Let’s talk about it.

Profiles

The personal profile is the core of facebook. Everything that is done on facebook revolves around it.  People with profiles create and join groups. People with profiles create pages and become fans of pages.  While you can administrate a page on facebook and no one can see your personal profile, you still must have a profile to create a page with full-functionality. (Note: You may create a page first and then connect it to a profile, but without a profile, you may not add applications to the page which limits its functionality.)

Pages

While personal profiles are strictly for individuals, pages are for organizations, products, services, bands celebrities and public figures to have a professional presence.  Pages must represent a real organization, business, celebrity, or band, and may only be created by an official representative of that entity.  Pages allow people to maintain a personal-professional distinction on facebook. Pages are public websites that extend content to the web at large. Pages are not limited to facebook members, as is the case with most personal profile content. Pages are indexed by search engines and rank well. Pages are great for web marketing!

 

Groups

Groups can be created by any facebook member and about any topic. Groups are used for sharing opinions and interests in a particular subject. Groups can be kept open to anyone, closed to a select group or secret (not findable except by invitation). If you’re a group admin, your name will appear on that group. Additionally, when you take actions on your group, such as posting on your group’s wall, these actions will appear to come from you as an individual. However, if you post or take other actions on a Page you own, it will appear to come from the Page. Group content is not indexed by search engines and are not good for web marketing. They can be good for relationship marketing if you commit to building relationships in the group and engaging in discussions.

How are you using your profile, pages and groups for business? I’d love to hear from you.

Last week at the National Speakers Association Annual Convention, Ico-presented a breakout session, along with two of my business partners, Myra Corrello, PhD and Jennifer Ledet. In the session, we shared our lessons learned from co-producing a major public conference.  In particular, we talked about how we used social media to gain major corporate sponsorship, fill the room (300 attendees) and keep them in their seats till the end of the day!

Ian Griffin, Freelance Speechwriter of Executive Communications, attended our session and asked for an interview afterward.

Read Ian’s article and hear the interview on Ian’s Blog, Professionally Speaking

 

Did you know that next Wednesday, June 30th, is the first official Social Media Day?
I’m celebrating and inviting you to do the same!

Join me for
Business on the Social Web-Where should you be in 2010?

 

Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM CDT

Location: Web Meeting

 

Register Now

We’ll look at the top 4 social sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Youtube) to see what new features they offer for business and how your company can benefit by using them! From sales 2.0 to relationship marketing, this webinar will reveal which social networks are best for specific business processes. Don’t miss the chance to discover the best web location for your business.

Then, we’ll open up the lines for you to take the mic so you can share your questions, favorite new features, apps, success stories, stumbling blocks and hopes for the future of social business communications.

Hope to see you on the webinar on Social Media Day!
This is an open, no cost event. Invite your friends to attend this Social Media Day Celebration.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/424459515

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

Businesses are using YouTube for marketing, education, communications, product information, technical instruction and inspiration.

Follow these 5 steps to create your own Youtube Channel:

1. Decide on your Youtube Channel Name. This name will entered as the USERNAME in the account creation process.
2. Go to Youtube.com and click Create Account.
   Username becomes Channel name. For corporate branding, you will likely make the username your business or brand name.For personal branding, the username should be your first and last name.
3. Develop your profile.
   Enter your website,  company name, first and last name.  Fill your profile with details about the contents of your channel. Consider how people will search for content like yours and include those keywords in your profile. Always match your text content to your video content.
4. Develop Your channel .
   Customize your channel by entering a Channel Title, Description, keywords and colors.
5. Post your first video! You can use existing professional video, create one with a webcam or utilize a simple camera like the FLIP.

Grab your Youtube Channel now even if you aren’t ready to post video.  You don’t want to lose rights to your branded Youtube Channel URL.

HootSuite.com is a web-based service that is marketed as a Twitter Client. However, it is so much more!

With a free account, you can manage and post status updates with one-click on these social sites:

• Twitter Profiles
• Facebook Profiles and Pages
• LinkedIn Profiles
• MySpace and FourSquare Profiles
• WordPress.com sites and
• Ping.fm account (a multi-account management tool that accesses numerous networks.)

HootSuite, one of my favorite One-Click Social Media Management tools, can help you manage your social presence effectively so you can spend more time doing whatever YOU want to do!  Not only can you post in multiple places, you can also schedule posts.  Scheduling your posts allows you to manage your time more effectively.  You can set up the posts when it is convenient for you yet schedule them to go out at the most convenient time for your target audience.

HootSuite continues to add functionality that makes social media more manageable.
You can get a free account by signing up at HootSuite.com.

To learn more about social media management and productivity, check out the Social Media Management Seminars at Social Media School in New Orleans.

Social Media is now accepted as a viable business communication tool. However, many companies still aren’t sure how to manage the multiple channels efficiently and effectively.  I’ve established Social Media School NOLA to meet the needs of companies ready to leverage the power of social media for marketing, sales, communications and collaboration.  Social Media School NOLA offers seminars to equip business professionals to establish best practices, company policies and sound strategies.  Check out the upcoming Course Listing at http://www.DaystarNewMedia.com/SocialMediaSchool.  All classes are currently held at The IP located at 643 Magazine Street. Reserve your seat today for personalized, small group social media training.

I’ve had several people ask me this question over the last year or two: Can I merge two LinkedIn profiles into one?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a merge feature yet!

So, you will need to decide which profile to keep and which to delete.  Decide based on number of connections and/or how developed your profile is.

Tip: I would keep the one with the most connections and move the profile data.

Here are some steps to help you successfully move to a single profile:

1. Login to the Account you want to delete.
2. Export the Connections to an csv or excel file. (See link at bottom of Connections)
3. Save all profile info into a Word Document.
4. Delete the account.(Go to Account & Settings and Close the account.)
5. Login to the account you want to keep.
6. Import the Connections stored in file from deleted account and re-invite them to connect on the correct profile. Offer an explanation since they were already connections on the other profile.
7. Update your profile as needed.
8. Associate multiple email addresses with your LinkedIn account so that people can find you by any of your email addresses. (Go to Account & Settings and Add Email under Personal Info.)

I hope this helps!  For more social media tips or to ask your questions, become a Fan on Facebook.com/SocialMediaExplained

Intuitive, precision, dynamic search with less complicated queries-that’s what the new faceted search feature offers! You’ll find the new filters on the left of the people search page in LinkedIn. The filter fields available are unique to your search. Powerful! With faceted search, you may drill down by relationship (Connection Level) , Industry, Company, Group,  School and more.

Check out this product feature announcement from LinkedIn onYoutube.

1. Set goals, create a social media plan for your business and stick to it.  For example, if you want to reach a fan base of 500 on Facebook, determine to be only about that goal when you login to Facebook during business hours. If you aren’t strategic in your use of Facebook, it can easily become a time waster.

2. In your status updates on all networks, answer this question: What information does my business audience need from me today?

3.  Relate to people on the networks as if you are seeing them in person. Ask questions. Reply to comments or messages. Engage in conversation. Then, and only then will you see the value of social media.

4. Develop systems for growing your networks.  Example: Invite all the decision makers you are working with into your LinkedIn network. Invite contacts from informal networking events into your Facebook network. Or, determine to invite 10 people from your business association memberships into your personal network each month.  Having a system will ensure incremental growth of the right audience over time.

5. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new functionality. Social media tools are still evolving. Everyone is learning.  You’ll get the most from these tools when you get comfortable with them.  You don’t have to think about how to use the phone and email for business. Eventually, you’ll feel that way about social media.  Dive in the deep end and have fun with it.

This question was raised today at online bootcamp: Does CoTweet.com have Facebook integration like Tweetdeck?

The answer: Kind of…

Ping.fm integration is available –very new since Oct 23— so that what you tweet on co-tweet can flow to your ping.fm account which of course flows to all of your accounts configured there.

Stay tuned for a detailed blog post on this subject.

You may also want to check out http://www.HootSuite.com for similar capabilities.