If you’re a one-person company, you already wear a lot of hats.  you do all of the sales, marketing, networking, operations, billing and bookkeeping.  You may have some help here and there – perhaps from an assistant or a contractor – but for the most part you’re on your own.  And now everywhere you go, social media expectations are thrust upon you.  You feel pressured to “do it all” or else feel like you’re falling behind the competition.  Some entrepreneurs feel so overwhelmed that they don’t know where to start, so they do nothing at all.  Others dive right in only to find they are in over their heads and then they bail out – leaving partial LinkedIn profiles and abandoned Facebook pages in their wake.

Larger companies have marketing departments or at least one person whose job is dedicated to marketing, including online marketing.  Solopreneurs don’t have that luxury.  They need to find the time in their already busy day to fit in social media.

Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  I recommend that you start slowly.  Choose one social media venue that fits your business strategy and reaches your target market.  Choose one and do it well.  Whether it’s blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or something else, you can have success with social media by finding the right fit.

Some aspects of social media can be outsourced.  You can hire someone to install and customize your blog, set up your Facebook business page, or create a template for an email marketing campaign.  But I don’t recommend outsourcing it all.  Remember social media should be “social.”  It’s all about creating and maintaining relationships.  A hired constant can’t connect with your customers the way that you can.

But a social media consultant can provide training to get you up and running faster with social media.  They can help you to learn the technology so that you are more comfortable using it.  An experienced consultant will make it easier for you to stay on track with your social media strategy by providing you with the right tools to help monitor your social media conversations.   They can even tell you how to automate updates to all of your social media platforms at once.

Taking it one step at a time helps to take the pressure off of you.  Ask for help when you need it and learn which tools can make it easier so that you can actually enjoy it!

Facebook Friends.
Twitter Followers.
LinkedIn Connections.

Everyone is following everyone else.  Sometimes I wonder if this is this just a numbers game.  He who gets the most followers wins?

My kids are on Facebook now, so I had to set some guidelines.  #1 is that they have to friend me and #2 is that they can only friend people they know – no strangers.  As kids will do, they’ve stretched the boundaries of rule #2 to include:  friends, relatives, friends of friends, friends of their cousins, each other’s friends, kids in their grade that they know of (but don’t really know well), etc.  “He who has the most friends wins.”

I use LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter for business and I often see the same mentality in adults.  I receive email notifications each time someone new follows me on twitter.  Although it is flattering to have people following me and as a business owner it is great to have an audience that is interested in my company and my services, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder why?  I can go for weeks without a tweet, yet I continue to get new followers.  Why would you follow someone who has not posted anything of value to you?  What do you get out of it?  Are you just looking for a follow back?

I don’t follow someone just because they are following me.  I don’t follow someone just because they have a lot of followers.  I follow someone who I think has something meaningful to share.

I also don’t follow someone hoping for a follow-back.  I follow someone because I agree with their point of view or because I think I can learn something from them.

Remember, one of the key rules to social media is to add value.  This goes both ways.  You’ll gain a larger following if you add value through meaningful posts.  But don’t you also want to get valuable information from others?

Social Media can be a waste of time if not used wisely.  If you are following thousands of people on Twitter or have hundreds of “so-called” friends on Facebook – then you are only seeing a very small fraction of posts and are probably missing many of the more important ones.

What do you think?  Do you choose your friends wisely or do you think it’s more important to just rack up the numbers

A New Year’s Resolution

I was recently given some great advice that I think will make a great New Year’s Resolution.  Go offsite to a coffee shop once a week/month and write multiple blog articles at once.  So if you blog daily, write 5 articles every Monday or if you blog monthly write a month’s worth of blog articles.  By leaving the office and turning off your phone (this is key!) you’ll have fewer interruptions and will be able to spend your time more efficiently.  Plus, if your blog software has a scheduler, schedule your articles to go out automatically and check that task off the to-do list!

As far as social media goes, you should at a minimum promote your blog articles on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  There are even applications that can automate this task for you.

So no more excuses – businesses need to keep marketing during the busy times to keep business rolling in.

How do you keep up with blogging and social media when things get hectic?  Please share your tips in the comments below.

We all love a bargain.

OK.  I admit it.  The first thing I did when I got to work this morning was to go online to see if there were any amazing Cyber Monday sales online.  I really didn’t find anything that knocked my socks off, but it got me thinking about how businesses could create their own “Cyber Monday” phenomenon using social media.

Everyone likes to feel like they are getting a good deal.  Why not give your customers what they want?  A Cyber Monday special every Monday!  Why save it for just the Monday after Thanksgiving?

I’m not suggesting that you go broke giving away your products, but you could have a special offer each week that drives traffic to your web site and social media would be the perfect tool to do so.

I’ve seen large retailers offer special savings exclusive to their Facebook fans or Twitter followers.  It does make you wonder what you are missing if you don’t sign up.

So, on your website and in your newsletters, let your customers know that they can get on the “inside” if they fan you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter.  Use one or both to announce the Cyber Monday sale of the week — exclusive to your followers.  And if you consistently post the offer around the same time each Monday, people will start to expect it and even look forward to receiving your Cyber Monday online special. 

Over time, you’ll watch your list of followers grow and your sales too!

Yesterday I was reading through some of my favorite blogs and came across a story on Mashable about eBay/PayPal & Miller Lite raising money for cancer research – a cause close to my heart after losing my dad to cancer last year.  Of course I had to find out more, so I went to http://beatcancereverywhere.com and learned that a $0.01 donation would be made to cancer research for every mention of the #beatcancer hashtag in a blog post, Facebook update or Twitter tweet in a 24-hour period.  In addition to raising money for cancer, they were trying to set a Guinness World Record for social media mentions.

Now I could care less about breaking records, but I do believe that every penny counts when fundraising for a worthy cause.  So I did my part – I posted it on Facebook and tweeted about it.  Some of my followers re-tweeted and the word continued to spread throughout the night.

beatcancereverywhere.com has a counter on their website and at the time of my first tweet, they were only several hours into the countdown and already had over 5000 mentions.  I checked and re-tweeted three hours later, finding the count at over 81,000 mentions.  The next morning the count was over 200,000.  And by the end of the 24-hour period, 208,424 people had used the #beatcancer hashtag in social media.

They had reached 208,424 people in just 24 hours.

Can anyone ever doubt the reach of social media again?

If you have remarkable ideas to share or a worthy cause to fight for, you too can reach out to the world with social media.

Feel the Power.

1. Working with a new client on…
2. Just launched a new product/service… [link to more info on your website]
3. [Your Company Name] in the news.. [news link]
4. Get your FREE copy of [link to whitepaper, e-book or other offering]
5. Interesting Book on … [book title or link]
6. Great Blog article on … [blog link -- yours or someone else's]
7. Breaking news… [list industry news & link]
8. Tips on how to … [link to blog article]
9. Great business advice.. [link to article]
10. Funny video on… [Youtube link]
11. Awesome photos from … [Flickr link]
12. Free Trial/Tool … [link to offer]

These are just some ideas to get you started on twitter.  And don’t forget re-tweets to share information you think is important and to build a relationship with the owner of the original tweet. 

Do you have any twitter starters that might be helpful?  Please share in the comments below.

I myself can understand all of those points of view.  When I first heard of Twitter, I too thought it would serve no purpose in the business world.  After going to several meetings where social media was the main topic, I decided to give Twitter a chance (although I still wasn’t convinced of its value.)

The more I learn about inbound marketing and building relationships through social media, I have come around to see more and more value to using Twitter for business.  Twitter is not only a great way to share your expertise and to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field, but you can also learn so much from your fellow Twitter users.  It’s like having a whole research team at your fingertips and I have learned so much from the tweets of other users who have linked me to blogs and articles that I probably would’ve never found on my own.

The key to using Twitter effectively is to follow the right people and to join in on the right conversations. You don’t want to follow someone who tweets about what they ate for breakfast or what they are watching on TV.  Likewise, people won’t want to follow you if you are not sharing valuable information.  You can also follow your competition on Twitter to see what they are up to.  [But remember that they are probably following you too, so don’t tweet what you don’t want your competition to know about!]

Valuable information doesn’t mean you have to give away your trade secrets, but you could share an interesting blog article (written by you or someone else.)  Or you could share a link to a video that you find interesting or an upcoming webinar.

You can also use Twitter to find out what people are saying about your company – including your customers.  Addressing complaints or issues is a great way to improve customer satisfaction.  Let your customers know that you are listening to them.

After all, listening and relationship building is what social media is all about.

What are your thoughts on the use of Twitter for Business?  Add a comment below!