Stop Wasting Time on Social Media

The Following is a guest post by Dan Schawbel, recognized as a “personal branding guru” by The New York Times, he is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, and author of the Personal Branding Blog, The 2^nd edition of his book Me 2.0, will be released October 5^th.

A lot of people are surprised that their thousands of followers on Twitter aren’t converting into leads, but I’m not. Ever since departing my social media job and starting my own company, Millennial Branding, LLC, I’ve been focusing on monetization. Basically, figuring out which platforms actually convert into cash, and which do not. The issue that people seem to have is where to invest their time, and depending on your goal and what’s working for you, you should allocate accordingly. If you aren’t seeing results in six months using a tool, then you might want to rethink your strategy, and how much manpower you put behind the tool. Aside from starting a company, I read the Inbound Marketing book by Brian and Dharmesh, which has inspired me to rethink lead generation. For instance, I used to spend two hours a day on Twitter, yet it didn’t result in enough opportunities to prove its marketing value.

Email vs Social Networks vs Blogs

Here is a breakdown of the significance of each platform as it relates to generating leads for your business. An email subscriber is worth more than a blog subscriber, which is worth more than a social network follower. This hierarchy isn’t changing anytime soon.

1. Email: An email contact is worth approximately $948, as noted in an IBM study. The loyalty of a single email contact is stronger than any social media follower (unless Oprah followers you) because users are not only opting in, but providing you personal data that they might not submit elsewhere. Typically, the exchange is a name and an email address for access to free material, and a possible lead for the company. I’ve been noticing that despite the advent of social networking, 71% of marketers believe that email will be more important this year. Email, if done right, is targeted, personal, and directs subscribers to other websites, including your own. You’ve also noticed that when someone sends you a Facebook message or adds you as a contact on LinkedIn, you still receive email notifications.

2. Blogs: A blog's value is much different than other platforms because of different benefits. The benefits you’ll have from blogging include: ranking high in search engines, becoming a voice in your industry, having a community of users that can support your future growth, having something in common with 200 million bloggers (networking), and building a list of subscribers engage your content. Subscribing to a blog takes two clicks, which is faster than it takes to sign-up for an email newsletter. This means that blog subscribers are less valuable than email subscribers, but are more valuable than social network followers. A social network follower only has to click one button to read your content, while a blog has two.

3. Social networks: I’m willing to bet that a lot of your Twitter followers are people you’ve never met before. I’d also like to wager that your followers don’t receive most of your tweets or Facebook status updates. They are simply following too many users to read all of your material, so it falls into the social media “black hole” (and the Library of Congress). For this reason, it is reported that a social network contact is worth a mere $3.50. Social networks are not marketing platforms, which means you have to start using them differently. Build relationships on social networks on a one-to-one basis and you’ll be more successful.

Marketing Takeaway

I'm not saying that you should stop using tools that you enjoy using. I'm trying to get you to think of how much time you're allocating to participating in each community, with growing your business in mind. There’s a reason why the top bloggers have email newsletters, in addition to their posts. It’s because they realize what’s more valuable and they’re making the investment to get a larger return. If you’re smart, you’ll invest in an email newsletter, and then leverage your current platform to convert your viewers into subscribers. This way, you’ll have a strong list of people, who would potentially do business with you.

Google’s Local Business Center Gets a Facelift

In an effort to improve and expand upon its local business coverage, Google has recently given its Local Business Center a major facelift. The rebranding began with a shift away from the name “Local Business Center” and to its new name, “Google Places.” While it may be tough to imagine that there’s a better name for Google’s local business center than, er, “Local Business Center,” this move was actually a very smart one for the search giant.

The name “Google Places” creates the essential connection between local businesses’ listings with Google, and their Place Pages within Google Maps. Place Pages were created as a way for businesses to really display what they’re all about in a more appealing manner than the typical bubble pop-up in Google Maps. These pages allow businesses to provide a rich description of their business, almost attune to that of a website, which will appear when a user clicks through for more information right from Google Maps. The rebrand of the Local Business Center to Google Places was a way for Google to further promote and encourage businesses to use these new pages, by making the names of the two local business tools similar enough for people to really make the connection that they go hand-in-hand.

And the official launch of Google Places didn’t end with the rebranding alone. In fact, Google added a host of new features to further entice businesses to take part. To summarize:

- If your business offers delivery, or does not have a specific brick and mortar location, Google now allows it to specify a specific geographic radius/delivery range rather than the “pinpoint” location which has been the standard in Google Maps.

- Google will now send someone to take photos of your establishment free of charge to display in the Google Places listing, at the request of the business.

- Google now offers custom QR codes for certain businesses, which they can place in their window to alert customers that the establishment is a “Google Favorite Place.” QR codes are the barcode-like images you’ve probably seen in windows of stores and also splattered throughout the internet that look like this:

Google previously provided QR codes to 100,000 US businesses, but now you can also request a QR code using the dashboard.

- Finally, of course, Google introduced an upgrade which will allow them to generate revenue, which is a new advertising program called Tags (LINK TO http://www.google.com/help/tags/). Tags cost $25 a month, and help a local business stand out in Google Maps searches using a small image of a yellow tag. This tag indicates a special deal for customers, and they can click through for more information.

All of the above upgrades were a part of the initial launch of Google Pages. Most recently, though, a very interesting additional upgrade has been made, called Local Business Annotations. While a lot of the upgrades described above apply specifically to the map or detail view of Google Maps, Local Business Annotations are a part of Google Street View.  Now, when you’re zoomed into the Street View of an area, you will start to see little icons appearing here and there, designating various top local businesses in the area.

Mashable explains, “Essentially Google is transforming Street View from a view-only panorama to an interactive virtual double of the physical world. The annotations should make it much easier to visually pinpoint a place to grab a cup of joe while plotting out your daily activities. They’re also potentially a big boon for the included local businesses and point to the value of Google Places.”

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/28/50000-websites-have-already-integrated-facebooks-new-social-plugins/#ixzz0mRxyNXek

Facebook’s not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers.

Here are 32 ways to use Facebook in your business.

Manage Your Profile

1. Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.

2. Establish a business account if you don’t already have one.

3. Stay out of trouble by reading the Facebook rules regarding business accounts.

4. Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your Facebook profile. (Although you should be careful before integrating your Twitter feed into your Faceboook profile, as a stream of tweets can seem overwhelming to your contacts.)

5. Keep any personal parts of your profile private through Settings.

6. Create friends lists such as “Work,” “Family” and “Limited Profile” for finer-grained control over your profile privacy.

7. Post a professional or business casual photos of yourself to reinforce your brand.

8. Limit business contacts’ access to personal photos.

9. Post your newsletter subscription information and archives somewhere in your profile.

Connect and share with others

10. Obtain a Facebook vanity URL so that people can find you easily.

11. Add your Facebok URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you.

12. Post business updates on your wall. Focus on business activities, such as “Working with ABC Company on web site redesign.”

13. Share useful articles and links to presentation and valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall, to establish credibility.

14. Combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.

15. Before traveling, check contacts locations so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.

16. Research prospects before meeting or contacting them.

17. Upload your contacts from your email client to find more connections.

18. Use Find Friends for suggestions of other people you may know to expand your network even further.

19. Look for mutual contacts on your contacts’ friends lists.

20. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.

21. Market your products by posting discounts and package deals.

22. Share survey or research data to gain credibility.

23. Use Facebook Connect to add social networking features to your web site.

24. Suggest Friends to clients and colleagues — by helping them, you establish trust.

25. Buy Facebook ads to target your exact audience.

26. Read up on Facebook Beacon to see if it might be useful for you.

Use Network, Group and Fan Pages

27. Start a group or fan page for product, brand or business. Unless you or your business is already a household name, a group is usually the better choice.

28. Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information and newsletter archives.

29. Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences and other programs where you or someone from your company will be present.

30. Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions.

31. Join network, industry and alumni groups related to your business.

32. Use search to find groups and fan pages related to your business by industry, location and career.

Via Web Worker Daily - by Meryl Evans