These days, many people are beginning to understand the potential use of social media to create event buzz. Whether the occasion is large or small, it can be enhanced tremendously through online communication.

With the popularity of social media, everything is different now. Social media allows planners and the organizations sponsoring the events the opportunity to have long-term interactions with the attendees well in advance.

Events have become much more exciting and part of that excitement is the anticipation or buzz that starts to build around the event long before it ever takes place. There are many ways to create buzz, and several of them will be discussed here.

• Intrigue your attendees: The vast majority of events have a website. However, not very many take advantage of the event management opportunities and free listings that are available to them. At the very least, you should have event pages on your website:
  • Facebook events
  • LinkedIn
  • Eventbrite.com – Eventbrite allows you to sell tickets, if that is something that you want to do
  • Meetup.com
  • Upcoming.yahoo.com

  Granted, it is a little more work to watch over all of the pages, however, it will be well worth it for you and the people who are going to your website. Additionally, another distinct advantage is that the search engines will recognize the pages and rank them.
   

• Engage your attendees: You should reach out to your potential attendees very early on. A good way to effectively accomplish this is by sending out a survey and asking for their opinions on a venue that you are considering choosing for the event, speakers that you are thinking about inviting, etc. Another way that you might want to engage your potential attendees is by asking their opinions on content topics. After you have been able to gather several topics for the content, you can ask your potential attendees to vote on the topics.
   
• Inform your attendees: It is a good idea to allow your attendees to vote on certain aspects of your event. It is a great deal more efficient and “green” than using a lot of paper. Another type of document that you can offer online is the program evaluation. There is no need to put that on paper.
   
• Integrate information: Once you are on site, you will have a wonderful opportunity to leverage social media in a really big way. The impact will be huge and people will start to buzz about what you are doing. You will need a hashtag for your event so that people who will be attending can monitor the event on Twitter. The shorter the hashtag the better. After that, you should tweet about your event, which will start to get your attendees excited and really motivated.
   
• Syndicate: You should take all of the content from the event and syndicate it as much as possible. Your ultimate goal is to entice people who did not attend your event to want to come to the next event, based on reading your content. Of course, you also want to get those people who did attend to come back next time. You can syndicate all of the event presentations as well as giving Twitter transcripts to all of the event attendees. You can also post the content on your event pages (which were discussed earlier on).
   
• Propagate: It is a great idea to take photos of your event (or have someone else take them) and upload and share them with people who were not able to attend the event. As an incentive, you can offer a prize for the best photo taken. You can also do a podcast after the event has finished and interviews of the speakers, attendees and sponsors. You should try to learn from the event to improve future events and connect with even more people as well as interacting with people who had questions for you.
   
• Blogs: Get bloggers to blog about your event and you can syndicate their blogs using a blog widget.

Conclusion

There are so many ways to create buzz about your event. The harder you work on letting people know what you will be offering and how you can involve them in some of the decisions that will go into making the event interesting, exciting, and buzz-worthy, the more positive their reactions will be and the more attendees you will gather.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Many people try to avoid using Facebook to market their business. They don’t really know enough about Facebook and how effective it can be for marketing purposes. Some of the more popular myths will be dispelled here.

If you are looking for a great way to really increase your visibility and reputation online, Facebook is an excellent way to do it. It has a phenomenal number of users and they are growing in number all of the time. When you think about that in terms of growing your business, it makes no sense whatsoever for you not to get involved (as a business person) with Facebook.

The following are some of the myths that people have bought into about Facebook.

• Only kids use Facebook: Many people believe that Facebook has no benefits for business because the largest part of its demographic is young. That has actually started to change. The older demographic (35+) of Facebook has grown dramatically and is still increasing to this day.
   
• You are too old for Facebook: At the other end of the spectrum from the myth above, in addition to the demographic now being older, age has very little to do with your successful use of Facebook. All that really matters is that you have something to say that is valuable and interesting to other people with whom you connect online. If anything, older age can be an advantage because with age comes wisdom and insight.
   
• Using Facebook is too time-consuming: Regarding the amount of time that is necessary to make Facebook work for your business, it all depends on how you manage your time.

  If you put yourself on a structured schedule and you really are committed to sticking to that schedule, the amount of time that you devote to Facebook does not have to be overwhelming and all consuming. The benefits that you will receive from spending the time and effort far outweigh any disadvantages that you can think of.

  In order to get the most out of your Facebook time, it is best to have a strategy in mind before you even start. Ask yourself what your strategy is and which goals you hope to achieve by interacting with people on Facebook. It is very important to have a clear understanding of why you are actually using Facebook to interact.
   

• All you need is Facebook to get clients: We all wish that this were true. However, it usually takes more effort than that to build up your business and acquire new clients. Unfortunately, many people believe this myth and are so disappointed when it doesn’t happen that way that they totally give up on Facebook after that. Facebook should be a part of your overall marketing strategy. It cannot be the entire strategy. Facebook is a great way to demonstrate your credibility and expertise. As you start to build relationships through Facebook, people will come to trust you and to turn to you for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems because they will consider you to be the expert.
   
• If you have a personal profile on Facebook, you don’t need anything else: This is a myth that many people accept as the truth. You should have a personal Facebook page that includes friends and family and a Facebook Fan Page that you use solely for business purposes. It is very important to separate the two. You certainly don’t want your business associates to know about the details of your life that is personal in nature.

  Facebook fan pages are public whereas Facebook pages are private. Because fan pages are public, the search engines can detect them and can rank them accordingly. You can also use your fan page to spread the word (virally) about your business offerings and your brand.

Tips to help you to get a lot out of Facebook without putting a lot into it

• Turn off most of your alerts: Based on your schedule, your goal is to spend a specific (and relatively short) amount of time on Facebook. If you leave all of your alerts on and you receive frequent notifications that tell you when someone has reached out to you, you will become very distracted and you will end up spending more time on Facebook (most likely for non-business purposes) than you should or than you intended.
   
• Ignore meaningless applications: Facebook has a great deal of applications that are fun but that serve no purpose for you when it comes to business. It is different if you want to get involved with them in your “play” time.
   
• Update your status on a regular basis: You should choose regular intervals to update your status and if something significant changes in your status in between those intervals, you should update it as it happens also.
   
• Peruse your newsfeeds: You should pay regular attention to your news feeds, which consist of the status updates of your Facebook connections, and if something is of interest to you, either share it with others or make a comment on it.
   
• Respond quickly: If someone has placed a comment on your wall, respond in kind with a comment of your own. You should respond as quickly as you can.
   
• Announce your events: If you are involved with an event, share the information with other people. You should try to get as many people as possible involved.
   
• Share your blog: Use the NetworkedBlogs or Notes application to import your blog postings, which will subsequently in your Facebook fans news feeds.

What do you do next?

• Continually update your page with fresh content: An effective way to accomplish this is by posting blog articles on a very regular basis.
   
• Pose questions that require answers from other people: It is very important to engage your readers as much as possible. The more engaged you make them; the more discussions will be generated.
   
• Be good to your fans: Allow your fans to take advantage of your business offerings, including special promotions, events and free giveaways.
   
• Communicate: Let your fans know what you are up to in your business and allow them to interact with you regularly.

Conclusion

After reading this article, you have hopefully been convinced that what you might have been feeling and what you believed about Facebook for business are not true. You can use Facebook for your business and all that it has to offer. So, jump right in and start connecting.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Facebook has many uses, some personal and some professional. When it comes to using Facebook for professional purposes, it should definitely be one of the social media channels that is instrumental in helping you to achieve your business goals.

Social media serves as a tool that helps you as a business person to get your word out to many people at once. Although Facebook was not originally intended as a professional tool, it certainly can be used effectively as a business tool and is definitely worth the investment of time and resources that you will have to make in order to communicate your offerings, whether they are products or services.

Facebook, as well as other online social networks, allow people to share valuable information and it encourages those people to stay informed of what is going on in their social media communities. Their social network may be composed of personal relationships or professional relationships.

If you use Facebook as a professional tool, the rules of behavior will be different than if you are using it as a personal tool. Because of the fact that so many people visit Facebook on an extremely regular basis, you would be remiss if you didn’t include it in your online marketing strategy. When considering the people with whom you share professional relationships through Facebook, remember to always consider their needs and help them to solve their problems, as is the case with all of your online relationships. Also, try to discuss topics that you feel will be of interest to them.

The following are simple, yet effective steps for using Facebook for professional purposes:

• Your branding: If you want to leave a lasting impression on your readers, you need to have a clever marketing campaign. Your goal is to stand out from the rest. There are several ways to accomplish this.
  • Uploading your graphic image: It is important to upload a good-quality photograph of you so that people can see what you look like. If they can see you, they will be able to relate to you more easily and will eventually be more inclined to do business with you.
  • Writing a biographical sketch that pops: You need a biographical sketch that describes who you are and what you are doing in a compelling manner. Remember that you have very little time to capture the attention of your readers so you better make it good.
  • Make your Facebook profile as detailed and interesting as possible: It is acceptable to mix some personal and professional details on your Facebook profile. You need to make sure that you seem human so that your readers really feel that they can relate to you on a personal level.
• Creating content: Facebook provides you with a golden opportunity to share information about your business and about you as you relate to your business. By taking advantage of this, you will be positioning yourself as an industry leader and a subject matter expert.
• Networking: Facebook is an excellent social media channel for networking. You should network as much as possible with people who share your professional interests and goals. You need to identify and get to know the leaders in your industry. Make sure that when you are committing yourself to using Facebook for business, you don’t get distracted by the personal aspect of Facebook, which is very easy to do.

Whether to use Facebook or another social network

When you are in the process of making the decision of whether to use Facebook for business, you need to make sure that people with whom you will be connecting professionally are people who can help you to get more business. You may be considering doing business directly with your Facebook connections by selling them your products and/or services or indirectly by using your Facebook connections to increase awareness of your brand or getting feedback on the products and/or services that you offer.

There are also other social networks that can be used for professional purposes, of course. You might ask how those other social networks compare with Facebook and whether using only one social network versus several social networks is enough for the success of your business or if you should be syndicating your content across multiple social media channels.

Facebook features

Facebook is used by older age groups, from people in their early 20s and all the way up. People spend a great deal of time on Facebook, time that they choose to spend there instead of on other sites on the Internet. Facebook has very little competition in that regard. The only possible competition is from MySpace, which attracts younger users and emphasizes music and videos and has more of a pop culture. Facebook is a social media network where people share life events, photographs, and establish new relationships as well as maintaining and strengthening already existing relationships. MySpace; however, is not used for professional purposes.

Facebook Fan Pages are an appropriate and effective way to use Facebook for business. With Fan Pages, people don’t need to wait to be accepted by the person who owns the Fan Page. They can immediately become a Fan.

Facebook Fan Pages allow you to interact with other people, which is why they are an effective way to build professional relationships. Not only will you be building professional relationships but you also have the potential to increase your business. Just remember not to inundate your Fans with too many promotions and hard sells. You certainly don’t want them to feel that you are spamming them.

Conclusion

If you ask yourself whether Facebook is good for business, the answer is definitely yes. However, it is very important to separate your business relationships from your person relationships on Facebook. Facebook will prove to be a wonderful marketing tool that will make a large contribution to the ultimate success of your business.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

All of your social media sites work a little differently. You may wonder how often you should update your status on the various social media channels of which you are a part.

Some of the more popular social media sites will be discussed here and if you follow the recommendations, you will start to see some positive results when it comes to your business connections on social media.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a status update function that a large number of people were not sure how to use or what purpose it actually served. Currently, LinkedIn is integrated with Twitter. A large number of LinkedIn members are also on Facebook and those people have a large number of ideas about how they want to update their LinkedIn status. Because of the fact that LinkedIn does not work in the same manner as Twitter as far as timing is concerned or like Facebook’s News Feed, it is not really advantageous to post information on LinkedIn more than once a day. Also, if you really don’t have any significant status change (or an update that ties into your objective) to post on LinkedIn on any given day, don’t worry about it. You should also be mindful of the fact that people are not going to want you to send frequent status updates too much. If you do, they may consider what you are sharing with them as spam. One very important fact to remember is that LinkedIn is a site for professionals and you need to make absolutely certain that what you are posting on LinkedIn is appropriate for everyone.

Facebook

There are numerous people on Facebook who want to take up space on your New Feed and if you don’t post often enough, you won’t get noticed. Posting once a day on Facebook is totally appropriate and the nature of the content that people post is more personal on Facebook than it is on LinkedIn. When it comes to frequency, Facebook is not Twitter, of course. Once a day is fine but every half hour or every hour would definitely be too much. With that said, you may have times when you want to update your status on Facebook more often than once a day, depending on how much you need to communicate and how much is going on in your business. Always be sure that you post content that is relevant to your readers and that they will find interesting and useful. The more useful the information, the more often they will return to your website.

Twitter

It is completely appropriate for you to tweet as many times a day as you wish. However, you need to be selective about what you convey in your tweets. If you are followed on Twitter by some business colleagues, you may not want them to know that you just ate the most delicious candy bar ever or that you just came back from getting a pedicure.

Blogging

You should blog as often as is humanly possible. You should shoot for your minimum blogging frequency of once a week, although more often is better. It is very important to be consistent with your postings when it comes to blogging. The best thing to do is to have the same frequency, same day of the week and same time of the day each week. Remember that you can never blog enough. It would be amazing if you could blog daily, although it might be difficult to find the time to do that. Each time you post a new blog, the search engines will visit your blog. The more content you post, the more the search engines will pay attention to you. Also, if you don’t continue to post fresh content, people will lose interest in your content and stop coming to read what you have on your website.

Conclusion

Fresh content generation and syndication are the keys to using social media to its fullest potential for your business. Content that is static does not have a very positive effect on your readers or on your business. However, content that is updated frequently and always appears fresh and new has a very positive effect on your readers. The more frequently you share valuable content that is interesting and helpful to other people, the more they will want to read what you are saying and the more they will trust you and find you credible.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

You are connected with a large number of people online. Of that large number, there are several whom you have never met face to face. Is that enough for you and for them?

Why a photograph online is so important

Having a business relationship with someone whom you have never seen in person is very different than having business relationships with people with whom you have telephone relationships. You don’t need to see them because you interact with another human quality—voice. In the social media world, connecting a face with a name (as well as whatever else you learn about the person) is essential for the success of your business.

With the ever-increasing popularity of social networking and social media sites, there are more and more people who don’t complete their profiles and who don’t understand how important it is in business for them to share more of themselves than just a name, where they went to school and where they are currently working. A little education goes a long way in this situation.

Not only are the details of your various profiles important to other people with whom you share a business relationship but your photo is also of utmost importance. You don’t display your photo as part of your social media profiles because of how good looking you are, you display your photo so that others are able to relate to you on a more human level. That is an essential part of developing and deepening your relationships with them.

Giving the entire picture

Your photo gives others a comprehensive and complete profile of you. When people have relationships with others online, they want to be able to see who is engaging them. This builds a deeper trust in the relationship, it builds more credibility and, perhaps most importantly, it makes you more human to them. The foundation of social media is engagement, valuable conversations and exchange of information and trust.

You should use the same photo in all of your online profiles because this will create stronger branding for you and your business and people will start to remember your photo and connect it with what you are offering.

With that in mind, it is very easy to see why a photo of you is so critical when it comes to interacting with other people online. Another very important thing to remember is to use your own photo and name in your online profiles. It is not a good idea to use your company name, company logo, or other impersonal images. You are trying to bring in the human factor, not remove it.

Your company brand is extremely important but in your business relationships with other business people online, people want to interact with you, the person, not your company, even though you represent your company and brand. If you make your profile personal, it will help to build the credibility of your business as well.

How to choose a photograph

You might ask how you should choose your photo. When it comes to actually choosing your photo, you should use a close-up shot or head shot. That way, you will also be recognizable in a thumbnail version of the photograph. Your photo should be professional looking (no silly faces, etc). Remember to choose a professional photo for a professional profile.

If you have a photo that you would like to display but it might need some updating, Photoshop is an excellent tool. It will enable you to make your photo as perfect as possible in your eyes. The end result will be that you will have a photo that you have been able to update and one that you will be proud to display to everyone online.

Conclusion

Your online presence is made up of many components. Some of them are connected to your “voice” and some of them are connected to your “image.” Since the main goal and the heart of your online relationships in social media has an extremely human basis, having a photograph that allows others to see you as well as to hear you rounds out the relationship. People are not interested in doing business with corporations. They want to do business with people. The relationships will always be on a one-to-one basis.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

“Blessed is the influence of one true, loving soul over another.”—George Eliot. When it comes to accepting friends and connections for your business through social media, discrimination is critical.

What do you do when people invite you to connect with them on LinkedIn or invite you to become a fan on Facebook? Do you accept any and all invitations that you receive just to gather large numbers of people in your online communities or do you only accept invitations from people with whom you have a genuine and solid connection?

This is a highly controversial issue and one that deserves a great deal of discussion and examination. The viewpoint that is discussed in this article is that of CompuKol Communications. The viewpoints of others will be presented here as well in order to show fair balance.

Many social media channels, including LinkedIn, for example, advise that you only accept invitations when you know the inviter and want them to be a part of your network. You should accept invitations when you

• Want to stay connected to the person inviting you.
• Find the inviter credible and trustworthy.
• Have had some direct connection with the inviter.
• Are very well acquainted with the inviter’s work and feel that there is a potential to work together in some capacity.

If you don’t really know the inviter, you should either ask him or her for more information about why he or she wants to connect with you or ignore the invitation altogether.

Quantity without quality, especially when it comes to your business, does not have a great deal of value. There is no point in gathering people if you will never have any sort of relationship with them on an ongoing basis after the initial connection. You should be connected with people only if those connections bring value to both sides.

Relationships are the foundation of the success of your business. Before anyone will do business with you, they must get to know you as a business person, learn that they can trust you and find your credibility to be rock solid. On your side, if you want a meaningful relationship with others, you must consistently strive to fulfill their needs and provide them with valuable information that will help them to solve their problems.

Your online network is very important to you and your business. You need to make sure that you never do or say anything that will jeopardize the strength of your network and how you treat those people who are a part of that network. You have worked long and hard to build and maintain relationships. The last thing that you want to do is cause them to disappear.

On the other side, there are many people who are willing to accept everyone who requests that they become an online connection. There are many people who feel that merely by the fact that you are connected to social media channels, you have the capability of creating a global network on a scale that wasn’t possible 5 years ago.

Sometimes those people will try to get to know others with whom they have not had any face-to-face interaction through forums, Email and social media channels that they share. The opinion there is that if you don’t connect because you don’t know those people personally, you are defeating the purpose of social media sites in general.

There is a third school of thought that says that people who invite others to connect do so with some caution. One of the driving criteria is that there must be something between the two parties of mutual benefit and value. If accepting invitations from people just to acquire a higher volume of connections, it may not help your credibility and your business.

What Is a Relationship?

A relationship is normally perceived as a connection between two individuals. Individuals can also have relationships with groups of people, such as the relationship between a rabbi and his congregation, and uncle and a family or a mayor and a town. Online relationships coexist simultaneously within many online communities or groups.

Fans vs Friends vs Business Connections

When using social media channels such as Facebook for business, it is important to understand what it means to be a fan as well as understanding the difference between a fan, a friend and a business connection.

Fans

According to Wikipedia, a fan is someone with an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking and enthusiasm for something. Fans of a particular thing or person constitute its fan base. Fans often show enthusiasm by starting a fan club, holding fan conventions, creating fanzines, writing fan mail, or promoting the object of their interest and attention. Fans are accepted automatically, without any screening process.

A good analogy here is a celebrity who has no control over who becomes his or her fans. Typical social networks where this model is used are Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

Friends

The definition of a friend is more complicated and falls under the category of interpersonal relationships. A friendship or interpersonal relationship is a relationship between two or more people. It may last a very long time or may be brief. Interpersonal relationships take place in many contexts, such as family, friends, marriage, associates, work, clubs, neighborhoods, and churches. They may be regulated by law, custom, or mutual agreement and are the basis of social groups and society as a whole.

A typical social network where this model is used is Facebook friends. In this case, the connection with your friends is personal and you should not accept anyone to be your friend unless you have that personal connection. If someone whom you don’t know invites you to be his or her friend, in order to create the personal connection, which may result in a friendship, both parties need to learn more about each other first.

Business Connections/Relationships

Business connections are a broad spectrum of inter-business relationships associated with providing and consuming knowledge and services. Online business connections emphasize the emergence of social networks as a primary medium through which business relationships are conducted.

Typical social networks where this model is used are LinkedIn, Biznik, Ryze, etc. You need to have established a mutual knowledge of the person with whom you are creating this business relationship. If someone whom you don’t know invites you to connect with them professionally, you need to establish that both parties are able to fulfill the other’s needs first. Although the needs of both parties may not always be apparent initially, both parties will always have some need that must be fulfilled.

How you value business relationships and how you develop them, whether in-person or online, also extends to referring other vendors to your trusted customers. If your customers need something that you are not able to provide them with, you should feel comfortable referring them to vendors whom you have come to know and trust through business. This will serve to strengthen your credibility further and your customers will want to continue to do business with you.

It will never be enough of a reason to refer a new vendor to one of your customers simply because the vendor has expressed to you a feeling of wanting to increase his or her business. You will have to really get to know that vendor well enough first to be able to trust his or her credibility and integrity. Before you connect the vendor with your valued customers, you need to be absolutely certain that your customers will be satisfied with the products and services that the vendor offers. In other words, the other vendor is an extension of you and your business.

If you treat your online relationships (and in-person relationships) delicately, you will be rewarded for your efforts. The more integrity you display, the stronger your relationships will be. Networking and continuing to build relationships is one of the most effective ways to increase business as long as you do it the proper way.

You have to put a great deal of effort into your relationships, which will usually have a tremendous amount of rewards that go with the hard work. Even though your ultimate goal is to increase business, it is important to concentrate on what is essential along the way. That is building strong, meaningful relationships. The rest will follow. It is, of course, very important to remember that relationships take some time to develop. Nothing meaningful happens overnight.

Conclusion

When approached to connect with people you don’t know on social media channels, it is a good idea to have a scripted Email with which to respond. You should thank them for inviting you to connect with them but, at the same time, you should ask them why they want to connect with you and ask them to tell you a little more about themselves and how you might be able to help each other.

You will see that some will never be heard from again but others will respond to you with more information and that will be the beginning of new and meaningful relationships. This approach really combines all schools of thought on whether to accept new business connections.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Facebook Fan Pages offer extraordinary opportunities to gain increased visibility, contribute to Google indexing, increase your ranking with the search engines, and engage your fans. How do you engage your fans and encourage them to interact?

The status updates on your Facebook Fan Page will greatly affect how far your reach will be. Your status updates will reach your fans and your fans’ friends. You might ask how you can guarantee that your status updates reach a large number of people.

The most significant way to increase your number of Facebook Fans is by sharing relevant, high-quality content and inciting comments. The more comments people make, the more marketing and viral visibility you will create.

Of course, it goes without saying that your fans will only comment on content that is worth commenting on. Your Fans will visit your Facebook Fan Page and they will stay if the discussions and the content engage them.

Your Facebook Fan Page is an extension of your business or your blog. It is a place where you can create and maintain real community and continue to strengthen your brand.

Remember that there is a direct relationship between frequency of posts and number of fans on your Facebook Fan Page. You should post frequently, but not so frequently that your fans feel overwhelmed.

If you have just created your Fan Page on the Internet, you should post daily so that you give your fans a chance to get to know you. If, however, you have had it up for a while and are getting good responses to your content, you should post several times a day, depending on how the discussions are going. You will start to get a sense of how often to post based on your interactions with your fans.

You should find the following tips helpful in increasing your number of Facebook Fans:

• Concentrate on having discussions instead of merely making announcements and/or statements.
• Ask stimulating questions that encourage your fans to have ongoing discussions.
• Ask straight forward, simple questions.
• Post links to a blog article or video with a question attached.
• Post a statement, quotation, or photo and ask your fans what their opinions are.
• Post questions daily that you feel your fans care about and would find interesting and valuable.
• Make sure that your Fan Page is simple and easy to read.
• Create a first impression that is exciting, compelling, and positive.
• Make sure that all of your tabs have a genuine purpose. Never have a blank tab.
• Have content on your Fan Page that is concise and to the point.
• Give people a reason to become a fan. Make exclusive offers only to your fans, appeal to your fans’ egos, and satisfy their feeling of wanting to identify with a brand as exciting as yours.
• Understand that there are different ways to promote your Facebook Fan Page: Facebook social advertisement; Through your existing social marketing channels, such as your website, Email campaigns, etc; and through your friends (suggest that they become fans of your Facebook Fan Page).
• Show your potential fans who your already-existing fans are (people enjoy seeing photos of other people).
• After you have 25 fans, you can request a vanity URL, which is a shortened version of your Facebook Fan Page address. The advantage of this is that it will be easier to share the link with other people.

Most Fans will keep returning to your Fan Page if they feel that there is a true sense of community. Remember to be sincere, friendly, warm, and human, even if your brand is huge.

Hopefully, the tips that were discussed will give you some useful ideas on how to market your Facebook Fan Page and greatly increase your number of fans. The more fans you have, the more potential you have for increased brand awareness and increased business.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

There are two networking tools that you can use in Facebook. You can create and/or join Facebook groups and you can create or join Facebook fan pages. You might ask which is better.

Facebook fan pages can be seen by people who are not registered and are indexed accordingly. Facebook groups can only be accessed by people who are accepted members of the group. Facebook groups permit you to send out mass invitations. Facebook fan pages will inevitably force you to send out some invitations manually.

Thus, if you are trying to do viral marketing, Facebook groups are definitely a better way to go.

Let us compare Facebook fan pages with Facebook groups in more detail.

Facebook fan pages are usually better for long-term relationships with your fans, customers and readers. Facebook groups are usually better for leading a quick and active discussion, which will attract a lot of quick attention.

Because of security reasons and limitations of size (only Facebook groups of under 5,000 members can send out Email blasts), Facebook groups are set up for more personal interaction. They also help you to focus on your interests. Facebook groups are also directly connected to the administrator of that particular group, which means that whatever goes on in the group could potentially reflect on you personally. Facebook pages don’t list the administrators and are considered as a single entity, an extension of your personal actions.

In Facebook groups, as long as the group has fewer than 5,000 members, the administrators can send messages that the group members will receive in their inboxes. Facebook pages administrators can send messages through “Page” to fans. Those updates will appear in the Updates section of the fans’ inboxes. You can send updates to as many fans as you wish, without limitation.

There is no automatic way to post content (photos, stories, or video) to Facebook groups. It has to be done manually. If you happen to have a blog and want to display the content of the blog, Facebook groups do not have the capability to pull the feed. With Facebook fan pages, you have more freedom as far as content generation is concerned.

With Facebook fan pages, you have the discussion board, video and photo uploads, and wall that the Facebook groups have. Additionally, you can import a blog feed, which gives the impression that your content is fresh. There are also many applications that you can add to your Facebook fan page, such as quizzes, for example.

Conclusion

Facebook groups are wonderful for organization on a personal level and for small interactions around a specific cause. Facebook pages work better for brands and businesses that want to connect with their customers without their being connected to a personal account. Both Facebook fan pages and Facebook groups are valuable and whichever one you choose for your business, make sure to get to know them as well as possible and use them to their full potential.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Social media can be an extremely effective marketing channel for your business. There is a great deal of enthusiasm from businesses and marketers about getting involved but many marketing people are not sure how to build a solid strategy.

Before you dive into social media marketing, you need to establish your social media marketing strategy. It isn’t enough to merely be connected to a variety of different social media accounts. You need to concentrate on quality vs quantity and to leverage your social media networks so that you get maximum benefit for your business.

Why do you need a strategy for social media marketing?

Many business people have Facebook fan pages or Twitter accounts because they are free, simple to use and everyone else has one too. Even though it is very important for businesses to have social media accounts for their brands, they need to think carefully before they devote a great deal of time to them. The return on investment (ROI) needs to be worthwhile.

If you attempt to implement social media marketing tactics without a solid strategy behind them, the result will be chaotic and your efforts may not produce positive results. Your strategy should be focused and have a high probability of success.

A part of your social media strategy should be to connect directly with your customers. You should make it your business to be a part of the online social communities that they are a part of. Participate in the discussions that occur and add value to the discussions by contributing your valued opinions and interesting information about your brands.

The key to business success through online channels is to pay close attention to your customers’ needs and interests. You can give them useful information and discussions that satisfy their needs and strengthen your brand credibility at the same time. That will increase your brand exposure and the more familiar your business is, the more people will be comfortable around you.

Social media strategy is much more involved than making a list of marketing tactics

Simply having a list doesn’t mean that you actually have a strategy. You need to ask yourself why you are using social media to increase your business. You should fully understand what is involved in a social media strategy. What should you be looking for?

·         Answering “why?”: Your social media strategy should totally answer why you are using a particular tactic. You need to find out if your audience is interacting with you already and if the potential for branding and exposure exists.

·         Deploying: You need to gain respect within social media. If you understand the social media channels as they relate to basic marketing principles, best practices, tools and tactics, you can create the structure for establishing a social media strategy.

Your social media strategy will direct your approach. It will tell you if you should be aggressive or if you should passively sit back and quietly get a sense of what you are about to embark upon. It will also tell you if the best approach for you is to ask questions first and then offer advice and whether you want to get submissions from the audience before you start writing valuable content. Your social media strategy should answer all of these questions.

·         Defining your goals and measuring: You need to have some way to measure if your efforts have been successful. What sort of ROI are you expecting? If you don’t have a clear set of goals that can be measured, how can you justify your tactics?

·         When to reevaluate your social media strategy: It is very common for a company not to include reevaluation in their strategy from the beginning. They don’t think beyond what they are doing now and how much they are spending on that. If something is not working, and you aren’t meeting your goals, you need to make adjustments in your strategy. When you look at your strategy and you are able to identify what is working, you need to leverage that as much as you can. The most effective thing to do is to build in the reevaluation from the beginning.

Using social media strategies to get your message across is an effective and vital approach to business. All marketing tactics (online and traditional) work in tandem to help your business succeed.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

This year on Valentine’s Day, people are taking full advantage of all that social media has to offer to build on their special relationships.

What does Valentine’s Day have to do with social media? What they have in common is relationships. Social media is about building relationships. Valentine’s Day is about paying attention to relationships and strengthening relationship bonds. There are several important aspects of social media relationships that apply to all relationships: listening (knowing what your clients are saying about you), empathizing (connecting with your clients and trying to understand why they feel the way that they do), being transparent (honesty builds trust and without trust, your business will not succeed), showing appreciation (express how much you value your clients), and being passionate (long-lasting and valuable relationships are filled with passion, dedication, and hard work).

People use social networks to connect with people with whom they have existing relationships. In the process, they also form new relationships. Social networks allow you to share media and to customize your look and feel online. People can form online groups that consist of people who all share common interests. Special occasions, such as Valentine’s Day, create a whirlwind of activity on social networks. People are looking for the perfect gift for that special person or for themselves.

Searching online for Valentine’s Day ideas produces a huge volume of new articles, social networking suggestions, commercial offerings, and live twitter feeds. Before social media was available, the standard flowers and chocolates were gratefully accepted. Now, social media is ensuring that everyone tries to get more creative and exciting gifts to show how much they care. In today’s difficult economy, people are trying to be generous without hurting themselves financially.

Here are some fun gifts and gift ideas for your sweetheart using social media:

• Create a personalized Facebook ad—You can create an ad that will only be seen by one user. You can make it as special as you want without any fear that you are sharing it with the whole world.
• Upload a karaoke cover of your song on YouTube—It will be considered very romantic if you sing a song for your sweetheart in a room full of people. In fact, in this case, you will be singing in front of the entire World Wide Web. Share your recording on social media channels so that it is perfectly clear who your sweetheart is.
• Schedule new @replies by the hour through HootSuite—Send a new reason for loving him or her every hour for 24 hours. You can set it all up in advance and HootSuite will automatically work its magic.
• Buy a generous Facebook gift (for charity)—Facebook’s online gift shop has an entire collection of gifts for charity. Whatever you spend will go to the charitable organization of your choice.
• Use the Sweethearts iPhone app to share personalized Sweethearts candies via Twitter—You can create, order and share Sweethearts with creative and special messages.

Of course, Valentine’s Day gifts are not the only things that are dominating the social media world. Ideas for celebrating Valentine’s Day cards, dates, surprises, proposals and other inventive ways to light a fire in a relationship or add something different and sweet to a friendship are all around us. In addition to gifts and ideas on how to celebrate, people are making plans to do something special within their budget.

Many popular sites, including Amazon and Oprah, have released lists of affordable gift ideas. Most websites offer a filter where items can be sorted by price. If you don’t want to guess what your sweetheart would like, Amazon also offers a wish list option where people can choose what they want, which avoids the recipient being disappointed as well as the giver not having to stress over whether he or she has bought the perfect gift.

For those people who find Valentine’s Day annoying, there are humorous gift online, such as fun things to do if you are single and broken-heart cookies. There is also a list online of the top worst Valentine’s Day gift ideas along with a list of the most unoriginal ideas and the worst Valentine’s Day dates.

With social media continuing to be a networking and economic giant, nobody will be left with a bad Valentine’s Day gift this year. Whether you love or hate the holiday, there is something that will please everyone. You should definitely take advantage of social media this Valentine’s Day, whether the result is a feeling of softness and sentimentality or amusement. In any case, a whole world full of possible gift ideas is open to you.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.