Using Facebook for Business? Hubspot.com has 9 Tips on What Not to Do

No one is denying that Facebook has become a viable business tool. People are coming up with new marketing methods for Facebook literally every day.

However, there are also things you shouldn’t do with Twitter – which is what Diana Freedman writes about at hubspot.com: “The 9 Worst Ways to Use Facebook for Business.” They are:

1. Duplicating your Twitter Strategy on Facebook. Twitter and Facebook are two different platforms, and you need to use them differently. While it’s good to Tweet two or three times a day so that your customers (hopefully) see you, too many Facebook updates could lead to people dropping you. When you do post on Facebook, take advantage of the extended number of characters you have to get your point across.

2. Posting plain-text entries exclusively. People like variety. Post relevant videos or links to interesting articles. Involve your readers.

3. Not Allowing Fans to Share Content. If you don’t let your fans post on your wall, what’s the purpose of having a Facebook page? If you sell a product, for example, don’t you want pictures of your fans using that product to put on your wall?

4. Not Responding to Fans’ Comments. Facebook is a social medium, so be social. Respond to comments and questions. If you don’t have time, make time.

5. Ignoring Fans’ Comments and Content. Those very contributions to your site can be shared with others when they’re beneficial to promoting your product or service. They can also be great content additions when you’re short on time. So use them!

6. Not using Facebook Questions. This new Facebook service, allows anyone to ask and answer questions to and from Facebook users. It’s a great way to get customer opinion on your product ideas, service changes, etc.

7. Using a Profile Image with a poor thumbnail. When you upload your logo or brand image, Facebook cuts it down to make it fit in the little thumbnail on the profile. As a result, many logos get cut in half or rendered totally unrecognizable. Create a 200px-wide image of your logo and use it.

8. Not Linking to your Facebook Page from your Website. Stop keeping your page a secret! Put a Facebook link box on your web page and start drawing traffic to your Facebook page.

9. Putting Up a Page with No Personality. If your page is stuffy, you won’t get many fans. Facebook users want to connect with friends, not with a sales pitch. Freedman provides several examples of companies who are doing this correctly.

Karlie Justus at SocialMediaB2b Discusses Pros and Cons of Blocking Social Media at Work

Can your employees access popular social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter? Karlie Justus, in her article “Pros and Cons of Blocking Social Media at Your B2B Company,” at SocialMediaB2B.com, cites a new report from Purdue University that says more than 80% of the businesses surveyed restrict the use of at least one social media site, while another 13% restrict all such sites.

The concern, said the survey, wasn’t so much that people were using their social media presence to socialize, but that classified information was being entered into the public record, at an average cost of $2 million per incident.

However, another report from McAfee, which also commissioned the Purdue report, says that 40% of businesses that allow their employees to use social media in the workplace have seen a measurable increase in productivity.

So what exactly are the pros and cons of blocking social media at work? Justus sheds some light on both sides.

Pros:

1. Your business needs a singular tone and voice for its perceived image. Many B2B companies use a singular image and voice to represent their businesses. In order to maintain the image and feel you want throughout your communications, you can’t have more than one or two people writing what you release to the public. Too many voices muddy the waters.

2. There may be industry specific concerns about social media. For example, if your company makes helicopters for the military, and their current project with you is top secret, you probably don’t want somebody accidentally spilling this information out on the internet. Justus says marketers in these areas should ask their customers whether social media is a part of their marketing plan before planning to use it yourself.

Cons:

1. It silences your biggest fans – your employees. Who knows your products better then the people who make them, sell them and want you to be successful, so that they can be successful too? If your employees can’t talk about your product, what better forms of free advertising do you have in mind?

2. Justus says that few companies tend to stretch the boundaries of how social sites can be used in the office beyond the marketing department. She questions why more companies don’t use Twitter, for example, to provide public relations opportunities for their sales teams. She asks why more companies don’t allow Facebook to be used by Human Resources to help fill a position. And LinkedIn is a proven source for leads. If your employees can’t access all this, however, these are all moot points.

3. A company that can’t access social media is a company that continues to live under the idea that social media is a waste of time, Justus says. If your company uses social media to attract new accounts, but you don’t let your own employees use it, how does that look to your customers?

Five Ways to Make Your B2B Popular on Twitter from Karlie Justus at SocialMediaB2B.com

Chances are, you know that you’re supposed to be supporting your company’s B2B social media campaign with an active presence of Twitter. But what you might be thinking to yourself is, “How do we do that?” Check out this article by Karlie Justus at SocialMediaB2B.com, “5 Ways for B2B Companies to Engage on Twitter.” Justus says that building an online reputation, generating leads and company coverage through Twitter doesn’t happen overnight. You need to develop ongoing two-way communication with your followers. Her five ways to do this include:

• Original content: Create tweets to alert people of the original content that you should be adding several times a week to your company web site. Rewrite eNewsletters, news releases and updates. If you don’t have any news of note, create 140-character facts and tips that you can fall back on when you tweet.
• Retweet: Did you get some excellent information from a Tweet? Share it with your followers. It shows you care about your industry and the other players in it.
• On-the-Ground Updates: Twitter’s mobility and brevity make if perfect for up-to-the-minute updates. “From the field” tweets about events at conferences for example (“just had a great conversation with manager of Smith in Atlanta,” e.g.)shows your company is busy and on top of things.
• Determine the popular hash tags and keywords to your industry: Then use Twitter searches to find tweets with those terms. This allows you to follow users who tag their tweets.
• Tweet with Personality: Your tweets don’t all have to be about business. Justus says, “Think of Twitter as a cocktail party.” Appoint one person to handle Tweets for your company and encourage them to let their personality come through. This means occasional Tweets that step outside the business realm. It makes your company look human and easier to identify with.

B2B Companies: Be more social now with these 11 tips from Hubspot.com

B2B businesses are traditionally slow to adapt to new changes. This is particularly true when it comes to social media. Many companies are still having trouble understanding that they need a social media program. Sure, there are a lot of technical things to worry about that are best left to the folks in your IT department. However, Kipp Bodnar, writing for Hubspot .com, says there are “11 Simple Ways B2B Companies Can Be More Social Today.” They are smaller steps that any B2B employee can not only implement easily, but also actually understand.


Socialize your documents: Chances are you’ve written white papers and speeches that contain valuable information that your potential customers can use. Post them on the web.

Social Media Icons: Make sure you have company logos that conform to the sizing requirements of various websites.

Set up social media accounts now, even if your company won’t be using them for a month or two.

Create a profile for your company at LinkedIn.com. It’s a good way to start connecting with other people in your business as well as potential customers.

Write blog posts. Even if you don’t have a live blog yet, create content that you can post when you go live.

Make sure your staff is equipped to go social. Make sure they have the right tools to create the media you’ll need to create when you go live.

Start to understand the tools of social media conversations such as Twitter Search, Alerts Grader and Boardreader. Use them to monitor the search terms of your business.

Determine who in your company will handle your social media content. Go over how they will represent the company in their posts and blogs.
Set up a Bit.ly account. This service shortens URLs to give you more room on limited-character sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Add social media browser extensions that can help make your browser more social-friendly.

Install Analytics. As you start getting new visitors from your social efforts, you’ll want to know exactly where they’re coming from Analytics tools can help you do just that.

Own a Small Business? Mashable Serves Up Five Problem –Solving Sites

Mashable.com’s Ben Parr owns a small SEO-related startup business – namely, Mashable.com. Like any small business owner, he’s often faced with decisions that he’s never encountered before. What’s more, his mentors and co-workers frequently have no answer either. This caused him to do what millions of entrepreneurs do when they need a question answered – he turned to the internet. Then he compiled “5 Online Tools for Answering Your Small Business Questions.” The five sites he finds most helpful for answer his own questions (and believes you’ll benefit from them too) include:

• Quora – A Q&A tool that allows users to ask primarily technological and startup-related questions. It’s particularly known for being the place to reach prominent CEOs and technological experts online. You can also read posts grouped by topic.
• OnStartups Answers - As the name implies, this site caters to founders of startup businesses and the particular problems they may have getting and keeping the ball rolling.
• Hacker News. This is a friendly “startup-centric” community. Its members are very open to questions and frequently go out of their way to help get something answered.
• Twitter: This social media staple could be your immediate access to advice from other entrepreneurs you are following online.
• OPEN Forum: The active discussion areas at this American Express site allow you to ask questions and get them answered quickly. While it’s not Parr’s first choice, as he says, “it can’t hurt to ask.”

For additional information regarding the information in this article, click here.

Wake Up and Smell the Tweets: Writer Sounds Death Knell for Traditional Marketing

Old marketing habits die hard. But Abigail Rossbach, writing at FathomSeo.com, says that to make your marketing efforts work for you, the time has come to forget everything you learned about marketing in a pre-Facebook, what’s-a-Twitter world. Content marketing, Rossbach says, is where it's at and where it’s going to stay.

"Traditional marketing methods have officially lost their influence," Rossbach writes, adding that in a marketing world filled with blog posts, video portals, tweets, etc., businesses need to take an entirely different look at how they conduct business online. In short, they need to commit themselves to content marketing. This means producing and distributing, entertaining, relevant and informative content on a regular basis.

This content will attract potential customers and provide them with something of value. In so doing, it will also provide a constant boost to your link building efforts. Rossbach stresses that this new approach can mean resisting the urge to push for the immediate sale. This can be hard for many marketers to grasp but it’s the way of the world now. Educate the buyers about your product first, she says, and they will look to you as a trusted source when
they’re ready to buy.

If you’re wondering what general topics to write about, Rossbach suggests starting with a recent article by Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz.org for ideas.

Columnist Cohen Says Twitter Translation Tools Keep Tweets From Being Lost in Translation

Most B2B firms have Twitter accounts these days. However, once they begin to work Tweets into their social media and link building strategy, many firms find themselves the recipient of Tweets from foreign countries that they can neither read nor decipher their purpose. Are they requests for business? Spam? How can you tell? What if you want to Tweet someone who doesn’t speak English? What do you do?

That’s what Jeffrey L. Cohen writes about in his article “4 Ways B2B Companies Can Translate Tweets” on SocialMediaB2B.com. Cohen reviews four of the most popular translation tools available on the internet specifically designed to bridge the translation gap between Tweeters. The first tool he discusses is Tweetdeck, the desktop tool that you may be using already to monitor your Twitter traffic. What most people don’t know, he says, is that Tweetdeck has a built-in language support option that you can find in the “Services” area. It also allows you to “un-translate.” Next, Cohen discusses the hootsuiteiphone app for iPhone. He calls it a “quick way to translate incoming tweets to your native language while on the go.”

Another web-based tool that Cohen likes is Twaitter, an update scheduler that also has Google Translate services embedded into its programming. Type an update, click the language you want it to translate to, and send. Cohen saves the most recent service for last. Tweetmeme, the popular retweet tool, recently announced that it has added Google Translate tools as well.