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.)

The retail experience is changing daily.  The days of one way, push advertising are being transformed with social media so that the user has a greater degree of control and basically opts in for what they want, when they want it.  This is very important for retailers because developing a deeper bond with customers will pay big dividends.  Keep an eye out next time you go shopping.  You will begin to notice the many opportunities for retailers to layer in social media marketing to their relationship building activities.  Here are just a few that you will begin to notice in the New Year and many may apply to your business too:

• Reward customers for checking in on Foursquare while shopping
• Tweet the latest coupons to customers
• Provide details about a private client event on Facebook
• Invite customers to become guest bloggers on the blog
• Make shoppers feel special by providing them free product sample offers via Twitter
• Record and post short videos of new product releases via YouTube
• Incentivize store visitors to become Facebook Fans
• Make it easy to rate, review and share store information

There are so many things to communicate via social media.  Here is a short list, be sure to add your own:

• Job opportunities
• Promote a contest
• Open house or after hours party
• New product launch
• Store employee of the month or shopper of the month
• Highlight satisfied customers and testimonials

This is just a start.  Integrate these social media marketing strategies into your marketing mix and watch your client list grow and profits as well.  To learn more about how to use social media marketing in your business, watch a complimentary webinar on Thursday at 1 PM Eastern at www.businesscaseforsocialmedia.com, provided by Social Media Training, Inc.

2010 will be remembered as the year that business professionals took Social Media seriously.  For more than 5 years, social media growth was fueled by personal users and businesses that were early adopters.  This past year, the “Tipping Point” was reached and businesses got on board the social media train.

Here are some of the mind boggling metrics we witnessed this year:

• Facebook has over 600 million members and is heading towards the 1 Billion mark
• The average Facebook user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
• 20 million Facebook users become fans of Pages per day
• 60 million status updates are made per day on Facebook
• Twitter has 190 million users, generating 65 million tweets a day and handling over 800,000 search queries per day
• LinkedIn now has almost 100 million professionals on board
• Over 2 billion videos are streamed every day on YouTube
• Foursquare, the mobile social network, is up to 5 million users with 25,000 new recruits every day. Foursquare is averaging 2 million check-ins daily, as the average user checks in three to four times daily.
• Nearly 4 out of 5 web users visit a social networking site on a monthly basis
• 73% of US companies use social media tools for marketing purposes
• Internet users worldwide spend more hours per week with social media than any other online activity
• 46% of Internet users worldwide interact with social media on a daily basis

The killer question in 2010 was “Where are you?” and this is evidenced by the amazing growth of rivals Foursquare and Gowalla.  The process of checking in at your favorite restaurant or retail store is rewriting the rulebook of marketing for small businesses.  They can leverage customer’s friends, followers and network connections by providing incentives for people to check in at their location.  2011 will surely bring some national players off the fence and into the location based social networking services.

Your personal brand and influence is easier to build than ever before.  Purchasing behaviors are changing, as are the ways people find and take in content.  The way we use the Internet has changed, and social media is simply a reflection of these changes.  In 2011, be sure that you are educated as the social media frenzy picks up additional speed and that you are taking part in the social media revolution or you’ll get left behind.

Sources:  Wikipedia, PEW Charitable Trust, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare

The Top 5 Winning Headline Strategies That Deliver Results

Nobody will read your content if your headlines are not compelling.  The average attention span these days will give you 3-5 seconds to catch your reader.  On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.  With all of the new social media platforms, the competition for your customer’s time is intense.  You need to grab the reader’s attention to draw them in or you will be wasting your time writing.  In order to accomplish this, you’ll need to communicate that your content will be relevant and helpful to the reader (quickly).  Do this and your readers will dive right in and devour your work.

Here are the Top 5 Winning Headline Strategies:

Ask a Killer Question Questions have a way of capturing the readers’ attention because they hit a nerve and personalize the content.  It can stop them in their tracks and draw them in.  EXAMPLE  When your customers search for your products on Google, will you be found first or your competition?

Top Ten List Or Top 3, 5, 7, you get the idea.  With a list, you automatically communicate to the reader that you’ll save them time because the information will be easy to absorb and well organized.  EXAMPLE   Top 5 reasons people buy Mercedes Benz automobiles.

Appeal to Emotion People react to emotions.  Strong feelings cause interest so stir up the pot and you’ll draw them in.  EXAMPLE   Is your fear of public speaking killing your career?

Paint a Picture You can pique your reader’s interest by referring to something that cannot be communicated by text alone.  Photos or videos are a great way to draw them into your content.  EXAMPLE   Video of the new Blackberry tablet on YouTube, before the wire.

How to Always Wins My personal favorite is the How To strategy where you are explicitly stating to the reader that you will offer up answers that they need with little effort on their part.  You have done all of the research for them so this too saves them time.  EXAMPLE   How to increase your Twitter followers overnight.

By mastering the art of writing compelling headlines, you will be light years ahead of your competition and you’ll beat the odds that are heavily stacked against you.  Many people breeze past most of the content out there but instead, you will command a bigger audience by writing show-stopping headlines.

Learn how to get results with Social Media for your business, Join Us for our next “Business Case for Social Media” Webinar every Thursday at 1pm Eastern.

The difference between success and failure when using social media starts with your profile.  2011 is predicted to be The Year of Social Search.  The growth of social search (searching on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) has eclipsed the projections in size and speed.  This means you need to ensure that you build a strong foundation.  Your profile is the basis of how people get to know you in the social media circles.  By doing this, it will ensure that you are found when your prospects are looking for you, your business or what your business has to offer.

Think about this for just a moment: Twitter search gets more than 1 billion queries per day — roughly 31 billion per month. That’s more search queries in a month than Yahoo and Bing combined. Oct. 2010

What is a magnetic profile? First you need get found so your profile must be optimized for your keywords and then you need to have a compelling profile that engages prospects and brings them in to get to know you.  The ultimate goal is to have these prospects reach out to connect with you so don’t forget to make sure it is easy to connect with you.

Follow These 3 Critical Steps:

First Add your keywords.  There are very important locations on the different platforms to add keywords.  On LinkedIn in particular, make sure your job titles and specialties include your keywords.

Second You never get a second chance to make a first impression so think twice on which photo to upload.  Make it a memorable picture capturing the essence of who you are.

Third Draft an engaging headline.  This will be the first thing people see when you are found in social search and will make a huge difference on whether you get offers to connect and do business.

Why is it so important to optimize your profile? Without optimization, you won’t get found.  You’ll be just like the hundreds of millions of people out there that do not see the return on investment from their social media activity.  Everyone is so busy these days and we are all on overload so it becomes even more important to be found at the top of social search and to stand out with an engaging profile.  Building a strong foundation allows you to achieve many other social media goals so invest wisely and get optimized.  Then and only then will you have the Power of Magnetic Attraction.

Learn More This Thursday 1 pm Eastern FREE Webinar “The Business Case for Social Media” Grab Your Spot.

Here is a short video I did sharing how to secure your brand identity online.