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In this segment Brian talks about the evolution of the newspaper industry and how the arrival of social media has changed the way information is shared and why the internet should be an integral part of how newspapers conduct business from here on out.
Do you get how serious the “Like” button is on Facebook? It is a really BIG deal. Never before have our consumers had this ability to share what they like and use. When you buy a bottle of Listerine at the store does anyone know? When you check out a product or service online does anyone know? If they are using social media they do!
Seriously, the whole idea of a “like” button sounds cheesy. I get it. But the power that the “like” button possesses is HUGE. It is something that builds on itself. The more it gets clicked the more you benefit. Simply saying that people should click your “like” button is one thing…getting them to click it is an entirely different thing.
So how do you get people to click that elusive “like” button. Well, it is pretty simple. Conveying true and honest content of what is going on around you is the key. Drop the whole idea that you can tell people about that 10% savings. Start telling them about you. Social media is reality. It isn’t the old and ineffective tools of placed advertising in print or banner ads on websites. If you are trying to get people to hit the button you have to prove to them that you are real.
Facebook is about people. Facebook is about connectivity and communications. If someone clicks that “like” button for you…you better take notice. Start having a conversation. Reply to your comments, let people know that you care. Seriously, you need to take the scientific probabilities and chuck them out the window. Being on Facebook is one thing. Being a part of Facebook is a completely different one.
I recently had the opportunity to share some tips and ideas at the North Dakota Newspaper Association’s annual conference in Fargo, ND. While the message presented was geared specifically towards the newspaper industry and how they could leverage social media to extend their reach the overall message applies to any company or brand that is getting started.
In this segment I’m talking about mindset. Both the mindset of our audiences and the mindset one should have when trying to leverage social media for their business. This is the introduction to several clips from this presentation that we’ll be posting over the coming weeks. I’d love to take some comments and start a conversation!
Facebook Pages vs. Profiles
I thought today I would address probably one of the most common questions I receive when I am out speaking. During my talks I of course, like a good social media consultant mention Facebook Pages as being an integral part of a good social media strategy. It is pretty clear that most understand the need to get into the whole Facebook game and most seem pretty willing to dive right in. But, I am usually asked a relatively simple question: How do I get a page for my business on Facebook?
To some of you this may seem like a no-brainer, but seriously some need a good explanation to get started on the right foot.
Perhaps it is best that we break down the difference between pages, profiles and groups first. So here is the deal:
Profiles:
Groups:
Pages:
The keyword for most businesses is “page.” Don’t do what so many have done. Go to Facebook and create a profile with a fake first name and fake last name. Like say, first name “Mikes” with a last name “Plumbing.” If you are feeling the need to fib on some of the details in the form that is the first sign that you are not doing it right. Facebook makes things pretty easy, so don’t fight the system!
If you want a page for your business or brand on Facebook you need to have a personal profile on Facebook.
If you already have a personal account on Facebook you are in good shape to begin. If not, go start a legitimate profile…with your real name. If you decide to fib your way into Facebook you will pay the price. A great example is a local fair in my area who started a profile page on Facebook. They fibbed their name, built up hundreds of friends and then one day their account was gone. Poof. GONE. All that work for nothing because Facebook one day realized that “XYZ Fair” wasn’t a real person. Back to square one. In some cases that is enough to cause people to give up altogether on social media. That’s bad.
If you have already made the mistake of starting a business page as a profile there are things you can do to mitigate the damage but the clock is ticking so get moving. Start a legitimate page on Facebook by following the information below and start telling your friends on your current account about it and get them to migrate over. Use the share button on the newly created page and post it to your old (and soon to be detected and deleted) space. Encourage people to join you on the new page. Be honest too. Just tell them that you created this cool new page and value their support and hope that they will join you. In no time you will have all that you have gained illegitimately in your new legitimate Facebook page.
So we have that straight, now with your personal account established all you have to do is hit up this page on Facebook. Now I know a lot of us won’t be at our same jobs forever but don’t freak out. One great aspects of pages is that you can assign numerous administrators. You can add people to help build the page. So just because you start the page under your personal account doesn’t mean that for the rest of eternity that you are the only one that can manage the page. So no worries!
I might as well toss in this other tip to those of you who are new to Facebook Pages. #1 Goal: Get 100 people to like your page. Once you do you can secure yourself a nifty vanity url. Get to 100 and then visit this link to get yourself a slick address like http://facebook.com/echelonmedia instead of http://www.facebook.com/235234223423/echelon/2547656231r3252/media234234. The vanity url will let you market your page to the masses. Easy to remember, easy to find.
So go out and get that page started and start having a conversation. No matter how simple this post may seem I hope that it is helpful to those who wonder, “how do I get a page for my business on Facebook?”
We were asked to contribute for an article in The Village Family Magazine about the pros and cons of Social Media.
With Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites having an increasing presence in our day to day lives there are some dangers with this public display of information. The articles talks about different ways to think before you post along with different ways to leverage social media in your favor.
The biggest point to take away from “Think b4 u post,” is just that. Realize that everything you do online can and will be public at some point in time.
I hope you enjoy and again we appreciate your feedback.
You can Download the article here
Today I am speaking to those of you with medium-sized and small businesses. You big enterprise level folks are welcome to follow along too, but you know as well as I do when it comes to social media, your hands are tied by big company rules and regs… but you smaller biz folks are fortunate! … you are agile, quick and creative; so let me teach you how to fast track your online presence in regards to social media marketing.
It’s All About Conversation And Interaction
I’m going to mostly refer to Facebook here because I believe it is the social media platform that allows the most direct interaction between you and your present and future customers. I am also going to illustrate by pretending we run a store called “Outdoor Patio Furniture Sales.” Play along with me ok? 
Having a Facebook Fanpage for your business is just the beginning really — you have to make the page alive. A Facebook page that is interactive, conversational and interesting conveys a message of SUCCESS and people (customers) want to be a part of something that is SUCCESSFUL! If your Facebook page seen as a success… potential customers WILL want to do business with you when they have a need for your product or service. But before you can do that, you have to have friends and fans who regularly visit that page and comment.
Getting The Convo Going
First off, I can bet that a good 80% of your current employees are utilizing Facebook on a weekly or daily basis to keep up with personal contacts. I can also bet that many of them have a good majority of their Facebook friends who also live in the local area where your brick and mortar store is located. Can you see where we’re going?
(1) The first tip I have for you is to encourage your employees to use Facebook to “invite” their friends to join your business fan page. It’s simple, non-assuming, and it works well, especially because I am sure that you treat your employees well, and they love working for you! They spend 40 or more hours per week building your business… why not encourage them to spend off time building too? … on Facebook!
(2) Big companies spend thousands of dollars developing and updating software to keep their employees from visiting social sites like Facebook during work time. They have multiple paragraphs of legal-speak in handbooks dedicated to telling employees what will happen to them if they are found “wasting company time” on the internet. It’s laughable !!
But you, Mr or Mrs small business owner, should embrace your employees’ desire to visit Facebook during the workday… you should encourage it! Now I am not advocating 6 hours of playtime everyday for every person who works for you… but it would be a great idea to have select employees visit your business page for 15 minutes 3 or 4 times per day to chat with your fans and friends!
Let’s look at this through our pretend outdoor furniture store… you can ask your employees to status update their own personal page with something like:
I’m here at the store, excited about the new patio furniture shipment that just came in… some super kewl umbrellas with solar lights are the highlight! You guys come by and I’ll show them to you.
You could also have your employee post a picture of these great patio umbrellas to their own personal update.
Next, I’d have the employee post a similar update to my business fan page (your fans will see this update on their walls)… something like this:
Hi guys, Cheryl here, assistant manager of “Outdoor Furniture Sales” and I wanted to let you know we just got in some really cool lighted umbrellas. They come in 3 sizes and 4 colors. Awesome stuff! Here’s a pic too!
Finally, I would have a couple other employees use their personal accounts to come in and place comments on Cheryl’s post above. You have 3 or 4 of your folks reply like this:
Hi Cheryl, the red ones are really nice and I wanted to add in that they run on solar power, so no batteries!
and another employee could write:
I just had a customer get two: one for his back patio, and one for his Mom too… these things are pretty neat!
Then of course, Cheryl should reply and answer back and continue to interact. If you ask 5 or 6 of your folks do this, you will find that customers will also feel very comfortable jumping in and being a part of it too. You might call this strategy, “priming the pump” for “flowing conversation!”
Now it occurs to me that some of you readers are already thumbing your noses at this strategy… if that’s you, I would say that “you just don’t get it” and you should probably just keep sending out thousands of direct mail fliers and spending $5,000 per month on roadside billboards. This free, touchy-feely stuff is just not for you! Of course, you could also contact us to help you run this whole thing.. that is what we do ya know!
(3) Keep in mind the 80/20 rule and social media. We don’t want to make it “all about me.” In addition to that, we want to use the Facebook page to “show ourselves to be human!” You don’t want people to relate to the sticks and bricks that hold up your store, you instead want them to relate to the PEOPLE that make your business great… you and your employees. Here’s how you can use your Facebook page to accomplish this goal. Once again, here are some updates you could make on the page for your “Outdoor Furniture Sales” store:
Cheryl our assistant manager just had a baby boy! Mom and son are doing well, Dad is passed out on the floor! Ha!
Or you could update something like this:
John Humphries Jr has worked with us for 3 years, and now he’s heading off to Marine Corps basic training next month! Come in and wish him well. Thank you John for being a part of our team! You’ll be missed.
Are you getting the idea here ya’ll? Let’s get your small or medium sized business up and running in this space and let’s knock out the big guys by being agile and quick and on the cutting edge! This is how we do it! Contact us today.
The whole concept behind social media shorts is a pretty simple one. We want to provide you with quick, effective and easy to implement tips for making what you do better with your social media strategy. We want to provide these tidbits of information because we realize that the little things matter a lot in social media. Without the little things the larger goals we have cannot be realized. The tips, hints and tricks that we provide can make all the difference between failure and success.
We also want to move forward with the SMS segments because we want to get to know YOU better. The questions we answer come from YOU and give us an opportunity to help YOU get started on the right foot right off the bat. Each week we will randomly select two questions submitted by our fans, followers and subscribers to feature in the SMS segments. We will then provide answers in one minute or less that will hopefully drive deeper conversations about the various topics covered and provide everyone with some valuable information that addresses some of the most pressing questions and concerns when it comes to social media.
Bottom line, we want you to succeed whether or not you ultimately seek our consulting services. We want to help people do what they do better. Plus, they are a lot of fun for us to put together! We look forward to an engaging experience with YOU!
We’ve already started answering some of your questions. Check out this example!
Your input is key to making the SMS segments a success. So start posting your questions, or if you prefer shoot us an email: sms@echelonmedia.com
There seems to be a big misconception out there that a lot of new Twitter users and other general marketing orientated social media users have. A lot of new users seem to think that their tweets and posts are simply a free version of banner advertising that magically sends new viewers to their website. No personal connection, no meaningful message, just a statement like, “Hey check out my cool new website” with a link to their homepage. ALL of these posts include their link in full form and appear to have no relevant, shareable information or purpose besides shameless attempts at self promotion.
Far too often this approach to social media doesn’t provide the desired results. Given a little time a lot of these users give up and become either a non-believer in the relevance of social media or worse, become a hater. While it commendable that these users have recognized the need to incorporate social media into their marketing plans they have failed to get started on the right foot.
Here are a couple of things that you want to make sure you don’t do:
Throwing rocks on your neighbor’s lawn: Sometimes the temptation to share a link to your site on some tasty looking Facebook page filled with your target market is unbearable. But, unless you have taken the time to form a relationship with the owner of that page fight the urge and “just say no” until you have. If another user’s followers or fans are so attractive to you start by getting to know that user not by trying to hijack their friends lists or wall. By all means follow and become fans of those you see as relevant to you. But, don’t stop there, start getting involved in what they are doing, be a part of the conversation and build a relationship that benefits everyone. Comment, share, use the like button. Be seen as an active and engaged user. You get more out of being involved with a popular post than attempting to spam your way to the top.
Love yourself and only yourself: We get it. You have a website. It is fine to share links back to your site in your posts. Just make sure that you don’t get carried away. There is a lot of information out there to share. And one of the best ways to form relationships is by sharing what others are doing. Refer to Allyn’s post on the 80-20 rule for a nice dose of reality on this.
Share links without tracking them: I know you are proud of your domain name but get used to using a URL shortener with some means of tracking impact. The users in these environments are used to shortened URL links at this point. Save yourself some characters and give yourself some data to work with. Doing all the work of sending out the information really does you no good unless you have a way to track your results and tweak your approach.
I am pretty sure that these users that continually do the things on the not to do list don’t do what they do to purposely appear to us as social media douche bags. They simply brought their old media frame of mind with them into the social media sphere because somewhere along the way they heard the social media call to action and wanted in. There is a lot of pressure out there for brands and companies to get involved in social media. Sadly many are getting started without the proper frame of mind that will ultimately bring them success. It really comes down to relationships and interaction. If you are not forming new relationships or interacting with others then you are not doing it right.
If you’ve been in business for more than a week, you’ve undoubtedly heard someone mention the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. Just in case, here is a simple definition from which we are gonna draw some super kewl Social Media for business parallels.
“The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”
You’ve probably thought about this in relation to employee behaviors, realizing that 20% of your workers bring in 80% of the results or revenue. You also may look at it in light of customers, whereas 20% of your customers drop in 80% of your bottom line. We could 
go on forever with this, so let’s get to the social media part of it before you are tempted to bust out your P&L statements and verify my assumptions!
The 80/20 Rule For Business Blogs
Our clients all know that I am a blogger first, and a marketer second. That’s important because we have to get in the proper frame of mind in order to be accepted leaders within communities online. When we play this right, we gain outspokenly loyal customers!
You see, bloggers as a group are very giving people. We work together to accomplish goals together. Josh brings this principle into the business sector when he talks about Trade Rings, and all boats rising together. I am going to take it even one step up from there (towards the Echelon! )
On your business blog, you want to give more than you grab. In fact, 80% of what you do on the blog, meaning articles you post, should be in some way about someone or something else. Now I’m not telling you to go and endorse your competitors here, don’t go there! I am, however, telling you that there are lots of great things going on within and around your community outside of your 4 brick walls and those things matter, a lot!
Let’s pretend you are a restaurant with 10 locations in the Indiana and Illinois and you have 300 employees. Your blog is rockin’ cool and very interactive (because you hired Echelon Media to run it for you, of course! 
) and here are a few ideas of articles to post that will satisfy the need to GIVE 80% of the time:
Example #1 — one of your employees at the Indianapolis location just ran in a 10-k event for charity and you do a write up about her, but more importantly about the charity and how much money was raised for a good cause. You include lots of pictures of people at the event because you know people love to see themselves in print! (like on a popular blog)
Example #2 — A local church in Tinley Park, Illinois has a thriving youth group and private school and once a month you cater in food there at a super discount. You don’t necessarily post about your goodness, but rather how impressed you are with the young people who attend the school. Maybe one of them is an Eagle Scout or just got accepted to West Point or the Air Force Academy… you get the idea.
Example #3 — Some new luxury condos are going up across the street from your South Bend location and you do a huge write up talking about how nice these condos will be and how great the builder and his crew are. (I hope you see how filling up the condo units will benefit your restaurant)
See how simple that is? You are giving while increasing your own brand in an indirect way. Remember, 80% of your posts should be of this nature. Here’s a quote to bring this concept home to you:
“I will use my blog to build up people in my community, instead of using people in my community to build up my blog”
Get it? I learned this concept in Bible college believe it or not, but it plays out very well in the business world as well.
The other 20% of your posts can and should be directly about your business. Talk about your specials, sales and expansion. Your 80% of giving will mean that people will want to be engaged with your 20% about you!
Just so you know, Twitter works the same way but in 140 characters or less — make 80% of your tweets about others, for others and with others, and 20% of the tweets about you.
Simple!
The ability to help you determine the kinds of numbers you want to increase online and the strategies to do so.
Social Media Consulting is nothing more than receiving good advice and results based off past learning experiences over time. Nobody wakes up on a Monday, decides they want to be an expert at something and then be considered an expert on that by Friday. So in order to embed a piece of our knowledge with you we have created a simple equation or metric below for you to compare the effectiveness of different Twitter users.
True Social Media Consultants will tell you the quantity and quality of the interactions with others is the real number you want to strive for. This for Twitter can be expressed as:
(# of RTs)+(# of clicks)/(# of followers) = Twitter interaction
For instance, let’s compare two hypothetical Twitter accounts that both are promoting a coupon. The first account is a much smaller Twitter account with a high level of interaction from the business. The first tweet goes out and you end up with:
(10 RTs)+(82 clicks)/(4,500 followers) = .02% user interaction or 2 people per 100 took action
Let’s compare that interaction level to another Twitter account that has focused on acquiring a massive amount of followers. The first tweet goes out and you net:
(25 RTs)+(547 clicks)/(127,000 followers) = .004% user interaction or 4 people per 1000 took action
Of course the second example appears to have gotten a much better result for traffic and click-thrus yet after running through our equation we discover that only 4 out of every 1,000 followers is willing to click on their tweet for that coupon. We aren’t newspapers here… Twitter and Facebook enable us to have conversations with real life people directly. To approach these tools in a different way is fool-hearty.
When we look back at the comparison we made, a lot more can also be learned from it such as how did the two accounts gain followers? Did they hand select based on location, niche, keywords or hashtags? What are their tweets per day divided by followers? Where is the value? And so much more.
People seem to get mesmerized by numbers in Social Media yet most of the time they are looking at the wrong numbers to begin with. Forget about how many followers or fan page friends you have. Instead, look at the user interaction score and make that number as high as possible. Of course there are many other metrics by which you can measure interaction but when aiming for a higher number, aim for the right one.
All of this focus on real numbers matters a great deal when your money is on the line. People can and have developed countless programs and tools to try and convince you that spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on their product/service is the best deal around. Most of the time their programs will do exactly what they say except they are fundamentally flawed by being focused on the wrong numbers. Having the most followers isn’t the answer, more interactions is.
The philosophy of higher user interaction is the primary reason businesses are taking more of their money and investing it online. Before you jump in with both feet, seek out those who are not only doing what they teach but showing exactly how they are doing things. Everything can be learned by anyone given enough time. Be careful of those in the social space who don’t disclose how they go about building your fan base. If it is a big secret, more than likely it is not effective nor will it lead to the kind of numbers you want. This is just one example of how we measure and do business in the Social Media space.
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