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How to Get Started on Twitter

By Melinda Emerson on June 21, 2011 in Ask Smallbizlady, Branding & Marketing, Customer Service, Featured Post, How to Start, Social Media, Technology

Using Twitter is a great way to start building your online brand. If you can send a text message, you can tweet. You can only communicate using 140 characters on Twitter, but if you want people to Retweet (RT) or share your content, you should cut your tweets down to 125 characters. Here a few quick rules: Listen first, then engage with people directly, then start sharing articles of interest to attract your target audience. Once you establish relationships on Twitter you can then start writing your own blog and tweeting your original content.

Decide what you wish to accomplish before using Twitter. Are you trying to establish your expertise, looking for a new work opportunity or simply want to connect with others who share a special interest or expertise?
Figure out who your target audience is and where these folks hang out online. (You want to be as specific as possible in targeting your efforts.)
Establish your own website. It does not make sense to use social media if you do not have a place to drive traffic, like your own website.
Developing a list of 3-5 blogs or websites. It’s a good idea to develop a daily habit of going out to a few websites and finding content to share on twitter
Remember that social media marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. You will get out of it what you invest in it.

5 steps to Establishing Your Twitter Account:

Set up an account
Enter your profile information & photo
Find your friends
How to follow someone
How to post messages

Step 1: Set up an account

Go to http://twitter.com and click the big green “Get Started – Join!” button.
On the resulting screen, enter the username you want, your desired password, your email address and complete the spam checker
About your username:
- Use your whole name, nickname, name of your business or a description of your service, examples @comcastcares @jenny55 @bizsavvymom @smallbizlady

Step 2: Enter your profile information

Your profile information is important. If you want people to want to connect to you, you’ll need to tell them a little bit about yourself. Try not to write anything scary or silly; or too personal. You need just to explain your expertise and/or interests. And your location should be a larger city nearby.
Log into Twitter, and click on the ‘Settings’ link at the top of your Twitter homepage.
The ‘Account’ tab of the ‘Settings’ section includes a text box that lets you input a 160-character blurb about yourself, along with a link to your website.
The ‘Picture’ tab lets you upload a picture to your profile. It is best to post a smiling picture of yourself

Step 3: Find your friends

There are a few simple ways to find people to follow on Twitter:
Click on the ‘Who To Follow’ to search for people who Twitter suggests you follow.
Invite from other networks will search your email address books (aol, hotmail, gmail etc.) to see if anyone has associated any of those addresses with a Twitter account.
Invite by email is a way to invite your friends to join Twitter through email.
Search tab allows you to search for new people to follow. You can mimic this function by using http://search.twitter.com.
You can search for the city where you live to find other users in your area. Enter your industry to find business peers. Enter your hobbies to find people with shared interests. The potential list is endless.

Step 4: How to follow someone

You can log in twitter from anywhere, you can use desktop applications, or you can connect from your phone.
To follow someone
- Hover over their @username, click link, read their bio & recent tweets. If they seem interesting, hit follow

Step 5: How to post messages

To post a regular message
Just type it into the box that says “What are you doing?” and hit the ‘update’ button below
To send an open message
When sending an open message to someone publicly, type “@” followed by their username, then the message. Here’s an example:
encouragement4u @smallbizlady How did you overcome your biggest business challenges? Check out these stories! http://budurl.com/eqbx

Send a Direct-message

To send a private direct message to someone, type “d” then a space and then their username. So, to send me a direct message you would type “d @smallbizlady That was a great #smallbizchat on Twitter last night!”
Note: you can only send direct messages to people who you follow, and who follow you back.

How to Retweet or RT someone else’s message

If you like what someone says, and want to show your followers that message.
Copy the tweet (not username), then hit grey arrow to reply, add ‘RT’ before the @username Put one space after @username & paste original tweet. If it is too long, You can edit, but only for space. Here’s an example of a Retweet:
Holly_Hanna RT @smallbizlady 32 Tips to make online customers love you –http://tinyurl.com/op9bbk (this is really well done)

Quick Twitter Tips

Remember to click your @username to see messages/tweets folks are sending to you openly.
Remember to Follow your Followers
Under your username & photo click followers to see who followed you and decide to follow back or not. When you have time its nice to send a thanks for the follow note.
Now you are ready to get started. Welcome to Twitterverse!

Melinda F. Emerson, known to many as SmallBizLady is one of America’s leading small business experts. As a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker, and small business coach, she develops audio, video and written content to fulfill her mission to end small business failure. As CEO of MFE Consulting LLC, Melinda educates entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies on subjects including small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. Forbes Magazine recently named her one of the Top 20 women for entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. She hosts #SmallBizChat Wednesdays on Twitter 8-9pm ET for emerging entrepreneurs. She also publishes a resource blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com Melinda is also the author of the national bestseller Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works. (Adams Media 2010)

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Ask @SmallBizLady: How do I follow-up after a business conference?

By Melinda Emerson on June 17, 2011 in Ask Smallbizlady, Become Your Own Boss Tips, Branding & Marketing, Featured Post, Grow Your Business, Social Media, Technology

Every Friday, I answer your small business questions in a video blog segment called Ask Small Biz Lady. This week, I took a question live from the New York Times Small Business Summit.

Here’s the question: How do I make a plan to follow-up after a business conference? Here’s the answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3rKLFEkF_I

Immediately reach out to all of your new connections on LinkedIn.

Separate your new contact into piles email follow-up vs. hand-written note.
Wait 5-10 business days to follow-up your initial contact with a personal phone call. I really enjoyed attending this year’s conference.

Here’s some key takeaways: It’s all about being ready to do commerce via mobile devices. All websites need to be mobile ready and google is coming out with some innovate tools to help…stay tuned.

LivingSocial.com CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy, enlightened the audience by explaining how important it is to have a local sales presence for an online business. He also made the audience aware of all the other services his company can provide for small businesses beyond daily deals, which I am intrigued to learn about that more fully.

Susan Sobbott, President of American Express Open, shared sobering statistics on social media use among small businesses. 35% are using Facebook, 14% are using LinkedIn and 10% are on Twitter regularly.

If you have a question for Melinda Emerson, Small Biz Lady, leave a comment on this blog using the contact us page or send me a note on Twitter @smallbizlady, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/smallbizlady or you can hit me up on www.linkedin.com/in/melindaemerson I’m always here as a resource.

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How to Make the Most of Social Media Marketing

By sss4success on June 14, 2011 in Become Your Own Boss Tips, Branding & Marketing, Customer Service, Grow Your Business, Social Media

Image taken from Google Images

Leveraging the power of social media to market your brand in the Web 2.0 world is imperative to remaining viable as a business owner. Having social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn aren’t enough to take advantage of the marketing opportunities that new media environment has created. You need to adopt a comprehensive strategy to deliver the results that you want.

Here are five (5) key strategies to insure that you make the most out of your social media marketing efforts:

Have a Plan and Set Objectives: As an entrepreneur, the temptation might be to just jump in and start using various social media platforms to promote your brand and products, but before doing so, you need a clear understanding of how you’re using social media to augment your core marketing efforts to generate leads and convert them to sales. Social media alone can’t be the “be-all, end-all” of your company’s plan, so having a Social Media Marketing Plan that specifically shows how social media outlets will be used to promote your brand is key.

Know Your Niche: In a world where Facebook has over 500 million registered users and Twitter sees 155,000,000 tweets a day from any of its 200,000,000+ tweeters, your message can be easily lost in the “noise” being created in the social media space. Targeting your market and knowing the best places to reach key members of your audience is the best way to insure better returns for your efforts.

Encourage Conversation and Dialogue: If you run a blog, enable your comments and allow visitors to contribute their opinion and provide a sense of community around the content you’re providing. If you visit other blogs regularly, leave useful comments (i.e. relevant to the topic at hand and not just a standard “Great Post!”) and provide your contact/blog information within your comments profile (if possible). Encouraging conversation and dialogue among the people who already find your content compelling is a great way to learn what makes them tick and ensure that you can keep providing what they need to keep them coming back to you.

Be Easy to Contact: It may seem like a “no-brainer”, but you’d be amazed at how many websites, blogs, and Facebook pages provide absolutely no way to get in touch with the people behind them. If your goal is to facilitate a relationship with your customers using social media, you have to be available to them. This can be done by providing easy ways for your customers and future customers to get in touch with you by providing online forms on your websites and blogs, giving email addresses and phone numbers (if you check them regularly and intend to respond), and even providing your Skype ID (if you use the service). Making it easy for people to contact you will provide one more way that you can hear what your audience wants.

Monitor Your Progress: Any Social Media Marketing effort is dead in the water without assessment. Be sure to manage and tweak Social Media Marketing Plan to determine if you’re meeting the long and short-term objectives you’ve set for your company.

What other strategies have you used to maximize the return on investment

of your social media marketing efforts?

Kindra C. Cotton is a Serial Entrepreneur, Technology & Social Media Specialist who runs a small business consulting practice specializing in brand marketing, market research, and strategic information consultancy. Her flagship brand “SSS for Success (Small Business Survival Specialists)” specializes in preparing small and medium-sized organizations to take advantage of the free and low-cost marketing avenues that exist online.

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Are you Google-able?

By Melinda Emerson on June 6, 2011 in Ask Smallbizlady, Become Your Own Boss Tips, Branding & Marketing, Business Inspiration, Featured Post, Grow Your Business, How to Start, Melinda Emerson @SmallBizLady, Social Media, Technology, Your Small Business

google logo

If you’re ready for a midcareer makeover, you can get new clothes and a new haircut. But even more important, you must make yourself what I call “Google-able.” That means you need to create a smart social media footprint.

By day I work as a small-business coach, and I keep coming across amazing professionals with extraordinary credentials who want to build a consulting practice or establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry.

But here’s the problem: When I put their names in Google, I come up with nothing. No website, no social networking profile — not even a guest blog post. These people may have advanced degrees and impressive titles on their resumes, but there is no electronic evidence of their expertise and accomplishments. Since this has happened several times over the last few weeks, it dawned on me that I needed to help fellow midcareer folks understand this new paradigm.

Gone are the days of calling around to get the 411 on a potential business partner or new hire. These days, people do an internet search before you ever get a call about a new opportunity. Recruiters and corporate executives routinely conduct internet searches when looking for talent and don’t always advertise open positions. Many believe you don’t even exist if you don’t have a social media footprint.

Here are five essential steps to get started online.

1. Smile and click.

One of the key things you need prior to establishing yourself online is to get a professional headshot. Go ahead and spend money to get a good photo. It should be a smiling shot that is friendly. Even though you are communicating over the internet, people still want to see who they are talking to.

If you haven’t established an online presence yet, keep this in mind: You are using the skills you already know — how to communicate with people. Creating an online presence simply helps people find you. Think of it as your virtual business card, which is far more useful in 2011 than the paper variety.

2. Sign up at LinkedIn.

The first step to building your brand online is to stake your territory: One of the best moves you can make is to set up a profile on LinkedIn. Yes, you’ll also want to establish a Google profile and sign up for a Facebook or Twitter account, too. But LinkedIn is the most important.

“If you are looking to do anything in the professional world, LinkedIn is where you need to be. LinkedIn is the ultimate buyers’ market,” says Patrice Rutledge, author of Using LinkedIn.

Here are her top tips to make your profile shine on LinkedIn:

Add your profile and be sure to fill it out 100 percent. Your profile should use the appropriate keywords that your target audience would use to search for your expertise (including job title and certifications).
Use applications to enhance your profile (SlideShare presentations, Google presentations, portfolio display or box.net to add a resume).
A detailed company profile is important for a business owner. Be sure to link it to your personal LinkedIn profile.

3. Create a website.

The next thing you can do is register your name or your business name as a website domain and create a simple one- to five-page website. If you are interested in establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry, adding a blog to your new website is a great idea.

I realize that this might sound intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. You can register your own domain name and then hire a virtual assistant who specializes in social media to help you set it up. (By the way, a virtual assistant is an entrepreneur who assists business owners and busy people with time-consuming tasks, allowing them more time to focus on profit-generating activities.) With a few basic lessons, and time with tutorials, you can get going in no time.

4. Sign up for a Facebook account.

Cathy Larkin, founder of Web Savvy PR, conducts hands-on workshops to teach baby boomers how to use Facebook. Her clients often want to know what to talk about on their Facebook Fan Pages and how to create a good profile.

“I show people how to use Facebook rather than telling them how to do it,” Larkin says. “It’s all about figuring out what your intended audience wants to hear, learn or know about.”

She offers the example of a real estate agent who posted information about how to clear two feet of snow from your roof, which is much more creative — and useful — information than simply listing houses for sale.

Here are Larkin’s three tips for using Facebook Fan Pages:

Consider your keywords. Your domain name for your Facebook Fan Page should include keywords that people will use to search for you online.
Set your Info page as your default page. If someone visits you on Facebook, they will quickly get a sense of who you are and what you do (and hopefully fan your page).
Upload photos and online videos. It’s a great way to promote your products or services and add rich content to your Facebook Page.

5. Don’t forget Twitter.

Thomas MacEntee, the 48-year-old founder of High-Definition Genealogy, says its best to think of social media as a garden you have to tend.

Laid off from his tech job in Chicago in late 2008, MacEntee reinvented himself as a family historian — helping people investigate their family trees — and utilizes social media to connect with clients. It took MacEntee about a year to build his business.

He’s been so successful mastering the intricacies of Twitter — the free service that allows users to share information in 140 characters or less — that he now teaches a social media class for baby boomers called “Twitter: It’s not just what I had for breakfast anymore.”

He says the key to Twitter is giving as much as you get, and listening as much as you speak. He says some boomers have a problem with these concepts. “They think they are giving away their work for free, but it’s part of building yourself as a brand and an expert,” says MacEntee.

Here are some action steps to get you started building your online brand.

Decide what you wish to accomplish before using social media. Are you looking for a new work opportunity or simply want to connect with others who share a special interest or expertise?
Figure out who your audience is and where these folks hang out online. (You want to be as specific as possible in targeting your efforts.)
Create your LinkedIn account immediately. Add a great photo, import your contact database from your e-mail and join one group.
Expand to your own website, Facebook and/or Twitter.
Start developing a list of potentials blog topics. It’s a good idea to developed an archive of blog posts at least three months prior to launching your blog.
Remember that social media marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. You will get out of it what you invest in it.

If you follow all of these tips, when someone types your name into the world’s most famous search engine, they will immediately have your virtual business card — and so much more — right at their fingertips.

Melinda F. Emerson, known as the SmallBizLady, is an entrepreneur, professional speaker, small business coach and the author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months. In 2010, Forbes magazine named her as one of the Top 20 Women for Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter.

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Blogging, & Handling Corporate Inquires & Monetizing your Online Brand.

By Melinda Emerson on June 3, 2011 in Ask Smallbizlady, Become Your Own Boss Tips, Business Inspiration, BYOB2011, Customer Service, Featured Post, Grow Your Business, My Recommendations, Social Media, Technology, Women in Business, Your Small Business

Check out this quick video from the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference. Fellow blogger Jewel Figueras of http://www.JewelsFabLife.com was interviewed by LaShanda Henry creator of SistaSense blogs for entrepreneurs and the Black Business Women Online Social Network.

http://www.sistasense.tv/smallbizlady-and-jewelsfablife-talk-blogging-and-working-with-brands-part1/

We discussed blogging, handling corporate inquires and monetizing your online brand. Enjoy!

I’m always here as a resource.
If you have a question for Melinda Emerson, SmallBizLady, leave a comment on this blog using thecontact us page or send me a note on Twitter @smallbizlady, on Facebook atwww.facebook.com/smallbizlady or you can hit me up on www.linkedin.com/in/melindaemerson

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Do you need a Small Business Makeover?

By Melinda Emerson on June 1, 2011 in Ask Smallbizlady, Become Your Own Boss Tips, Branding & Marketing, Customer Service, Featured Post, Grow Your Business, Mompreneurs, My Recommendations, Social Media, Technology, Your Small Business

Pitney Bowes wants to give your business a communications makeover worth up to $10,000. If you could use some help with your email, direct mail and social media communications, you can win a free year of using Pitney Bowes’ full suite of business tools. The grand prize winners will also receive in person one-on-one coaching from me @Smallbizlady and my colleagues marketing expert Jane Applegate and technology expert Phil Simon.

You have until July 19th to tell us how you’d improve your business communications. The earlier you enter the better as you will need to get a social media pals to vote for you in order to become a finalist. To enter write a 300 word essay on your biggest communications challenge or send in a one minute video. Click here to enter the Pitney Bowes Small Business Makeover Contest http://www.pbsmartessentials.com/makeover/

Disclosure: I am a paid consultant to Pitney Bowes to participate as a judge and business coach in this makeover contest!

For more tips on how start or grow your small business subscribe to Melinda Emerson’s blog http://www.succeedasyourownboss.com.

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4 Things All Entrepreneurs Should Do On LinkedIn

By Melinda Emerson on May 31, 2011 in Ask Smallbizlady, Become Your Own Boss Tips, Branding & Marketing, Business Inspiration, Featured Post, Grow Your Business, Social Media, Solopreneurs, Starting A Small Business, Women in Business, Your Small Business

Linked in Logo

LinkedIn is important! 75% of all professionals in the US have a LinkedIn profile, which means if you want to do business you must have one too. LinkedIn is powerful tool that you can use to promote yourself if you are an individual consultant or a company with 2 or more employees. Here are my four tips that all entrepreneurs should do on LinkedIn.

Make sure your profile is 100%: If you do not have a headshot, please add a profession one. Typically, business owners who are not 100% lack recommendations. Look at your connections and ask at least three people to write why they love doing business with you. To make it easy, write the recommendation for them. This might be rough, but go ahead and do it. Actually, you should get in habit of asking anyone you interact with to give to a recommendation. I have over 47 recommendations and counting, you can never have too many.

Know Your Keywords: Your keywords should be spread across your profile. First your description of who you are should include keywords that your target customer would use to find you on the internet. Your summary and skills should also be peppered with keywords. This will also help you appear higher in Linkedin searches for experts.

Join LinkedIn Groups: You can join up to 50 groups on LinkedIn. You should join at least 10 groups that have your target customer in the group. You should have a strategy for how you will engage and attract members of the group to connect with you. Many groups allow fellow members to connect even though you do not know each other.
Answer Questions: One of best ways to standout in LinkedIn is to answer questions. It should become a part of your social media routine. Try to answer two to three questions a week and see how many new connections you will make for your business.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool and a great way to connect with decision makers. Make sure you are in the best position to promote yourself and your business online. Do you have any other LinkedIn secrets to promote a small business? For more tips on how start or grow your small business subscribe to Melinda Emerson’s blog http://www.succeedasyourownboss.com.

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4 Tips for Listening to Your Audience Online

By sss4success on May 24, 2011 in Grow Your Business, Social Media, Your Small Business

One of the first pieces of advice you’ll find about using social media for your small business is to “listen to your audience“. By creating a listening strategy you’ll find out what conversations are happening among your customers (or potential customers), before you dive in and try to become part of the conversation and ultimately sell your wares.

A good Social Media Marketing Strategy starts with an active monitoring and listening plan that helps you learn what’s going on in your industry, as well as what people have to say about your brand. It allows you to plan exactly how you’ll enter the conversation and what valuable content you’ll use to make yourself a valued asset and not just another person shouting about their brand in the already overcrowded social media space.

The following 4 tips will help you formulate a listening strategy to hear what your audience is saying and find out what you can bring to the conversation:

1. Use Google Alerts: Google Alerts lets you get email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on the topics of your choice, where you can choose your topic and have the results delivered via email or RSS feed at the time you specify. The great thing about Google Alerts is that you can set up multiple alerts for your name, company name, competitors’ names, and relevant keywords or search terms for your industry to keep up with the information that you need. This intelligence will be delivered to you regularly, instead of heading to a search engine and running queries yourself.

2. Try Social Mention: Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services. It’s like Google Alerts, but for social media platforms. It works similar to Google Alerts, where you can set it up and monitor your brand and competition in the social media space.

3. Search Twitter: With over 200,000,000 million users, tweeting 155,000,000 tweets a day, Twitter has become a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about topics you’re interested in. Searching Twitter is a great way to find out what people are talking about NOW, and using a Saved Twitter Search is the best way to monitor topics relevant to your brand and industry.

4. Create Surveys: Regularly polling your customers and prospects is a great way to find out what topics are of interest to them, and what kinds of products and services will meet their needs. Services like Survey Monkey make it easy to gather information from your customers first hand by asking them what you want to know. For the cash-strapped entrepreneur, Survey Monkey offers a basic plan that lets you have up to 100 responses on a 10-question survey, thus providing an excellent tool to learn more about your stakeholders.

Have you tried any other listening strategies that have brought you success in the online realm?

Kindra C. Cotton, Serial Entrepreneur, Technology & Social Media Specialist, and Jill of All Trades (and a Master of Two), channels her energies into her small business consulting enterprises specializing in brand marketing, market research, and strategic information consultancy. A transplanted Nashvillian with years of expertise with the Internet and web-based technologies, she channels her passion for entrepreneurship, information technology, and social media into being an excellent resource for online marketers and people looking to promote their brand on the web as Examiner.com’s National Online Marketing Examiner. Her flagship brand “SSS for Success (Small Business Survival Specialists)” specializes in preparing small and medium-sized organizations to take advantage of the free and low-cost marketing avenues that exist in the online arena.

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Ask @SmallBizLady: How do I get started with social media?

By Melinda Emerson on May 6, 2011 in Ask Smallbizlady, Your Small Business

Every Friday, I answer your small business questions in a video blog segment called Ask Small Biz Lady.

This week, we are taking on the question: How do I get started with social media?

Here’s the answer:

If you want to start using social media as a lead generator for your small business here’s 4 steps to take to get started:

Develop goals (how many prospects, subscribers, website hits, etc.)
Conduct a listening strategy (know where your customers are hanging out online)
Have a great website that solves your customer’s problem within 3 seconds!
Start using social media by setting up a personal profile on LinkedIn

If you have a question for Melinda Emerson, Small Biz Lady, leave a comment on this blog using the contact us page or send me a note on Twitter @smallbizlady, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/smallbizlady or you can hit me up on www.linkedin.com/in/melindaemerson

I’m always here as a resource.

Melinda F. Emerson, SmallBizLady, is one of America’s leading small business experts. She is an author, speaker, and small business coach whose areas of expertise include small business start-up, business development, and social media marketing. As CEO of MFE Consulting LLC, Melinda develops audio, video and written content to fulfill her mission to End Small Business Failure. She publishes a resource blog at: www.succeedasyourownboss.com and hosts a weekly talk show on Twitter called #SmallBizChat for emerging entrepreneurs. Forbes Magazine named Melinda Emerson one of the Top 20 Women for Entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. Melinda has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Fortune, and Black Enterprise. She’s the author of the bestselling book “Become Your Own Boss in 12 months: A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works”, and she writes a column for www.secondact.com and is an instructor for the Black Enterprise Small Business University.

P.S. Want an “I [heart] #SmallBizChat t-shirt? It’s available! for $20.00 plus s/h sizes M-L-XL-2X

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Social Media Customer Service: Don’t Fake It

By Melinda Emerson on February 8, 2011 in Customer Service, Guest Articles, Social Media

In recent years, social media has effectively taken everything that we know about customer service, and turned it upside-down. Online, there is no place for your company to hide. If you leave your customers unsatisfied, you are pretty much guaranteed to see a rant or rave about it on a social media network somewhere. Consumers are quick to embrace this power that they have received- the power of mass exposure. And this can leave you and your company feeling, well, massively exposed.

One of the most valuable things that you can do as a business owner today is to develop a specific and detailed social media customer relationship management program in order to foster a positive rapport with your customers. There are plenty of small business owners out there who stumble across negative threads about their business, and do not know how to conduct themselves in response, nor do they have a plan for how to handle this type of negative exposure. If nothing is said, the problem is guaranteed to escalate. If the business owner poses as a “fake” customer to post a contradicting positive comment, the falsehood almost always shines through. However, with a plan in place, you can quickly change a customer’s negative experience into a positive one without taking on a false identity.

Oftentimes, what fuels a customer’s discontent in the first place is a company’s lack of response. For example, if a customer writes to a shoe company that he bought a pair of leather shoes that disintegrated the first day he wore them, and receives no response, it is likely that he will post a negative thread about the company on a public forum. Noteworthy is the fact that the likely focus of his thread will be the simple lack of response and lack of customer care from the shoe company, not the lack of quality in the shoes. The relationship that your company establishes with a customer is equally as important, if not more, than the product itself.

When your social media team responds to a customer service issue, such as a negative comment posted on your Facebook page, you must have a specific plan in place. First, ensure that your company has access to each customer’s contact information. A designated customer service representative should contact this customer personally in order to assist him or her. A social media customer service representative should always leave the customer with his or her own email address and personal phone extension. While social media allows your company to be available and accessible to consumers, you should never doubt the power of personal one-on-one contact.

When aligning your social media customer relationship management plan, insure that your customer service representative will follow through appropriately with the customer. For example, if a replacement pair of leather shoes has been sent to the customer, the representative should call the customer back in 2 weeks to make sure this pair has not disintegrated. Insuring that the same CSR checks back with the customer is necessary. We have all had the experience of being transferred to 4 different reps on a customer service line before, and it’s an experience that leaves you steamy under the collar, isn’t it? Insuring that a customer is able to correspond with one dedicated representative allows him or her to establish a comfortable, trusted relationship with your company. Enable your customer to provide a satisfied testimonial once you have corrected the problem, and you will see that the level of attentiveness you have provided is reflected in the customer’s new feedback.

As you continue developing and refining your social media customer service methods, make sure that your plan evolves as social media evolves. For example, if you use Twitter as a forum for customer’s to post feedback to your company, how do you handle the fact that Twitter is always on? Will you designate customer response hours in your bio? Will you designate a CSR to Tweet when the CSRs will be offline for the day? Allow your methods to evolve and develop over time in order to provide the best customer service possible.

Debra Leitl is the Mentor in Residence at eMentormarketing.com. You can find her on twitter @MentorMarketing. Her specialty is interactive marketing with a focus on ecommerce and online marketing strategy.

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How To Build a Social Media Brand

By Melinda Emerson on October 18, 2010 in Branding & Marketing, Social Media

One of the topics I regularly speak about as I tour the country helping small business owners is how to build a social media brand. I am often inspired by questions I’m asked to write blog posts to further answer business questions. In this case, I realized that I have already written many articles on virtues of social media and how to get started. I decided to use today’s blog post to recap my favorite posts for getting started with building an online brand. The first step in building a social media brand is starting with a marketing plan. Then you need to figure out where your customers spend time online. From there, start slowly and figure out if LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook are the right social media network to launch your online footprint. Plus, if you think blogging should be a part of your strategy, I threw in a three part series on blogging for business.

How to Develop a Marketing Plan

http://succeedasyourownboss.com/09/2010/how-develop-a-marketing-plan-for-your-small-business/

Getting Started With LinkedIn

http://succeedasyourownboss.com/06/2010/getting-started-on-linkedin/

Getting Started With Twitter

http://succeedasyourownboss.com/06/2009/getting-started-on-twitter/

Using Facebook to Promote Your Small Business

http://succeedasyourownboss.com/10/2010/using-facebook-to-promote-your-small-business/

Blogging for Business Three Part Series

http://succeedasyourownboss.com/09/2009/how-to-build-a-small-business-blog/

http://succeedasyourownboss.com/09/2009/strategy-developing-a-blog-vs-website/

http://succeedasyourownboss.com/10/2009/10-ways-to-get-your-blog-to-shine/

I want to know — what’s your formula to build social media brand?

Melinda F. Emerson, known to many as Small Biz Lady (or on Twitter as @SmallBizLady) is one of America’s leading small business experts. As a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker, and small business coach, she develops audio, video and written content to fulfill her mission to end small business failure. As CEO of MFE Consulting LLC, Melinda educates entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies on subjects including small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. Forbes Magazine recently named her one of the Top 20 women for entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. She hosts #SmallBizChat Wednesdays on Twitter 8-9pm ET for emerging entrepreneurs. She also publishes a resource blog www.succeedasyourownboss.com. Melinda is also the author of the national bestseller Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works. (Adams Media 2010)

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Using Facebook to Promote your Small Business

By Melinda Emerson on October 13, 2010 in Q & A Interviews, SmallBizChat

I’m Melinda Emerson (AKA “Small Biz Lady”). Each week as @SmallBizLady, I conduct interviews with small business experts on my weekly Twitter talk show #SmallBizChat. This is excerpted from my #SmallBizChat interview with Paul Mosenson (@NuSparkMktg on Twitter). Paul is the founder of NuSPark Marketing, a team of independent experts from the Philadelphia area. He is a seasoned advertising vet of 25 years, experienced in B2B & consumer marketing; he is also adept at social media training, implementation, and measurement. Visit the website at: http://nusparkmarketing.com/

Smallbizlady: Should every small business have Fan page?

Paul Mosenson: No, not at all. It depends on a number of things; do you target consumers or other businesses? The jury is still out on b2b use although there are isolated cases of results. So assuming the business targets consumers, a couple of factors come to mind: a. Is your potential audience large enough to support the time and effort to maintain the fan page, and b. Do you have compelling, engaging content or offers that you can offer your audience exclusive from your website or other channels. I’m more likely to become a fan if you provide me with something of value, because remember, when I become a fan, my own friends will see that on my updates. In essence, you’re creating an alternative database of potential customers. And don’t forget to become a fan of your own page, so all your friends of your personal page take notice.

Smallbizlady: Something I think a lot of people do not understand: How should you suggest that people like your fan page?

Paul Mosenson: There are a number of methods to generate fans.

a. External marketing- advertising, direct mail, or other means where you can remind audiences to become fans of your page (and receive unique content or offers).

b. Other internet marketing; email newsletters, your website, even other social media channels. Make sure all methods include a link to the page.

c. On premises; promote the page on internal store signage and even direct requests.

d. Facebook itself. When you set up a fan page, you can advertise your page to connections and specific target audiences on Facebook. Promote offers or events

e. Create an engaging page. Take advantage of applications; upload photos and pictures- give people a reason to become a fan. Also create events. Post updates and useful articles on your wall

f. Suggest to Friends. You can suggest to your personal Facebook friends to become fans.

Smallbizlady: It is better to have a Facebook group than a fanpage? Or should you have both? What about new Groups Features?

Paul Mosenson: Typically a fan page is better for businesses. It opens up your targeting to anyone with an interest in your business. Fan pages can use multiple facebook apps. Content updates are shared with fans. And, you can advertise on Facebook to generate fans. Facebook groups are a little different. Figure groups are like clubs- they bring people together with a similar interest. You can only use a few basic applications. A business doesn’t really need a group; but a non-profit could, or a school, or a hobby. However, Facebook just changed how Groups work, so the jury is still out on the new FB Groups.

Smallbizlady: What are some general guidelines for Fan Page design?

Paul Mosenson: Generally speaking, you want to stay focused on the needs of a potential fan; every element should offer value. You want to keep your page clean; too many apps can be a distraction. You want to keep your content fresh. By providing fresh content, your customers return to your page often. A Fan Page should reflect your personality. It’s ok to have fun with it, but be professional at the same time. Of course, give fans an opportunity for feedback-whether it be posts, polls, surveys, or content.

Smallbizlady: How do you do Facebook advertising?

Paul Mosenson: Actually you have two options; pay-per-click OR cost-per-thousand impression pricing (CPM). At the bottom of a Facebook page there’s an advertising option where you click and go to the ad set-up screen. You write a headline, ad copy, and provide an image for what you are advertising. Then include a URL of a landing page you’d like your ad to link to. On a Fan page itself, you’ll also see a section where Facebook asks if you want to promote your page with an ad. So there are two types of ads here. You may promote your Fan Page specifically, or you may link people to your website instead.

Smallbizlady: How do I target who’s going to see my Facebook ads?

Paul Mosenson: Once your ad is done, you select targeting options, from age, gender, and education, to interests (by keyword), relationship status, and geography (usually you can select 10, 25, or 50-mile radius from cities, or choose state targeting. You can also target connections, or friends of connections. Once targeting is ready, you choose your daily budget and either a cost-per-click or CPM model. You can test various ads and targets for optimization. More information on creating and targeting an ad, go to my NuSpark Marketing YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/nusparkmktg.

Smallbizlady: Should you have a weekly or monthly budget for FB advertising? How much budget is reasonable to get results?

Paul Mosenson: Like Google, think about a daily budget. But your actual campaign budget will depend on what you’re promoting. If it’s a specific offer or event, you’ll spend short term. If it’s an ongoing message, you can advertise consistently. Like any advertising campaign, give it time to work- build the reach and frequency. Track trends and make revisions accordingly. I would give 1 month, but you should test various targets and ad creative

Smallbizlady: What are the steps for a successful campaign?

Paul Mosenson: First, define your audience. What are their needs? What kind of content are they looking for? Second, determine your goals and objectives. Is it lead generation, branding, customer service? Also, define who will be the administrator of the page in your organization. Who will be responsible for page updates and responding to customers? Third, Configure your page. Determine your Facebook landing page. It doesn’t have to be the Wall page. It could be another tab, or even a custom tab you create, like a special offer page. Then decide rules for comments and wall writing- will you allow customers to post content? Finally, create a compelling page, with good content, photos, videos, and appropriate apps.

Smallbizlady: What about Facebook Events?

Paul Mosenson: Facebook is a great way to promote any specific events that your business is having, whether it be a sale, open house, or a lecture. By clicking the event tab, it’s easy to set up the details. First, input general info such as name of event, date, time, location, you can even upload photos or videos. Then, there are options to share your event, exporting it to a calendar invite, RSVP options, Event type (open, closed, secret), and any other information. More information on creating an event can be found at my NuSpark Marketing YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/nusparkmktg

Smallbizlady: What are the most important metrics to track?

Paul Mosenson: Well, the first thing is to create a spreadsheet and start tracking your fan growth per day, as well as page views. Page views are a measure of engagement and shows how robust your page is with information. By clicking on the Facebook Insights section on your Wall page, you’ll see a number of variables to measure. Fan growth and page views are the most important as a start. By the way, although I keep using the term “fans”, what I am really measuring is “Likes” as Facebook altered the term a couple of months ago. People still use FANs as a term and so do I. By liking a page, you become a fan of it.

Smallbizlady: What else can you track on Facebook Insights?

Paul Mosenson: You can track two categories: Users and Interactions.Users give you data such as demographics of your fans, gender and age, and the activity of your fans-photo views, audio plays, and video plays. Interactions tells you the number of discussion posts, reviews, wall posts, videos uploaded, and overall trends on likes, comments, and unsubscribes. A healthy fan page has an active number of interactions happening each day. The important thing is to measure trends, and act accordingly whether you need to post new content, or evaluate existing content to make sure its relevant to audiences.

Smallbizlady: There are many Facebook APPs created by third party developers. How do I choose?

Paul Mosenson: Applications are powerful tools for marketers. They are a great way to dress up your Fan Page with some sizzle. Facebook apps for business range from creating simple RSS feeds, linking YouTube videos, to conducting surveys and even promoting contests and sweepstakes to the Networked Blogs app. A favorite app for contests is wildfireapp.com. Wildfire sets up your contest seamlessly, allowing users to upload their own essays, videos, etc for your company to judge and pick a winner. You can also promote coupons and special offers, and then promote those offers with ads. Custom tabs can also be created using FBML, or Facebook Markeup Language. HTML code can also be entered into these custom tabs so that you can display an ad, coupon, or even a webform for a newsletter signup. It’s all about engagement. More information on finding apps can be found at my NuSpark Marketing YouTube page: go to http://www.youtube.com/user/nusparkmktg

Questions that will be in the Q&A blog post, but not in the Twitter interview

Smallbizlady: How do you use privacy settings to separate personal and business contacts?

Paul Mosenson: More intricacy here. First privacy affects friends (of personal pages) and not fans (of fan pages). First, from your friends list, click on friends, and you’ll see a button called Create a List. Call it “business contacts” Then select which friends are business contacts and add them to the new list. Next, go to your privacy settings page and click the blue “customize settings” link. From there you’ll see a number of categories that you can share with various sets of people. To the right of each category click the drop-down menu and choose “customize” again. From there, you can choose the unique list “business contacts” if there are certain Facebook posts and info you wish to hide from business contacts. Again, seeing how to do this is more effective to understand.

Smallbizlady: If you have Google Analytics installed on your website, can Facebook be tracked?

Paul Mosenson: Certainly, any kind of digital marketing needs to be tracked with certain engagement goals, whether it be a purchase, or an action such as a newsletter sign-up or request for quote. These goals can be tracked by setting up goals through your Google Analytics account. Then, for every link you have on your Facebook page or Facebook ad, use a URL shortener like http://bit.ly, and further, you can create a custom tag that can include such variables as campaign name, media type, and offer. Once created, you can analyze your Google Analytics and measure how Facebook users engage in your site compared to other media or social media sources. More information on tracking Facebook ads with custom URL tags can be found at my NuSpark Marketing YouTube page go to http://www.youtube.com/user/nusparkmktg.

Smallbizlady: Any last tips like How do you import your blog into facebook?

Paul Mosenson: It’s a little intricate, but two ways:

When you setup for your fan page, view the tabs at the top of your fan page. Click on the little right-facing arrow and go to the “notes” icon and add the notes tab. Once there, click on “add a new note” But instead of writing a note, you’ll see a section at the bottom left if the screen, saying “edit import settings” and here you can add your blog feed or blog URL. The Notes page will populate your last few blogs until you publish a new one. Other people use an application called NetworkedBlogs, but that’s a third party app. SocialRSS, another popular app, works as well to integrate your blog. When possible, it’s always best to use a tool directly from Facebook. More information on importing a blog my NuSpark Marketing YouTube Channel-http://www.youtube.com/user/nusparkmktg

If you found this interview helpful, join us on Wednesdays 8-9pm ET follow @SmallBizChat on Twitter.