New Facebook Announcement Social Mail

Watch the video below for Facebook’s announce about their new offering… Social Mail. Very impressive!

Social Media Landscape Update

As you can obviously tell, I haven’t posted on here for a little while.

I have a couple of updates I need to inform you about.

You will notice the comments have been removed.  I was using a different service for comments but for some reason it wasn’t working properly.  People said they were leaving comments but nothing ever showed up.

While using that comment service, spammers were continually leaving spam messages, even though the service didn’t show them, they were there.  So when I removed the service, there were over 3,900 comments.  Mostly Spam!

I couldn’t go through and read every one and weed out the bad and keep the good.  It would have taken A LONG time, which I didn’t have.  What I did was purge the comments database to start anew.

SPAM

I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.  There were great comments and conversations, especially about the current series of Small Business posts.

So I ask you and encourage you to write and comment.  I am not using a service anymore.  I have added some security and Anti-SPAM measures so it should be smooth sailing.

The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is updates to this blog.  They are resuming, now that everything has been fixed on the backend.  I’m sorry for the delay.  A lot of the comments were from people who wanted the next blog post in the series.  It will be up shortly.

Please leave a comment and let me know if you have any questions, would like to contribute an article or be a guest author, or if there are any specific subjects you want covered.

Small Business Brand Management on the Social Media Landscape Part 2

In part 1, I talked about you or your business’s brand management, and how important it is in an online environment.  I talked about building up your social brand equity and how your KLT factor can increase considerably faster in a social environment.  If you didn’t read it, please start there:
Small Business Brand Management on the Social Media Landscape Part 1

Now that you know how important your image is on the social media landscape, let’s dig a little deeper into your social profile.  Your image is what invites them in now what do they do when they’re there.  They read about you, they read your bio and a few other things I’ll get into later.

Social Networking Profile

So let’s take a look at the requirements for the bios first.  There are many different social networking sites and each one seems to allow a different amount of characters for the bios.  Some allow you to write a book for your bio allowing 1000 characters.  The thing is, people aren’t going to read a 1000 character bio.

Most social sites keep it shorter and what I recommend is you keep it to 160 characters.  The reason why is because you need to grab the attention of the people going to your profile.  Like I said, they’re not going to read a long bio.  You have 5 seconds or they’re gone.  So what are you going to say?

In my book “The Social Media Matrix” I use a scenario of Rick, who loves fishing so much he even makes his own reels and created a business out of it.  The name he chose for his social profiles like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., is RicksReels.  So with that in mind, here is what a short bio would be for Rick:

“I am passionate about fishing and make my own reels. I like to teach others to have as much fun as I do fishing solo, with friends, or family.”

Now let’s analyze that for a quick minute.  What can you gather from Rick’s 143 character bio?

First I know he’s passionate about fishing.  He’s inventive and makes his own reels, in part due to his passion.  Rick teaches others how to fish.  I wonder if he does that live or if he has DVDs or some other form of teaching.  I love to have fun, fish, and hanging out with friends or family.  I want to know more about this guy and what he has to offer.

And if I ever needed a reel or anyone ever said something to me about it, you know where I’m sending them?   Right to Rick!

It is your short bio that will get people to take the next step.  It shouldn’t be “salesy or pitchy”.  It has to be true and honest.  It’s what you want people to know about YOU, not your business.  People buy things from people, so when they know you, like you, and trust you, they’ll buy from you.

Once someone reads your bio, they are going to take an action.  They’re either going to leave, click your link in your profile to learn more, and/or “friend” you.

Build Relationships

Making a first impression is very important and your image and bio is it.

See, brand management is about those positive relationships you build.  Those relationships will grow your business more than you can measure and social media is a major way to get you there.  They say it takes seven interactions with someone before they will trust you enough to buy from you.  With social media, those seven interactions can take a matter of minutes.  That’s how you’ll build your brand equity.

Next:  Small Business Brand Management on the Social Media Landscape Part 3
We’ll talk about what happens after you make that positive impression and more!

Small Business Brand Management on the Social Media Landscape Part 1

Managing your brand is hard enough offline, but now with the advent of social networking sites, the social media landscape can be a scary place for brand management. One of the most important ways to ensure you are recognized online is to have a uniform presence.

Your presence on the social media landscape shows your customers, clients, and would be clients, that you care to be where they are. Not only that, you are able to build relationships faster in a social environment than anywhere else. It is said that it takes seven (7) interactions with someone before they trust you enough to buy from you.

The more interactions you have with someone, the better it is in building your relationship. You do know that people buy things from people, right? Well let me explain how to build up your KLT (Know, Like & Trust) Factor quickly which will, in essence, help you manage your brand.

One of the biggest things you need to ensure is uniformity. Most businesses have a logo, image, saying, or if you are going to brand you, your own personal pic. Whatever it is it needs to be the same across all of your profiles. My recommendation is to use a face instead of a company logo.

Why use a person’s face instead of my logo? It’s simple, and I’ll reiterate what I said before: People buy things from people. I mean you can’t have a relationship with a slice of pizza, or a swoosh can you? No. You must remember this is a social environment.

Think of the last business meeting you went to, or seminar, whatever. Did you have a conversation with a piece of pizza? Well I hope not! Let me break it down like this:

Imagine you are at a local Chamber of Commerce after hour’s business mixer. There are people there from local businesses, networking. Who do you think would be the person that meets the most people or who gets the most contacts? A person who has a nice smiling warm face, a person who has a frowning face, or a person dressed up like a slice of pizza.

What I’m hoping you’d say is the person who has the smiling face would get the most attention. If you did, you’re right. So what I recommend to you is that the image you put on all your social profiles be a person’s face. They should be smiling and inviting. The image should say “Hi! Nice to meet you. Let’s get to know each other.”

Now the question is, whose image should you put up there? Should it be the person in your company that is going to handle the web and social media stuff? Let me ask YOU a question. Even though your web or social media person may be good at what they do, what happens if they leave the company and your presence online is now tied to their face?

The person’s face should be the owner, vice president, president, or someone who will be with the company for a very long time. It should be someone who lives the mission statement and follows the vision. They should be a leader, someone who you want to represent the company to thousands, tens of thousands… heck hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

To learn more about building your brand equity on the social media landscape, go to http://SocialBrandEquity.com. There you will discover more information on the subject of branding yourself or your business and how to save time and money secure your presence at over 50 social networking sites. Brand management is key to increasing your offline and online social brand equity.