Business owners and independent sales professionals often ask us, "Can I use my personal Facebook profile for my business?" According to Andy Defrancesco, business Facebook pages have functionality that was built specifically to help you grow a fan base and to efficiently and cost-effectively advertise your company. Why to Not Use Your Personal Facebook Profile for Business You need a business page for Facebook. I know. It sounds like another thing on the small business person's never-ending list of "things to do." But before we get into some of the drastic differences, maybe not apparent at first glance, let's talk about a couple of basics. It's a Facebook Violation It's a violation of the Facebook Terms to use your personal account to represent something other than yourself (ex: your business), and you could permanently lose access to your account if you don't convert it to a Business Page. Drawing attention to your business in a negative way by violating rules is also not something you will want to do in general as a business owner. When (or if) you come to close down your business, for example, you choose to Dissolve a California LLC, it is important that you've followed guidelines and laws throughout your ownership in order to successfully close the business. Furthermore, if you have linked your personal accounts to your business, which is now closed, this could cause further confusion for previous customers or potentially new customers looking for a service. Do You Really Want Business Friends? Facebook is a place to be social with "friends." Do you really want prospects and clients knowing about your holiday celebrations, kids' first day of school, or that you enjoyed the rock concert last night? This potential encroaching on your personal life is why some businesses, particularly small and/or virtual businesses, might consider getting a business mail forwarding address so they don't have to give out their personal address for correspondence. A Test: Would You Like Your Own TV Channel? How would you respond if I told you that I'm going to give you your own radio or television station, completely dedicated to your business? Would you shrug your figurative shoulders and say, "Nah. I don't have time to talk to people who want to watch my channel. I already have my own world where I talk to everybody I know." Sounds a little... unenlightened, doesn't it? Of course, you wouldn't respond that way. Because the prospect of a radio or TV channel would mean that people you don't know would be watching and learning about your offers! You'd be crazy to pass that up, right? New prospects. New leads. New business. A Facebook page for your business is essentially a new channel to reach not only existing customers, but also prospective customers. And to allow them to tell each other how great your business is. And it's free. You can even look at setting up a sip trunking VOIP system so your customers can contact you, especially if your business [...]

Get the most out of your content by promoting the free content you receive from HOT!Content. Social media marketing starts with posting articles that are interesting, entertaining and informative. Engage121's HOT!Content is a great source. And it's free! But did you know that Facebook estimates that only 5% of your community ever sees the articles you post? That's because social media is an advertising medium, no different than your local newspaper or radio. To engage and grow your social media community, you need to make sure that your posts are seen by both current and new community members. That means advertising your content, or what social media pros call, "Promoting your posts." If you’re not yet doing YouTube marketing strategy for your brand, start now because: 1. It has a wide reach and generates plenty of traffic YouTube has over 1 billion users, who spend millions of hours per day viewing videos Since March 2014, there’s been a 40% year-on-year increase in the number of YouTube viewers per day,  learn how to get more in QQTube. YouTube is localized in over 70 countries and is available in 76 languages It has greater reach than cable in the US It’s huge on mobile – more than 50% of YouTube views are via mobile phones The earning potential is enormous. Recent statistics show that every year, there’s been a 50% increase in the channels earning 6 figures annually Engage121's HOT!Content makes promoting posts as easy as 1 - 2 - 3.

Local social media marketing is the science of building a community of social media followers that are a demographic fit with your best customers and live or work within the geographic reach of your business. So, if your best customer is a 40 – 50 year old woman interested in cooking who owns a dog, you can reach her directly. Inexpensively you can build a relationship and more efficiently promote offers, specials, recruit new staff after conduction a background check, or develop her interest in your business. Your goal?  Turn these “new friends” into community followers and then into customers. If you sell locally, local social media marketing should be on your radar. These are your people. People develop a preference for things, simply because we are familiar with them.  This is called the mere-exposure effect. Wikipedia explains: The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. The effect has been demonstrated with many kinds of things, including words, Chinese characters, paintings, pictures of faces, geometric figures, and sounds. In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often a person is seen by someone, the more pleasing and likable that person appears to be. So, let’s see how to use this to grow your business. Local Social Media Marketing Step 1:  Grow a community Start with identifying your target persona. Focusing on your ideal purchaser will make you exponentially more effective.   Our blog entry How to Crush Your Competition Using a Buyer Persona Template covers this in detail. For our fitness center, let’s use the profile we created in the article above. We’re selling to Danielle, and her husband is named Chris. You can read more about her here. There is a three-pronged approach to getting more “Danielles”  to follow you and grow your social community. Post the type of content that is interesting and informative to Danielle. (Get your free HOT!Content here.) Promote (pay/advertise) that interesting content to people who are not yet fans. Pay to promote your site, and getting more likes. (Get help posting your social media ads.) Local Social Media Marketing Step 2:  Breed familiarity How do you now take this group of followers who are not yet customers, and turn them into customers by “breeding familiarity?” The answer lies in what type of content you post. Fans must find it interesting enough that they look forward to your posts. I’ve read tons of articles explaining “how many re-tweets of other people’s content you should do before you can promote anything, etc.”  But let’s simplify, based on our experience. Minimally, out of four posts, three should be interesting, informative or helpful, and one can be promotional.  A sample rotation may look like: Meet our new instructor, Jamie (including a photo and some fun facts about Jamie). Promote HOT!Content. (Get your daily free HOT!Content here if you don’t already have it.) Survey:  Who likes the new tollway that just opened? A [...]

Do you feel like you need to slow down and thank your customers? Running a small business involves a hectic, crazy schedule. Each day's agenda is packed full of multiple responsibilities; staffing and managing employees, customer service, business planning, marketing, cash management, and basic bookkeeping, to name just a few. Small business accounting could be of the most important areas you might want to focus on along with other things. Maintaining systematic records of your finance could help you make informed decisions when it concerns future areas of investment. This is especially important with startups and small businesses as capital tend to be at a premium. While you can use an online accountant such as Wizz Accounting to reduce some of the stress of running a business, it still can feel pretty overwhelming at times. Each business is difficult in its own way, it has to be a specific market involved and have a product to market. For example, a food branding agency might be helpful if you're struggling to brand your product in a very easy and fast way to be positive for your business. As we move into this especially thankful time of year, here are a few ideas of ways to reach your customers with a sincere "thanks." Don't Give Gifts This sounds backwards, yes? I spend most every waking hour at home trying to move things out of my house. I don't need things, and I'm guessing I'm a target profile shopper for many small businesses (working mom, middle-aged, non-hoarder, suburban....). While there are times to use corporate gifts suppliers, such as when you are trying to promote your business with merhcnadise, you shouldn't give loyal customers anything they don't really need. What do they actually need? If you work with clients who deal with a large number of files, you could give them something to help with storage (you could get some advice here about what to look for when purchasing flash drives with your company logo on), which could be useful to them. Think about yourself too - your customers probably need similar things to you - at the end of the day, we're all human. What do I need? Time. I need time. What can you give your customers to give them more time? Wrap it in a "thanks" and you'd have my business forever. Host a Free Learning Event At the local community theatre at which I volunteer, a patron recently tweeted: I contacted her to learn more about her "session." It is a complimentary event she holds to teach communities about safe social media for their kids. The theatre is going to bring her in to hold this event for the families of students at the theatre. It's a win-win for all involved. Our invitation will cite, "As a thanks for being part of our community, we have organized this complimentary session..." What a great way to give them something that helps the kids we serve. Don't Spam Them Quit trying [...]

Are you spending money on social, but would like to get even better Facebook advertising results? If you have launched into the world of social advertising, you have witnessed why it's so exciting. For literally a fraction of what we spent in the past on print advertising, you can achieve much more affordable, measurable and speedy results with Facebook advertising. While you can save money on print marketing by investing in your own slitters cutters creasers machine and creating your marketing materials in-house, if you are trying to reach a younger, tech-savvy audience then Facebook advertising is the way to go. Why is Facebook Advertising So Effective for Small Businesses? Facebook has a ton of information that allows it to "know the people" better than you can. You know your business, but Facebook knows the preferences, interests and demographic details of the buyers. Also, Facebook is non-interruptive. A well-created ad feels like part of the stream and is interesting to the reader. Finally, Facebook is very visual, which allows it to compete as a compelling platform more effectively. When people hear information, they're likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. (Source) To ramp up the effectiveness of your Facebook advertising, here are some tips to optimize your results. Know Your Goal To be effective, you should start with the end goal in mind. Know what is it that you'd like to accomplish with your ad before you do anything. You also need to know your Facebook Budget before you do anything so you are not spending too much or too little on your ads. This will affect how you write the copy, select an image to use, and of course, chose the target demographics that will receive the ad in their streams. Goals could include any of the following: Increase your number of followers. Drive foot traffic to your location. Promote sales. Sell tickets to an event. Get people to your website. Gain market name recognition. Visualize Your Target Knowing to whom you are advertising for this purpose is key. This "to whom" is called a persona. A clean detailed persona is one of the most important things you can do for effective advertising. For example, writing a letter to your mom is very different than writing one to your nephew. This explains why there are so many different "categories" of birthday cards at the drug store. You simply will lose effectiveness if you try to write ads that are for "everybody." Before you get going, answer some basic questions about your target profile, such as: Gender: Male or female? Age: Milennial? Baby boomer? Neighborhood: Suburbs? High-rise? City? Suburban? Interests: Music? Fashion? Kids? Health? Parents: Does this person have kids? If so, how many? What ages? Misc: What type of car does he/she drive? What are his/her politics? Educational background? Income? Typical day? The more detailed [...]

You’ve heard of Facebook Ads and understand the concept, in general.  What are the different approaches and reasons that you should consider paying to promote content? As we publish this article, the current Facebook algorithm  that drives what people see in their personal stream only allows 3-5% of your fans to actually see your post in their stream. For most businesses, this won’t get you the results you’d like. Paid Facebook advertising is affordable and can be tightly targeted. So if you really understand who your ideal customer is, you can achieve some fairly exciting results, for as low as $15 - $25 per ad. It pays off for a small business to learn how to utilize Facebook Ads. There are three different approaches to consider when paying to promote, using Facebook. Before we outline those, let’s review some helpful terms. Social Media Vernacular Review Here is a little of the social media “lingo” for your understanding, before we dive into specifics about paying to promote, to avoid getting lost in the language. Post (noun): A post is a comment, picture, or some type of media placed on your business Facebook wall for fans to read. Post (verb): “To post” is the action of placing these items on your wall. Share (verb): Posting information on your page for your followers. This does not cost you anything. Typically, 3-5% of your followers will see the share. Promote (verb): Paying for a post to reach exponentially more people, including fans, but not limited to those. Most reached will not be followers. Ad: An ad is any type of paid promotion. Paying to Promote #1: Promote Your Page Promote is code word for “pay for broader exposure.” The goal of paying to promote your page is simply to get more likes, thus broadening your audience, and raising the potential to engage with these people. One Facebook ad type is called a “Page Like Ad” whose call to action is simply “Like Page.”  This is a great way to reach people who don’t know you yet, as you can exclude current followers from seeing the ad. Here is what a sample Page Like Ad looks like.   Paying to Promote #2: Promote Hot Content We live in a “help” economy.  To build a highly-engaged fan base, you should think, “What type of information would be helpful to my audience?” And it should, in no way, be information that somehow is an attempt to sell.  It’s an attempt to help. That’s it. You should get useful content only for the purpose of being helpful, interesting and informative to your readers. There are two ways you can share industry content. Share the content. The app makes this easy and it keeps your stream full of useful information. Promote the content.  The next level includes paying to promote that content, as only 3-5% of your fans will see the share. This conquers that issue for as low as $15 to reach over 1,000 people. This helpful content [...]

If you're like most entrepreneurs, you worry sometimes about making small business Social Media mistakes. Don't worry. We have a few ideas to help. Are you making small business Social Media mistakes? Getting started on Social Media for your business can be scary. But NOT being there is even scarier. There are resources that you can use and a few ground rules you should consider to ensure that you have a professional, well-managed community. Here are the 8 most common small business social media mistakes and how to avoid them. Not Being on Social Media At All It can be overwhelming. But if you're smart enough and motivated enough to have started your own business, you have what it takes to do this well. Today's consumer expects you to be on the digital highway, and if you're not, it will hurt you, especially if you are selling to consumers directly. If you haven't started, open Facebook and get going now. (Nervous? We'd be happy to help you at no charge. It's that important.) Underestimating Time, Effort and Resources Building an effective social media presence takes time, effort, and some money. To be effective you must engage with people continually, and communicate highly informative, entertaining and thought-provoking messages to connect. Each social platform has its own "personality", voice and constraints. Start with one platform and build from there. Not Responding to Comments Everyone who takes the time to Comment, Like, or Share deserves a fast and genuine response. Once the perception takes hold that your company is not interested in engaging with the audience, that's the beginning of the end. You will be labeled as a company that is interested only in self-promotion, a cardinal sin of social media marketing. Oh, and if you delete negative comments rather than address them? The negative floodgates will open. Simply ask the person to inbox or direct message you with details so you can address it with them directly and take the conversation off line. Selling Too Much People aren't necessarily on social media to be sold. They come for information, entertainment, and referrals. In fact, many use social media to escape commercialism. If you make your content all about you it is going to backfire. Think 80/20 – 80% engaging content geared toward their needs and interests, and 20% about your business, event, special offer, etc. The best way for your community to generate sales is to build relationships, trust, and authenticity... then introduce the idea of doing business together. Not Selling Enough The converse of No. 3 is also a mistake-not attempting to sell through your social media campaign. This amounts to not having a strategy. If you view social media as a way to build credibility and brand awareness, that's great, but at some point it's time to turn that credibility and brand awareness into sales. It's a delicate balance. For many Amazon brands when their products are doing well then they tend to enlist help from something like an amazon [...]

Congratulations. You're setting up social media accounts for your business. You're focused on your Facebook and Instagram marketing, as you know that a lot of customers are sourced from these platforms. If you want to use Facebook for marketing to moms, here are some special considerations for you to attract this generation's parents to your business. Before we dive into Facebook, specific, configuration, here are a few notes that apply to most social media channels. For all Channels when Marketing to Moms First, a few considerations regarding all social media platforms: Name yourself – Your social channel "name" should meet certain criteria and should ideally be the same across all channels. If you are an outlet of a larger organization, check with your corporate office, as there may be guidelines for this, but make sure that it's something pronounceable and that it's as short as possible. No special rules here for marketing to parents, necessarily. Describe your business – The description of your business should be identical across all platforms, if possible. LinkedIn and Google+ make this easy, yet Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest all have a 160-character limit, which will constrain the description. Be sure to include the benefits to the children receiving your product or service. Today's parents look for what the kids will learn at your business. Enter contact information – Don't make people have to dig for a phone number, email address, street address, or website. Especially in the business of serving children, make yourself very "available." Also, today's mom is an "e-mom." You'll definitely be more attractive of an option if you're available via email and Facebook messenger. Use a professional image – Profile pictures should project a professional image. Logos work great, and also remember that a parent may be showing your page to a kid, so use an image that is attractive to them. Profile pictures should be consistent across your social platforms, although size requirements may differ. Banner – If you're focusing on kids, create a banner that reflects this. It could be a photo of a class of students, an intimate moment of an instructor working with a child, or kids playing and learning. Get an image that shows that your organization is warm and that kids are learning and happy. Don't use your personal page to run your business, although you should definitely champion your business there. First of all, it's just confusing. Also, it's against Facebook's Terms of Service to use a personal page with commercial intent. And while only Facebooks calls this out as a requirement, this is a best practice across all platforms. Use your personal page to be "you" and your business page to speak on behalf of the business. Configure Facebook for Marketing to Moms This platform has the greatest number of members with 1.7 billion and growing. Pay attention strongly to Facebook if you're marketing to moms and You may consider looking at online marketing courses if you want to expand your marketing skillset. About [...]

Configure HOT!Content If you have already requested your daily dose of free content to share on social media for your business, here are the instructions to help you configure your account effectively. Not yet registered to get your HOT!Content?  Here’s the link. Once registered for HOT!Content, login here to get to your portal. On the login screen, enter the user name and password sent to you when you registered. At the top of the page, select COMMUNITY. On this screen, you’ll see options to add various social accounts. Simply press the + next to each platform to add it. This will allow you to share HOT!Content with this selected platform via one click, from your phone or via your desktop. Any pages for which you are authorized will show as a choice for you to select, and you may select any one of these. (If you don't see one of your pages for which you think you are authorized, check under Settings/General/Page Roles on that fan page to confirm.) For other platforms, you will simply need the user name and password. Included sites are: Facebook Business Pages Twitter LinkedIn Google+ Business Pages YouTube FourSquare Pinterest Yelp That’s it.  You’re done configuring. How To Start Using HOT!Content Each day, you'll receive a daily HOT!Content email with the subject line "Today's HOT!Content."  It takes less than 60 seconds to complete the following steps to add value to your community. -Review the HOT!Content titles in the email. -Read any that may be of interest to your readers. -If you determine that one of the articles does, in fact, qualify to share, you can post it find the POST NOW button at the top right. Selecting that button brings up the following screen.  If you scroll through the page, you’ll see you have the option to personalize this post for each of your platforms, by writing an appropriate introduction. -Select NEXT at the bottom. -Either post now or schedule your post for a future time. Also note that if you select to post to Pinterest, you’ll need to select a board. So get sharing. Ready to take things to the next level?  Here are the five types of content you should be sharing to grow your community.

Using social media content to attract customers takes a simple, but purposeful, formula. When you plan out your posting, think about five different types of social media content to post. This way, your followers whether they've been bought or naturally grown, will be kept happy. By visiting websites such as JeffBullas.com you can learn about the best options if you are to choose to buy your followers. These include: Industry Expert Content – to be helpful and show that you know your "stuff" Unique or Local Updates - to build community Personal Updates – to build community Product-Based Promotions – by providing all of the above, you have earned the right to promote your products or services Promote Ads or Content Using Facebook Posts - not really a different type of content, but a different way to distribute the four above. Let's dive into a little about each of these types of content. All of these will help you build your community by being interesting, educational and informative. Industry Expert Content Post about appealing topics for your audience, but not necessarily promoting your products/services. Free HOT!Content is the easiest way to populate this category. Provide your readers with information about your industry that shows you know what's happening and that you can guide them. For marketing to moms, or parents, this may look like: Parenting 411: Homework Tricks 25 DIY Furniture Hacks You Should Start Right Now This Year's Hottest Hair Trends At some point or another, these pieces of information will come in useful for anyone who is looking to make some changes to their life. When it comes to learning about the hottest hair trends, for example, simply knowing where you can get the best hair rollers from will help those of us who are in desperate need of a style transformation before a birthday party or wedding. The articles may not be used all the time, but you can guarantee that they will be at some point because we're always looking for ways to add some spice to our lives, and it could come in the form of informative articles like this. Looking for a resource to get industry content customized to you for free, each day? Get free Hot!Content for your industry here. Unique or Local Updates Share posts that brag or highlight things happening in your exact locale, or very narrow market segment. These would look like: New Tollway Set to Open Next Friday 4 Must Attend Events this Weekend Cy-Hope Resale Shop Opens off Barker Cypress Rd. Personal Updates Local and personal updates help build community and include items that aren't selling something, but are making your audience increase familiarity with the organization, the neighborhood, its people and goals. It could involve: introducing a new face, thanking volunteers who worked on a project, giving a "here's what's happening now" post, a "congratulations" to a staff member or customer, or even a "pardon our mess while we renovate the north bathroom" post with a photo [...]