Tag Archives: Facebook

5 Ways to Better Manage Your Online Presence

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When managing your online presence – it is not enough to just have a Facebook profile page, a Twitter Handle, LinkedIn profile, and a website/blog up and running. There are at least a few social media management items you want to make sure you have tackled in order to increase your personal brand awareness.

1. Email and Social Profiles: How many times a day do you use your email? Countless, correct? Well, WiseStamp is a simple tool for adding your social links to your email signature — so every time you compose an email and/or respond people will see where else they can find you with the click of a button (see image below). For other options you can check out this Toolkit on virtual business card options. In addition to your email signature, make sure your website has the links to each of your social profiles, and is easily visible to new visitors. People like things at their fingertips, and having your social links easily visible is key to driving more traffic to your social profiles. In addition link your social pages, such as on your on your LinkedIn, have a link to your website, Twitter, etc. Make it easy and simple for people to find you, with the click of a link or a button.

2. Consistent Personal Brand Image: A consistent image across social platforms can be helpful. For example, if you have a different pictures for each platform, people may be confused and unsure if it’s really you, when searching. If you have a consistent image across your platforms, it will be easier to find you and it will create a cohesive and consistent message about your personal brand. A helpful tool is using Gravatar, which allows you to have “an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog” as well as on your own sites. Not only is it a globally recognized avatar, but it’s easily linked to WordPress.

3. Search: When you Google yourself, what is the first result? If it’s not your website, blog, and/or other pages, then you have a problem. If your name comes up first, it will also demonstrate that you are an authority in your brand category. Thus, some effort and time may be needed for SEO marketing. You can learn to do this for yourself, or you can get some assistance by companies who are pros at this. A couple things to remember when getting started: identify keyword opportunities (for your blog, your videos you share, etc) and do not forget the importance of inbound links to your site.
4. Balancing Professional and Personal Presence:
Part (1): I know some people believe that it is good to differentiate, keep your personal stuff, personal and your professional stuff professional. If you have two Facebook pages, it appears you have a double life and it can be confusing and it definitely adds to the clutter.  I understand if you’re afraid to share certain things like particular pictures or videos. However, that’s what privacy settings are for. They allow you to be smart, and still share be “human” with your brand. So why live a double life, when you can live one great one?
Part (2): If you are focusing on your personal social sites, do you identify who you work for in your Twitter bio and in your blog? My suggestion would be to add a disclaimer on your blog. For example, Julia Roy has such a disclaimer on her blog which states, “The views expressed on my blog and social networks are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, Manilla.” This way you protect yourself, and the place you work with against any issues that may occur regarding tweets, posts, and/or other items shared on your personal social sites.
5. Protecting Tweets: Afraid to share your tweets with anyone and everyone? Well that’s the point of Twitter community — sharing you tweets is key to (1) building your personal brand awareness on a main social platform, (2) letting people find and follow you easily, (3) sharing relevant content to all those who may be interested, and (4) engaging with people in a real and open-door manner.
Here are some additional tools I thought would be cool for you to check out when managing your personal brand online:
About.me: A newer tool that is awesome for pulling all your social platform information to one place, one profile, and best of all – with a clean and crisp presence. This tool allows you to create a profile page that contains a succinct bio, and links to all your other social platforms and web pages. Thus, it’s everywhere you exist, but in one place — making it even easier for people to find you and be aware of your personal brand. And the price is awesome: Free.
Flavors.me: A platform that allows you to show all that you are on one page including photos, videos, blog posts, feeds, and even your resume if you so wish. The pull of this tool is that it is very interactive and visual. It gives you the opportunity to be creative with your one page of content, yet keeping it simple for people to view who you are and where you are present on the web. Free sign up.


Lead Generation Made Simpler

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Creating lead generation is essential to all B2B and B2C companies and can be very time consuming! However, there are some simple and easy-to-use tools for doing so that can hopefully cut down some of that time. Want to know the best part? You’re probably already using some of these tools! But now lets discuss how to use them effectively for lead generation.

Twitter: First and foremost, Twitter itself is a great asset for lead generation. Consumers and companies are both on Twitter for many purposes – whether it be to build their brand, create contacts and followers, increase engagement and promotion, and/or all of the above. First make sure your Twitter account is set up, you are utilizing it regularly, and your blog or web address is in the bio (whichever you use more for lead generation). What is needed to best utilize Twitter effectively: time and effort. It is a free social media platform, and it kicks butt at being in touch with the target market you are hoping to reach.

Need help on finding your target market on Twitter? Look at the next 5 tools below!

Twitter Search: the first place to start out is normally Twitter Search which is a part of your Twitter Account. I recommend going beyond the basic search options and utilizing the advanced search option in order to get more precise and relevant results to your specific company. Using advanced you can focus on people, places, dates, attitudes, etc. The places option may be key for companies looking for leads in a particular area, and people option may also be helpful when looking for people an “influencer” has mentioned.

Follower Wonk: A simple free tool that allows you search keywords in Twitter Bios in order to filter out individuals/companies you may or may not want to follow for lead generation purposes. You can search for individuals based on a specific keyword or you may use locations/names and/or filter out those who have a certain amount of followers (ability to find the influencers). In addition, this tool allows you to compare up to 3 Twitter folks and compare their stats, who follows them, their activity, and their unique versus shared followers. Interesting capability of this tool in order to see how a certain individual or company can be useful for lead generation or not.

Creating lead generation is essential to all B2B and B2C companies and can be very time consuming! However, there are some simple and easy-to-use tools for doing so that can hopefully cut down some of that time. Want to know the best part? You’re probably already using some of these tools! But now lets discuss how to use them effectively for lead generation.

Tweep Search: A tool that allows you to search through bios of all the “tweeps” on Twitter with specific key words. In addition, when you find someone or a company that you find to be relevant – you can then limit the search to their followers and search through there specifically. Narrowing a search is always helpful as there are so many people on Twitter.

Twithawk: If you couldn’t tell by the name — this app is like a “hawk” — looking out for you and your target marketing on Twitter. Unlike the aforementioned tools, this one is a paid service, which allows the Twithawk team to find the best target market matches for you from your specified search terms. Example: “TwitHawkperiodically (at the frequency determined by you) find tweets that mentioned “I need coffee” by users that are actually, currently, located within 5 miles of Queens such as‘@cracksh0t I need a coffee or anything with caffeine NOW’ or ‘@loxly This is so boring, I need a coffee… my one true love’ Then, TwitHawk will grab the tweets, and pop them in a list for you to check over, and you’ll be notified that you’ve got new matches to check over.” In addition, the TwitHawk team and app can help you keep track of tweets sent, noise, link tracking, and Google Analytics.

Tweetdeck: This client can be used on your desktop or on the-go and allows you to organize your followers and filter Tweets in order to assist in lead generation. Set up a column for saved search terms and question phrases (whether related to a product item, your company, a competitor, etc). Then, you can monitor and interact with people who are talking about your industry in a more organized and simpler fashion.

Three other tools you won’t want to miss:

LinkedIn: This is not just a platform for networking – it is an awesome lead generation asset! How to utilize this to your benefit? A few simple things: (1) customize your page; (2) Connect to Twitter (3) Create answer feeds (4) create an industry group (5) follow your target market (possibly those you already found via Twitter?) and (6) Share curated and created content! As corny as it sounds – Get Linked!

Your Blog: This is the content you create and then distribute through your channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It is a great asset to have in order to create lead generation, especially when people subscribe and give their email address to do so!

Facebook: Considering Facebook has more users than the population of some countries, it is definitely a tool you want to utilize to make connections, and hopefully convert those connections into leads. As with your Twitter page, LinkedInpage, and Blog – customize your Facebook to increase the amount of “likes” you may receive and engage those individuals to sign up for a newsletter or the blog you have (aka lead generation). In addition, when someone “likes” a page, others will see it, and may be prompted to do the same!

Recall that it takes time to build connections and more time to convert these connections and followers into leads. However, these tools can help decrease that time and make the time you spend on finding these connections (who will hopefully become leads) more effective.

You’ll never know how truly effective each tool is for your company until you experiment and play around with each of them. Enjoy!

 


Communication of Message

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“How to communicate a brand message” for a product takes effort to be creative. 3 creative methods that I researched for the Sony brand (for a global branding study) include:

1. Creative Product Placement: Honda did a fabulous job at placing its CR-Z in a Facebook game in order to create brand awareness. It was also a very unique way for its audience to engage with the brand. In addition, HP placed its computers in Project Runway, which was a great way to show how easy the computers were to use and how cool they were for designers and others who love to geek out.

2. Consistent Spokesperson: Sony has had an issue with being consistent with its brand message. Using a consistent spokesperson could be helpful as Apple had done with Justin Long in its successful “Apple vs. PC” ads. Can you blame Apple for being named “Marketer of the Decade?” Although Sony used Justin Timberlake for its 3D TV ads, it was short-lived. It may behoove the brand to find a new “cool” spokesperson such as from a popular TV show like Glee. Just a thought.

3. User Generated Content: Nowadays UGC has become the norm and many brands are taking advantage. Sear, Chevy Tahoe and FreeCreditReports.com are just a few of the brands who have utilized UGC. For example FreeCreditReports.com had a summer long contest where bands would compete to become the new band for the ads. The winner would debut at the 2010 mtv awards. How cool is that? Sony could do something similar like having contestants produce songs and the winner could appear in a Sony Studios movie.Therefore, keeping the promotion of “innovation” consistent and utilizing the brand message “make.believe” where what you can imagine can come true.

In short – communicating a brand message requires effort, creativity, and consistency.

"I like it on…" Facebook Status Updates

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Were you a part of this year’s breast cancer awareness viral phenomenon on Facebook? Last year it was what color bra you were wearing, this year it was where do you put your purse when you come home. A little bit of scandal with a bit of fun and lots of awareness for a great cause. How can you not partake?

“I like it on the dining room table”….what about you?

The Fear of TMI

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Ever fear you are posting “too much” on Facebook or Twitter? Ever wonder why some people post every minute of their lives, rather than just living those moments? I admit, I spend a lot of time on my computer, but one comes to question, when is it just TMI?

I recently read an article from the Boston Globe (yes, online) regarding a couple’s relationship and how it was affected by Facebook. The female spent most of her time at home while her husband worked. She posted everything about her day and her relationship, including his efforts on purchasing gifts for Christmas. As the article stated, some people have a “water cooler” for their break to chat with coworkers and friends, while some people have facebook as their “water cooler.” It may not be an issue for the female because she does not mind her life exposed to the public, but her husband is quiet and reserved. He would not expect his friends and coworkers to know about his travels, his child having a toothache, or the Bic pen he gave his wife, before he even walks into the office.

So when is TMI an issue? I guess it’s for each individual to decide. Is Facebook an outlet for you? If so, maybe keep it for you, rather than both you and your significant other.

To each their own, and their own TMI.