Profiling

Your profile is your page's thumbprint, your theme's identification, the backstory to your branding. Here are a few suggestions in maintaining some control over how it's interpreted.

Open or Closed?
What disclosure type lends itself best to your plan and to compel visits to your site?
GCC Expeditions is more intimate in its sharing of personal information because their clientele will be interfacing on a personal level.  You'd probably want to get to know the people who will be taking you and your family on a kayaking expedition. I would.

Businesses coming to you for janitorial supplies probably care a bit less. Your business patina is more important than the personalities driving it. Chances are you and your page fall somewhere in between.

Garbage In, Garbage Out
It's an old IT adage, but it applies to your profile and page content as well. More human resource managers and personnel agencies are searching applicant Facebook pages than ever before, in fact it's quickly becoming the top clearinghouse for information on a personal level. Much can be learned about you from your network of friends and their posts to your wall.

This might be a good time to do a little editing, or in some of your cases, a lot. Remember, your personal page is just a click away from your business page. Do you care if your potential visits discover that what you did in Vegas ended up on your buddy's wall? Take a look at status updates and pictures with the eye of your personifications and see what may keep people from liking you.

Sex, Religion and Politics
Probably safe to say that we're living in the most polarizing contexts that this world has seen. If you were invited to your significant other's parent's home for dinner, what topics of conversation would you avoid? Your page should bear the same observation. For me, that's tough to do, so I've created a blog far away from my page, with no link (at least within seven degrees of separation) that might plop the wrong eyes onto my more outspoken, irreverent rants and insights.

Guilt by Association
Joining groups, are you? Been liking a lot lately?  Let's see; a cursory check on my page shows John Stewart and the Daily Show, People Should Have to Take a Test and Pass an Interview Before They're Allowed to Reproduce, NPR, my son's racing page, Karen Marguth, Top Gear, Kayaking, and We Can Find a Million People who Believe in Evolution... to name a few. What can be derived from these?

And links? Holy smokes. Fortunately, I can edit. 

Vigilance
Watch and read your page(s) on a regular basis. You never know what's going to be posted by your more colorful friends, or what's been hacked onto your likes and groups.

Can you trust a Facebook profile?

Best Practices

Must-reads to add to your blogroll:

Mashable
AllFacebook
Inside Facebook
Social Media Examiner
Enterprise 2.0

The Web is Dead

From Wired Magazine

Some definitions:

FTP - File Transfer Protocol - FTP is usually used to send files from computers to hosting webservers when creating a website. It can also be used as a means of "downloading" files from other servers. FTP is sometimes used to send files from one computer directly to another.

DNS - Domain Name Systems - The DNS is a record, located at the registry, that converts IP addresses from numbers into names, i.e. 123.456.789.0 to www.yourdomain.com. This record tells a browser where your web site is located and also tells mail servers where to route your mail to. If the DNS isn't set-up properly your domain name won't work.

Telnet - A network protocol that enables one computer to communicate with another via the Internet.

Newsgroups - Newsgroups are Internet discussion forums where groups of users with common interests gather to talk about everything from software to comic books to politics.

Peer-to-Peer - Peer-to-peer is a communications model in which each party has the same capabilities and either party can initiate a communication session.

How does this impact you? Leave your comments below.

Stakeholders and Customers

Stakeholder Needs
It's syntax, but it's meaning needs to be understood. If you're working for a large organization, corporation, non-profit organization small business, or a government entity, the stakeholders range from investors and board members, to management and administration, and to peers and colleagues. What you do in representing your organization on Facebook directly impacts its people.

If you're the sole proprietor, and many of you are, you are the stakeholder. It's a term derived from the days of the great Western land rush. Settlers moving west were organized in territories and were enabled to claim parcels of land by going out into the territory and literally staking a claim; driving a large wooden stake into the ground. These pioneer flippers were considered stakeholders. And here you are, virtual stake in hand, ready to stake your claim in the territory of Facebook.

What are your needs? What are the needs of your other stakeholders? Take a look at the questions below from Facebook Marketing:

• What does the stakeholder think of social media?
• Is the stakeholder using Facebook and/or Twitter?
• What are your organization's best campaigns for dealing directly with customers?
• How can your organization improve customer engagement?
• What does social media success mean?
• How does social media marketing increase workload?

Customer Needs
Shakespeare used the word customer to mean "prostitute." The late 14th century discovered the term to mean buyer, though it evolved over the next one hundred years to mean, "a person with whom one has dealings," and a bit later, "a person to deal with," as in tough customer.  

News flash: they're all tough customers these days. The text explains that despite Facebook's remarkable population, most of its inhabitants are reticent to click ads and visit pages, too darn busy playing Farmville. Hopefully you've created a dozen or so personas of your customers. The next step is to qualify their needs.  Facebook Marketing asks these questions:

• What do they do on social networks?
• How much time do they spend on Facebook?
• How often do they log in and how long do they stay once they get there?
• What annoys them about Facebook?
• Are they fans of other companies on Facebook or follow such on Twitter? Which ones?
• Have friends recommended pages on social media. Which ones and why?
• What are you willing to share with your friends?

What other questions do you have? Add three of four more that deal specifically with your theme or campaign.

Lay the Groundwork

Set Project Goals

• Increased Sales
• Campaign Content Updates
• Improved Customer Service

Social Networking Workflow

Set Up Your Campaign
Define and create your concept, the idea that drives your project reflected in your page. What's the experience for the end user? How can you inspire your audience?

Businesses with a budget usually outsource this stage, looking to design firms or ad agencies to develop their concept. You probably don't have a budget for this, only your imagination.

Procure Content
Give your audience something to go for. You need to create a voice that cuts through all the noise in social media. Articles, essays, start-up dates, behind-the-scenes stories and pics, videos, content that hooks your audience. You can create your own media or find, repurpose and post existing content.

Update Content
Give your audience a reason to come back to your page. Keep your content updated and respond to feedback. Who's in charge of updates? Is there a consensus and guideline on content? Continuity is a must.

Track Metrics
The use of social media generates rich data that tells you how customers receive your social media presence. Some is available by simply scanning a fan page, while other data can be found using Google Analytics, Omniture, Coremetrics or Webtrends. Look in Facebook Insights. We'll tackle this later in
Chapter Nine.

Analyze and Revise
After your page has been running for awhile you'll need data to interpret and what you'll find is the efficacy of your content, your campaign ideas. Perhaps it's a goal of 2500 fans, or 5000 unique visitors to your page during a month. Goals not realized? Time to revise.

Your Facebook Presence

Understand Your Targeted Market

Gliding Glen Canyon

Establish Personas -  a sample backstory of your customer base.

Jared is 42, a small business owner in Southern California who enjoys outdoor activities including kayaking. He's divorced has a couple of kids with whom he has typical visitation and is always looking for unique getaways to develop indelible experiences in the limited time they have together. He uses social media mainly to establish dating ties and hook up with buddies for ball games and fishing trips.

Carol is 29, has completed her grad work and works for a PR firm in Phoenix. She's single, maintains a close relationship a few other women, mostly on a professional level, and is always looking for a unique getaway. She's a mountain-biker, snowboarder, and water skier. She's fit and works hard to be in good condition. Her social ties share common values in fitness and outdoor activity and she maintains most of these relationships through Facebook.

Greg is 57, married with three kids and two grandkids. He's on the backside of a career in sales and prides himself on the vacation opportunities he creates for his family, especially his grandkids. He's a bit out of shape, his spouse likewise, though they're active fishers and campers. They've endured the crazy years of parenting and now find themselves empty-nesters. They stay connected with their kids through Facebook and chat regularly with their grandkids,



Establish Effective Tactics

• What do customers of a kayak touring service want?
• What is within my means and expertise to provide? 
• What makes my service unique?
• What does my competition do?

Take a look at Harry's. 

Who's their audience?

What is their strategy?

How has their page configuration helped them reach their audience and strategy?

What's compelling about their page?


Define your Audience


Determine your Strategy


Configure your Page


Make it Compelling

ad2action.com - A Look at Social Media Marketing Strategy

ad2action.com

Social networking websites, such as Facebook, can be one of your most powerful tools for gathering leads and promoting your business—as long as you do it right. To give you a reason to feel motivated, there are millions of subscribers on Facebook and they are found all over the world.  If you’re thinking of going global Facebook may just be a good place to start.

To improve your presence on Facebook try these suggestions:


Create a Business Fan page.

Not a lot of businesspersons are aware that you can actually create a business account on Facebook. For instructions on how to do this, visit http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages.

It’s different from a personal page in that the information can be quite restrictive with business accounts but it allows you to create, manage, and keep track of your Facebook advertising campaigns.  You can also develop a personal profile that is more suitable for a business entity like yours.


Integrate different applications.

Do you have a blog hosted by other blogging platforms such as Wordpress or Blogger?  Perhaps you have your own Twitter or Plurk accounts.  You can now integrate these applications right into your profile so that more updates will be added to your page.  You can also use this method to avoid creating duplicate content.  You do, however, want to be careful about how often new information is added to your profile, as contacts may become annoyed by too many Twitter updates, for example.


Look for contacts from your e-mails.

Facebook also permits you to look for contacts directly from from your e-mail accounts.  This is far more ideal than randomly choosing people from the website because your contacts have already been in touch with you at least once and there is already a level of awareness for who you are and what services you provide.  It’s easier to build trust and credibility with strangers when you are surrounded and supported by friends and associated.  They can also refer you to their own contacts who can then refer you to their contacts in a never-ending method called Viral Marketing.


Choose a keyword-rich URL.

You can now create a more specific URL for your page through http://www.facebook.com/username/.  This can be an opportunity for you to develop a keyword-rich address for your business which may also carry the official name of your enterprise. The point here is that the page can be indexed by SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), so you’ll want to ensure that search engine users can immediately see and click on your link when they look for information about your niche.


Check your landing page.

A landing page is important on Facebook for two reasons:

First, you have to remember that you can create ads on Facebook, so you’ll want to have a page where you can send the users who click on them.
Second, you can add links into your own profile.

This completes lesson #4.

If you are not already an ad2action member, we invite you to JOIN TODAY!  ad2action rewards you for selling our powerful Internet Marketing Products, as well as provides the tools for you to market & sell your own products and services using the ad2action platform. We also supply additional products to resell in the event you do not already have a product.