A Solo Entrepreneur’s Best Place For Getting Started Right With Social Media

This Social Media Training webinar is meant for anyone who is just starting out, has been dipping their toes in the social media waters, or is more advanced…but feeling overwhelmed! Social Media Marketing for your business doesn’t have to be complicated, but there certainly is a recipe for success.

If you have never had an overview of how social media works, the right tools, their unique and individual roles, how they work and integrate together, and how they should each be deployed on behalf of your business…then this is absolutely the right place to get started!

We will explain everything that you need to know in order to have the best chance of succeeding with social media for your business, including a detailed explanation of the “7 Elements of Social Media Success.”

The total length of the Webinar is just over 46 minutes. You may have to wait 30 seconds to a minute for the video to start playing. After watching the webinar, please make sure to review the recommendations below for how to plan out the training for your next two months. And remember, month one is all about setting your social media foundation. Month two is where you actually start prospecting!

Below is a timeline For laying out your first two months of activity. Make sure to follow them in priority order!

Things You Do Once (your first month)

Week #1 – Review the webinar on Branding Strategies. This will show you how to create your brand (even providing templates to fill out), how to identify your target market niche and develop your keyword strategy.

Week #2 – Take the time to refine your brand strategy, target market and keyword strategy!

Week #3 – Watch the webinars and create your Facebook personal profile, YouTube and Twitter accounts. Even if you have these accounts already up and running, you will still want to take the time to review these since they are focused on using these tools for business! Make sure that you are providing the right information on each account so that it is a balanced reflection of both you as the individual and you as the business owner.

Week #4 – Review the two webinars listed below which will help you create a rock solid reputation online, and help bullet proof your credibility as a businesowner that people can trust!

• Google Training Webinar – 20 Minutes To Top Page Google Rankings
• Yelp Training Webinar – The Top 5 Strategic Uses Of Online Reviews You Can’t Ignore

Your Second Month (all about prospecting)

Week #5 – Start reviewing the three Prospecting Training Webinars in the University. This will give you an extremely solid foundation to start generating new business leads!

Week #6-8 (part one) – Continue to refine your prospecting strategies and tactics as you put the University’s lessons into action. Make sure that you have hooked up with an accountability partner during this process. If you need one, we can help!

Week #6-8 (part two) – Start to build your blog. As you will learn in the training, this is the hub of your social media activity! You will find a complete Blog Training series for your review. This may take you past the first two months, but is well worth the effort!

FINAL NOTE: If you spend the time to dedicate to your success through social media marketing, you will find all-new ways to achieve growth for your business that you never even knew existed before. As you will find as you go thru our training…Your personal brand, influence and ability to find and convert prospects from anywhere, anytime will be easier to accomplish than ever before.

Click through to return to the Getting Started series home page.

How Any Small Business Entrepreneur Can Get Started Right In The World Of Social Media Marketing

August 25th from 4-5p PST

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What You Will Learn From This Social Media Training 101 Webinar

• What should my expectations be to create a successful social media campaign for my business?
• What are the elements that I would need to create?
• What is the priority order?
• How do I create success with limited time?
• What are the few things that will make the biggest difference?
• Success stories?
• Why you can do it, with nothing more than a computer and a good connection to the internet!
• How to do it all, for very, very little out-of-pocket costs!
  

One of the most daunting tasks for most small business entrepreneurs is simply knowing where to start! If this is your situation, or you are already well under way, but don’t feel like you have a game plan…then this is the webinar for you!

This is the webinar where it all comes into one clear picture. And we guarantee that this webinar will include things that you have never hear of before. We don’t stop with the popular social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, we dig deeper for things you just can’t miss in your road to success.

You are not going to want to miss out on this webinar!

Does My Small Business Need A Facebook Like Page? And When Should I Open One?

One of the most common Facebook Training questions that we get is around why and when to open a business page on Facebook. There seems to be almost a gold rush mentality around the need to have a Facebook page. But there are a number of really important factors that need to be considered first.

Time is a huge factor. Do you have enough time as a solo, small business entrepreneur to dedicate to making your new business page into a vibrant destination site that will engage new visitors on a regular basis. Do you have the time to create a page that constantly adds value, creates interaction and accelerates new visitors into a deeper relationship with your business? These questions could be the very same ones asked about the blog for your business. And we know that your blog is the very hub of your online, social media activity.

So you have to ask yourself the question of whether or not you have the time to make that kind of commitment. If you move forward and only give a portion of the effort required, it will backfire! You will have created a lifeless, inactive page that shouts out to everyone who visits that there is nothing of real value there. You will have created the exact opposite experience that you were intending for your brand!

Do you have a plan for creating ongoing engagements and value? It’s not enough to just say you want a business page on Facebook and just go right ahead and open it. You need to have a plan for how you are going to create a regular drum beat of activity that engages and involves your visitors. If you have not considered this plan before creating your like page then you have probably not had great success with it over any length of time. Really think through what it will take to create ongoing value without having to recreate the wheel each week or suck up all of your time! Feel free to check out the Practical Social Media University’s Facebook Page as one example of how a vibrant community around a business can be created.

Why do I need a Facebook Like Page? One of the biggest benefits of Facebook is that interactions (comments, likes, tags, photos, videos, etc.) can all become “stories” that make it into the newsfeeds of those that like your page. That means that their friends have the opportunity to see them interacting with your brand on your like page. And there is no limit to how many people can like your page. So as long as you have a growing, vibrant, engaging experience happening on your like page, it will constantly be working to make your business more and more viral on Facebook. The more interactions on your Facebook page, the more stories get entered into the newsfeeds, that stay up longer and generate more exposure for your business.

Does it meet your near term goals? Most solo entrepreneurs that I talk to want and need more customers and clients now. The best way to get immediate results on Facebook is to simply dive in and start targeting and prospecting. In order for business pages to really start producing new leads, they need to have a lot of love and attention put there way.

Another consideration is that Facebook pages don’t allow you to message one on one, that is only a feature of your personal profile. Facebook page messaging doesn’t even go into the regular, most noticed part of people’s message inbox! So Facebook pages are really intended for creating mass engagement strategies off the page itself! Thus, they are a slower process to creating a return on your time invested because the real value comes from creating an all-new community around your business.

When should I open a Facebook Page? When you already have a good following for your business online. When you can announce the new page and assure that you’ll be able to start out with a large enough community to create a foundation for good, sustained interactions. The best plans for a like page won’t make any difference unless there is that community of people using it!

Conclusion: Facebook pages are a tremendous opportunity to go viral on Facebook while creating a community that naturally attracts your existing customers at the same time. That mix of satisfied customers and new prospects can be a tremendous benefit for your business! You should have it in your expectations that long term, one of the most significant reasons why you create a Facebook page is because of the value of interacting and creating a community for existing customers and clients. Not only are they a vitally important source for future earning potential, but the best advocates for your business if you keep in touch and keep them happy.

Just make sure that before you start that you have the time, the plan and the community in place to make the most out of your new business page on Facebook.

We also have a full member’s webinar dedicated to this subject, entitled, “The Marketing Role Of A Facebook Personal Profile vs. A Business Page.“

Click through for a full list of Facebook Training resources within the University’s curriculum.

You won’t believe these stats!

2010 was a BIG year for Facebook. The site’s user base grew 42% in the U.S. to more than 145 million, according to iStrategyLabs. The prime group of users 25-54 represents 50% of that user base. If you were under the impression that Facebook was for teenagers, it’s time to think again. EVERYONE is on Facebook.

No matter who your target demographic is, a good percentage of your target market are on Facebook. Facebook has more than 600 million active users, and half of them log on daily. People spend 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook. Yowza! That’s a lot of time.

In fact, the average American Facebook user spends about 421 minutes per month on Facebook, which equals about 14 minutes a day. None of the other mainstream sites come close:  users spend an average of one minute a day on Google and YouTube, and two minutes on Yahoo. Even if you lump them all the big-time sites together (including Wikipedia), Facebook is still the head honcho.

More than 30 billion nuggets of web content are shared each month on Facebook (that includes links, photo albums, etc). The fact that there’s a ton of stuff on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s harder to get noticed, though. Quite the opposite. A lot of people are on Facebook sharing information, and all you have to do is get on the train and get into the mix.

Also, the average user is connected to 80 pages. One of those pages could easily be yours, couldn’t it?

Furthermore, over two million websites have integrated with Facebook, and an average of 10,000 sites hop on board each day. 250 million people engage with Facebook from an external website each month. In other words: Facebook is all over the web.

Facebook has gone mobile, too: more than 200 million users log-in on smartphones or iPads. Mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users. Since smartphones are surely going to rise in popularity over the next few years, we can expect to see many more active users.

In a nutshell: Facebook is the land of opportunity for small business entrepreneurs. It is now the most-searched, and most-visited. It’s also the place where web users spend most of their time.

So, in a nutshell? Facebook is the ideal place to connect. What are you waiting for?  There is a whole world of Facebook prospecting opportunities for your business, and the training is waiting for you at The Practical Social Media University.

Image: Courtesy of Facebook

Blogging For Business With A Plan

If you are reading this Social Media Training post, then you are to be congratulated! That means you are actively taking an interest in what is one of the most crucial social media tools (blogging) that you have at your disposal. I loved the Fast Company article that came a couple of years ago on The Ten Commandments of Social Media, with #1 being “Though shalt blog, like crazy.” To find out more why blogging is so important to your business, check out our Blog Training series home page.

As much as blogging is so important, it is also one of the most wasted social media tools as well. Too many small business entrepreneurs work extremely hard at their blog, but their blog isn’t working very hard for them. Why? They don’t have some of the fundamentals down!  The fundamentals require that you have a brand strategy, that leads to a target audience definition, which feeds into a content outline and finally your keyword selections. You need a PLAN. If you don’t have a plan worked out (and by the way, you only have to do the plan once), then you are probably working really hard at putting up blog posts that are quite random, and actually confusing Google as to what your site is all about.

I had a good friend that recently just went back into a good portion of his blog posts and started updating them with a well-considered keyword strategy that DOUBLED his blog’s traffic in a matter of days. He is now getting well over a 1,000 more site visitors a day as a result.

Blogging can be crucial to your business, as long as you have your fundamentals in place. Don’t make the mistake of going forward on a social media, a blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any other marketing effort without having your fundamentals down first. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time on wasted efforts. This is one of the most important social media training tips to remember.

And What You Can Learn

About six months ago, Starbucks held a “Free Pastry Day”, and attracted over one million people to their stores. How? Social media. Twitter and Facebook captured the buzz about the event and people went searching for a free pastry.

Starbucks is a leader in effective social media marketing. Starbucks has over eighteen million fans on Facebook. The company’s MyStarbucks Idea has also generated over 80,000 ideas, and the Vice President of Brand, Content and Online, Chris Bruzzo, credits Twitter for the success of the project. Starbucks was also the first company to offer a nationwide Foursquare deal.

So, where did Starbucks get their social media smarts? The company listens to their customers. Starbucks works on engaging a dialogue, and considers social media as a relationship, rather than a one-way promotion. Also, Starbucks uses social media to tell a story about their brand, via stories and videos. During the Haiti disaster, for example, Starbucks used videos as part of the Haiti outreach campaign on both YouTube and Facebook. Customers were able to donate to Red Cross in stores, and learned that Starbucks cared.

Alex Wheeler, Director of Digital Strategy at Starbucks, calls their social media approach “scrappy”.  As one of the first companies to really embrace social media, figuring out what worked and being open to different options was what led to their success.

As a small business entrepreneur, you can learn from the company’s social media activity. You can use social media to start a genuine conversation with your customers. It’s not about marketing as much as it’s about relationships (though, the relationships will lead to sales or clients).  And remember, your relationship is one that constantly gives value, and expects nothing in return.  Your are there to help and tell your story along the way!

This is yet another reminder of just how important your brand is to your social media success.  For more on this subject, please look over our lead article on “The Importance of Your Brand To Your Social Media Success.”

New survey has incredible results and news for businesses of any size

In a global study conducted by STUDYLOGIC LLC, surveying 4,204 people, 39% of correspondent’s said they “could not live without” social media sites. Of course, people were living before social media came along less than a decade ago, but they’ve become completely dependent in recent years. Almost half the respondents consider social media a vital component of their lives (somewhere up there with air, food, and water).

What does that mean for small business entrepreneurs? It means that companies can jump into a “vital” form of communication that people have become somewhat addicted to. People are using social media all of the time, according to this study. Four-fifths of respondents said that they checked in on social networking sites multiple times during the day, and one-third of respondents said they checked in several times an hour.

Before meeting a new business contact, more than half of the people surveyed admitted they’d done a little “snooping”. Of course, it’s hardly snooping when you’re looking at public social networking profiles, especially when everyone does it these days. Also, 60% of respondents claimed they had refused to hire a candidate due to a negative impression from a social media profile. As a small business entrepreneur, you’d better be careful what your social networks say about you: they can make or break a deal before it’s even begun.

Also, social media isn’t just in the office or at home anymore, it’s out on the road. 60% of travelers use social media to get in touch with friends or family when they’re traveling. 64% use social media to make their plans, and in the 25-34 age bracket 76% use social media to make their travel plans (um, if you’re a travel company, you’d better be tapping into Twitter and Facebook!). And, regardless of whether or not you’re a travel company, social media travels (literally) far and wide, and you’d better be on deck.

The STUDYLOGIC LLC survey demonstrates how widespread social media has become, and it’s good news for small businesses who know how to effectively harness the power of social media. Think about it: according to this study, social media has become a mainstream form of communication between friends and family (beyond telephone and email!), and if your business makes a genuine, honest effort to use social media well, you can enter this intimate form of communication. And, everybody is already hanging out there, all the time.

Just as Google Analytics tells you what keywords and other sites are drawing visitors to your website, Twitter Analytics will tell you which tweets make or break your Twitter popularity. As you may know, some third-party vendors offer similar services, but Twitter will offer analytics for free (and they have no plan to charge anytime soon). Most likely, the startups that currently offer analytics are looking for a new business model.

A bar graph charts 6-hour increments, and shows mentions, follows and unfollows. You can also filter your tweets to see them in the following categories: “best”, “good” and “all”. The dashboard has been built by Smallthought Systems, a team that Twitter acquired in June. In other words: it should be simple, easy-to-use, yet thorough.

Just to give you an idea how exciting Twitter Analytics is: more than 12,500 people tweeted the story when it appeared on Mashable last month. Why is everyone so eager to share this news? In part, because small business owners like you will greatly benefit from Twitter Analytics. You will be able to measure your success, better understand your customers and improve your marketing communication. Tweet on, tweet on!

Here’s what they found: each social media share is equal to $1.78 in ticket sales. Facebook shares are most lucrative, equaling $2.52 per post. Next up: a share through e-mail equals to $2.34 in sales. A Linkedin share is worth $.90 and Twitter is worth $.43. Facebook is now the most important referral site for Eventbrite.

Eventbrite believes that sales that occur through social media, or “social commerce”, is going to be the next big hoorah in online business. Here’s a line from their blog: “True social commerce promises to leverage the speed and connectivity of social networks to drive sales transactions. It’s an elusive promise that many companies have struggled to realize, but those that do will disrupt industries and create a new scale of business.” According to Eventbrite, social media is going to become the mainstream marketing channel for online businesses. Then again, perhaps it already is?

What everyone needs to know BEFORE getting started with social media

If you review the training within this series, you will understand the fundamentals necessary for business success, have the proper expectations of what it takes to start, and avoid sure disaster from just jumping in with both feet first. The advice isn’t always very intuitive, but it is critical to your success as a social media marketer.

IMPORTANT: If you are brand new to the University, you can also visit our New Member page or review our step-by-step, Training Webinars for recommendations of what to learn in priority order. You can also access any training module (webinars, videos and how-to articles) from the home page or the sidebar on any page throughout the site. However, we recommend reviewing this Getting Started series as your introduction into social media marketing for your business.

Don’t miss our SOCIAL MEDIA 101 TRAINING WEBINAR, all about how to get started right as a solo entrepreneur. This webinar is an overview of exactly what you should expect and do in your first two months…including the SEVEN ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS!

Don’t make the mistake of starting out before spending time in this Getting Started series!  The best time to use this Getting Started series is prior to launching into the tactics of your campaign. If you don’t apply the learning here, we guarantee that you will work really hard at your social media marketing, but your social media marketing won’t be working very hard for you!

Here are the two most important “Getting Started” recommendations:

• Review the Social Media 101 Training Webinar on Getting Started Right For Solo Entrepreneurs. This will provide you with invaluable information that previously, could only have been discovered through the school of hard knocks!
• Set your expectations right! Make sure you are committed to carving out an hour a day to set your social media foundation and then start prospecting for your business. In fact, we recommend seeking out an accountability partner to help ensure your dedication and success.

Every social media expert who has been exposed to this ‘Getting Started’ series has said in one way or another that it was priceless. They each wish they had known the information when they were just starting out!