Social media is great, but it can have its pitfalls, too.  There’s a very specific etiquette that comes with social media (especially as it pertains to business), and if you don’t follow it, you could find yourself banned in such a way that you even hurt your business.  Therefore, while the casual atmosphere of social media is certainly great for business, there are some things you should be aware of so that you can be careful, too when getting started with social media.

Don’t just jump in and start “selling”

The anonymity of the Internet has made people feel comfortable with just letting it “all hang out,” but that can come back to bite you big time if you’re trying to use it to promote your business.  For one, you DON’T want to be anonymous if you are a business.  You want people to know you and to trust you; you want them to depend on you for your expertise, and you want them to be comfortable with you as a “person.”  The more comfortable they are with you, the more likely they are to buy from you when the time comes.

Lurk first, then introduce yourself respectfully

One of the best things you can do when you sign on to social media to try to promote your business is to hang back and watch how things work first.  You’ll notice, for example, that people who try to spam are generally removed quickly from discussion — and even if they’re not, they may be flamed (made fun of, called out, and generally harassed) for their behavior.  If you want your business to succeed through social media, you will want to avoid the hard sell and direct spamming.

Instead, lurk to see how things work, and then introduce yourself respectfully by joining a discussion about a topic you‘re somewhat of an “expert“ on.  It should have to do with your niche, and the advice you give can certainly be related to the product or service you sell.  However, it should NOT directly “sell” your product or service, and instead should simply be advice related to the question asked.  Give away something for “free” with social networking — namely, your advice — and you’re much more likely to gain loyal customers quickly.

Promote indirectly

One of the best things about social media is that you can promote yourself indirectly, without overtly saying that you sell something.  You do this by putting your website address and any other relevant information about yourself in your profile and/or your sig. line, as applicable.  Once you come in on conversations and begin to participate (again, offering honest advice, and not trying to overtly sell anything), you’re indirectly advertising yourself simply by posting your signature line below your posts, and/or including information about your business and about you in your profile.  At least some of the people you’re participating with are bound to be curious about your website and about you and will go take a look.  And certainly, the people who are seeking your advice would likely go check you out and look at your profile, go visit your website, etc.

What’s great about this is you never have to engage in hard selling.  Instead, you gradually establish yourself as an expert, someone people can turn to for advice in your particular niche.  As you gain a reputation and a “brand” yourself as an expert, you can move on to the next area of social networking; that is, you’re actually going to put out content (videos and text) that will tell people more about your business, effortlessly, through viral marketing.

When it comes to social media for small business, the world is literally your oyster. What does that mean? It means that your customer base has the potential to be worldwide, depending on what you’re selling. Because social networking is so pervasive and can literally reach to every corner of the globe, you have the opportunity to find and target your customers specifically, thus potentially increasing your sales exponentially.

There’s something you have to do if you want that to happen, though. It’s all well and good to get the word out about your product or service, and to let people know that it’s available. If you don’t establish yourself as an expert who truly wants to help people, though, it’s not likely you’re going to get much of a customer following. The key, then, with social networking is that you have to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Once you can do that, and once you have clearly aligned your online persona or your “brand” with that expertise, you’ll have success.

How do you establish yourself as an expert through social media?

Although social media can make something happen instantly, in that you can literally get a particular message to thousands or even millions with the click of a mouse or the push of a button, establishing yourself as an expert is going to take some time and effort. Therefore, build slowly from the ground floor up and establish yourself as an expert before you try to push your product or service too much.

• Start slowly, offering advice on forums and other social media pages

Depending on what your particular business is, you can begin to frequent like-minded forums and other social media pages and venues. Post frequently and often, including your signature line or the website address for your business — but don’t try to sell anything. Instead, honestly answer people’s questions and offer advice for “free.” Your ultimate goal, of course, is that you will attract customers, but your intent at this point should simply be to help people. In turn, that will raise your profile as someone who is an expert in your field.

• Write articles and blog posts, perhaps graduating to videos

As you are offering advice to others on other forms of social media networks, you can also be writing blog posts and articles on your area of expertise that you will then post to various article directories and blog sites.

Now, again, this has to be genuinely quality content that gives people something for “nothing.” We see poorly written articles or badly produced videos all the time that don’t really offer anything. They’re clearly simply meant to entice people to buy something. That’s misguided though, and doing that is not going to help you become an expert in other people’s eyes. They’ll simply see you as a shyster interested in their money, and nothing else. Then they’ll go look for somebody who truly is an expert and is willing to help them. Your articles, blog posts and videos should be of the best quality you can produce, with the true intent of helping people with a problem they need to solve. At the bottom of these articles or blog posts, or at the end of these videos, you can certainly include your website or contact information so that people can find you, but selling something should not be the central focus. Post these videos, blog posts and articles to directories or your website, encouraging people to share them by putting easy to use links to Facebook and Twitter on the pages your posts or videos appear.

When you do this, you will slowly become well-known as a true expert in your field, which will encourage people to turn to you for advice and yes, buy your products or services. (Incidentally, you can do this even if your business is a local-only business. You’ll still gain a lot more traffic to your website and therefore attract more customers by doing so.)

If you’re just starting your own small business, you may not know about social media and what it can do for you. At its essence, though, social media is a great way to “get the word out” about your business and help you grow almost effortlessly.

Sounds good, right? But before you get started, there are a few things you should know about social media and how it works.

Lurk before you participate

New social media networks are popping up all the time, but some of the most established are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. (Google Plus is the “new kid on the block,” and isn’t quite as well established, but you can visit there too, and just hang around and get a feel for it.)

Visit each of these social networks and do a search on your particular business niche. Chances are, you’ll come up with groups and pages specifically devoted to your business; you’ll find both people looking for opportunities to expand their own small businesses, and people looking for the products and services you offer.

Both of these groups are important to you. Those who are more experienced than you in your niche have had their small businesses for a while and can teach you something about success. By lurking, you can find out a lot about what makes them successful without either imposing on them (bad form, in many cases) or unnecessarily opening yourself up to some pretty stiff competition. Just lurk, take notes, and learn.

The second group, those who are looking for your products and services, are important to you too, of course. Here, you have a ready-made customer base.

• Why lurking is important

It’s important to lurk before you participate because you want to learn just how things work before you get involved. If you get started too soon, you’re going to show yourself as a complete newbie, which is usually not beneficial to your business. It may get you taken advantage of, for one thing, and you’re certainly not going to look professional to your potential clients.

The other thing is that social networking really has a language and “community” all its own. It has etiquette and rules as to what “good” and “bad” behavior are. Step on the wrong toes, act improperly, or simply show yourself to be inexperienced, and you are likely going to damage your reputation, something you may not be able to fix later.

Join a few groups, and participate

After you’ve lurked for a while, you can join a few groups and participate. At this point, refrain from setting up your own page or group. Instead, you simply want to join existing groups and get involved in some good discussion.

Don’t spam

When you participate, make sure you follow etiquette. Some of these groups or pages will have rules specifically spelled out that you should follow, in which case you should be sure to do so. If they don’t, though, a general rule of thumb is that when you participate in social media, you should never spam. Instead, comment on ongoing discussions honestly. You can usually include your website, Twitter feed, etc., in a signature line or profile posting that will be clearly visible. People can see who you are and visit your website if they so choose, which will indirectly get you more traffic and ultimately, more customers.

Start your own group and/or set up your own page when you feel ready

Once you’ve learned the rules of the road for the specific social media network(s) you have studied and participated in, you’re ready to set up your own page or group. Again, this is a great way to bring like-minded people together to talk about topics related to the product or service in question. It’s also a way for you to post special deals, etc., you have going on for a new product or service just as a matter of course, to keep people informed. When you do it this way, it’s not “spamming.” It’s simply posting information that group members and customers will find useful.

A lot of people see social media as a great way to socialize, hang out with friends, and simply catch up on everything that’s going on in other people’s lives. What you might not know, though, is that it’s an absolutely great way for small business to get new customers almost effortlessly. That’s because it lets you advertise and educate easily, to a very wide audience. Here’s how:

Use social media to direct traffic to your small business website

It’s never a good idea to simply jump into any social media venue (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are a few well-known examples) and start advertising your business willy-nilly with a lot of spamming. That’ll just irritate people, and it may even get you banned.

However, you can use social media subtly to direct traffic to your website and attract more prospective customers. Once there, prospective customers are much more likely to convert to actual customers if you’ve enticed them with social media commentary and content, and then have followed up with quality content and products or services on your website thereafter.

Use viral content to spread your small business message — fast

Viral content (not to be confused with a virus, which would be a bad thing) is basically something (a message, video, or article) that becomes so popular that it spreads like wildfire throughout the Internet. Come up with a clever video, for example, that advertises your product or service in a commercial or non-commercial format. Make it enjoyable to watch, and you’re suddenly not just selling a product or service. You’re actually entertaining people. The more people that enjoy your video, the more they’ll pass it on, and the more people will see it; in turn, that will bring people to your website to find out more about you. Once they arrive at your website, the more likely they are to be interested in your product or service.

Post as a participant on social networking sites to create organic back links to your own small business website

Search engines these days are very savvy to manufactured “back links.” That is, fake back links that have been bought and created specifically to give you a higher search engine ranking are very easy to spot, and are likely to get you blacklisted so that your site won’t show up on search engines at all.

However, search engines absolutely love organic back links. Organic back links are those links that are created because you have legitimately posted throughout social networking sites and on forums, etc.. Whenever you participate in a conversation on a social networking site and do so honestly (not just to spam, but to give actual advice, honest commentary, and the like), that post will generate at least one good back link. Make it really good, and other people will pick it up and pass it on so that it creates a number of back links.

 Use social media for small business targeted marketing

Coupons aren’t just those things you clip out of the paper anymore. With social networking, you can create and distribute “coupons” on the fly, targeted to a specific audience for your product or service. For example, let’s say you sell a product or service on your website (or locally), and you decide that you’re going to give anybody with a specific coupon code 10% off their next purchase. Post this information on your website, distribute it through your profile or sig line on social networking sites, and put it on your Twitter feed. You can even create a text message that you can then send out to a targeted (opt in) audience. When those people visit your website or your establishment, all they have to do is enter the coupon code into the proper space or present it to you at purchase, and they get that discount. And again, this is something that the word will spread on, so that others will come to you to use the same discount. It’s word-of-mouth that has really gone high-tech through social networking, and it only bodes well for your business.

Starting out as an entrepreneur in 1997 the advice I received in the first year was “invest in myself”, to invest in my education, personal growth, and future.

Here is a short list of things I do on a regular basis to invest in myself:

• I read books and websites on the topics of sales, marketing, understanding people, and faith.
• Taking time out of my business to bring back my focus and clarity. That means time off a.k.a VACATION and mini 1 day vacations.
• Exercise, I haven’t always done this however as of late I do so regularly and this bring increased clarity and energy.
• Walks, often I will just take a walk outside and flat out be with nature and the elements.
• Hunting, once a year I take two weeks to go whitetail deer hunting .  No meetings, calls, deadlines, or even an exhausting vacation and I know you know what I mean by exhausting vacations.

So is this selfish? I don’t think so because all of this makes me a better person in my business, family, and faith.

I hope you find time to invest in yourself as I have, I know I am a better person because of it.

Now, what would you add or better yet what was the best business advice you ever received?

Everything is Bigger on LinkedIn

Here I am at a family camp on Western night having to wear the Biggest Hat. Kinda like people on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn seems to create big egos! There I said it and some of you know exactly what I mean while others haven’t been on LinkedIn long enough to understand this statement. Let me explain, I often run across LinkedIn profiles that make the individual look like Mother Teresa’s mentor.  It starts with a  long list of multiple job titles and a specialist in about 20 different areas you will discover as you read their profile, sound familiar?

You’re Story

I am all about sharing your accomplishments, experience, and expertise. Along with shining an effective well thought out spotlight, but not pulsating Vegas lights that we all know are not reality. Focus on your story and why you do what do. Share that and you WILL have something that grabs people’s attention.

Here is an example using my headline on LinkedIn.

I have to throw this in because it really is relevant, now the video is about 17 minutes and it will set you back the rest of the day, week, and maybe a few months on your own thoughts. However it is really relevant to communicating what, how, and why you do what you do.
(more to read below the video as well)

I told you the video was good!

What is Your Why?

So what do you think are profiles over inflated on LinkedIn? Do you know your why? Please share it.