Wednesday 25 January 2017

2. Facebook

            In the year 2017, if you are not easily found on the internet, you do not exist.  This is the second in a series of articles; “How to Create and Maintain a Social Media Brand – the Lecture Series”.   This is all you need to know to create a social media presence for the independent consumer based business.     Enjoy, and Happy New Year 2017.
Facebook has been written off by many professionals as a personal space.   Nothing is personal in 2017.  Everything is public.   So is your professional life. 

Facebook is useful for businesses because it has
  • a search engine
  • business pages where you can promote your business activities or at least publish them at no charge 
  • paid ads to target audiences
  • boost posts for pay, to a  pre-selected audience.


So create a page about yourself with tasteful photos of you.   Some of these should be personal and some of these purely professional.   Give people a glimpse of your true self and your many aspects. 

Publish updates weekly or bi-weekly.   These are gentle touches to your network.

Create a business page with address, phone, email and any other important contact information so that people can search and find your business easily using the search engine. 

Publish regular (bi-weekly or monthly) business updates on the business page.   Again, these are gentle touches.

Consider paying for an ad or two.  The ad should be interesting, innovative and entertain your intended audience.   The ad should most of all entertain.  Facebook is a leisure activity. The ad will increase your page likes and followers.

When something interesting or extraordinary happens for your business, publish these events and boost the post to ensure that as many people as possible in the public learn about it.  This will also serve to increase your network and your reach.

Privacy and Security
If you think of these Facebook pages as places to promote your professional self and business, then you will realize that privacy is really not very necessary.   Most of your posts should be public.  However, you should ensure that you get to review anything that anyone writes on your wall or shares on your timeline.  Do not re-share personal information or posts from your Facebook friends.  Do not include personal information on this site that you wish to keep personal or only share with close friends and family. 

Ending on a positive note:
Facebook can extend your network by leaps and bounds.  You can gently remind people that you are the trusted professional of choice for the myriad of services that you provide. 



Tuesday 17 January 2017

1. LinkedIn for the Small Business

In the year 2017, if you are not easily found on the internet, you do not exist.  This is the first in a series of articles; “How to Create and Maintain a Social Media Brand – the Lecture Series”.   This is all you need to know to create a social media presence for the independent consumer based business.     Enjoy, and Happy New Year 2017.

LinkedIn is the social network for business professionals.   Seventy four percent of professionals are registered with LinkedIn.   Sixty percent of LinkedIn users check their LinkedIn site more than 3 times a week.   To network in 2017, use LinkedIn.  

In the olden days, I would get a business card, perhaps enter the information in Outlook, and then, with many contacts, lose touch with them as they changed emails or changed jobs. 

With LinkedIn, the contact maintains the information and the changes to their emails and job situation. 

     Rule 1:   Keep your contact information up to date in LinkedIn so that people can contact you, especially if they have no other contact information.  (oh yes, and have a professional photo of yourself)

Networking is more than just getting someone’s contact information.   It is about sharing who you are and learning about who they are and sharing updates.

        Rule 2: Share professional updates:   these can be articles of interest that you find on some publication, thought or musings or issues as they come up, company information, press releases, news and events in the business world that you work in, industry information, information about your profession.  

Write articles:   If you really are an expert about something, and good at your profession, you can write the occasional article that supports this.

        Rule 3:   Write articles for LinkedIn.   These can also be published on your blog if you have one.  Sharing updates and writing posts/ articles are 2 different things. Updates appear on the news feed on the Home page and flow.   Posts or Articles appear on your profile and do not flow away in a few hours. So it is worthwhile to take the time and write the articles. 

Company Pages explain to the world, the company that you work for.   You can showcase events and achievements of your company on these pages.   Your company is part of your professional legitimacy.  People do search on LinkedIn and Google treats LinkedIn information almost as highly as it does Wikipedia.

        Rule 4:  Create and maintain a company page.  (Post weekly or monthly).

Groups are a forum for you to connect with people in similar professions and interests, exchange ideas and publish opinions.   Join groups that reflect your professional credentials to further establish your professional credentials.


        Rule 5:  Join Groups that reflect your interests and skills.  Joins discussions and share interesting articles from groups to your contacts.  





Tuesday 10 January 2017

Why Social Media for the Wealth Management, or Insurance Company?

Much that has been written about Social Networking tactics is too general.   There is more than one type of consumer based business.  For example, a consumer based business could be a business that sells professional services to consumers, one that sells iPhone74 aps to tweens, or one that sells cheese to a mass market.  For a consumer goods, mass market business, the benefits of Facebook are obvious.   Get a million followers and use ads to promote your posts to the next million.   Entertaining posts will be shared by any and all. 

Re-shares happen organically, but only if you are cute, funny, a kitten, original, useful, and/or timely (or some combination of those).   This is such an easy thing if you are selling Coke and have a million dollar budget (or can add the ‘real thing’ into the real thing.   


The issue here for the small to medium sized business such as a mortgage broker, insurance agency, financial analyst, appraiser... 

For the independent consumer based business:  the wealth management firm, the financial services company, the insurance brokerage, getting results from Social Media for business is a bigger challenge.  

But the objectives are different as well.  Instead of a million followers, you are looking for a thousand local followers.   Instead of a million shares, you are looking for increased traffic and SEO (SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but in 2017, it just means that Google should offer you up when your customers or prospects go looking.)   


In the year 2017, if you are not easily found on the internet, you do not exist.  Over the next weeks, I will publish a series of articles; “How to Create and Maintain a Social Media Brand – the Lecture Series”.   This is all you need to know to create a social media presence for the independent consumer based business that offers professional services and products.  I am specifically addressing the requirements of insurance, mortgage, financial services industries, but the results are also applicable to construction companies, consulting firms, and small B2B endeavors.     Enjoy, and Happy New Year 2017.