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Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Get Rid of Overwhelm and Start Getting Results Today

December 10, 2012 by Kimberly · Leave a Comment

Are you ready to get serious about using social media to market your small business, but feeling overwhelmed by all the social media bells and whistles out there?

Maybe you’ve tried a few things – some Twitter marketing here, Facebook strategy there, but you’re not getting the results you’d like, and all this social media stuff is taking waaaaay too much time anyway. Plus, holy cow, there’s always some new tactic, strategy, or entirely new social media platform coming down the pike that you’re told you need to get on board with right.this.instant.

I get it.

In fact, recently when I was giving a Hootsuite demonstration to a client, we asked ourselves what the next new thing in social media will be that all of us will just have to learn, commiserating that once we learn that shiny new thing, there will be another right after that. And then another. Even if we’ve barely got a handle on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus as it is. It’s enough to drive a girl around the bend, I tell you.

I have been there, and it ain’t pretty.

I’ve attended countless webinars and read scads of blogs on Facebook and Twitter marketing, using Pinterest for small business, blogging, SEO, content marketing, sales funnels, conversions, email marketing and multiple other small business marketing topics.

And the sense of overwhelm was, well, crushing.

That’s why when Laura Roeder revamped her business back in the summer and launched Social Media Marketer, a comprehensive suite of easy to understand and implement video-based social media training courses geared to the small business owner or solopreneur, I signed up pronto. Because everything I needed was now in one beautifully user-friendly place.

And, as an added bonus, new courses are added to Social Media Marketer regularly, so I never have to worry about the next shiny new social media/online marketing thing, because I know if it’s something that gets small business results, Laura and crew will no doubt be covering it inside SMM. Plus, anytime I need a refresher on any aspect of using social media and other online tools to market my small business to get better bottom line results, you guessed it – it’s inside SMM. What a stress reliever.

What Made Me Go for It

I’ve been following Laura online for over two years, read her blog weekly, and have attended plenty of her free training webinars in the past, so I knew her advice was solid.

I’d also taken her massively comprehensive and actionable Zero to Facebook course a few months prior to the launch of Social Media Marketer, so I was familiar with Laura and crew’s laid back but effective teaching style, and the easy to follow, do-this-don’t-do-that nature of what was likely inside Social Media Marketer. That made it easier for me to sign on the dotted line, and I wasn’t disappointed once I ventured in.

If you want a reliable, predictable way to bring in new clients using social media marketing, and you value down-to-earth, straightforward, no fluff training that’s actionable, then Social Media Marketer is a training course worth investing in. And if you’re feeling apprehensive about parting with your hard-earned dollars, think of it like this: your business is worth investing in, you are worth investing in. Once I adopted that mindset, signing up for this course was a no-brainer for me.

What’s Inside Social Media Marketer

Social Media Marketer is entirely online, so once you sign up, you’ll have access to all the course materials right away. You’ll be able to go through everything at your own pace – take a course a week, a course a month, or go crazy and do them all back-to-back in a month’s time if you’re just nutty like that. There’s even a handy beginners course on social media marketing to get your feet wet if this is your first time. Very useful, that.

Courses include:

Your Backstage Pass to Twitter

Zero to Facebook

Zero to WordPress

Zero to Social SEO

Social Media Traffic School

Pinterest Marketing

Blogging for Business

Your Profitable Website

Advanced Business Systems

Advanced Monitoring and Metrics

Plus courses on Google Plus, LinkedIn and lots more.

You also get:

Handy checklists for each course, PDF transcripts, and strategy guides created specifically for small business

A starter series of emails over the first 7 days you’re a member to get you instantly up-to-speed with what’s inside Social Media Marketer and how to use it most effectively

Social Media Marketer Digest every other Monday – updates on what small businesses need to do to stay current with social media, full of actionable take-aways.

Weekly Founder Friday Subscription – more personal emails from founder Laura Roeder with advice and guidance she’s put into practice to grow her own uber-successful small business.

Expert guidance from topic experts in the SMM community on online marketing, branding, launching, WordPress and more, there to guide you in figuring out how social media applies to your unique business.

In a nutshell, the program is full of practical, simple to implement social media marketing strategies that will get you bottom line results in your business if you apply what you learn.

The Investment

So what do you have to pay for all that goodness?

$95 per month. But, and this is big, it’s not one of those courses you sign up for and get stuck paying for for the next 6 months like some other online training courses out there. You can sign up for a month, 6 months, 12 months, or any time period you want, and quit at any time, with no hassle.

In fact, I signed up in July, stayed on for 3 months, then cancelled in October because I was between clients and trying to cut a few expenses. Now that I’m booked to capacity again for the next 6 months, I’ll be signing up again once the holidays are out of the way, because I want to head into 2013 with all the tools I need to have a killer year in my business. : )

How I Used Social Media Marketer

Once I signed up and got inside, I got so excited by all the material that I started consuming everything willy-nilly with no rhyme or reason.

I knew this approach wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I came up with a plan: I’d do one course per month, focusing only on that one course for the month, implementing all I learned with a laser-like focus for 30 solid days.

I made August “Twitter month,” taking the Your Backstage Pass to Twitter course and implementing each piece of actionable advice. The result? I took my Twitter following from around 600 followers to just over 1000, turned Twitter into the #1 traffic driver to my website, and lined up a guest post at a blog that also serves my audience, all from my month of Twitter activity following the Social Media Marketer plan of action.

I highly recommend the one course per month approach to keep the overwhelm at bay and give yourself time to really learn and absorb the material, and most importantly, to apply it.

And on the “I’ve been blogging on WordPress for four years, so I’m not going to learn anything new in the SMM Zero to WordPress course” front, au contraire.

There was something fairly technical I was struggling to do on my blog that I couldn’t figure out on my own (something to with my blog’s navigation and creating hidden download pages, as I recall), and boom – when I went searching inside the Zero to WordPress course, sure enough, there was the answer to my problem. All fixed now, thank you very much.

All that said, I have two very minor quibbles:

I felt like the Pinterest course could have been a little more robust (although what’s here will definitely get Pinterest newbies up to speed quickly).
The forums weren’t very active. To be fair, I was last inside SMM back in October and it’s now December, so that may have changed. In fact, there was an email from the SMM team directly addressing this issue while I was still a member promising to do what it took to make the forums more active.

For anyone who wants to up their small business social media marketing game and get real results, I recommend Social Media Marketer without reservation.

Filed Under: Resources, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: social media marketing for small business, social media training

How to Create Quote Images with a Free Online Photo Editor

October 24, 2012 by Kimberly · 4 Comments

You’ve noticed how text images featuring quotes seem to be all the rage on Facebook and Pinterest these days, right?

I’m sure you have – a pithy or inspirational quote, made into an image, and posted to your favorite social media site.

And if you’ve been paying attention to this trend, you’ve also noticed that these kind of posts get lots of likes, shares and comments, which is exactly what you want if you’re using Facebook to market your business.

Today I’m going to share with you the free online photo editor I use to create these kinds of images, like the one you see above.

Why Quote Images Are Good for Your Small Business Marketing

When you post content to your Facebook page, it reaches your fans and followers, and others who browse your page without officially following.

But when your followers share that content, that’s when things really start to get good, because the potential reach increases exponentially.

And images are the #1 kind of content shared on Facebook. Not to mention that other addictive time-suck, known as Pinterest. ; )

So if you have a few juicy quote images with your website link on them, and these get shared around on Facebook and Pinterest, you can see how your small business could get some extra exposure.

Now, I’m not promising that this technique is going to get hoards of people coming to your website, but it’s one more tactic to add to your bag of tricks. I create and post quote images only after I’ve got all the other big-picture business tasks done, for example.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Spend an hour brainstorming and come with a bunch of great quotes from leaders in your industry, inspirational quotes about your niche, and short tips and tricks you typically teach in your business; save these to a Notepad doc or similar.

2. Then choose among photos you already have saved to your computer, or find free images with a tool like morguefile.com. Alternatively, you can just create a plain colored background using something like Microsoft Paint.

3. Use a free online photo editor to add the quotes you saved to your photos or a plain background, and voila, you’ve got a few dozen quote images to post to Facebook and Pinterest.

*Make sure to add your website link to the image, as I’ve done above, so that when your images are viewed and shared, they lead back to your main hub online – your website.

A Nifty Free Photo Editor

The cool no-cost photo editing tool you can use to create these images is called PicMonkey, a feature-rich online photo editor that works right in your browser, no downloads necessary. Use it for “fearless photo embetterment,” as they say.

Once there, the process is very simple:

1. Click on “Edit a Photo”

2. To add text, click on the “P” in the left hand navigation column

3. Choose the font you want to use

4. Click on “Add Text”

5. A text box will pop up where you’ll place your text. You’ll also be able to resize and lots of other fun stuff too.

6. Click “Save,” and you’re done

PicMonkey is pretty intuitive and user-friendly, but if you have any issues, pop on over to the Facebook page and leave your questions there and I’ll answer them.

And have fun “embettering” your photos. : )

[Hey there, gorgeous. Want more actionable tips, techniques, and how-to’s for marketing your small business online, delivered straight to your email inbox each Tuesday? You betcha! Sign up for my FREE weekly newsletter by entering your name and email address at the top right hand side of the blog now, and let’s get you glowing online.]

Filed Under: Content Strategy, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: free online photo editor, quote images

How to Write Your Twitter Bio To Get More Followers

October 21, 2012 by Kimberly · 2 Comments

When you’re on Twitter looking for new people to follow, how do you decide who makes the cut?

Your first step is to check out the person’s bio, right? Yep, that’s what everyone else does too.

And since the short bio connected to your profile is easily visible and the #1 thing people use to determine whether to follow you or click on the links you tweet out, it makes sense to create the best bio you can.

So, what makes a good Twitter bio?

The best Twitter bios are interesting, engaging and offer insight into your business and/or your personality, while conveying some benefit to following you. And since Twitter is less formal than other social media platforms, it’s a good idea to lighten up a little and show some personality here.

You get 160 characters to summarize your business and what you have to offer, so you’ve got to be strategic about what to include.

In a nutshell, try to do following: tell people who you are and why they should follow you, state the benefit of following you while using your best keywords, and include your website or blog URL.

Keywords in your bio are important because that’s what gets your profile found – Twitter search engines look at these keywords when they recommend profiles for others to follow. (You can use hashtags for the same purpose. A hashtag is the symbol # placed before a relevant keyword or phrase in a Tweet, with no spaces, to categorize Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search.)

And here’s a little tip not everyone knows – you can actually have two clickable links in your Twitter bio field.

There are a couple of ways to use this to your benefit: you can place your website URL in both the Web and Bio fields of your profile so that it’s easily visible and accessible to your followers, or, you can use the second live link to promote something else you want to direct attention to. For example, you could include the link to your Facebook business page or other social media profile, an email opt-in page, or an opt-in for an upcoming webinar, etc.

Let’s look at a few Twitter bio examples, both the good and the not-so-good, and talk about what makes them that way. (These are all real examples I pulled from Twitter.)

First we have what I call “The Laundry List”:

Personal Development, Body and Mind Fitness, Life Coaching, NLP, Smart Teaching and Learning, Travel, Yoga and Meditation

This is merely a string of semi-related words that don’t add up to enough strategic information about this person or their business to make folks want to follow. How do we know which of these phrases relate to this person’s business and which to her personal life? And what about a website link for more information? This bio doesn’t pique my interest enough to make me want to click over to her profile for more info.

Next we have the hopelessly vague:

We love to Inspire, Motivate & help others around us to reach Success. Follow & Interact with us now & Please Like Us On Facebook.

This is another kind of Twitter bio that’s all too common. It’s vague, and the benefit to following is not clearly defined. More specific info on how they “help others achieve success” and/or what kind of success they mean would improve this bio. Is it weight loss success? Small business success? Financial success? If I’m going to follow this person, I want to know.

And then we have everybody’s favorite, the “Hashtag Stuffer”:

#Blogger, #entrepreneur, digital marketing #consultant and recording #artist. I make #money online and #teach others how to do the same.

The Hashtag Stuffer places as many keywords in the bio field as possible in hopes of being found through Twitter Search or similar. You want to avoid this, not only because it’s annoying to other Twitter users and considered bad form, but more importantly, Google views the overuse of hashtags much like spam, which means those tweets will be excluded from real time search results.

And then there’s The Deadly Dull, another very common approach to Twitter bios:

As a prominent author, speaker and coach, ______’s expertise is utilized to gain insight and to create change in leadership and communication.

The Deadly Dull bio gives us enough information about who someone is and what they do, but it’s not very compelling. And the phrase “expertise is utilized to gain insight and to create change” is unwieldy and overly formal. This is Twitter, not a resume. So please, ok?

And now for a few examples of interesting, engaging and benefit-driven Twitter bios:

I use my punk-rock personality to create super fun tools that help business owners and entrepreneurs assault and trample their technical fears.

This bio works because it’s witty and shows personality, while at the same time clearly outlining the benefit of following her profile. You get a sense of who she is – “punk-rock personality” – who she helps – “business owners and entrepreneurs” – and how she helps them – “assault and trample technical fears.”

Facebook Marketing expert Amy Porterfield’s Twitter bio is effective because it quickly tells us who she is and what she does, and provides two relevant links:

I’m a social media strategist who specializes in Facebook (http://AmyPorterfield.com/Webinar). Co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies.

Here’s the bio for Sean Malarkey, an online business professional and Social Media Author and Speaker.

What’s interesting here is that Sean’s LinkedIn bio is much more formal and business-like telling us more about his business, while on Twitter he follows the protocol of less formal and more personal:

Blogger, Chocolate lover, Living a dream by living PT in Argentina, Retired Real Estate Investor. Husband, Dad, Good friend to many.

And last, we have the bio of a photographer who manages to get across in a very succinct and poetic way the benefits of using her service:

@AnnieVaiPhoto Live the Moment. Inspire the Love. Capture the Memory. Wilmington, NC http://www.annievaiphotography.com

And there you have it.

Use these guidelines and examples as a starting point to create your own Twitter bio – a compelling, strategic, benefit-driven masterpiece, all in 160 characters or less.

[Hey there, gorgeous. Want more actionable tips, techniques, and how-to’s for marketing your business online, delivered straight to your email inbox each Tuesday? You betcha! Go ahead and enter your name and email address at the top right hand side of the blog now to get my FREE weekly newsletter packed full of marketing goodness, and let’s get you glowing online.]

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing, Writing for the Web Tagged With: good Twitter bios, how to write Twitter bios

LinkedIn: Quick 3 Step SEO Optimization Tip

September 5, 2012 by Kimberly · Leave a Comment

Today I want to share a quick little follow-up tip to the post I recently wrote about optimizing your profile on LinkedIn, where I talked about 5 key areas to place keywords in your LinkedIn profile.

In case you weren’t aware, you can add three website hyperlinks of your choice in the “Additional Information” section of your profile and name these links whatever you’d like, provided the copy doesn’t go over the character count.

A lot of folks leave the default hyperlink copy there, which you don’t want to do, unless you want to optimize your site for “My Website,” “My Portfolio” and “My Blog.” Just a little tip from me to you. ; )

Here’s how you do this:

1. Scroll down to your “Additional Information” section, which is under the “Recommendations” section and click the “edit” link. This is what you’ll see:

2. So here what you want to do, rather than selecting any of the defaults like “personal website,” “company website,” or “blog,” etc., is select “Other.”

3. Enter your custom copy in the fields there, then add your links. You can see what I did above. I entered my blog link, which I called “Get Your Creative Biz Online,” the direct link to my email opt-in page, which I called “Skills to Grow Your Small Biz,” and my Facebook Page, which I called “Join the Community.”

4. Then hit “Save Changes” and when you’re taken back to your profile, you’ll see your live hyperlinks, like this:

These are of course live links that point directly to the web properties you put in the fields there.

Tah-dah, easy-peasy, right?

Resource Alert: If you want to know more about using LinkedIn to grow your business, check out what Lewis Howes is up to – he’s a well-respected LinkedIn marketing expert, and my go-to mentor for all things LinkedIn. I linked to Lewis in my previous LinkedIn post if you want to check that out.

[Hey there, gorgeous. Did you know you can get my FREE weekly newsletter, with actionable tips, techniques, and how-to’s for marketing your business online, delivered straight to your email inbox each Tuesday? You betcha! Go ahead and enter your name and email address at the top right hand side of the blog now, and let’s get you glowing online.]

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: LinkedIn marketing, LinkedIn profile optimization, SEO tips

End Your LinkedIn Shame: Optimize Your Profile by Placing Keywords in These 5 Key Areas

August 21, 2012 by Kimberly · Leave a Comment

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was very late to the game when it came to LinkedIn. Sure, I put up a profile a few years ago, then promptly forgot about it, letting it grow old and stale, never checking in and never using the platform to market my business.

But LinkedIn offers some pretty powerful networking and marketing opportunities, so I decided to get in the game, recently gutting my profile entirely and starting over fresh, changing almost everything.

There is still work to do, but now I can use LinkedIn to market and network, because I’m no longer ashamed of my outdated, poorly optimized profile.

And yes, you can use LinkedIn if you’re a solopreneur or small business owner – its’ not just for job seekers.

Here are just 5 reasons you may want to optimize your profile if you haven’t already:

1. Your LinkedIn profile will often be one of the first results to pop up when someone Googles your name.

2. LinkedIn is a powerful platform for getting leads because it’s business-oriented. You’re not signing in to watch funny cat videos or check out what your friends are up to – and neither is anyone else. People are there to network and build professional relationships.

3. You can link out to your other online profiles and properties from within your LinkedIn profile, giving you SEO benefits.

4. You can tap into the LinkedIn Answers feature to use your expertise to benefit others – another way to build mutually beneficial professional relationships.

5. You can join LinkedIn groups in your industry, where you can get and give advice. Very useful, this.

There are plenty of LinkedIn experts (I suggest one at the end of this article) and free resources online that go into the 5 reasons above in much greater detail which will teach you how to create a holistic LinkedIn marketing strategy, but what I want to focus on here are the 5 key areas on your profile you can optimize today using your keywords, in half an hour or less.

These are:

1. Your Headline. The headline is next to your image. This is the most important place to put your keywords. See mine here.

2. Current Work Experience. This is the first section under the “Summary” section.

3. Past Work Experience. This is just below current work experience.

4. Summary. The summary section is the first section under the actual profile (that box containing all your info at a glance).

5. Number 5 used to be the good old Specialties Section, but you may not have a “Specialties” section anymore – I don’t. I’m told that as of this writing, LinkedIn has done away with the Specialties section, so I would suggest making the number 5 destination for your keywords the “Skills and Experience” section, where you can choose up to 50 skills from the built-in competencies LinkedIn offers there. Here’s what mine looks like.

And there you have it. Go ahead and get your keywords in those 5 sections on LinkedIn today so you can start using this powerful platform to build relationships and market your business.

Resource Alert: If you want to know more about using LinkedIn to grow your business, check out what Lewis Howes is up to – he’s a well-respected LinkedIn marketing expert, and my go-to mentor for all things LinkedIn.

Check out this article on Lewis’s site for his top ten tips for LinkedIn marketing.

And visit Copyblogger for this article Lewis wrote called 7 Quick Ways to Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Social Media Marketing Workhorse.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: LinkedIn marketing, LinkedIn profile keywords, LinkedIn strategy

OPC (Other People’s Content): Totally Awesome Guide to the New Facebook Pages

March 15, 2012 by Kimberly · Leave a Comment

You’re probably aware that as of March 30, 2012, all Facebook Pages will be converted to the new Timeline.

I’ve been working with a Facebook Page for one of my clients that we switched over a couple of weeks ago, and in the process of navigating my way through all the new features and capabilities I got to thinking, “if I could just find a really comprehensive text-based resource that explains all the new features and how to operate them in one place, I’d be golden.”

And just like that, I came across this wicked comprehensive gem called “The Marketer’s Guide to the New Facebook Pages,” over on Quicksprout. (One of my favorite go-to resources for topics from entrepreneurship to social media to SEO and lots more.)

I’ve linked up to it here so you can get the scoop on how to set up and navigate the new Timeline on your own Page. Whether you’re marketing for yourself or for your clients using Pages, this guide will get help you get the new Timeline set up correctly right from the get-go:

The Marketer’s Guide to the New Facebook Pages

If you’re more visually oriented, you might also want to check out this article from over on Hubspot, another gem that includes lots of great graphics:

The Complete Guide to Setting Up the New Facebook Page Design

Either way you go, both of these terrific articles should have you covered with all things Timeline.

Good luck!

Filed Under: OPC (Other People's Content), Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Facebook marketing, Facebook pages, Facebook Timeline

3 More Tips for Using Facebook to Drive Traffic to Your Website

February 8, 2012 by Kimberly · Leave a Comment

Last blog post we talked about 4 easy tweaks to make on your Facebook Page and your personal profile to drive traffic back to your website or blog.

This time I want to dig a little deeper and talk about some techniques that are a little more labor intensive.

If you’re serious about using Facebook to drive traffic to your website, then keep in mind that these aren’t “set it and forget it” techniques. Generating traffic takes consistent action and hard work.

You have to be in it for the long haul, because it could take 6 months to a year, or even longer, to see a real boost in traffic from your efforts. You’ve likely heard this before about getting social media results, and it’s true: it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

One of the most important things you can do is be consistent.

• Consistent action = consistent results. As much as you can, you want to keep to a regular, daily posting schedule. Post once per day, 5 days per week, or at least 3-4 times per week. This will get your audience used to hearing from you at regular intervals, and you want to be in front of them consistently so you are top of mind when they’re ready to purchase the product or service you offer.

(Restaurants, bakeries, crafters and other creatives, etc: your advantage is that you have new things to post on a super regular basis, way more than say, an accountant, or auto mechanic or drycleaner,etc. – use this to your advantage!)

Another key part of getting traffic to your site from Facebook is to create new content of your own to post to Facebook regularly.

• Create your own unique, signature content. Posting content from other sites to your Facebook page is great for engagement, but it won’t help you grow your own site traffic directly. That’s why you want to have a blog that gets updated 2-3 times per week; this way, you’ll have a reason to link back to your own site over and over again. If you have a static website/brochure site, it’s going to be more challenging to get traffic from your social media efforts, but if you commit to creating new content weekly – even once per week – and consistently posting it to Facebook, you’ll see a boost in your site traffic over time.

(If you’re in the food, wine or a creative business of any kind, then coming up with your own regular signature content shouldn’t be very difficult: you’ve got dinner specials, behind the scenes restaurant goings on, new cupcake flavors, your weekly wine delivery or tasting specials, new crafts/images/jewelry/designs and so on and so forth, so create content around the product or service you offer. Again, you’ve got lots of advantages over other kinds of businesses when it comes to crafting unique content consistently, because what you do lends itself more readily to being talked about on a regular basis.)

Use Facebook Insights (everyone has this on their Facebook page) to figure which content gets shared and engaged with most, then create and post this kind of content to your page consistently, with a link back to your site.

• Photos are the #1 thing shared on Facebook, so use them in your own content that you will then link up on Facebook. This way, your site content will have a greater chance of getting shared, which will net you more visitors to your site.

(For restaurants, you could take pics of family meal, or the dinner specials brainstorming session, or a dish you’re featuring this week, etc., then blog about it, with pics, and link up the blog post on Facebook. For creatives of all kinds, your work produces endless opportunities for images, which you can then add a few short lines of content to, and Voila!, instant blog post!)

Have Facebook traffic or engagement tips you’d like to share? Share ‘em in the comments, below!

[Hey there, gorgeous. Did you know you can get my FREE weekly newsletter, with actionable tips, techniques, and how-to’s for marketing your business online, delivered straight to your email inbox each Tuesday? You betcha! Go ahead and enter your name and email address at the top right hand side of the blog, and let’s get you glowing online.]

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Facebook traffic, traffic generation

4 Simple Facebook Tweaks to Drive More Traffic to Your Website

February 5, 2012 by Kimberly · Leave a Comment

As we’ve discussed before here on the blog, it’s vitally important to have your own blog or website as the “hub” of your online presence. Social media tools are great, but social media is where you build the relationship, not where you close the sale. So use social media to engage your prospects, add value and make friends, but link back to your blog or website to lead folks into your sales process.

OK, now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can get down to the nitty gritty, specifically, how to use Facebook to drive traffic to your blog or website.

Here are 4 easy tweaks you can make on your Facebook Page and your personal profile to drive traffic to your other online properties.

Tip #1: Put Your Site URL in the About Box on Your Facebook Page

One super easy fix for getting more traffic from your Facebook Page over to your website — and something I see so many people not doing — is to put your website address in the About box on your Page’s profile. It’s not enough to have it inside the “Info” section of your Page, you want to have it front and center in that About box! Now, if you’re a known entity and have thousands of “likers” on your Facebook page already, feel free to skip this tip if you want; otherwise, I suggest you go ahead and make this small tweak to your Page now.

Here’s how:

Once you’ve logged into your Page, click “edit” inside the About box; it’s just below the left-hand navigation menu, which is below your profile image.

This will take you to your Info page, where you’ll see the text box, below.

Once here, be sure to put your website or blog URL up front in that text box, as you see I’ve done in the image above. There are 78 characters displayed in the About box on your Page itself, and 240 characters total, visible after the user clicks the “More” link, so you want your most important information in the first 78 characters.

Tip #2: Put Links in the Comments Section of the Photostrip

Another place you can put links is in the comments section of the 5 small images at the top of your page, called the photostrip. Simply click on an image and the comment box will pop up, where you can enter your information. I suggest you place some text there as well, not just a link on its own. For example, “Visit us online at [your web address here] for [a description of something compelling your business offers].” You get the idea.

The next two tips are things you can do on your Facebook personal profile.

#3: Put Your Website Link in the Comments Section of Your Personal Profile Image

The profile image is the most clicked on thing in your Facebook personal profile, so it makes sense to put your web info there with a call to action, as in Tip #2, above.

Do this just the same way you entered your info in the comment box of your Facebook Page photostrip images, above. Simply click on your personal profile image and the comment box will pop up; enter your info there.

Now this is about driving traffic back to your website, but you could also add links to your other social media profiles here, or your contact info, or some combination thereof.

#4: Put the Link to Your Facebook Page in the Employer Section of Your Personal Profile

The 2nd most clicked on item on your Facebook personal profile is the Employer section. Now, here you might want put the link to your Facebook Business Page. Since you now have your main website or blog link on your Business Page in the About box after following Tip #1, you can use the employer section of your personal profile to direct people to your Facebook Page.

To do this, go to your profile, click on “Info” in the navigation bar, then click “Edit” in the “Work and Education” section. Once you fill out your info there with the link to your Facebook Page, it will become a live link that will take folks directly to your Page when it’s clicked on.

And there ya go.

In the next blog post I’ll talk a little more about using Facebook to drive traffic to your website; for now, check to see if your Facebook Page or personal profile could benefit from implementing the tips above.

As always, comments are welcome, and encouraged! : )

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: driving traffic, driving traffic with Facebook, generating traffic

How to Use Twitter Search to Find Clients and Customers

January 25, 2012 by Kimberly · Leave a Comment

How cool would it be if you could spend just 15 minutes online and find potential clients and customers in your area, looking for exactly the kind of product or service you provide?

Well, you can use Twitter Search to do just that. Now, a word of caution: once you do find people looking for what you have to offer, you don’t want to do a hard sell; instead, you want to give them a valid reason to check you out.

For example, say someone’s looking for happy hour specials at a full service bar within a 5 mile radius, and you happen to be a full service bar with great happy hour specials within that 5 mile radius. So you reply to their tweet with “Great happy hour specials at –Name of Your Fabulous Bar Here—on Front Street, ½ price appetizers & handcrafted beer until 7:00 pm!” or similar. Or if that’s too “salesy” for you, offer a $5 off coupon off for their next visit to your establishment. You get the idea.

OK, so let’s get down to it and do a Twitter search so I can show you what I’m talking about. There are two ways to do this.

Log into your account, and once there, use the simple search bar at the top of your page:

Enter your search terms and see what turns up. You’re going to want better, more targeted results than a general search will give you though, so click on “refine results” in the bottom right corner of that pane once your initial search results are returned, which will take you to the Advanced Search page.

Or, you can simply go to http://search.twitter.com/, and click on “Advanced Search” from there.

Once you’re in the Advanced Search pane, you’ll see all sorts of options for searching, so just have a play around and see what works; you’ll see that you can filter searches in several ways there. If you’re a location-based local business, then obviously you want to use the “places” filter for finding people in your specific area searching for what you offer.

Here’s how I set up my search:

I searched for the general term “cupcakes,” which returned far too many results. I then “refined” the search to: “need cupcakes,” within a 15 mile radius of Washington, DC, then clicked the “Question” box on the bottom of the advanced search page. Here’s what that search turned up:

Bingo!

Now what if you’re a bakery with mini cupcakes/cookies in this person’s area – don’t you think with a well thought out response to their tweet, offering them exactly what they’re looking for, that customer is coming to your store?

Here’s another example. Let’s say you’re a caterer who specializes in catering large weddings. Using Advanced Search, you look for mentions of the words “wedding caterers” within 15 miles of your town, and you select the “Question?” checkbox in Advanced Search, which will narrow the results to tweets that contain your search terms and also pose a question.

You might not get results on your first search, but it’s entirely possible that if you run this search on a regular basis, you’ll find someone asking for recommendations for caterers who specialize in large weddings. Then you can respond to these tweets with a special offer, a free consultation, or something else of value.

If you use Advanced Search to find people who are looking for what you provide, and you offer genuine, non-douchy value and solutions, chances are you’ll be able to add new clients and sales to your business.

Have you ever used Twitter search to find new clients and customers? How did it work? Let me know in the comments below!

Filed Under: Local Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: twitter for getting clients and customers, twitter for small business

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