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Facebook Personal Profiles vs. Fan Pages

By "Professor" Benjamin · Comments (0)

Monday, October 5th, 2009

There are two primary ways you can have a presence on Facebook as a user: You can have a personal profile (what the vast majority of Facebook users have) or a fan page, which is more of a business- and personality-oriented page. We’ll explore the difference and help you make the most of Facebook.

Personal Profile
As you might expect, the personal profile on Facebook is primarily for personal interactions. In fact, Facebook frowns on creating personal profiles for businesses, nonprofits and brands (that’s what Fan Pages and Groups are for).

But there are clearly benefits to setting up and using a personal profile on Facebook for your business. One of the primary benefits is networking. Making your business known to your family, friends and colleagues is a no-brainer. Of course you’ll need to be careful: Most people don’t see Facebook as a business networking site (that’s what LinkedIn is for) and will be turned off by aggressive networking. But you should definitely list your business under ‘Work Experience’ and should feel free to mention your business and relevant opportunities in your status updates, notes, photos, videos, etc. You don’t want to overdo it, but if your business is part of who you are, it makes sense to share it on a personal level.

Fan Pages
Facebook offers fan pages for a “celebrity, band or business”—basically any entity that’s not a single person (businesses, nonprofits, websites, bands, sports teams, etc.) as well as personalities that are larger than life. How do you know if you’re larger than life? If you’ll have more than 5,000 friends (or “fans”) then you’ll want a fan page (personal profiles are capped at 5,000 friends).

This is really where most businesses will want to pour their time and effort. Fan pages are set up very much like personal profiles except the basic information is different—and varies depending on what category you select (restaurants can list hours, parking and nearby public transportation; websites cannot). As an added benefit, fan pages have a few extra communication tools, including the ability to update all your fans with targeted messages.

Now you know the difference between personal profiles and fan pages and you know where to invest your time for your business. Next time we’ll cover how to make a fan page work for your business.

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Categories : Social Media

Tags : Facebook

What is Facebook and Why Should I Care?

By "Professor" Benjamin · Comments (0)

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Facebook is the social networking giant of the day. They currently boast more than 300 million active users. The numbers that kind of userbase generates are staggering. And with everything you can actually do on Facebook—from the basics like chatting and sharing photos to more complex interactions like playing Scrabble with strangers or recruiting people to donate to your favorite charity—it’s no wonder people spend more time on Facebook than any other site on the web.

More than anything, Facebook is a platform to interact with people. It was originally built as a basic social networking site for college students and its primarily purpose is still connecting people. But now it’s a lot more than reconnecting with long lost high school friends and trading comments back and forth.

Much like Twitter, the Facebook experience centers around status updates that your friends see in a constantly updating stream of activity. This stream of updates is important, because it’s the best way for businesses to tap into Facebook. But unlike Twitter, Facebook goes far beyond simple status updates. You can share photos, videos, links and blog posts (or “notes” as Facebook calls them). You can invite friends to events, form groups, post classified ads—even give digital gifts. You can also explore an ever-growing collection of applications that extend the functionality of Facebook and let you do things like catalogue and share your library or rank and review your favorite movies. You can also connect with businesses, celebrities and causes through fan pages that are effectively profiles for non-people and larger than life people.

Why Care?
You need to care about Facebook because that’s where the people are. As much as Twitter is grabbing the headlines, the sheer number of people on Facebook is an order of magnitude higher. A recent MPR article noted that Best Buy had 10,000 followers on Twitter, but 830,000 on Facebook. If you want to connect with people, Facebook is the place to do it.

Signing Up
Getting started on Facebok is pretty simple. Visit the homepage and sign up to create your profile. There is a link to “create a page for a celebrity, band or business,” but if you don’t already have a personal profile Facebook will make you create a profile before you can finish setting up a page. So you might as well set up your personal profile first.

Once your personal profile is set up you can add all sorts of extra information, including your profile picture, membership in various networks, work experience, political views, religious views, family members and more. It can definitely veer into too much information territory, so be sure to think twice about what information you share. You can also check the privacy settings and to adjust what information you’re sharing with strangers (under Settings: Privacy). As you add friends the e-mail notification can be a bit overwhelming, so you might want to dial back the e-mail notifications now (under Settings: Notifications).

In future posts we’ll cover how you can make the most of Facebook for your business.

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Categories : Social Media

Tags : Facebook

Making Twitter Easier

By "Professor" Benjamin · Comments (0)

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

There are a number of extras, tools and third party applications that can make Twitter a lot easier. The value of each one is going to depend on your own needs and preferences. Maybe you get everything you want at Twitter.com, but if not there are other options.

Shortening Links
Putting useful links in your tweets is always a good idea, but that pesky 140-character limit can cause problems. Twitter.com will often automatically shorten your URLs, but that doesn’t always help you cram as many characters into your tweets as possible. There are a number of URL shortening services out there, including Tinyurl, is.gd, bit.ly, ow.ly and more. Some simply shorten your links, but others will also provide stats and tracking.

Photos & Video
A lot of folks also share photos and video from their cellphone and post them directly to Twitter using tools like Twitpic, Twitvid, Yfrog and Posterous. They make Twitter on the go a much more visual experience.

Third Party Apps
There are a number of third party applications that let you take Twitter out of the web. Some of these are desktop programs and others are for mobile devices. Either way, there’s a slew of them and they’re constantly being updated and improved with various features. A quick sampling includes HootSuite (web based, multiple accounts and scheduled tweets), Tweetie (multiple accounts for Mac), TweetDeck (good organization with groups), CoTweet (great for shared accounts) and Tweetchat (for hashtag chats). Twitter lists even more on their site. You’ll likely need to experiment and figure out which set of features serves your style the best.

Stats
It’s always helpful to have some metrics. TweetStats offers helpful graphs of your Twitter usage like tweets per month, day and hour. TwitterCounter has graphs of your followers and tweets over time.

Just for Fun
Twibbon lets you create and add ribbons to your Twitter avatar to support various causes. You can jump on a pre-existing bandwagon or create your own. Some are serious (Alex’s Lemonade Stand) and some are ridiculous (International Bacon Day. You can also have fun with Twitter by jumping on various trends, like Follow Friday or Music Monday.

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Categories : Social Media

Tags : services, Twitter, utilities

What Should I Tweet?

By "Professor" Benjamin · Comments (0)

Monday, September 21st, 2009

OK, you’ve got your head around Twitter (not really, but sorta), you’ve signed up and you’ve found a few folks to follow. It’s time to start tweeting. So now the big question: What should I tweet?

The obvious answer is whatever you want. But if you’re tweeting for your business then you clearly need to be more intentional than that. You need a good strategy.

What Do You Want to Accomplish on Twitter?
Are you trying to address customer service complaints or are you hoping to bring in new customers? Maybe you just want to set yourself up as an expert in your field and start making contacts. Any of these goals will give you your strategy:

If you’re tweeting to resolve customer complaints, you better start listening and tweeting helpful tips.
If you’re hoping to bring in new customers maybe you’ll tweet coupons, brag about your chef or highlight new features.
If you want to positioning yourself as an expert and make contacts, then you’ll post interesting and helpful links, share advice, and listen and respond to others in your field.

General Tips
In some sense you just need to dive into Twitter and see what works. Pay attention to what people respond to and do more of it. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Not everything has to be about your business. If something is interesting, share it. If it’s funny, share it. If it makes you cry, share it. You can take that too far, but a little personality goes a long way.
Offer real value—you should be providing something people can’t get anywhere else. Don’t just tweet your blog posts—give us something more: deals, extra links, behind the scenes scoops, photos, funny stories, etc.
Twitter is about relationships. The hard sell doesn’t work any better here. It’s fine to push your wares, but avoid the appearance of a spammer: Don’t cram every tweet with links to your stuff, don’t repost the same thing over and over, don’t @reply or direct message people with unrelated information. It’s not all about you. Show some interest in other people. Consider introducing yourself and telling them what you like about their tweets.
Ask questions. Especially as you gain more followers you’ll find that people respond. Ask what people like about your business, what they’re looking for, what they care about.
Give credit where credit is due. Many of your links, resources and interesting finds were found somewhere, so give them some credit. It’s not only common courtesy, it’s ethical and gives people a source to track down further information.
Twitter doesn’t have to be just text. You can link to photos or videos. A number of sites like Twitpic will let you post a photo from your cell phone and tweet about it.
Whatever you do, don’t Twitter something you wouldn’t want the entire world to know. Anything you tweet better be public knowledge. If there’s a certain someone you hope won’t read what you’re posting, then don’t post it.

In the end, have fun. Twitter is a pretty laid-back communications avenue, so if you’re stressing over it you’re not doing it right.

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Categories : Content, Social Media

Tags : Twitter

Getting Started on Twitter

By "Professor" Benjamin · Comments (0)

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Last time we mentioned that the best way to figure out Twitter is to just dive in and get started. So let’s do it.

Sign Up
The first step is to sign up. The sign up process is basic enough, but take your time when it comes to picking your username. This will be both your Twitter URL (http://www.twitter.com/username) and your Twitter handle (@username)—the name you’ll be known by on Twitter. It’s what people will use to respond to you or to refer to you. It should be as short as possible, but it also needs to be memorable and descriptive. Yeah, that’s a tall order. You can change your username later if you come up with something better, but just like changing a URL you’ll risk breaking links to your feed and losing any inbound links.

Fill Out Your Profile
The next step is to flesh out your profile so people know who you are. These can be found under ‘Settings’ in the ‘Account,’ ‘Picture’ and ‘Design’ tabs.

More Info URL: Your website goes here. Don’t tell me you don’t have a website.
One Line Bio: Here you have 160 characters to tell people what this Twitter account is all about. Use them wisely.
Location: Add even more personality by giving your specific location. You are a real business, not just some ephemeral entity somewhere in cyberspace. Listing your location can also be helpful because many third party sites will aggregate this data and list Twitter accounts by locale.
Picture: This is the icon people will see next to your tweets. It’s how you’ll be visually identified, so you want something recognizable. If this is your business a logo is a good choice, but it does have the downside of being impersonal. Whatever you choose it needs to be recognizable even at a tiny size.
Design: You also have the option of changing how your Twitter page appears. This isn’t incredibly important since people will likely only see your Twitter page when they decide to follow you (even then, they don’t have to visit your page). But it is a chance to reinforce your branding. You can create something custom (do it yourself, hire someone or turn to a free custom site) or you can turn to any number of Twitter background sites. If you need a little inspiration you can check out the Twitter Backgrounds Gallery.

All of these steps to flesh out your profile are completely optional, but if you’re serious about Twitter they shouldn’t be. A custom design isn’t a necessity, but if you leave your bio blank or go with the default picture many people won’t give you the time of day. That’s equated with laziness or spammers. So take the time to fill it out and give yourself some easy legitimacy.

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Categories : Social Media

Tags : Twitter

What’s Twitter and Why Should I Care?

By "Professor" Benjamin · Comments (0)

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Twitter is a free micro-blogging service where people share 140-character updates about whatever they want and follow other people and their minimalist text entries.

If you’re scratching your head right now, don’t worry. Twitter is a bit of a head scratcher. Most people don’t get it at first and it usually requires taking Twitter for a spin to discover its appeal.

Get Social
When you set up your account and post your first tweet (yes, Twitter has its own vocabulary) it’s rather anti-climactic. But that’s because Twitter is a social application and when you first log on you probably don’t have much of a network with which to socialize.

You “follow” other people on Twitter to have their updates delivered to you, and vice-versa. So instead of just talking to yourself, you have a whole stream of updates coming in from your friends and acquaintances.

You can also interact with this stream of updates by replying (public) or sending direct messages (private). Conversations quickly develop and networking is happening.

Anytime, Anywhere
One feature of Twitter that’s helped it spread is that it’s so ubiquitous. Despite what you might think looking at Twitter.com, you don’t have to sit at your desk and visit the website to post tweets. Twitter ties into the text messaging world, so you can send and receive tweets on your cell phone. You can also tie Twitter into Facebook or status updates on other social networking sites. There are also a number of desktop applications that plug into Twitter, allowing you to post updates without ever visiting the site. Your status updates can also be streamed onto a website, so your content isn’t limited to people on Twitter.

Suddenly Twitter is no longer just geeks tied to their computers. The world is at your fingertips—well 140-characters at a time anyway.

So What’s the Big Deal?
The reason Twitter matters is because people are using it. Go where the people are. It also happens to be a low-barrier way to communicate. It requires minimal investment: no website to set up, no money to pay and you can’t even type more than 140 characters. There are few marketing avenues you can try that have such a low barrier to entry. What do you have to lose?

And with Twitter’s 6-10 million users and roughly 20 million unique visitors each month, you have a lot to gain.

Sure celebrities are using Twitter to gossip, geeks are posting pictures and sleazy marketers are spamming people, but there are also businesses making good. Comcast is trying to save its customer service, Ford is reaching out, a Twin Cities pizza shop is offering coupons, a cupcake truck in Connecticut is reaching customers. These businesses care about Twitter and it’s working for them. (Twitter even has a getting started guide for businesses.)

You should care about Twitter because it’s an easy way to communicate with your customers. Sending a coupon or answering a question is as easy as pulling out your phone and sending a text message.

Check it out and give it a try. What can you do with 140 characters?

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Categories : Social Media

Tags : Twitter

Small Businesses on Twitter

By "Professor" Benjamin · Comments (0)

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Everyone from Oprah to Ashton Kutcher is hopping on the micro-blogging service Twitter. Basically it’s a free platform for sharing 140-character snippets of text that can easily be read online, posted on websites and pushed to mobile devices. Small businesses are turning into a creative marketing tool. The New York Times recently profiled how small businesses are using Twitter, including a crème brûlée cart (sounds like a certain cupcake truck we talked about before) a sushi restaurant, a liquor store, a bed and breakfast, and an antique shop:

“We think of these social media tools as being in the realm of the sophisticated, multiplatform marketers like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, but a lot of these supersmall businesses are gravitating toward them because they are accessible, free and very simple,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst who studies the Internet’s influence on shopping and local businesses.

The Boston Globe recently featured restaurants that are taking advantage of Twitter, using it to post daily specials and offer freebies:

“You could be a pizza guy at a greasy spoon sending text messages from a three-year-old cellphone,’’ [Aaron] Cohen said. “You don’t need technology to be spreading your message on Twitter. It’s very utilitarian.’’

Twitter is even offering its own guide to help businesses figure out how to best use Twitter.

While some of these articles claim Twitter is easier than setting up a website (it can be), they also claim you don’t need a website. That’s one point we disagree with. A website is your online home, offering clarity, longevity and search engine traffic.

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Categories : Social Media, Website Benefits

Tags : Twitter