It’s a simple and free marketing tool that will give you a big boost in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is one area of online marketing that many small businesses do little about, mainly, I suspect, because they don’t understand it. And while Google+ is growing by leaps and bounds, too many small businesses, local businesses and solopreneurs have not yet jumped on the Google+ bandwagon.

If that sounds like you, it’s time to change that. Go to Google+ today and set up your account now.

Here’s a short video produced by Google about what you need to know about setting up your Google+ profile.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Are you on Google+? Share a link to your profile or a comment about how you’re using it.

5 Things you  must do now to get ready for March 30th

If you have a Facebook Page (also known as Fan Pages) for your business, you need to know that Facebook is making changes once again. On March 30^th all Pages will be automatically converted to the new Timeline format.

Many businesses have voluntarily made the switch (check out The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur page). This is good news for you if you haven’t because you can see what others have done and use them as a model for your conversion.

Timeline is much more visual and while it takes some getting used to, I think it holds a number of advantages for businesses. If you get started before March 30^th you can preview your page in Timeline before you publish it. This gives you a chance to make changes and adjustments.

Create & Upload a Cover Photo

First thing you’ll notice is the Cover photo. It is much larger than what was allowed previously. It needs to be 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. And this should be a high resolution photo. This image is large and you want it to be as clear as possible.

One word of caution about the cover photo: you can’t include blatantly promotional copy, contact info or calls to action. For example, you can’t ask people to Like your page in your cover photo. See the official Facebook guidelines here.

Choose a Profile Photo

Your Profile photo, which becomes the thumbnail beside your posts, is 180 x 180. It can be a photo of your, your logo or something else.

Rearrange Your Apps

Under your cover photo at the right are images of four of the apps you’ve applied to your Facebook page. The first one is always Photos and you can’t change that one. You can rearrange which apps appear. Just hover over the app and a pencil icon appears. Click on it and you can swap places with another icon. What might these icons be? A page where you offer a free report, your YouTube videos, events, your blog etc. You can even change the image that shows for each app. Just make sure the image is 111 pixels x 74 pixels.

Edit the Past

Because Timeline allows people to go through your Facebook history much easier than before, you’ll want to edit what you’ve posted. Because this is your page and not your personal profile, I assume you’ve been professional in your posting. However, when you were first learning how to use Facebook for your business, you may have posted things that you’re not so happy about now. Delete them before you publish the Timeline.

Milestones

When you’re using Facebook as your Page, you’ll see a drop down menu appear at the top of the page. Click on the Milestones button to add major events in your business, even if they happened before you started on Facebook.

Include things you might want people to know about your business – your start date, the day you won an award, when you started selling a new product. These will add some interest to your history and act as promotional items for people who want to look through your history.

If you still have questions or want to know more, please join me for a free Webinar I’m hosting on March 27^that 2 p.m. eastern. I’ll walk you through some of these steps as well as showcase some additional features of the new Timeline. Just click here to register.

Here's why my Cover looks like today

The most noticeable change is the cover photo. This large image is eye-catching. You can change and update it at will.

Here's a great cover - created using an App

For best results, your cover photo should be 720 pixels wide but I’ve been seeing reports that tell us the ideal dimensions should be 850px wide by 315px high. Higher resolution photos are better so the image is clear. The nice thing about the cover photo is it’s easy to change so if you don’t like an image, choose another one.

In addition to the cover, how your posts and uploads appear on your profile page have changed. It looks more like a magazine with more emphasis on images.

If you want to edit your posts, there are a number of ways to do so.

Click on the globe icon just below your name to choose who sees this post – everyone or certain groups of people.

This is where having lists of your Facebook friends can be useful.

For example, when I’m promoting a local event or story, I often change the setting to include only my list of local friends.

By doing this people who can’t participate aren’t inundated with posts that have nothing to do with them.

You can also choose to have only specific people see certain posts. The control is in your hands.

Click on the “pencil” icon in the upper right of the post to edit the post – change dates, add locations or hide it from your timeline.

The “star” icon lets you change the size of a post. If you want to highlight something to visitors, you can make a post become the full width of the page.

The biggest change however is the “Timeline” feature.

Seen on the right-hand side of your profile, it gives clickable links to past posts – going all the way back to when you started Facebook.

Want to see what I did in 2008? Click on that date and you’ll be taken to my posts from that year.

This is what has many people worried.

Until now, it was tedious to search through someone’s Facebook archives to see what they’ve posted in the past. If you said or did something that doesn’t reflect you today, it didn’t matter so much because the odds of anyone bothering to look was slim. Now it’s dead easy for anyone to find your past.

This is why you need to convert to Timeline today. When you convert, you’ll have seven days to go through your past posts and decide what items you want hidden from view.

Other than looking pretty, is there any up-side to the new timeline? Yes! You can add important milestones from your life to your timeline, even if they occurred before you joined Facebook. Your wedding, university graduation, a prestigious award can quickly be added. You can choose to highlight the events that you want. Including a photo with the event will add to the impact.

What should you do now?

First, upgrade to the new Timeline. Add an interesting photo for the cover or choose one from your Facebook photo albums.

Second, start looking through you Facebook history and hide or delete anything that no longer reflects who you are.

Third, add live events you want people to see. Think the date you started your business, important anniversaries, awards you won. Don’t forget to include some personal life events too – things that you don’t mind sharing with the world but show who you are as a person. Include your wedding date, a memorable vacation – use your imagination.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Have you seen some interesting uses of the new Timeline features? Are there tips and tricks you’ve learned? Do you have a question? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

An automated DM in Twitter is when you use software to automatically send a direct message to new followers. I was (and still am) against them because everyone knows they’re automated and are often annoying to the receiver. They do nothing to help the receiver get to know, like and trust you better. Getting people to know, like and trust you is your main purpose with marketing.

However, I recently received this automated DM and this is the exception to my no auto-DM rule. Why? Because it made me laugh – which is clearly the goal. It is poking fun at how most people craft these types of messages and instantly made me like the sender a little more. Therefore, it did the job.

What do you think? Leave a comment please.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Google Analytics Dashboard WordPress Widget lets you see your Google Analytics at a glance from your WordPress Dashboard. It doesn’t give you everything, but you can top posts, top searches and top referrers. These are all important things to see every day.The Link Within plug-in gives you the related posts you see at the bottom of my blog posts. It’s a nice way to encourage visitors to go to more pages on your site.

The Maintenance Mode plug-in allows you to make major changes to your site without having visitors see a mess. Instead, visitors will get a message telling them the site is undergoing maintenance and when they can expect the site to be back, including date, time and how long. You wouldn’t want to do this often, but if you’re implementing a major overhaul of your site, this is handy to have.

For automatically Tweeting new blog posts I use Twitter Tools. It was easy to set up and works well. You can also add hashtags to any Tweet you want to send.

If you’re selling digital products on your site but don’t have enough sales to make buying a fancy shopping cart a financially viable option, try the eStore Plug-in. It’s easy to use, easy to install and will integrate with your email list and PayPal. Best of all, rather than a monthly fee, you just pay one price.

Please share your favourites by leaving a comment on the blog.

However, I know that many people who get on LinkedIn, set up a profile, send a few invites to connect, then sit there with a handful of connections, wondering what to do next. If that sounds like you, please join me on September 7th for my online workshop: How to Build a Profitable LinkedIn Network. I will teach you the secrets of creating a great profile, how and when to send invitations to people you don’t know and what you need to watch out for so you don’t get kicked off the site.

Just go to http://thebabyboomerentrepreneur.com/linkedintraining/ to register

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.

Wrong!

Nine of those comments looked like this:

I would like to thank you for the efforts you have put in writing this blog. I’m hoping the same high-grade site post from you in the upcoming also. In fact your creative writing skills has inspired me to get my own website now. Actually the blogging is spreading its wings rapidly. Your write up is a great example of it.

Not similar to that, EXACTLY the same. All from the same person, promoting the same website.

Guess what? I went into my comments folder and spammed them all.

I know that many internet marketers tell you that a good way to get incoming links to your website is to comment on other blogs.  In fact, I tell people that too. You may have read it right here on this blog.

If done properly, blog commenting works. For a long time, one of the top ten Google search results for “Andrea Stenberg” was a comment I made on Chris Brogan’s blog.

However, if you’re going to comment on another person’s blog, don’t do it only for the purpose of getting a link to your website. You’ve got to add value. Make a comment that is specific to that blog post. Be insightful and thoughtful. Add something new to the conversation. Agree or disagree. It doesn’t matter as long as you are commenting because you have something to say.

So please, make my day. If you have a thought or experience about this post, please leave a comment. If you disagree, share that too. Just add something to this conversation, please.

Andrea J. Stenberg