Masterful Marketing » Social Media Tools

Organizing LinkedIn Connections via Tags

Debra — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:28:12 +0000

Organize your connections into different groups via tags

LinkedIn is in beta with a new connections page that makes it easier to find, organize and stay in touch with your business contacts. The update adds a panel that makes it much nicer to browse contacts quickly, enabling you to find what you need with a few clicks. You now are able to browse contacts by their companies, industries or locations. Selecting the recent activity filter, you can see who has added new connections.

When you click on one of your connections, a mini profile appears in the right panel, showing you contact information, photo, current position and number of connections.

One feature that caught my attention is the ability to tag your connections. Similar to friend lists on Facebook and lists on Twitter, you now can segment your connections so you can send specific communications depending on which list they are on. It’s no longer an all or nothing selection! This is a feature many have been waiting for with LinkedIn and is a welcome addition.

The Marketing Impact

This new LinkedIn connections interface makes it easy to browse and get information on your connections. But something that this interface also points out is whose profiles need work. Profiles without pictures, status updates or website/blog addresses are profiles of people who don’t want to get noticed. In this very crowded market, you must go the extra mile to be visible. Having a complete and compelling profile is one simple exercise to help you stand out. By the way, using your company logo as your profile picture doesn’t count – people don’t build relationships with logos or companies. Relationships are among people and the more approachable you are, the more likely someone will want to connect with you. There’s a reason why Facebook differentiates a personal profile from a business page.

Spend a few minutes each day updating something in your profile. The benefits include making your profile interesting and the fact that you updated something in your profile gets publicized to your connections, ensuring you stay visible. What’s keeping you from filling out your LinkedIn profile (or any social media profile) completely so people can connect with you and develop those so very important relationships?

LinkedIn Works With Twitter

Debra — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:25:31 +0000

I think we’ve all been waiting for this (I know I have!). We now have the ability to send our LinkedIn status updates to Twitter to reach a broader audience and updating our status from Twitter to keep your LinkedIn community up to date. This new feature is just being rolled out now so if you don’t see the Twitter icon under your status area, you will!

To get started, click the checkbox next to the Twitter icon next to your LinkedIn status area. You will automatically asked to allow LinkedIn to access your Twitter information. You can always update that information by clicking on the down arrown next to the Twitter icon. They also give you the ability to list multiple Twitter accounts if that makes sense for you.

The following short video has Biz Stone and Reid Hoffman describing the new integration.

You have a choice:

You can selectively send your LinkedIn updates to Twitter by checking the box;
Select which Twitter updates to post on LinkedIn – all or only those with either the #in or #li hash tags;

You can choose whether or not to include your Twitter handle on your profile page. I recommend that you this so you get the maximum visibility on Twitter. And while you’re at it, make sure one of your Web site links contains your Facebook Business Page!

With the integration between Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook all coming together nicely, there is no excuse for not staying active in your communities. Your followers, friends, fans and connections want to hear from you!

How will you be integrating your social media activities?

Facebook Business Accounts

Debra — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:36 +0000

Recently, a lot of people have asked me about using a Facebook Business Account rather than a Facebook Personal Account to create a Facebook Page for their business. Please note that a Business Account is not the same as a Business Page. People are totally confusing the two and generating a LOT of misinformation about this topic.

Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Facebook Pages and their ad campaigns. They have limited access to information on the site and they cannot be found in search, cannot send or receive friend requests.

Having read this information, I had assumed a business account would enable businesses to create Pages that were disassociated from current employees. Once the Page was created, they could then get employees to become fans, which would make them eligible to be Page administrators. This would be logical as employees come and go and using a business account to be the creator of the Page would provide a way for the Facebook Page to remain associated with the business and not some former employee.

So, although it sounds like a logical alternative for larger businesses and organizations with employees, I don’t think this is the case.

Why would having a Facebook Business Account that did what logic would imply be so important?

At this time there is no way to transfer or remove the creator of the Facebook Page. Whoever creates the page remains the owner. Kimberly Yow wrote a very complete post on Unlinking A Facebook Fan Page From Your Personal Account, so I won’t go into gory detail here.
In the Facebook Help discussion forums, there is a thread titled “Transferring a page to new ownership?” that was posted at the beginning of April. Since then, a total of 166 people have requested a solution to this challenge. And so far, no one has an answer.

I do understand the rationale for making the creator a permanent administrator from a security perspective. A business with a disgruntled employee who was a Page admin could delete the originator and other admins and take over the Page. But businesses need a way to create a Page that is autonomous from any employees’ personal profiles.

According to Facebook’s policy, if you already have an indvidual account, you are not allowed to set up a business account. In addition, a business account does have all the features of a personal profile account in Facebook.

From Facebook help:

Business accounts are designed for individuals who only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. For this reason, business accounts do not have the same functionality as personal accounts. Business accounts have limited access to information on the site. An individual with a business account can view all the Pages and Social Ads that they have created, however they will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer.

You will not be able add any other applications to your business account. Your account will not be visible in search and other users on the site will not be able to find you and add you as a friend.

You may create a business account if you don’t already have a standard Facebook account. To get started, you will need to first create a Facebook Ad or Facebook Page. Once you’ve entered in the required information, you will be taken to the “Facebook Login” page and asked if you have a Facebook account. If you do not currently have a Facebook account, then at this point, please select “I do not have a Facebook account.” You will then need to enter your email address and date of birth.

Please be aware that managing multiple accounts is a serious violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If we determine that an individual has more than one account, we reserve the right to terminate all of their accounts.

So although logically a Business Account looks to be the proper mechanism for creating a Business Page that is associated with the business and not a personal profile, I can’t find any place that discusses its use in this way.

So, the major question that needs to be answered really soon by Facebook themselves is:

How does a business create a Facebook Business Page so it is NOT associated with someone’s personal profile who may someday leave the company but can be easily administered by current employees?

But until we have the answer to that question, proceed with caution if you do decide to use a Facebook Business Account.

If anyone has actually used a Business Account to create a Facebook Business Page successfully and can share their knowledge, please begin a discussion here in the comments or on the Masterful Marketing Business Page in the discussion tab so we can all benefit from your experiences!

TwInbox: A Twitter Tool for Outlook

Debra — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:31:55 +0000

Found out about a nice plugin for Microsoft Outlook that gives you an integrated Twitter client while helping you manage your Twitter followers. From TechHit, it’s called TwInbox. Thanks to Olinda Services for the pointer to this useful tool. Any tool that helps me eliminate the need to click and open a new window to get more information gets my attention.

Easy to install, this client enables you to stream your Twitter feed into a folder so you can manage them a bit easier. You can also have a separate folder for each follower.

What I like about this tool:

The toolbar makes it easy to send a Tweet to someone without having to leave the Outlook interface. It doens’t replace the Seesmic Desktop client, but it has its usefulness.
You can easily determine which followers are important for you to pay attention to. I got 58 Tweets in 4 hours from one person. None of the them really were of interest to me, so I unfollowed them. Too noisy for me. However, someone else sent 30 Tweets in the same timeframe, but all of them were pointing me to social media news.
You can focus in on someone who you want to watch without having to search or scan your feed.
The Tweets include the person’s profile information. If someone is bombarding you with Tweets, you can also see what they are interested in and determine whether you want to continue to follow them.
The Tweets also include the picture if they have uploaded one to TwitPic.

Like the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar, this handy little tool can help you manage your Twitter followers and keep your ratio of information to noise in check.

What tool is your favorite for helping you manage your social media activity? Share your favorites.

Hackers are Everywhere

Debra — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:07:47 +0000

Unfortunately, nothing on the Internet is immune from unscrupulous hackers, including Facebook.

I received an innocent looking message in Facebook chat from Denise Wakeman (@DeniseWakeman on Twitter). The message raised my suspicion since I don’t know Denise very well, but I saw a Facebook status update in the news feed from her saying ”I’m stuck in London” so I said hello. After a bit of small talk, the person said “I was mugged at gun point and could you help me?” Help was them asking for me to wire them some money so they could get home.

This scam was written up in Techcrunch in January and is still being used to con people into wiring money.

Protecting Your Identity

This post is a reminder to all of us on how to be smart about our use of social media, what types of personal information we share on social media sites and with whom and how to protect yourself as best possible. Keep in mind that the information you provide in these sites is valuable as phishers will try to harvest this information in order to steal your identity.

Here are my recommendations for protecting your Facebook account. What you do is your choice, but be cautious about what applications you allow access to your account.

Create a profile on Facebook even if you don’t plan to use it. Acquiring your profile on most of the popular social media sites will protect your online identity and ensure someone doesn’t try to impersonate you online.
Make your password difficult to guess. Don’t use the same password on Facebook that you use on other sites and don’t share your passwords. Create and encrypted and password protected file of your accounts and passwords so that you can remember them but keep them secure.
Only install business applications from reputable companies – i.e. Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Upcoming, etc. I personally don’t install any games, pokes or other applications that are not business related. If you want to use any of the “fun” applications, do some research before you install. Read the reviews, search for scams and check it out like you would any application you would install on your system.
Don’t randomly click on links that appear on your wall (or in Twitter tweets either). Just as you would be cautious in email, check out the source before you click. If the URL is shortened with a short URL service (like TinyURL), use caution. Some hacker may have hijacked a friend’s account and be masquerading as them.
Don’t share 25 random facts about yourself that reveals anything that could be used to steal your identity, such as your birthdate year, your mother’s maiden name or anything you would use as a personal question to validate your identity online.
Watch out for sites that imitate Facebook. Look for those telltale signs that you are not where you think you are – hover over all links to see what is really behind the anchor tags. Don’t enter your password unless you’re sure you’re entering it on the real Facebook site.

Protecting your identity and accounts on the Internet is something you need to take responsibility for. Even the most cautious and knowledgeable person can get hacked. Just be aware of what you need to do and take control before the hackers take control of you.

The following articles offer some additional information to ensure you keep your identity and social media accounts safe:

If you do have your Facebook or Twitter account hacked or hijacked, contact the companies immediately for assistance. For Facebook, go to the Facebook help center and select “security” from the list of help topics. For Twitter, follow the instructions found on the Twitter Help Resources page.

What tips do you have for keeping your social media accounts safe?

Facebook Business Accounts

High Five to Facebook

Debra — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:58:26 +0000

This week I was pleasantly surprised twice by Facebook!

Pleasant Surprise Number 1

The first surprise was a credit to my Facebook account for my Ad that I ran for the Get Connected, Get Found tele-clinics in May and June.

Recently, we have detected an increase in invalid clicks on Facebook. Your account was impacted and as a result, we are crediting your account. Your credit has been automatically deposited into your Facebook account and will apply toward future advertising campaigns. Your credits expire December 15, 2009.

Photo Courtesy of JDAC on Flickr

Not only does Facebook give you a PPC capability with very targeted demographics, they also monitor click activity and provide credits if they deem the clicks are invalid. Their help files say that determining what makes up an invalid click is a combination of your daily budget and your target audience with their “secret recipe” applied to the mix.

Now I’m even a bigger fan of advertising on Facebook. I will be starting up the ad again shortly for the tele-clinic that I have scheduled for August. If you are thinking of advertising on Facebook, I highly recommend that you try it out. Take it slow to see how it works, but it does work.

Pleasant Surprise Number 2

I received the following email from their User Operations regarding my vanity URL for my Facebook page:

We have added your requested username to your account. You can verify this change by logging in and viewing your web browser’s address bar.

Facebook provided a mechanism for owners of registered trademarks to submit their trademark information to prevent others from taking it. I did that before the first stampede for the vanity URLs happened at the beginning of June. Since I didn’t have 100 fans for my Page on June 27th, I was not able to create my MasterfulMarketing vanity URL at that time, so I have been waiting to get to my 100 fans.

Imagine my surprise when I got this email and went to my fan page! You can now easily remember my Masterful Marketing fan page name. Now I can build my fan base organically so that all that become fans are truly interested in what Masterful Marketing has to offer.

Thank you Facebook for attending to these details.

WordPress, Not Just for Blogs

Debra — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:00:52 +0000

Small businesses need a Web presence. It’s the central hub of your social media strategy – the place where you send everyone to find out more about what you do or provide.

The challenge for many small businesses is to obtain a high quality, professional Web presence that is affordable and easy to keep fresh with new content. On top of that, business owners are hearing that if they blog, tell stories and keep people aprised of what they are up to, they will help increase their chance of being found through search engines.

So how do you maximize your Web presence without breaking your marketing budget?

For most small businesses, building your Web site in WordPress will help you achieve what you are looking for. You can get a quality web site that is easy to update and maintain, support all the multimedia features you want to keep it interesting, while having the ability to add a blog if you are ready to take that step.

I’m still finding small business owners are confused as to what they truly need when it comes to the Web. What is necessary is a place you can call your home base. This home base is where you should be directing everyone through your calls to action in your marketing campaigns. This one place should tell your prospect why they want to do business with you. And, this one place should have everything you need to keep your visitors engaged. You should strive to combine your Web site and blog into one Web property that does it all for you. If you have two separate sites – one for your static Web site and one for your blog – you risk splitting your traffic between the two and you may just find yourself

If you are starting to develop a social media strategy, be sure this Web presence is solid so that when you point people to it from your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Google profile, you will be proud.

Why WordPress?

[/caption]I have finally moved all of my client’s Web sites to WordPress and have trained them on how to update their content. This has liberated many of them, helping them keep their Web site up to date with news, events and content that attracts their ideal clients. In my opinion, the following are the key benefits for building your Web presence in WordPress:

It is easy for anyone to add, change and update content – This is a real benefit to businesses that sell services. Sharing your expertise through articles, a blog or other types of content keeps your Web site interesting and up-to-date and helps you demonstrate how you help your customers.
The developer community has built an enormous number of quality plugins – This enables you to include complex features, such as embedding video, audio, image galleries, flash, and secure email forms without having to know how to write code. This reduces development time, thereby reducing the overall cost of building the site. In my experience, if I search for “wordpress plugin xyz feature”, I usually come up with a plugin that does what I want.
The business can grow their Web presence as needed – Start with a web site using only the page template and add a blog when you are ready for that option. Businesses don’t feel like they have to know everything about how their site will look to get something done. They can add new areas of pages (if the theme is set up to accomodate), change content and add the blog without a major redesign.
The site takes less time to set up – The structure of the site can be set up in a much shorter timeframe than developing a web site using html. If the business owner has the time or another resource, they can enter the content themselves, reducing the overall cost of the site to create.
WordPress templates extend the design capability – You don’t have to have just one page template for the whole site. You can create different templates and apply them to pages to create a customized look for various sections.
WordPress sites are search engine friendly – You still have to ensure other SEO (search engine optimization) techniques are used, but the structure of the site (page names/categories/tags) are all used to help the search engines index the site better. Two plugins that help with this is All in One SEO Pack and Google Sitemap Generator which creates an XML sitemap supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.
Your site can be mobile ready with a simple plugin – By installing the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin, you can support mobile devices such as iPhone, Blackberry Storm and other powerful smart phones without a lot of additional development. Mobile support has become a must for all web sites now given the number of people who access the Internet from their mobile device.

The following sites are all created with WordPress. These examples illustrate the creative sites you can achieve using this platform. In addition, even though these sites are a tad complex, they all support mobile devices.

So the bottom line is this: small business owners – take the plunge and get your web site built on WordPress. Many Web developers can do this for you. Find someone who understands the online marketing world and can help you set up a Web presence that helps you grow your business.

For a really comprehensive discussion about building a WordPress Web site, read the blog post Guide to Your First WordPress Web Site by Jerry at Web Hosting: Secret Revealed.

6 Twitter Types to Avoid

Debra — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:00:08 +0000

Let’s face it. If there’s a way to exploit a new service for monetary gain, folks will figure it out. Some of us, however, still find that building relationships and meeting new people is more valuable for our personal and professional lives. Because of this, I like Twitter. I love to follow smart people. I find meeting them in person is twice as nice. And I review (or vet) each new follower before I follow back. I don’t auto-follow, follow everyone and will often unfollow those who break a few of my Twitter guidelines. The following is a visual illustration of my Twitter rules . I have edited out the names to protect the not so innocent.

Type #1 – Endless Sales Pitches

If your Twitter stream looks like the image below, well I’m not interested. Any type of multi-level marketing scheme that claims I can make this much money sounds like a scam to me. The URLs in each Tweet is suspicious as well. Where’s the conversation? How are you getting to know me and what my interests are? Unfortunately, I have manyof these to pick from but there’s not enough room on the page for this.

Type #2 – Thanks for Following, Buy My Product

If your auto direct message (auto-dm) looks like the image below, you will get unfollowed. If you send me a sales message the first time you speak with me, how do you know what I want? I am not looking for a “get rich quick” scheme nor am I interested in starting another business. I’m plenty busy and love what I do.

Type #3 – Numbers are Everything

What’s wrong with this picture?

I’m not sure if the account holder is at fault or those who auto-follow! How can someone who has never twerped a tweet have almost 2000 followers?

Type #4 – The Valley Girl

For those who know me, I’m sure they can figure out pretty quickly why this person wasn’t top of my list to follow back. Like, IDK like I’m like sooooooo thrilled :D. Oh please. Save me.

Type #5 – Gimme More Followers

Like with all social media tools, the number of followers, connections or friends you have tends to indicate your social media “power”. However, it is very easy to get followers on Twitter, so the numbers aren’t necessarily the best measure of the value of a Twitter user. I get amused by what I sometimes see in an email I get from SocialToo that gives me a list of my daily followers and those who unfollow (they do more but this email is a nifty feature). When the same person follows and unfollows me within the 24 hours that the email comes out, it gives me a very blatant clue to what this person is after – connections not relationships. Go figure.

Type #6 – Extreme Adult Content

Ok this one also goes without explanation. I do like their creativity around their bio to try and capture some of us who may not look at their actual tweets. Newer tools like Tweepular and Tweepler enable me to see not only your bio but also your last tweet or two. I wonder what SEO means to this person? In any case, I don’t think this person got their target market quite right.

The moral (pun intended) of this story is if you want to get to know me and establish a mutual relationship, this is not the way to go about it. I am pretty open to connecting with people who care about the relationship and how we can both benefit each other in some, maybe tiny way. I may not Tweet a lot each day, but I read, absorb and understand what makes those I follow tick. So by all means, please do follow me on Twitter. Just know that I want to get to know you.

Update: yes I know there are 6 – I added a bonus but forgot to change the title.

Amazing WordPress Plugins – Part 2

Debra — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:47:33 +0000

Creating a Membership Site

Back in February, I wrote about two amazing WordPress plugins that made implementing a rotating flash header easy to implement. In this post, I want to talk about more nifty WordPress plugins that helped me implement a membership area on the Web site. This area is used by the condominium association to communicate with the owners of the properties, providing updates to documents, minutes to board meetings and information on social events.

Once again, I needed to find some WordPress plugins that helped me implement some type of protected area on the site. Through my search, I found two very powerful but easy to use plugins – Member Access and MemberWing Membership site plugin.

Based on the features needed for the site, I ended up selecting the simpler of the plugins, Member Access. This plugin allows you to select what pages or posts on the site need a password to access. You can set the default as open to all and selectively protect the different pages until the member signs into their subscriber account. Once the member signs in, all the pages are accessible to them. This is just what I needed for this site.

Another membership plugin I found was the MemberWing Membership site plugin. And although I didn’t select it for my client’s site, I’ve saved that one for future use for me and a few of my clients. If you need to create a member’s area where you want to charge for content, Memberwing is what you want. It is very easy to set up and use, gives you four levels of access, users can register themselves, put in a credit card number and gain access to the content without your intervention. So check these membership plugins out.

Simplifying the User Experience

I also wanted to make it simple to manage the community of owners so I implemented another plugin called Register Plus, which allows members to register themselves while enabling me to customize the registration page and ask for information from the person wanting to register. Register Plus only supports WordPress 2.5+ but we’re at 2.7, so no worries there. It allows you to add a custom logo, password field, invitation codes, disclaimer, captcha validation, email validation, user moderation, profile fields and other features that help you create a user community on WordPress. We set it up so that the accounts need to be approved by the management company, but this has cut down on the administrative needs of the site. As owners sell their properties, the new owners can register and the administrator can remove the accounts for those who are no longer owners. Before, I had to create user names and passwords for each of the owners and change them when properties were sold.

All was well and fine when I was testing the site, but when actual users were starting to register themselves, I needed two more plugins to remove the last two challenges and simplify things for users (and for me). Peter’s Case Insensitive Login removes the case sensitivity for those logging into the site. I’ve had this issue with many of my clients thinking “debra” and “Debra” are the same and email me when they get an invalid user login. I most likely will add this to all my client’s sites so they no longer have this problem.

The Peter’s Login Redirect enables me to send the users to the member’s home page of the site when they log in rather than the WordPress dashboard based on their roles, which for the owners is “subscriber”. This very useful plugin removes the confusion for the user and puts them at the area on the site where they belong.

I absolutely love the flexibility and power of WordPress as you can tell, and these plugins made something that was once project for a very skilled developer very easy to implement. My thanks to these developers who have contributed to this community.

Amazing WordPress Plugins

Debra — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 20:18:26 +0000

I am a big fan of WordPress. Most of my clients have chosen to move their Web presence to that platform for the following reasons:

Low cost
Easy to use
Easy to maintain and update content
Easy to add a blog when ready
Many cool plugins to make our lives easy
Add your favorite reason here!

So when I suggested we move the Beach Dreams Community Web site to WordPress, I really didn’t think twice about it. However, I had forgotten that we had a Flash header with a variety of catch phrases that were randomly assigned to pages. I really wanted to find a way to create the site so that the phrase changed everytime a page is refreshed or a new page is loaded. But after looking for a plugin to provide that feature, I came up empty-handed. But with my creative juices flowing, I managed to implement the headers using two plugins – Kimili Flash Embed and WP-Ads.

WP-Ads lets you set up rotating ads pretty much anywhere you want them on your page or post. In the administrative interface in WordPress, you set up as many banner ads as you want, indicating the location and the html code that will show the ad. Unfortunately it did not take the Flash code directly but by using the Kimili Flash Embed plugin, I was able to put the following code in place of the html the plugin was expecting:

[kml_flashembed movie="/flashfiles/catchphrase1.swf" height="171" width="639" /]

Kudos to these developers who built these plugins. I’m sure neither thought this was how their plugin was going to be used, but the flexibility of WordPress and the creativity of the development community enabled me to accomplish what I had set out to do. To view the site with the rotating flash header, go to Beach Dreams Properties web site and go to any of the back pages and refresh a few times.