Social tools for business

I'm at the cottage and I am thinking about all the online tools out there and how valuable they can be for businesses. Now, more than ever before, business owners can communicate with their clients and potential clients quickly and effectively.

If you are a business owner who continues to struggle with how to make social media work for you then I encourage you to read through five of my favourite blog posts that offer up valuable social media tips on some of my favourite social channels:

1)   Should you be on Instagram?

If you are a business owner who doesn’t understand the value of posting pictures on a regular basis, then read this post to find out if you’re missing out on a tool that could be helping you reach an audience you didn’t even know existed! If you are a visual business, you should most probably be on Instagram. Click here to learn more.

2) The Value of Recommendations and Endorsements

LinkedIn is a professional social channel and is the best place to showcase your accreditations, skills and accomplishments. It is also a place to connect and network with new professional connections and prove that you are worth working with. It is for this reason that you should learn and use the recommendation and endorsement features on LinkedIn. These features allow people to see what you are all about and have to offer without having to connect with you first. To learn more about the value of LinkedIn, click here.

3)   Why should my small business use Facebook?

Believe it or not there are still small businesses who are not on Facebook – or they are on as a personal profile or group and do not have a business page.  There are advantages to being on Facebook as a business and this post goes back to the basics – for those who still need convincing. To read the full post, click here.

4)   The Twitter Rules of Thirds

If you are new to Twitter, or you have an account, but instead of using it for business use it for news updates instead, this blog post will help you understand what you should really be using this conversational social channel for. Twitter is not as time consuming as you may think! Used correctly for about ten minutes a day can help grow your audience substantially. Click here to learn more about Twitter.

5)   Periscope – What is it and why should I care?

This is a new social app and it is taking the world by storm!  Periscope allows you to live stream from your cell phone and it’s free to broadcast and view. There is a lot of potential in this simple app, and I have seen business owners use it to share tips, product reveals and more!  It’s a quick and easy tool that can be used to connect with your audience in real time – from anywhere in the world. Click here to read more on Periscope.

So, as I connect with you miles from my office I hope you find these highlighted posts helpful as you continue to explore the endless possibilities social media brings for small businesses. 

Three quick tips to improve your Facebook page

Facebook is one of the most commonly used online marketing tools for business - and rightfully so!

It's also one of the most frustrating.

There are all kinds of things you can do to optimize your Facebook page so that it works for you. Today I'm going to share three really simple tips that will help make your Facebook presence better.

1) About page

How complete is your About page? Make sure that you have filled in as much as you can because Facebook is Google searchable. The more relevant your make your content and the more keywords you use, the better.

The other bonus is that you look professional. The more well rounded, descriptive and easy to find your content is, the more credible and professional you look.

2) Call-to-action

Have you seen the "Call to Action" button that Facebook has made available for pages? It's a great and SUPER simple way to give people the opportunity to engage with you.

To set it up go to your page and click on "Create Call to Action."

Then walk through the simple steps of choosing what you want your button to say and where you want it to go.

And that's it - you're done. I've set mine up as a sign up to my newsletter, but you can send it to any kind of page: a squeeze page, sales page, have them sign up for an appointment or watch a video.

There's also a handy report of how well the call-to-action is performing in your page side bar. Don't expect these numbers to be huge - there's very little information and most people aren't actually coming to your page when they see your content. But considering it takes 2 minutes to set up, there's no good reason not to do it even if it only converts occasionally.

3) Put a call-to-action in your cover image description

Putting a a call-to-action in your cover image description is another call-to-action improvement because that's ultimately what we're trying to achieve with using Facebook for our businesses - to get people to DO something.

When you upload a photo as your cover image on Facebook, don't just leave the description blank. This is an opportunity to ask people to do something. This will be effective if people click on the image to see more, if they see it come through their news feed (especially when you initially change your cover image) and if you put a call-to-action in the image (I don't have one, but it's a great thing to test out) that says, "click here to get a _____" and then leave the extra information in the photo description. Always remember to tell people what they're getting - demonstrate the value to them. 

There you have it. Three really fast and easy ways to improve your Facebook business page.

Have any other easy tips to share? Leave them in the comments!

Planning your social content: a step-by-step guide

The best way to effectively use social media for your small business is to have a plan. Since that is definitely easier to say than do, I thought today I would break down step-by-step how to come up with a simple plan.

1) Know what you're trying to achieve.

I've written about this topic quite a bit in the past, so check out some of those posts, but the simple explanation is to figure out why you're using social media - we all have different reasons beyond "make more money," which is key for most of us. 

2) Know who you're talking to.

Different audiences are on different channels and different audiences like different kinds of content. You need to know who you're talking to so they feel like what you're saying is for them. If you're too vague or general nobody will feel like you're talking to them, which defeats the purpose of what you're doing.

3) What do you want them to know.

This is SO important. This drives all of your content. What do you want people to know about you and what do you want people to know about what you do. 

4) Pick your channels

It doesn't make sense for you to be on every social channel. You don't have the time or resources for that. Start with a couple and once those are completely under control you can grow from there. 

My top three social media choices (without knowing your audience so this is flexible!) are for you to have an email newsletter, a blog and Facebook.

If however, your audience is very business-to-business, I might prioritize LinkedIn over Facebook.

If your audience is under 25, I might prioritize Instagram over Facebook.

If writing and time is hard for you, I would leave the blog until after you have Facebook and a newsletter set up.

5) Know your numbers

Knowing your numbers is so important in all aspects of business. You need to know where you're at now so you can tell if you're growing.

Set up a spreadsheet or table that lists:

- Facebook likes
- "Talking about" numbers on Facebook
- Twitter followers
- Instagram followers
and so on and so forth

Make sure that Google Analytics or some other analytics tool is set up on your website and track:

- Visits
- Unique visits
- Page views
- Referral sources

You are then going to want to track these numbers monthly to see if what you're doing is working. We want to make sure that the effort you're putting in is worth it to you - you're a busy person!

6) Start sharing your knowledge

Take 10-15 minutes and write down as many tips as you can about something.

Are you a realtor? What are great ways to get your house ready for sale?

Are you a hairdresser? How should your clients be taking care of their hair between cuts and colours?

Are you a nutritionist? What are some great ways to make healthy food on the fly?

The goal is to have a list of one or two sentence tips that you'll be able to use later on and to realize just how much content you can write in a short period of time when you have a specific topic to write about.

Do the same for a few other topics and you'll have a lot of content ready to go!

7) Don't think you need to create it all

You want to share content that's of value to your audience. There is a LOT of content that already exists that your audience will really appreciate having access to. If it backs up your key messages, the things you really want people to know, use THAT content instead of having to write your own.

Whenever you're browsing the internet or Facebook and you see an interesting article, a funny joke or a video that you really like, think about whether or not it would add value to your audience while still staying in line with your key messages. If it does, save it and you'll be able to use that content later!

8) Evaluate

You have your baseline numbers, make sure to check and see what's working, what isn't, and how you can shift and change to improve.

A plan doesn't need to be extensive to get you going on the right path. If you want more help figuring all of this out for Facebook and Twitter, we have a program called Simple Start. It's on sale right now for $39 (regular $99) while I work to update it from the old Wellman Wilson branding. The price will go up once it's been revamped so now's the time to invest!

Learn to blog in 5 weeks with our new online course!

There are so many great reasons to have a blog: 

• To showcase your expertise.
• To give people a reason to come to your website (your home base on the web).
• To help with search engine optimization (SEO) so that you'll come up in search.

The problem, of course, isn't that people don't know the value of having a blog, it's that they don't know how to start a blog, they don't know what to talk about, they don't know how to optimize their content, or they don't feel they can handle the maintenance of a blog. These are all really valid concerns, but we don't want to let them stop you.

Simple Start - Blogging

One of our goals at Wellman Wilson is to create tools to help you feel comfortable with online marketing. We started with a course that helps with Facebook and Twitter, last Fall we introduced a course on newsletters and now we're thrilled to be starting a course on blogging!

The goal of our blogging course is to walk you through the steps of setting up a blog from the very beginning. Does this mean that if you already have a blog this course isn't for you? Definitely not, it may just mean that some of the very first lessons have some refresher material for you - which never hurts!

What you'll learn

Week 1 - Foundations

Choosing to blog - why? how?
Identifying audience, goals
Crafting key messages

Week 2 - Content Basics

Creating a theme (subject) for your blog
Picking blog topics
Telling stories

Week 3 - Enhancing Content

Mixing up content - types of blog posts/media
Creating content
Using images to enhance blog posts

Week 4 - Planning

Setting up a plan
Using a content/editorial calendar
Establishing a regular publishing schedule

Week 5 - Optimize for Success

Optimizing your content for sharing
Learning the basics of SEO (search engine optimization)
Measuring success

How does it work?

The lessons are emailed based and will be delivered to your inbox over 5 weeks. Each week you'll cover a series of topics and be given homework and assignments to move you forward through the lessons.

You will be added to a closed Facebook Group where you will get the support of other people also taking the course and where you can ask questions that we will answer. 

You can also take advantage of our PLUS program which will give you access to one of us for three 30-minute calls.

How much does it cost?

As with our other programs we like to offer a great rate the first time a course is offered. If you enrol when the blogging course launches April 9th the cost is only $49 (it will be $99 when it runs again)!

For more information, including how to register visit: http://www.wellmanwilson.com/blogging

We look forward to seeing you in the course!

I like it! Yup, I like that too!

I hit "like" a lot when I'm on Facebook. I also make a lot of obvious comments or sometimes ask questions I know the answer to. Why?  

Because I'm all about gaming the algorithm. ;)

How Facebook works

We've talked about this before, but here's a quick recap on how Facebook works. Facebook doesn't show you everything because there is simply TOO MUCH content between all your friends and the pages you like (plus the ads, of course). Instead, Facebook tries to figure out what it is that you want to see and they do that based on:

- Things you have previously liked or commented on. If you liked it before, you're more likely to like it again.

- Things that are popular with lots of people. If lots of people like it, it's probably interesting.

Customize your feed

If you feel like you're always seeing content from the same people and not from others, change things up by going to some posts by people or pages you want to see and liking or commenting.  This post came up in my feed today and clearly the post worked for them. It showed up in my feed as well as in many other people's feeds because so many others liked and commented. As a result, people should continue to see this content again in their feeds for awhile (unless they go back to not liking or commenting).

Post by Knitty.

How can you get more people to see your content?

Always put a call to action into what you're saying to encourage your audience to do something.  If you don't do that they are likely to read what you have to say and not do anything because it won't occur to them.

A few other simple things

- Like your own content as yourself.

- Ask a few of your close friends, dedicated clients, etc. to turn on notifications for your page and hit like and comment on your posts, and offer to do the same for them.

- If someone shares your content, like it and comment and thank them. You should do that because it's nice, but also keeping in mind that the more engagement the post has, the more likely that person's audience is to see it.

Facebook is a busy place with a LOT of content.  It can be hard to stand out in the crowd and you can't expect to get incredible reach without being willing to spend some money on advertising. That being said, simply liking stuff can go a long way.  

Leave a comment and let me know if you find your feed can change based on what you've been liking and comment on.  Then go and like a few new things you'd like to see more of!