff and help edit, that second pair of eyes can be a Godsend. And you've got a ton of content - 10 weeks worth of posts. Tell people about your blog, invite them to visit it through emails. Not everyone will be fascinated, but some people will be.

4. Start a Facebook group
Your friends and relatives are on Facebook, go find them and make friends with their friends. If you don't want to waste all your time reading stupid posts from people you don't know then don't. Don't respond to vampire bites or join stupid groups whose sole purpose is to prove that we're all sorta closely connected. Facebook is the center of town right now, so there's no point in ignoring it. DO go there and start to comment about how your life and your business are connected. Respond to your friends and post interesting tidbits from your blog. Create Facebook events for people to come see you present. This is the easiest place in the world to get the word out, take advantage of it.

5. Make friends & post edited articles
Take those 10 articles you wrote and posted to your blog, edit them to fit your topic on your Facebook group and post them there too. Create links to your blog. Another great place to find viewers for your blog is on other blogs. Go comment on blogs in your field, add a link to your blog at the bottom, especially a topical link to something you've spoken about directly on your own site. People love to click-through and check things out.

6. Create Linked-In & Yelp profiles
Go join LinkedIn and start inviting people you know to connect with you. Then go create a Yelp business profile (different than a personal profile) so people can review your work. The whole idea is to get people to start finding you and clicking on you. Other good sites to make a profile on are Myspace and Biznik and Naymz.

7. Ask for testimonials
Send out emails to people that have used your work and ask for a testimonial. If it helps, you can ask them focusing questions like, "How did I improve your profitability?" or "What a three things you like about my services?". Post the testimonials to your blog and other social profiles.

8. Turn articles into email newsletters
Ok, so remember those 10 articles you wrote? Edit them again to fit into an email newsletter. Remember that people only like valuable information in their email, so stick to bullet points and pithy writing. Also, add a special offer, 10% off or a 2 for 1 introduction - anything that offers direct clear value. Constant Contact is a great tool for this.

9. Turn newsletters into an eBook
By now you've edited those 10 articles a few times, and you've gotten a second set of eyes to go over your work, right? What glues these ideas together? Is there anything else that inspires you about your craft that you haven't shared? Put it in there. This is the beginning of your eBook. There are tons of ebook directories, they may even host and promote your book for free or a sponsorship link posted to your site. eBooks add credibility and give people the big picture on what you offer.

10. Create calls to action...
By now you have begun to generate traffic. People are coming to your blog, they're reading articles, they're downloading your eBook and they're clicking back to your site from your links on other blogs. Now it's time for them to act. Do you want them to call you? Post your phone number prominently. Are you selling online? Make sure that shopping cart button is front and center. Offer discounts if they "Act Now" and be clear about how valuable that will be for them.

Farmers vs Hunters

Inbound Marketing is a buzzword that could use some clarification. What does it mean to bring people in? Isn't that the same as old-school marketing? In short, no. Think of farming vs. Hunting. Outbound marketing is about going out and hunting down customers. Cold calls, discounts, advertising. The goal is to convince people, and it can burn a lot of energy.

Inbound marketing is about creating rich content that interests your target market. It's about being a resource that people can trust. How-To manuals, instructional videos and expert opinions offered through blogs and websites. These are spread out through social networks and different media: podcasts, videos, eBooks, tweets, whatever. It's also about getting people talking, whether commenting on blog posts or forwarding links, about your topic of expertise. You are suddenly the expert who's word is passed on to others, and people are coming to you for advice, at first, and then your services. Now THAT's harvesting just rewards.

Outbound Marketing - Finding clients

• Making sales
• Promoting products
• Finding leads
• Capturing markets

Inbound Marketing - Getting found by clients

• Speaking to needs & interests
• Providing access to rich content
• Creating dialog within community
• Connecting through several channels

All The Social Media Sites On One Page

The Global Social Media Network has a comprehensive list of damn near all the social media sites and the sites with social media tools and, woah! That's a big list. This is a Swiss Army Knife of access to places where you can drop a few links and a few lines of your best content. Remember though, this isn't about places to do free advertising. Inbound media is about speaking to the buyer's interests. Be funny, be cool and, most of all, be knowledgeable about what the buyer wants to read about. Read the comments, think about what people are saying. Do you have anything to say? Most likely you do, and being opinionated is a good thing when it comes to the Internet. Then let her rip -someone out there in "The Tubes" will share your position.

David Meerman Scott Talks Inbound Marketing

"Focus on the persona of your buyers rather than your product."

Think like a publisher...what will your buyers want to believe about you or your company? Don't talk about the product itself, nobody cares about your product. Bring the skills of a journalist to the task of discussing the interests of your buyers in the language they use.

1. Nobody cares about your product
2. No coercion is required
3. Lose control
4. Put down virtual roots
5. Create triggers that encourage people to share
6. Point the world to your doorstep

David supports creating a bunch of different marketing efforts. Find what works and focus on that: free ebooks with lots of colors and creative commons licensing, funny videos, blogging and online news releases. He's a big fan of Hubspot.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - 10 tips

Ecommerce-gude.com has ten great tips to help get your site to the top of a Google search.

"What's a Google Sitemap and how does it help search rankings? ...Does it really matter how I handle photos at my site in regard to SEO?" [more]

Learning how to improve your website search ranking is a big task, luckily there's a LOT of information out there on the Web...just do a search.

A guiding principal to getting your site to the top of the search page: write about your interests. I'm a small business consultant who loves entrepreneurship, so I write about the needs of small businesses. I write about it often, making sure to include my service offering - management & marketing solutions. I talk about San Francisco because that's where I work, and I talk about about tools people can use for their small business - like SEO.

I think in terms of a potential client, specifically a San Francisco entrepreneur who could use some website marketing tips. The contents of this post would likely come up when they did a Google search: website marketing tips small business.

When they get to my blog, they just might say, "Oh! A small business consultant! That would be useful, let's give this 2hats a call."

Optimizing Site Visibility

Start a Blog... blog every day. Yes, your silly thoughts and musings can be of interest to the universe. Focus on: a) how to do things you do in your work b) what you love and c) how a) supports b). Yep~

Link to sites that charge you and talk about the charge.
Link to sites that you like.
Post your opinions on review sites and other people's blogs -- add links in your comments to your own site if it serves.
Make a Picassa gallery and upload your art and make simple names that describe the image clearly.