You don’t want to be sharing what you ate for lunch or when you went to the bathroom.

On the other hand, you don’t want to be too promotional either; that turns people off. You need to find a balance.

What’s your social media brand?

No, I don’t mean your logo or your photo – although that’s part of it.

It’s how do you want people to think of you. If you’re a micro business – providing a product or service where your expertise is what sets you apart – then you probably want to be seen as an expert. You want to be the “go-to” person in your field.

How do you do this?

Be a resource

Provide useful information that your customers – and potential customers – need and want. You don’t have to create all the content yourself. Provide links to articles and blog posts that provide useful information. Using Google Reader and RSS feeds can be a great way to quickly and easily find content to share.

Someone who does a great job of this is Infinity Network Solutions. They’re an Owen Sound-based IT company and they populate their Facebook page with lots of great information about computers and how to use them safely or better.

Don’t forget to be social

However don’t forget it’s called “social” media. Part of the power of tools like Facebook and Twitter is it gives people a chance to get to know, like and trust you. But in order to do that, you can’t just be posting links. You need to spend some time talking about yourself, giving people a chance to get to know you..

For example, I Tweeted about washing my cell phone received tons of retweets and @replies like the one here.

So why would I send out a comment like this when I’m using social media for business? Because anyone who has had a similar experience suddenly felt a personal connection to me. I was no longer an anonymous business online but someone they could relate to. I’d gone from “know” to “like” because they could see how I’m like them.

Don’t forget to promote

After all, you’re using Facebook, Twitter or whatever for your business. So don’t go so far over to being a resource or being social that you forget to toot your own horn. Post about specials or new products you have. Post photos of work you’ve done for clients (with permission). Share news about hiring new staff, expanding or anniversaries. Just make sure the informational and social posts are more frequent. Only 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 posts should be blatantly promotional.

Someone who does a good job of this is Jennifer Harris of Keylime Creative in the Village of Paisley. She has a nice chatty style, shares information and promotes herself.

One final piece of advice

Don’t forget to reply to anyone who visits your page and takes the time to comment. It’s a great way to deepen the relationship and shows the world that you’re paying attention.

So go out and start posting!

Andrea J. Stenberg

If you liked this article, please share it with your social networks by clicking one (or more) of the share links. And feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment here or at http://www.facebook.com/TheBabyBoomerEntrepreneur.

Let me explain. Previously, if you went to your Facebook page – your business page for example – any posts would appear as having come from the page. For most people that didn’t matter too much; it was fine posting to their page as the page.

However, sometimes it makes sense for you to post as yourself. For example, I’m one of the admins for the BNI Synergistics Facebook page. This is a page for the BNI group I belong to here in Owen Sound. When making announcements about meetings and speakers it makes sense for those to come from the page.

Other times I want to share my personal thoughts about a meeting or speaker – my personal thoughts should come from me because I’m not speaking on behalf of the group. Also, I want to show my friends that I’m a member of BNI. If I post to the BNI page as Andrea Stenberg, people see that I’m involved in BNI. If I post as the page, they don’t know it’s me.

Change your Facebook page settings

To do this, you need to change your settings. Go to “edit page” under your page’s photo then choose “your settings”. Then remove the check in the “Posting Preferences” box.  Conversely, if you want to ALWAYS post as the page and never as yourself, make sure this box is checked. You’ll need to make this change for every page you administer.

Switch between using Facebook as a page or as your profile

Next, go back to your page and choose the “Account” drop-down menu and select “Use Facebook as Page” in order to post as your page.

When you want to go back to posting as yourself, choose “Account” then choose “Switch back to [your name here]”.

**Warning: On several occasions when I’ve tried to switch back from posting as a page to posting as myself, Facebook has crashed on me. If that happens to you, just close the web browser tab you’re in then log back into Facebook. You should be posting as your profile once again.

When you log into Facebook, the first place you’re taken is your News Feed (or Home tab). This is where you see updates from your friends and the pages you have “liked”. But have you noticed that you’re only getting news from the same small number of people lately?

It doesn’t mean all your other Facebook friends have gone off line. Facebook has added a way to control your newsfeed. You can see the updates from all your friends, or you can set the feed to only show the friends and pages you interact most with.

For many people, if not most, their setting was defaulted to “Friends and pages you interact most with”.

If this had happened to you, scroll down to the bottom of your News Feed and click the “edit options button” on the bottom right of the page.

Next, click the button and choose “All your friends and pages”. You’ll start receiving updates from everyone again.

Getting back on your friends’ newsfeeds

But this is not the end. If you’re using Facebook for networking and marketing, many of your friends (or fans of your Facebook page) will no longer be seeing your updates because they haven’t changed their settings back.

In order to show up on your friends’ news feeds you’ll need to start actively interacting with them. You can’t just passively use Facebook to post links, comments or photos. Many of your followers won’t see them. You need to become one of the “Friends and pages you interact most with”.

How do you do this? By interacting with them. When you see a post or update in your newsfeed, go to their wall and reply. Check in with people and ask what’s new. Have conversations. Build relationships one-on-one.

Yes, this is more time consuming, but it’s what I’ve been telling you what to do all along. One-on-one interaction with people is the best way to build relationships. And by building a relationship with people you’re giving them time to get to know, like and trust you. And once they’ve reached the trust phase, when they’re ready to buy what you sell, you’ll move to the top of the list.

Happy networking.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Enjoy,

Andrea J. Stenberg

After you listen, please leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Andrea J. Stenberg

The photos under your name are any photos in Facebook where you are tagged, not just photos you have uploaded.

If you don’t like one of the photos, hover your mouse over that photo and an “x” will appear on the upper right corner. Click on the “x” and the photo will be removed from your profile page.

Note, however, that this doesn’t remove the photo from Facebook nor does it remove the tag. If you really don’t want that particular photo linked to you, remove the tag or ask the person who uploaded it to remove it.

This is one of the few changes Facebook has made that I really like. It doesn’t really change how I use Facebook (so no learning curve for me, but it does look a lot prettier.

When I first heard about the new profile I was disappointed when I logged into Facebook and saw the old profile. However, after checking out some of my friends I eventually got a message offering me the new profile.

If you haven’t received the new profile and would like to, go to http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/ to get the new look.

Andrea J. Stenberg

I would love to know what you think about the new look on Facebook. Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Table of contents for Social Media Marketing Means Talking To More People

1. How to Have Off-Line Conversations with Your Online Connections

Yesterday I wrote about why you need to take your online connections off-line. Today I’ll tell you how.

When you met somebody online and you’ve had some sort of an ongoing conversation, someone you think you might have a connection with, approach them about having an off-line conversation.

You can send them a private message on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, or send them an e-mail asking for a phone conversation.

Don’t make this a sales call! Really – I’m serious! Stress that this will be a “getting to know you” conversation. And mean it. Suggest a couple of dates and times and give them a time limit for the call – I suggest 30 minutes.

When the appointed time comes, ask a series of open ended questions that will allow you to get to know this person and their business. Of course you’ll want to give them the same information about yourself.

Types of questions to ask:

• Tell me about your business.
• What makes you different from the competition?
• Who is your ideal client? How would I recognize them?
• What are your goals for the next year?
• What resources do you need to accomplish them?

Be sure to take notes as are having this conversation. Then go through your connections and see if there’s someone you can introduce them to. It could be an ideal client, it could be a resource they need, it could be someone you think they would like to know.

Then over the coming weeks and months, keep this conversation in the back of your mind and try to send this person a resource, an interesting link, or a referral.

Not everyone you speak with will become a valued customer or colleague. The vast majority of people really don’t know how to network, and don’t know how to help others. But if you go out into the world with a genuine desire to be a helpful resource, eventually you’ll find people who help you achieve your goals to.

Andrea J Stenberg

But making posts without any real connection to real people isn’t really marketing. The truth is everyone is doing that. There are 500 million people on Facebook, and while a significantly smaller number are businesses, everyone is doing the same thing. They’re all busy posting away and hoping that it will get them business.

But the real secret of social media marketing is that these online networking tools only allow you to get on people’s radar. It’s very rare that somebody who follows you on Twitter comes along and buys something. There has to be a step in the middle.

And that step is a real conversation.

You have to either get face-to-face with prospects or at the very least get them on the phone. The big difference with social media marketing is these are not cold calls. These are people you had conversations with, they’ve gotten to know you, and now the two of you are ready to take your business relationship to the next level.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think you should start calling all your Facebook and LinkedIn connections and set up sales meetings. In fact please don’t do that. What I am saying is when you meet somebody online and they are interesting, and the two of you have an ongoing conversation online, why not take the conversation off-line?

Over the years, I’ve done this several times and the results have been phenomenal. I haven’t always known what the results were going to be, but I took the chance and talk to these people.

I have one business colleague I met six years ago in an online discussion group. We’ve never met in person, and only talk on the phone once or twice a year. But I consider this man to be a good colleague and friend. Over the years he’s played some phenomenal resources my way, resources that have changed my business and my life. As a result, whenever he says something I pay attention. I know he’s always got something of value to say.

And that’s the power of the off-line conversations.

Once you have spoken with somebody in the real world, your online conversations take on a more personal note. They’re more likely to pay attention to what you have to say, and are more likely to send referrals your way. If things work out really well they may even become a customer.

So look for your list of connections on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Make a note of the ones you’ve had the most interesting conversations with. These are the ones you should get in touch with. Join me back here tomorrow when I’ll tell you how to approach these conversations.

Andrea J Stenberg

It helps if you make this decision early. If you’re going to be using Facebook for both business and personal relationships, you need to act accordingly. You need to be aware of who is seeing your posts and make sure what you are saying on Facebook is something you would like clients to know about you.

The first thing you should do is create lists of friends. Lists allow you to target certain posts to specific groups of people.

For example, if you’re talking about a pot luck dinner for the family reunion, you may choose to only publish this to family. You can put family in one list, personal friends in another, and then create a variety of business-related lists.

When adding new friends, you are given the option of adding them to a list.

I recommend you get in the habit of adding each new friend to one or more lists right away. If you have existing friends are not on any lists, don’t worry. You can easily add them to lists now.

It helps to have a variety of categories for your business relationships. You may choose to list people by geography, industry or both. You may also choose to create lists of how you met the person.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having people on more than one list.

Once you have your friends added to lists, you can use these lists to control who sees what content.

For example, when posting a status update, you can decide you only want your family to see this post.

To post your update only to specific people, click on the little lock icon underneath the post and you’ll get a drop down menu.

Choose customize, which opens a new window.

While Facebook doesn’t bring up your lists of friends, you still can choose who will see your status update. To allow only certain groups of friends to view this particular

update, click on “Specific People” then type in the name of the list.

Don’t worry if you don’t remember the exact name you chose for your list. After you type the first few letters, Facebook will show you people and lists that most closely match what you type. Just select the appropriate list then click save.

You can also do this when uploading photos, videos or any content.

Just one caveat: although Facebook settings may seem secure, never post anything online that you don’t want the entire world to see. If something is truly private, keep it offline because although you can control what you do with your posts, you can’t control what other people do with it.

Andrea J. Stenberg