Facebook

As much as I know that social media forums like Facebook and Twitter offer brilliant free marketing for small businesses when used strategically, there are a handful of things I’ve begun to hate, I mean…er…strongly dislike when it comes to socializing on those platforms. They are, sadly, things I could have done better or understood more fully if I had made it my entire life for a set period of time. I couldn’t, and can’t, and I’ll assume that you don’t have that kind of time, either. I really do work, and because I write for my living, quiet thought is my friend. That means long hours of intense mulling over and reading (the one thing I love about Twitter, by the way – things I read and learn from what is posted there.)

Please learn from my mistakes. I committed these social media crimes knowing full well what I was doing, and thought in time these problems would rectify themselves. They haven’t. And now I’m paying the price for poor planning.

I wanted to name this article, 6 Things I HATE About Social Media, but my sister and mentor scolded me and told me I needed to speak more effectively about my calamity, and also that I should share with you problems I could have avoided, rather than just throw the fit I was intending.

I learned social media for business and accidentally realized it was a good hook up for long lost family. That was cool, but I’m not in there constantly typing about my life, and I haven’t talked myself into purchasing the $400 phone that would let me Twitter and Facebook the only time I really would, (out and about with my unique, humorous perspective:-) I should be ashamed, because I endorse social media for my clients and really believe that a local business can use these tools with some really kick-a** results. But for me, I’ve been in it just long enough to know what I hate…er…strongly dislike.

1. I indiscriminately chose people to follow believing it was more important at the beginning to start a list and refine it later.  I thought it was O.K. to start my list with ‘who-evers’ but now I have to go in and fish through them to rid my list of them so I don’t accidentally get rid of someone I like. What a pain.
2. I followed marketers just because we were in the same industry. B-a-a-aad idea. Only a handful are really interesting, the rest just abuse the twittersphere.
3. I allowed strong political perspectives, but prejudice is prejudice, and I hate it. Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative – whatever, why must you decide you’re one thing and someone else is another? I’ll choose for myself, thank you, but political party certainly doesn’t define me and shouldn’t make you angry.
4. I don’t know how to get rid of the disreputable, vulgar and obscene people that for some reason decided to follow me. I report them, they come back. DON’T FOLLOW ME! I get updates in my email every once and awhile when checking my new followers. I look at their profile and see their updates and can’t for the life of me figure why they followed me. Yuck, go away. I’m not a part of any one’s harem.
5. I allowed automated quotes. I should have stopped following those eons ago. Thought it might keep me positive. Some are actually pretty insightful. Know what keeps me positive? REAL conversations and feedback. I’m a positive person, really.
6. I didn’t get that expensive phone so I can’t update when I’m out running errands. Trouble is, I really engage in conversations with people. Real people I can see. I talk to my favorite cashiers, neighbors, people waiting in lines, and just about anyone. If I’m zeroed in on my cell phone during those precious moments, I’m missing out in some rewarding interaction. That phone is a thorn in my side because I know for business, it would help me be more efficient. I don’t think it would help me as a person, though. Sometimes ya gotta make choices.

So, I guess that’s a shameful perspective for someone who thinks all small businesses should be represented on social forums. There’s only a handful of people I really enjoy, the rest I will delete soon, if I haven’t already. How I wish I had been more discriminating. It will easily take hours.

If only local businesses would represent themselves, they could completely tear up their industry giants. Marketers, on the other hand, seriously over-saturate.

Oh, there’s one more thing I strongly dislike...

I love God, and I’ll tell you all about it in person if our conversation ever goes that way. In no way would I ever publicly or otherwise disclaim God, I think that would be stupid because He’s been integrally involved in my life and I’m uber-thankful, but I really strongly dislike what’s happened to marketing-speak. Every time I try to forage new relationships with what I hope to be my peers, I end up with these people that scream Holier than Holy all over my Facebook page. Nothing wrong with inspiration, but what I’m talking about is over the top. Gonna have to thin that out.

I hope you’ve learned from my mistakes, I’ll try to do better, promise. For those of you who’ve stuck with me through the weird stuff, well…please accept my apology, and…thanks.

Facebook has a neat way for small businesses to interact via Facebook Business Pages. A page won’t cost you anything, and may very well be a terrific way to build a following and interest in your particular company. That’s what we’re counting on, anyway!

We started working on ours a couple of months ago, along with updates to all of our media campaigns, just to see if it really is all it is cracked up to be. Why not, right? Well, simply stated, I can tell why we’re not all jumping out there to do it! Facebook navigation can be time consuming and confusing. Thing is, I believe in the potential. We’re going to figure out exactly how to promote ourselves on Facebook because we strongly believe in what it can do for small and home-based businesses. Meanwhile, here’s a few things we’ve ironed out that we’d like to share with you.

To Publish, or Not To Publish:
It’s nice to work on your page without the scrutiny of public view during the process. We suggest that you remain unpublished until you’ve got some of the technical understanding worked out. To begin with, your logo needs to be on your page, and although it shouldn’t need to be said, so does your COMPANY NAME!! I was perusing the FB search box for companies we should be targeting, and lo and behold–so many companies listed on a group page or category failed to list their company name. Truly, why bother? It takes some time to set up your page, so please take the necessary steps to be able to be found. It’s unwise to publish your page without both company name and contact info easily found and linked back to your Web site.

So What SHOULD Be On Your Business Page?
You’ll have some options about how to ‘feed’ your wall posts. First, you need to decide out loud just what you want to accomplish. Seriously. Do you just want a static presence? Because if that’s all you’re after, a social business page will be pretty meaningless. Remember that the point of having a breathing presence on social sites is to invite curiosity and conversation, divulge helpful tidbits of information, and to get feedback. We’re better when we have feedback from our audience. Many times what your viewers have to say can be helpful both to the way you do business, and for future topics that you will learn already interest them.

Your ‘feed’ can be manually entered posts to your wall, or automatic updates from your blog to your wall. We thought it would be easier to keep our Facebook business page current if we used the blog feeds from our Web site to automatically post for us. Ideally speaking that might be true, but now we don’t believe we could interest anyone like that because doing so left our wall space obnoxious–our company name was repeated too frequently to promote interest, and our blog posts alone looked like a public RSS feed, leaving little to inspire interaction. Once we decided to break it up by manually entering our status updates instead, the page came to life. Now our viewers can see other things that interest them, as well as questions that inspire feedback and conversation.

As we keep breathing life into our FB presence, we’ll be updating our photos with pics from our photographer, Gerald Voigt and uploads from our graphics designer, Scott Alberts. Keep in mind that your photo section should be business related. No boob shots.

How Does Your Page Grow?
Make a habit of searching and inviting followers to your business page. Encourage them to be fans. We decided to devote 10 minutes every day to inviting small business and home based business owners to visit our site and become fans.

Make sure your Facebook badge appears on your company Web site or blog. This is one part I really dig. You’ll have the option to include within your badge (depending on how much space you can support), both your ‘feed’ and followers. They will appear on your actual Web site. That means that when they comment or fan your Facebook Business Page and leave their link, their link will show up on your company Web site viewable through the badge. That turns into an outbound link for you with the potential of a new relationship, and an inbound link for them because the link comes in from your site. Its a win-win!

Good luck with your Facebook Business Page (we hope you’ll ‘fan’ Zero To Sixty Marketing), can’t wait to see you there! What have you learned about your Facebook Business Page promotion?