May 3, 2020 By Fiona Lucas

Facebook Pages vs Profile – where are you doing business?

Dear Business owners,

So glad you have understood that you can gain great value and grow your business through Social Media, but did you seek advice before you started? I actually wrote this blog originally back in June 2012 on my old blog Socially Skilled, but I’m reproducing with a few updates which I will note as I still see it happening, businesses operating from a personal Facebook profile instead of a Page.

I can’t believe I’m posting on this topic again – but still I see so many new businesses starting up as a personal profile under a business name, or operating their business from a personal profile. I know it might seem easier, and you feel you don’t want to personally “be” on facebook, but this is against facebook terms and is a poor business decision. (Update: using your personal messenger is also a pretty spammy way to do business).

It kinda makes me want to cry!

Because I am passionate about supporting businesses to grow, I usually drop a friendly private message to give the business a heads up… but I find it so frustrating that so many still do it. On an ethical level I will no longer “friend” a business – it would be hypocritical of me. (Update: I never did “friend” a profile in a brand name). However create a page and if your product or service is something I value, and proides value, then I will LIKE away, and engage!

Remember a LIKE is an endorsement of a product or service – if you are getting value from a page then you should LIKE them to say thanks! Update: We value engagement so much, comments, hearts and shares will always give your business a boost!

(Note that this is a reproduction of the original post from 2012 with updates or amendments noted).

After sending messages to a few pages, I had a couple come back saying they get better engagement with a personal profile – but the principles are all wrong. Let’s just examine a few from both the business perspective and that of someone “friending” the business as opposed to becoming a fan:

Do you really intend to push your business out onto all your friends – many of your friends may not appreciate that you are spruiking to them, and it is very poor social etiquette to do so.
On the other side, if you “friend” a business they are able to spam your friends .. NOT good social etiquette at all
as a business on a profile, you cannot take advantage of all the cool things that the Tabs can do help your business to grow. Update: Pages include messaging, shop, services and insights and more!)
You risk building a huge base of fans only to have it all it all shut down – at some point, especially with facebook now privatised, they are going to do some serious culling – then all your work is lost!
It is almost impossible to implement any kind of reasonable social media marketing strategy when you are operating as a personal profile, and any self respecting and qualified social media consultant should not encourage it. If you want to start list building – then do it through offering something of value and create an opt in offer.
Without a page you cannot take advantage of the analytical tools on offer – so how are you measuring your engagement?
Having an individual profile will limit you to a maximum of 5000 friends, pages can have millions of followers.
Converting to a page later is messy and doesn’t always work as well as you might like. It may not work in the best interests of your brand to later change over where some fans may move and others might still interact with the profile. You miss opportunities for engagement with a much broader audience.
You can link a page to your website and include a buttons to improve engagement, you can’t do this with a profile.
If you later create a personal profile then you are again in breach of facebook terms which clearly state that personal profiles must be in the name of a real identifiable individual (yes not your dog, cat, boat or business) and you may only have one. If you also have a business set up as a profile then you risk having both your profiles shut down.
It actually doesn’t help anyone to do it this way as it causes the statistics to be incorrect – and if you are trying to measure your ROI accurately then we all need to play the game fairly.

I could go on, but the number one thing that you are doing when you set up your business as a personal profile – is not being honest. No one knows who you are – it does not generate trust. If you are being transparent and using your own name, but using the profile for business, you are missing out on many benefits of a page. Be proud of what you have created and let it shine on it’s very own page. If you are not sure what to do, or don’t have a strategy, seek help from an expert so you don’t waste precious time and money, because you never get time back.

Update: I don’t really need to update any of the points, as they are all still really relevant despite me writing them back in 2012!

Fi.

October 6, 2019 By Fiona Lucas

Are you using user generated content?

Humanize your brand with user generated content

The quest for new content is never ending. What is user generated content? It’s allowing your fans, customers, clients, users to tell their story of your brand, or to contribute in other ways to your social media presence. It’s marketing generated by them for you.

image by davicidig depositphotos

User Generated Content (UGC) is becoming a big go to for brands big and small. It’s not a new concept, but it is developing in the ways it can be incorporated into a business strategy.

Becoming creative with your clients, letting them tell the story of your brand, letting them take the lead? Perhaps it’s time too consider.

According to research by Stackla in the “Bridging the Gap” 2019 Data report

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making purchasing decisions…” quote=”Consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making purchasing decision, yet 49% of marketers are planning to increase their investment in influencer marketing in 2019″ theme=”style3″]

So consumers seem to prefer to connect with Peers and “regular” people over influencers. That’s pretty big.

It also is a call to influencers to choose to promote products that match their brand and that they actually like and use. Nothing is worse for a brand than an endorsement made purely because of the monetary transaction that took place. Seek out micro and macro influencers, people in your own community and local area who can become brand ambassadors for you and share content with you. Best of all engage your customers in your marketing.

Use contests and promotions

Another fabulous way to bring engagement and fun to your social media pages is to run a contest or promotion which requires entrants to post their entries. Whether a creative image, or a paragraph, all of the above not only creates engagement, but it’s done for you. Nothing beats the excitment of interaction with a little competition. Be sure to follow the appropriate rules when running promotions however.

Celebrate their wins

Asking your audience to share their wins and achievements, whether business or personally is another way to generate content for your brand.

It’s such a feel good thing, just writing this makes us smile! Every business is only as good as its customers, so celebrate them, respect them and get to know them

Make Sure you have permission

Having permission is everything. Whether you are talking to a client, an influencer or strangers with a competition, it is vital to ensure they have given permission for content to be used. For a competition this would be written in the terms and conditions. For a client or influencer, make sure you have a signed agreement in place which outlines how you may use any content provided.

Of course if they are posting it directly themselves, then permission has been granted by the very act. We would still recommend having terms and conditions somewhere on your blog or on Facebook as a note or in the about of your page that content posted may be used. One thing to be wary of, is that you need to be sure the person sharing the content, owns the content.

There have been issues where folk have entered a photographic competition for example, with an image that was not theirs to share. Make sure you have a line in terms and conditions that says entrants are agreeing that they have copyright and are giving you rights to their intellectual property.

Would you be game to ask a stranger to judge your product?

It might sound risky, but if you are confident in your product, getting the reaction of someone seeing/using that product for the first time is worth a million words. That first look of surprise and delight is pretty hard to fake! You can ask people at events, tradeshows, marketplaces and on the street and video their reactions, or ask them to film an “unboxing” of a product. (see above, make sure you have permission to use the content, have them sign a disclaimer before you give them the product).

Whatever you do, be authentic – mean it!

Please don’t ask questions or run competitions just for the attention. You will build much greater trust and rapport if what. you do genuinely comes from an interest in your clients/customers and prospects.

May 16, 2018 By Melonie Dodaro

How to Use LinkedIn to Increase Revenue

One of the most overlooked platforms for many small businesses struggling to find qualified leads, new clients and increase revenue is LinkedIn. Perhaps you have heard of success using LinkedIn for client acquisition but you really don’t understand how to effectively use it?

We asked leading LinkedIn expert, author and influencer, Melonie Dodaro to share her thoughts on how businesses can use LinkedIn to increase revenue. I’m currently reading her new book and it’s packed full of actionable information to help your business to grow. Highly recommend. – Fiona

Over the past decade, social selling has grown from being a little-known concept to an integral part of modern selling and marketing. LinkedIn is the premier platform for social selling for B2B businesses.

While Facebook is still the largest social network, LinkedIn remains the go-to place for business professionals. According to Hubspot, 98% of sales reps with more than 5,000 LinkedIn connections meet or surpass their sales quota, while 78% of salespeople using social media perform better than their peers.

More than three out of four B2B buyers say that they won’t even speak to a salesperson until they have done their own research – and most of them do that research by using social networks.

However, the stat that I find the most compelling is… 80% of all B2B leads generated by social media come from LinkedIn. So, if LinkedIn is producing more B2B leads than any other social network, doesn’t it deserve your attention?

The old way of selling isn’t as effective with today’s modern buyer, especially on LinkedIn. To attract today’s buyer, it requires a shift in the sales dialogue from “What can I sell you?” to “How can I help you?”

Today your personal brand is more important than it’s ever been as people are looking to find out more about an individual before they do business with them.

Seven seconds is all you have to wow a potential client. Your social selling success is dependent on how your LinkedIn profile represents your personal brand.

With all of these challenges, there is still tremendous opportunity. You now have tools available to you to connect directly with your ideal prospects, with the click of a button.

And while everyone has been talking about social media for years, few talk about the power of LinkedIn. I believe many businesses ignore LinkedIn for two primary reasons:

It isn’t sexy.
It isn’t fun or exciting.

While LinkedIn may not be exciting, getting new clients and having a successful business certainly is!

A Blueprint for LinkedIn as a lead generator

There are five crucial steps that will turn LinkedIn into a highly predictable lead generator for you; I call this The LINK Method™.

In the infographic below I will share with you the five-step process, what you need to have in your profile to attract your ideal clients, trigger events that allow you to build relationships with your prospects on LinkedIn, how to leverage existing relationships, increase revenue and much more.

Are you interested in discovering how to turn LinkedIn into a lead generation machine? Take a look at the infographic below:

Image credit Top Dog Social MediaI believe that when you stop collecting connections and start building relationships, you increase trust, credibility and attract more clients. This is vital because effective social selling is all about building relationships and trust.

The beauty of LinkedIn is that it is a platform that was designed to help you find, connect and then build a relationship and trust with the exact group of people that comprise your target audience.

Social Selling Mistakes people make on LinkedIn

Yet people continue to make two very serious mistakes with LinkedIn and social selling.

Mistake #1: They rush to a sale right after connecting with a potential prospect.

Mistake #2: They never move the conversation offline, or don’t know how to, as it’s offline that you convert a prospect to a client.

LinkedIn is the premier business platform for social selling and the tips shared in this infographic represent just a small portion of the blueprint laid out in my brand-new book: LinkedIn Unlocked: Unlock the Mystery of LinkedIn To Drive More Sales Through Social Selling.

Your thoughts

Are you currently using LinkedIn? Where are you finding success, or what aspects do you struggle with?

From Fiona: We invited Melonie to contribute a post for us to share some of the amazing content of her new book and her expertise with our readers. As a LinkedInLocal host, I extol the virtues of LinkedIn on a regular basis. This is not an affiliate or sponsored post, we just wanted to share with you key learnings to help you increase revenue from one of the top LinkedIn experts globally, and we greatly appreciate her generosity in sharing.

If you would like to learn more about LinkedInLocal, you can read why I got involved.

graph showing business growth with LinkedIn — image: created on Canva

May 16, 2018 By Fiona Lucas

Support the small businesses you love online

Facebook news feed and small business support

How can we support local business, especially in a busy online environment? You probably have seen all kinds of stories about Facebook making changes in the way the news feed operates. Most of these stories have been written for business owners and marketers to help them make sense of the changes. What about for you, the Facebook user? How do these changes affect you?

The changes are aimed at being positive. Facebook want to provide you, with more of what you love, and less spammy posts.

Part of the way they will be doing is this is by asking you, to let them know which Pages you love, what types of content you like and which sources you trust for information.

[ctt title=”‘At a time when there is a lot of confusion around news and information sources, it is really important that we can trust the information that is in our news feeds.'” tweet=”‘At a time when there is a lot of confusion around news and information sources, it is really important that we can trust the information that is in our news feeds.'” coverup=”5jFW8″]

For many small businesses and local businesses, changes could mean that they appear less and less in our feeds and even more so they will need to pay a lot more in advertising to try and stay visible. It also means they need to work harder to provide you with the information you want to see.

How to be more visible

As a small business owner myself, I want to provide the best value and service I can to my clients and followers.

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Conversely we can only do that if we get your support in helping us to shape our content and by sharing the message.

Facebook want to see that you really enjoy content and it will measure this by whether you merely “like” a post or whether you comment or engage with it directly.

coffee up with support local business geelong local business — Image: Adobe stock

Further to this Facebook are trying to decide which businesses provide relevant and trustworthy news, and to find this out, Facebook may ask you in a survey if you trust particular content.

So…

[ctt title=”how can you support the small businesses, particularly local businesses you love and trust, and help them to give you more of what you want?” tweet=”how can you support the small businesses, particularly local businesses you love and trust, and help them to give you more of what you want?” coverup=”3v21U”]

Here are 7 things you can do right now:

1. Make sure you mark your favourite pages as “see first” in your news feed. You can do this on a computer or laptop by going to the page, click the button that says “following” and then click on “in your news feed”. Select “see first” and save. On your mobile device, in the facebook app, click on the “hamburger’ triple line symbol for more, scroll down to settings, choose news fed preferences and set up.

2. Turn on notifications for your favourite brands and businesses so you know when they have given you more great value and information. 3. When you see a post you really like, make a comment, ask a question or share your opinion. 4. Share content you love with people who share your interests and ask them to comment or give their opinion on the content. 5. Ask them questions and let them know what information you would like them to provide. Businesses want to give you value and earn your trust and respect. 6. Show them the love and tell the world by leaving a review or testimonial. 7. If you are asked a survey question about a business, please do respond to the questions to provide your support.

Mark Zuckerberg said “ I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions”

7 things to support small business online

Why not share this video to help the small businesses you love, and tag them in your post!

If you want to read Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement on the changes, you can read it here on his personal page

The FB News room announcement on Trusted sources was made on 19 January and can be read here along with information on changes to the algorithm for business here

I’m making sure that I keep in my feed my clients, my favourite local businesses and the people who inspire me and keep me informed.

Let us know your thoughts!

We would love to know what you think about Facebook currently, whether you are a Facebook user personally, for business or both. Have you noticed changes already? Will you make an effort to engage more with content or does it seem to be more of a chore?

Many people we spoke to this week said that they are busy, they like to read or watch content and they give it their approval by a like or share. Others said they just like everything to be nice 🙂 What is your view?

August 26, 2016 By Fiona Lucas

Adobe Spark makes a few changes

Getting creative with Adobe Spark

One of our favourite freemium products is Adobe Spark. It’s wonderful for creating images and video quickly and effectively. Up until now although you could remove branding on images, you could not on video. Adobe Spark is now opening up the ability to remove branding and add your own. It’s free for now but eventually will be a paid service, so if you do accept their offer, be aware of that. They are rolling out the offers to active users, so if you don’t have it yet, it shouldn’t be far away.

The fantastic news however is that if you are already a subscriber to Adobe Creative then this is part of your subscription as long as your subscription is current! Yay for that.

This is great news for social media and content managers.

So if you haven’t jumped on board the Adobe Spark train, why not give it a try.

There is an app version of both Adobe Post (for images) and Spark Video too although at this stage the branding may still be on videos created via the app.

One of the best things about Spark is it’s ability to help you get inspired. With lots of shared content you can look at for ideas and a vast collection of images on hand (and of course you can upload your own images as well).

We created this little video on the topic of inspiration because like many working in the field of social media, sometimes we have to remember just to stop and breathe, and take in our day and inspiration and content ideas will come.

It also serves as a lovely example of how Spark helps you to create simple and memorable video.

We hope you enjoy. Please share your experiences with Adobe Spark with us in the comments