Why Facebook Over Twitter For Business?

#1: Facebook is communal.

Unlike Twitter, Facebook makes it very easy for group discussions. Twitter is primarily a one-to-one or one-to-everyone tool. With Twitter you can’t easily interact with two or three people at once, for instance. And you certainly can’t easily see what others have had to say about a post.

But Facebook has grown to over 500 million active users for a reason. They make it really easy for people to connect at a human level. And Facebook knows what its fans are interested in.

For example, if you frequent a fan page, Facebook knows you care about that page and shows you popular posts and discussions from that fan page in your live feed, above others. If done right, this is marketing gold!

When your Facebook page shows up in the live feed of your fans, it encourages rapid discussions and a chain reaction. When your fans engage in those discussions, it shows up on their walls. Their friends discover your page and your following grows.

In this regard, Facebook is like blog comments on steroids. When people interact with your brand, you are building community. This moves people from passive observers to advocates. And that’s a powerful marketing weapon.

#2: Facebook pulls people to its site OFTEN.

Part of the brilliance of Facebook is how it taps into some of our innate human desires. Every time someone posts something on your wall, tags you in a picture or tags your wall, you are notified in some way. For most people, this is an email with topic like “Joe Smith commented about a picture of you.” Or it’s a little red number at the top left of the screen when you are in Facebook.

These little mechanisms are intentional ways to get you into Facebook and interacting. It’s almost impossible to ignore these cues. If you’re like me, you’ve been conditioned to check Facebook almost as often as you check email.

Twitter doesn’t have the same systems to pull people back.

This is a huge advantage of Facebook and a primary reason you need to be there. The more people connect with others on Facebook, the more this grows. The upside is huge. This is why Alexa ranks Facebook as the second most frequented destination in the world, just behind Google.

Your customers, prospects and fans are already there A LOT. And when they arrive, they’ll likely see your page updates if you’ve figured out a way to get them to engage with your Facebook page updates.

#3: Facebook reveals powerful social proof.

This one is a brilliant move. If you click the Like button on an article (inside or outside of Facebook), something amazing happens. The next time one of your friends goes to that page, your name is displayed as someone who likes the page.

Perhaps you have a Facebook Fan Page and even some fans. But now what? How can you encourage your fans to act and interact?

If you build a fantastic fan page with plenty of quality content, will they come and will they stay? They will come and they will stay if you give your fans good reason to engage.

Given that over half of Facebook’s 400 million active users log in daily and spend an average of 55 minutes per day on the site, you can get your target audience to spend some of that time getting to know you, your brand, your products and services.

The secret is to create a fan page with the right blend of ingredients that resonates most with your ideal fans. And to ensure they’re made to feel a strong part of your online community.

1. Ask questions
For status updates, try ending with a question.

2. Use the words “you” or “your”
Use the word “you” often – “What are your thoughts?” “What do you think about xyz?”

3. Keep it short
The easier it is for your fans to read, the more likely they are to respond. Keep your status updates short and simple with one topic. You have up to 420 characters per update, but I recommend about half that for an ideal size. For longer updates, use the Notes app – or write a blog post and update.

4. Post in high-traffic windows
Get to know when your fans are most responsive. Depending on in which part of the world the majority of your fans are, you might want to post between 9:00am and 2:00pm in your timezone.

5. Respond promptly
Do your best to respond to fan questions (as wall posts) as promptly as possible. If you find you can’t keep up with the volume of questions, offer a free teleseminar or webinar where you answer the top questions for your fans.

6. Address fans by name
Come back and reply often to your fans’ comments – Facebook currently doesn’t have threaded commenting, so I suggest addressing specific fans in your comments as @name.

7. Comment yourself
Add your own comment as needed to get the ball rolling. However, don’t step in too soon. I often find that the comments come more freely when you allow your fans to run by themselves initially.

8. Thank your fans
Acknowledge your fans often with simple thanks. Genuine recognition goes a *long* way!

9. Surprise your fans
Don’t be afraid to stray “off topic” from time to time and surprise your fans. In other words, your content doesn’t always have to be directly related to your product or service. You might share an inspirational quote and add your own thoughts.

10. Use @ tagging
You can tag other fan pages that you’re a fan of and your own friends (along with Groups you belong to and Events you’ve RSVPed for). When appropriate, and used sparingly, @ tags can be a very powerful way to have your post show up on others’ walls, which gives you more exposure and brings more fans or potential fans back to engage.

11. Use the Discussion Board
Give your fans a place to network with one another. Plus, often fans want to do self-promotion. You can encourage these types of activities on a specific discussion thread. Also, when you first launch your fan page, be sure to start 3 to 5 discussion topics so it’s not a blank tab.

12. Send updates to fans
Each tab on your fan page and each discussion thread topic has its own unique URL. To bring fans back to your page to contribute to a discussion and get them more engaged, send out an update with a call to action and specific link. (To find the Update feature, click Edit Page under your image then look for Send Update to Fans on the right of your Admin page.)

13. Monitor insights
If you’re a perfectionist, the goal is to get 5 stars and a perfect 10 score! Facebook uses algorithms to calculate your Post Quality as determined by the percentage of your fans who engage when you post content, calculated on a rolling seven-day basis. The number of stars depends on how your Post Quality compares to similar pages (for example, pages that have a similar number of fans).

The more activity your fan page posts generate, the longer you’ll show up in the News Feed of your fans!

As you build up your fan base, consistently add quality, relevant content and engage your fans. You’ll start to see results that translate into an increase in brand awareness and positive brand sentiment, email and blog subscribers, and of course, sales and paying customers.

Why Should I Use YouTube In My Social Media Marketing Campaign?

Because YouTube is all about video broadcasting. And videos are perfect for showing technical equipment, demonstrating a procedure or giving prospective buyers a virtual tour of a home for sale.

Videos can even show a “talking head” touting the benefits of any product or service. Just like a TV commercial. But you have up to 10 minutes to make your case, not 30 seconds. And it won’t cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This is not your father’s TV. It’s not 97 million Americans watching the Super Bowl on one channel on one day and seeing whatever ads the station selects, whether they want to see them or not.

This is 400 million people worldwide actively seeking information on an estimated 6 million to 9 million YouTube channels every month. Yes, I said millions of channels. And watching what THEY want to see.

As of 2009, approximately 100 million Americans watched about 6 billion videos on YouTube each month. Americans performed more than 2.9 billion searches on YouTube every month.

In fact, YouTube accounted for 79% of all US visits to 60 online video sites in 2009. Google Video was #2, with a 4.6% market share.

Remember, social media is about monitoring and participating in the conversations about companies, products and services. And finding evangelists and influencers who can help you build your business.

Your customers are already having these conversations on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — wouldn’t you like to know what they’re saying? Wouldn’t you like to find those evangelists?

Here are some things businesses can do in a YouTube video:

• Publicize a news event about your company.
• Introduce a new product or service.
• Demonstrate a new product or service.
• Distribute a speech given by the company president, CEO or VP.
• Record celebrity endorsements of your product or service.
• Show conference presentations, exhibits and speeches.

You can even advertise on YouTube. You can place your own ads on videos that match your criteria. It can be a traditional Google text ad or a video ad to the right of the video player. Or you can place the ad in the lower part of the video itself as a semi-transparent overlay while the video plays.

You can also create a Brand Channel complete with your logo that gives you many more options than a regular channel. More than 147 million US Internet users watched an average of 100 videos per viewer in January 2009. That’s a bigger audience than the 97.5 million people who watched the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl!

And it’s not just 10-year-old girls. Sixty-two percent of YouTube viewers are 35 and older. Almost half have a college degree and a similar percentage have incomes of $75,000 or more.

A YouTube channel is the equivalent of a Facebook profile. You create the page and put whatever you want on it. But instead of lots of text, you put lots of videos. Videos of all those things that businesses can do on YouTube.

And YouTube allows viewers to rate your videos, favorite them and share them with friends. They can also upload a video response to your videos, add comments and subscribe to your channel.

What do you think about YouTube? If you are using YouTube, please share your experience!

A Roadmap To Social Media For Small Business Owners

Why are you doing this? It shouldn't be because it’s cool or because everyone else is. You need to be where your customers are online, so you can reach them. It doesn’t matter if you’re clueless or scared of social media; if your customers are there, you need to “suck it up and get over” whatever it is that’s holding you back. If you don’t know where your customers are online, then you need to ask them and find out.

Watch out for “experts.” Everyone and their mother is a social-media "expert". The real experts are the ones for whom social media is a job — one they get paid to do through writing, speaking and consulting. Even among the legitimate experts, you can’t listen to them all because you just don’t have time, so pick a few and consider their advice seriously.

Know your “why?” and use it to guide you. This is the reason that you’re engaging in social media — and it has to be a good one because it’s what you will use to keep you motivated so you won’t get bored and stall out. You aren’t just trying to get on social media — that’s just the avenue. You’re after the endgame. That endgame is different for each person, and could include building visibility, becoming a thought leader, getting more media coverage or connecting with customers.

Don’t try to add social media to your already packed schedule. Examine your marketing and find out what’s working and what’s not, then cut the stuff that isn’t. It could be your newsletter, e-mail or direct mailings, but whatever it is, you can take the time and energy you were wasting on it and devote them to social media.

Use the right tool for the job. Selecting the wrong tool is costly in terms of time, money and resources. The right tool for one business may not be the right tool for another — if people in your market don’t have time to sit down and read your blog, it’s not going to make a difference even if you are putting amazing information on it.

Get social media onto your calendar. Here’s the deal with social media: If you don’t make time to do it, you will never do it. Your calendar reflects your true priorities are, and if social media is going to be a true priority, it needs to be there.

Keep cool, calm and collected. Stay organized and in control — organization helps alleviate the anxiety that may come with trying to do social media. Remember, not everyone who tries to get your attention actually deserves it.

Create your short list. This is the list of which social-media services/tools you will use and which you will ignore. You need to ask your clients where they’re at online and where they might want to connect with your business, and that’s where you want to be. You don’t need to ask every client, just talk to a few of the best or the most responsive.

Set boundaries. Who will you friend and who will you ignore? You shouldn’t engage with everyone everywhere, so set your own rules and boundaries for each service you’re on.

Don’t think you’re replacing anything. Social media is like makeup. “If you ain’t pretty, it’s not going to make you pretty.” Social media only enhances what you already have, so don’t stop doing things that work and replace them with social media, just stop doing the things that don’t work.

Get business. Business isn’t always a sale. It can be a new client, media coverage, a connection who will make a referral, a book deal and more. To get it, you need to use the Rule of Reciprocity, which is really just a rip-off of the golden rule — if you want comments on your blog, you need to comment on other blogs; if you want people to talk to you on Twitter, you need to talk to other people on Twitter.

Measure. That’s the only way you’ll know if your social-media efforts are on track or not because what doesn’t get measured gets ignored. First figure out what you want to measure — Facebook fans, retweets, visitors to your blog, etc. — then do it regularly so you can measure like to like. Use that information to recognize a derailed effort and make the necessary changes to your strategy.