It occurs the first time Neo goes to see the Oracle after he was rescued from the Matrix. In the Oracle’s waiting room, he sees two girls floating blocks above their heads and a young boy bending a spoon.

Young boy: “Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead … only try to realize the truth.”

Neo: “What truth?”

Young boy: “It is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

So if you think you can use traditional marketing techniques on social media, you’re still trying to bend the spoon. That’s the message in The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Hyder Kabani.

“Traditional marketing rules cannot be applied to social media because social media is not a marketer’s platform. It belongs to consumers,” says Kabani.

Todd Defren, principal of SHIFT Communications, is even more blunt: “You are in the findability department. The marketing department is dead.”

“Findability” means using social media to find people who are already talking about you and your company, and starting a relationship with them. Yes, I said a relationship! Because relationships are why most people use social media. And most people are more likely to buy something from someone they know than from a total stranger.

So when you use social media to find people who are already talking about their needs, and you offer to help them solve that need, you are building the foundation for a trusting relationship.

That’s very different from spending thousands of dollars and using mass media to “blast” your message at millions of total strangers who probably couldn’t care less about your product or service at that particular time.

And Kabani writes from personal experience. After getting a Master of Arts degree in Organizational Communication at the University of Texas at Austin in 2006, she started her own online marketing business in 2007. Just one year later, she was making “six figures.” And all of her clients came from her online marketing efforts, specifically social media marketing.

Now she gets speaking engagements and television interviews, and has to turn away more clients than she takes on. Wouldn’t you like to be in that position?

ACT Right to Get Results

“The Zen of social media marketing is about understanding the mindset of people who are using social media and then using it to your advantage,” says Kabani. And here’s a clue about that mindset: they’re not interested in buying anything! “Remember, social media is not a selling tool! It is an attracting tool!”

That’s right – Kabani recommends using social media primarily to attract people, not sell to them. Because people don’t use social media to look for something to buy. They use social media to express their unique personality and connect with friends and family.

In fact, Kabani says “attract” is the first of three steps in successful online marketing:

1. Attract: Get their attention and lure them to your main selling tool – your website.
2. Convert: Use your website to turn a stranger into a prospect or a customer.
3. Transform: Turn past and present successes into testimonials, case studies and customer success stories.

The acronym for this process – very appropriately – is ACT. And Kabani recommends you use social media for steps 1 and 3, and your website for step 2. The testimonials, case studies and customer success stories on your social media sites will attract a new set of potential customers.

Because people love to read stories – especially the stories of people who have successfully solved the same problems they have. How did they do it? If they can do it, maybe I can too!

And if your company provided the solution, they might just email you.

If you already know a lot about social media marketing, you may want to pass on this book. It only covers the basics and you may already know all of that.

But if you’re still standing on the beach wondering how to use social media marketing, let Kabani teach you how to swim in the social media ocean. If you’re not willing to spend four months learning social media “an hour a day,” you will love her book. You can read it in one day!

Here is what you will learn:

• How to use the ACT process
• The importance of a properly optimized website
• The basics of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
• Video podcasting from Dave Kaminski of Web Video University
• How to create a social media policy for your organization
• Using Ping.fm to boost your website’s Google ranking

The book ends with social media marketing case studies from 12 different companies and organizations. Many are using social media to successfully market their products and services. You can too!

And Kabani has created an interactive, online version of the book that will be frequently updated “to make sure you’re always on top of the latest in social media, with videos, MP3s, and more!”

So if you need a brief, basic introduction to social media marketing, you can’t do better than this book.

Social Media Examiner gives this book 5 stars.

There are 157+ articles on SocialMediaExaminer.com with the keywords “social,” “media” and “marketing” in the title. Here are just a few recent articles:

• 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report
• 3 New Studies Prove Social Media Marketing Growth
• How Big Brands Employ Social Media Marketing

Are you aware of the Facebook Friday expert sessions Social Media Examiner has been doing?

Here’s how they work.  We bring an expert to our Facebook wall for an hour to answer questions.  The expert gets great exposure and the fans get their questions answered.

These sessions  are a great way for fans to quickly get the information they need. And you can model this for your business. These open Q&A sessions with industry experts are a great way to encourage engagement with your fans and get your updates to show up more in your fans’ news feeds.

A recent Facebook Friday session on our Facebook page starred Jeff Widman, CEO of BrandGlue . He gave our fans some great advice. Jeff helps businesses make their Facebook marketing sizzle, and of course many of our fans had questions to ask him. And he shared some great nuggets of advice.

This article will show you how we do them by highlighting a recent session.

Find the Right Questions to Ask Fans

It’s so much easier to create a strong Facebook marketing plan when you ask the right questions. Jeff helped Angie Swartz do just that to get more interaction on her page.

Identify Your Needs

If you’ve been on Facebook for any length of time, you know that things change. Facebook can get overwhelming. But a clear understanding of what you need and why you need it will help you to get the most out of Facebook as it continues to evolve.

Jeff helped Mindy get a clear understanding of why she may or may not want to learn FBML, given that Facebook is moving to iFrames in January.

Get a Deeper Understanding

What goes on behind the scenes on Facebook affects how often our updates are seen by our fans. It’s hard to stay up-to-date on everything and it’s always great to hear from the experts on what works best today.

Andy had a question about how often you should post on your Facebook page. It’s interesting to learn how the Facebook algorithm impacts your reach on Facebook.

Get Help in Setting Up Your Social Media Marketing

When you start to set up your social media marketing, you’ll have lots of questions. The Q&A session with Jeff helped Paula get on track to figuring out the best number of pages her company should have.

Get Easy-to-Follow Guidelines

Information overload hits all of us. The Q&A format on Facebook makes it easy to get simple guidelines from social media experts who do this for a living. Naimah got solid advice from Jeff to help her get started on her own.

Get Useful Tips for Your Business

It’s not always obvious to businesses how they can connect with their particular audience on Facebook. Having access to someone with experience across a variety of businesses is useful.

Jeff gave Sheri and Rachel a great way to start promoting their cause on Facebook.

Get Feedback on Things That Appear Complicated

Facebook seems to be the social media platform where people have the most questions on how to set up their profiles and pages and how to use them. And it’s not always easy to find answers to basic questions.

Jeff explained to Lisa the “yes and no” answer to whether she could change the name of her fan page.

Ask All Sorts of Questions

An open Q&A session with a social media expert is a great place to ask all sorts of questions, even the ones that may appear to be too simple.

Jeff explained to Natasha how to change a personal profile page to a fan page.

Get Expert Advice for Your Social Media Tactics

It’s great to seize the opportunity to ask an expert for advice. These questions and answers are useful to everyone.

Here’s one such question from Cathy about dealing with attrition rates on Facebook. Jeff’s answer is useful to all businesses with Facebook pages.

Increase Your Facebook Engagement

Did you notice the stats for the number of impressions in other people’s newsfeeds and feedback percentage in all of the screenshots of the questions shown above?

These statistics are only visible when logged in as an admin for your Facebook page.

They are an indication of your reach and how much engagement you have on Facebook. It’s an easy way to see which updates got the best results on your page.

Now, your updates may not get as many impressions in the newsfeeds of your fans. Social Media Examiner’s Facebook page has been a tremendous success. In only a few months, we’ve reached over 15,000 fans and this shows in the number of impressions and the feedback percentages.

Showing recognition is another way to increase fan engagement.

But you can ask questions and follow the advice shared with the social media experts in our Facebook Friday sessions to improve your social media marketing. So remember to “Like” the Social Media Examiner Facebook page and keep an eye out for the Facebook Friday sessions.

Now it’s your turn. What do you like about these expert sessions on Facebook? How could they help your business? Please leave your comments in the box below.

So he set up a Facebook fan page with the help of his parents. In just one week, he got more than 1,200 fans and raised $400!

“I can understand using Facebook for a fifth-grade science project,” I hear you saying. “But how do I use Facebook to market my business? I keep hearing that I should include social media in my marketing campaigns, but I don’t have a clue how to do that.”

You’ll be happy to hear that your clueless days are over.

A recent Nielsen report showed people spend 7 hours a month on Facebook, but only 2 hours a month on Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN.  That’s a huge opportunity.

One of the biggest names in Facebook marketing has written a Facebook marketing textbook just for you. Mari Smith partnered with Chris Treadaway to write Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

Yes! It’s another “Hour a Day” book. So you know you’ll be getting the equivalent of a college semester’s training in the privacy of your own home, at your own pace.

Facebook is every marketer’s dream, because in no other medium can you:

• Show your ad to 1,000 people for only 20 cents. Not 20 cents apiece, 20 cents total.
• Create lifelong fans of your business for only 27 cents per fan.
• Target divorced male executives between the ages of 40 and 55 who have an MBA from Harvard Business School and work at specific companies in Chicago.

Targeting Customers With Surgical Precision

You can target Facebook members by location, age, sex, education, language and even by their workplace. So you could target your ad to married men over 40 with a college degree who work for a particular company. You can throw in a couple of keywords that members list in their profiles to get even more specific.

And Facebook asks its members for a LOT of information! Not only gender, birth date and location, but also favorite TV shows, college major and even religious and political views!

“Facebook advertising is perhaps one of the most effective and inexpensive ways available to target specific people based on profile data that they have entered voluntarily,” write Smith and Treadaway.

But Facebook isn’t just about ads. And that’s just as well, because Facebook ads are the same, interruptive, “in-your-face” form of traditional advertising in a new medium. Many Facebook members may just ignore them.

“Although Facebook’s pay-per-click model of advertising offers competitive rates… Facebook users have been consistently obstinate when it comes to responding to advertising on its profile pages,” write Smith and Treadaway. “As an advertiser/marketer, Facebook has an extremely large, desirable audience that [has] refused to click ads.”

“Facebook members are typically not in the habit of clicking on ads,” say Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger in Facebook Marketing for Dummies. “They are on Facebook for social purposes, as opposed to browsing and discovery.”

Facebook Is More Than Just Ads

Fortunately, there’s a lot more you can do on Facebook than just running ad campaigns. But only if you follow the primary rule of social media marketing: Find your evangelists and then give them everything they need to help you market your business for free.

Before you even begin a social media marketing campaign, you need to answer the following questions:

• What is the goal of your social media campaign? Increased sales? Better customer service?
• How will you measure success? What metrics will you use?
• Do company executives view social media as a risk or an opportunity?
• Do you have employees who are interested in helping with the campaign?
• Can you provide enough interesting content on a regular basis to attract potential customers and keep them engaged?

And your company executives will have to answer the following questions:

• Should you promote your brand, your company or your products/services?
• Will you need a policy governing what information can be shared on social media?
• Will every update have to be approved in advance? By whom?
• Will you communicate directly with customers via social media?
• Will you manage the project internally or outsource it?

And this will be a team effort. No single person has all the skills necessary to run a large corporate social media marketing campaign. And the leader of the team has to be “one part visionary, one part marketer, and one part politician,” according to Smith and Treadaway.

Here are some Facebook metrics you can track:

• Number of new Facebook fans
• Number of wall updates/posts
• Number of likes and comments
• Number of customer interactions
• Amount of money spent on advertising
• Advertising cost per fan

This is just a taste of what you will find in Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day. The authors cover the gamut of Facebook marketing, beginning with Facebook basics and working through to Facebook analytics, Facebook Connect, and Facebook apps. They end the book with interviews from six industry experts who predict how Facebook may evolve.

If your prospective customers are spending more time on Facebook than any other site, shouldn’t you be there too?

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 5-star rating. Be sure to grab a copy if you want to master Facebook with only an hour a day.

Have you read the book?  Do you think Facebook will change the way businesses connect with customers? Please leave your comment in the box below.

As more companies integrate social media into their marketing and communications plans, emphasis needs to be on creating a social media strategy.  Without a strategy, you’ll undoubtedly be sucked into a social media time sink.

So how exactly do you develop this strategy?

It’s easy.  Here’s a practical approach to developing a social media strategy for your business.

The Prerequisite

Do you work for a large company? Before you develop your strategy, make sure your upper-management team believes in social media and that the first goal is not to sell, sell, sell.  In other words, if your business is jumping into social media because “everyone else is doing it” or because you want to sell product rather than to build relationships, please step away from social media.  Social media is a long-term commitment and not a marketing gimmick.

If you’re having a tough time convincing your team that social media needs to be integrated into your marketing plan, then counter any concerns with these responses to common social media objections.

It’s important for the organization to understand that testing and experimentation are keys to success.  This comes naturally to an organization whose culture embraces being proactive and open.  The reason why all businesses need to have a social media strategy is because it prevents any misunderstandings and emphasizes why social media is relevant to your business’ overall goals.

Now let's develop your social media business strategy, shall we?

Here are seven key points to consider…

#1: Determine Your Goals and Objectives

Determine who owns social media.  Whether it’s marketing, PR, or communications is irrelevant.  In a perfect social media world for businesses, social media instills a collaborative approach and breaks down silos.

What’s important is to understand your social media goals and objectives and how they tie into your overall company goals.

Keep it Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Timely (aka be SMART!).

#2: Research, Research, and Research Some More

Rather than jumping into the social media pool with both feet, do the equivalent of the “splash-water-on-self” maneuver so you know what to expect.  Step two of creating an effective social media strategy is research.

• Develop a list of social media sites where you can potentially engage with people.  The list will most likely start off with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a few select blogs and forums.
• Check out each of the social media sites on your list and do additional research to determine relevancy by searching for your brand name, your competitors, and your target keywords.  Listen to what’s out there, identify, and understand your target audience.

#3: Create a Digital Rolodex of Contacts and Content

When social media is done correctly, relationships will build naturally.  Begin making connections by following the conversation.  You can do this by subscribing to blogs in your industry and by making a list of influencers who are relevant to your business.

This becomes handy when it’s time to provide content on your social networks.  Read Emily Proctor’s article in which she provides some excellent pointers on a social media content strategy.

#4: Join the Conversation to Develop Relationships

Now it’s time to start making use of all the research you’ve done.  You can start joining the conversation by posting comments on blogs and forums, answering questions on Yahoo! and LinkedIn, joining groups related to your industry and joining Twitter chats.

Begin developing relationships by following and friending influencers and those in your industry.  Don’t just look for people with thousands of followers; you’ll be surprised by the value that someone with only a couple of hundred followers provides.  Here’s an article on how to network on Twitter.

#5: Strengthen Relationships

It’s easy to hide behind your avatar or profile picture, but face-to-face is incredibly powerful.  I think more people are now realizing how underrated the in-person interaction really is because of how far social media has come, allowing so many people to “hide.”

Attend offline events related to your industry—not only to strengthen your knowledge base but also to network and strengthen relationships with those you might have conversed with via social media but never met in person.  A popular offline event is known as a tweetup.

#6: Measure Results

You have goals and objectives, right?  That means you should be able to measure  your success.

Remember, what you measure will tie into the goals and objectives of your social media strategy.

Let’s take the four commonly used objectives:

• Improve brand presence across social channels—The measurement goal here is an increase in the number of followers on Twitter, number of fans on Facebook, number of comments, number of times your brand is mentioned in blogs and forums and so on.
• Increase positive sentiment about your brand—The goal here is to convert the number of positive mentions while taking note of negative mentions.  Has the ratio of positive to negative comments improved?  With the good comes the bad in social media. Get used to it!
• Develop relationships for future partnership opportunities—This goal is to keep track of those with whom you’ve connected.  For example, if you met a potential speaker for your webinar, include that person into your digital Rolodex.  If a vendor contacts you through your blog, capture that lead and take note.
• Increase traffic to your website—Keep track of visitors to your website who come from each of your social media sites.  If you’re promoting an event using social media, consider using a unique code to track the campaign.

Measuring social media is a never-ending debate.  What metrics do you use to measure social media?  What objective are you measuring those metrics for?

When it comes to measuring social media, it takes a multitude of metrics as well as trending reports to get a sense of what to improve.

#7: Analyze, Adapt, and Improve

Your social media strategy doesn’t end with measurement; it goes beyond that.  You need to analyze your social media campaigns, adapt any new findings into your current processes, and improve your efforts.

Testing and experimentation will perfect your social media efforts.

As you dive deeper into the never-ending pool of social media, you’ll quickly understand what works and what doesn’t.

More specifically, you’ll develop favorite tools to use, realize that there are certain days and times where it doesn’t pay to be active in social media, and come to the conclusion that you still have lots to learn.  It’s a wonderful new world and I hope many of you are as thrilled to be part of it as I am.

Conclusion

Social media strategies will vary for each business and for each industry.  However, one thing is clear: social media needs to have “all hands on deck” in order to be successfully integrated into your company’s goals and objectives.

In general, I view social media as a strategy, not a tactic. I consider the social media platforms like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., as tactics that tie into the social media strategy.  In other words, outline your social media strategy and support your strategy with tactics.  Without a carefully thought-out plan, you’ll eventually be overwhelmed with social media and even worse, get burnt out by it.  Use this guide as a stepping-stone to your social media success.  Cheers!

What are your thoughts about strategy versus tactics? Do you have any tips from your own experience developing a social media plan?  Please share your thoughts in the comments box below.

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]]> http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/7-steps-for-a-successful-social-media-strategy/feed/ 30 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-cash-in-on-your-passion-with-social-media/ http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-cash-in-on-your-passion-with-social-media/#comments Mon, 03 May 2010 12:00:07 +0000 Ruth M. Shipley http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/?p=2691 Have you heard of Joseph Campbell?

He was the famous mythologist—author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces and many other books—who told us all to “follow your bliss” in his Power of Myth PBS specials with Bill Moyers in the late 1980s.

“That’s all well and good,” you may have thought at the time. “But I have to make a living. How do I make money by following my bliss?”

If you’ve been asking that question for the past 20 years, you’ll be happy to know that someone has finally answered it. Gary Vaynerchuk has written a book to teach us how to make money by following our bliss.

Many of you may know Vaynerchuk as the host of the video blog WineLibraryTV.com. Now he has written a book titled Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion.

Here’s a recent episode from Gary’s WineLibrary TV.

“Crush It!” refers to Vaynerchuk’s passion: wine. His family had a liquor store and by the age of 26, he had taken the store from $2 million in revenue in 1994 to $20 million in 2001. Here’s how he did it, building his personal brand along the way:

1. He started in 1997 by creating WineLibrary.com and selling wine online.
2. The rise and popularity of YouTube convinced him to start a video blog called WineLibraryTV.com in 2006.
3. He started talking about business in 2007. How to start one, what to sell, and how to sell it.

He had come to the following conclusion based on his personal experience: the only way to make money and be successful is to monetize your passion.

Or in Joseph Campbell’s words, to make money by following your bliss.

Why is monetizing your passion the only way to make money? Because starting a successful business is long, hard work. That’s exactly why you must monetize your passion and nothing else.

“If you’re living your passion, you’re going to want to be consumed by your work. The passion and love for what you do will enable you to work the hours necessary to succeed,” Vaynerchuk said.

And why is now the time to do it?

Because social media, new advertising venues, and the Internet have made it possible for you to find other people who share your passion and might even pay you for your knowledge. If you can establish yourself as an expert, people who need your expertise will seek you out.

Let’s talk about those new advertising venues. “The difference between promoting your brand via traditional marketing and advertising media and doing it via social networking platforms is like the difference between sending a message by Pony Express and chatting on Instant Messenger,” says Vaynerchuk.

Here’s how he came to that conclusion. He spent $7,500 to advertise on a billboard, send a direct mailing, and produce a radio spot. He got 170 orders from the billboard, 300 from the direct mailing, and 240 from the radio ad.

Then he tweeted the ad for free and got 1,700 orders in 48 hours. That’s more than all three traditional ads put together!

“These social networking sites have changed the game by giving entrepreneurs a reason to ditch the sinking traditional media and advertising platforms in favor of a communication method that opens them up to markets that would have been inaccessible until just a few short years ago.”

Crush It! will give you the techniques you need to establish your expertise using social media. Vaynerchuk calls it “building your personal brand.” Here are the techniques in a nutshell:

1. Identify your passion.
2. Learn as much about it as you can.
3. Start blogging about it.
4. Find other blogs about it and leave comments.
5. Find Facebook pages about your passion, become a friend/fan and contribute.
6. Search Twitter to find other passionate people and talk to them.
7. Repeat steps 2 through 6 over and over and over.

As your knowledge and your passionate community increase, you can reach out to advertisers. And don’t be surprised if some business development people start calling you. Vaynerchuk calls them “biz dev” people.

Suppose you have no product or service to sell? You can still get paid for your expertise. You can write one or more ebooks, speak at conferences, and even sell ad space on your blog.

But Vaynerchuk doesn’t care for Google AdSense. It “makes your page look cheap and cluttered [and] it doesn’t pay that well.” Instead, he recommends banner ads.

Here’s how to find advertisers: browse through magazines about your passion and look at the ads. Who’s advertising? Contact those companies and say, “how about advertising on my blog for a lot less money?” Of course, you have to have a really big community to get their advertising dollars.

“There is lots of money to be made, albeit in dribs and drabs to start, by siphoning off money from already-existing sources,” Vaynerchuk says.

“Siphoning off money from already-existing sources” means dumping traditional advertising venues and marketing techniques that broadcast the same ad to millions of people. Most of whom couldn’t care less about the product being advertised.

Instead, you will offer advertisers a highly targeted market: all of the people who share your passion.

And if the money comes “in dribs and drabs” in the beginning, don’t worry. As you build your expertise and your passionate community, more people will seek you out. Including advertisers.

“If you live your passion and work the social networking tools to the max, opportunities to monetize will present themselves,” Vaynerchuk says. “The passion and love for what you do will enable you to work the hours necessary to succeed.”

So if you’re unhappy in your job, pick up a copy of Crush It! Vaynerchuk wrote it “because it drives me crazy to know that there are still people out there who haven’t figured out that they don’t have to settle.”

And he means “settle” for a job doing anything besides what you really love to do.

But is it really possible to make money following your bliss using Vaynerchuk’s techniques? Why not buy Crush It! or find it in a library and write down all 21 steps in Appendix A.

Then follow his techniques for one year. Do they work? Tell us about your success or failure, and we’ll summarize the results on Social Media Examiner.

Social Media Examiner gives this book 3.5 stars.

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts on Vaynerchuk’s style? Please comment below.

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]]> http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-cash-in-on-your-passion-with-social-media/feed/ 35 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/building-your-business-one-tweet-at-a-time-twitter-marketing-101/ http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/building-your-business-one-tweet-at-a-time-twitter-marketing-101/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:00:42 +0000 Ruth M. Shipley http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/?p=2161 “You want me to use Twitter to market my business?” I hear you asking. “How do I generate leads and promote my business by telling my friends what I had for lunch?”

Yes, many people just use Twitter to share their day with their friends. Friends who may live 2,000 miles away.

And some people use it to broadcast a breaking news story as it happens. Like the time a plane crash-landed in the Hudson River. A man in a nearby boat with an iPhone got the “scoop” on that story before the news media reported it.

“That’s certainly dramatic,” you say. “But how do I create a marketing message in only 140 characters?”

You can start by buying Twitter Marketing For Dummies by Kyle Lacy. Yes, there’s a Dummies book about Twitter marketing now!

The whole point of social media — of which Twitter is part — is to find your satisfied customers and encourage them to recommend you to their friends and relatives. In social media terminology, this is called finding product evangelists.

And it’s so easy to do this on Twitter.

Twitter Marketing Made Easy

1. Sign up at Twitter.com. It’s free!
2. Create a profile for your business.
3. Use the search feature to find messages about your company, products, or services.

“Wait a minute!” you say. “Twitter keeps all of those messages?”

Yes! And suppose your search of the Twitter archives for your company name or product names pulls up the following message:

“Just bought. Can’t get it to work! Help!”

What would you do? Here’s what you should do immediately:

1. Click the Reply button.
2. Send the person who posted the message a brief helpful response.
3. Look at the next message you found about your company or products.
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3.

That’s easy enough, isn’t it?

“But what will I say?” you ask. How about, “If you need help, please call our Customer Service Dept. at 1-800-555-2848.” That’s only 75 characters.

What you’re doing is eavesdropping on the global conversations about your company and your products and services. And starting conversations with the people who are talking about you.

You can even follow them and they can follow you. This means you’ll see all their messages — their “tweets” — and they’ll see yours.

And people share information on Twitter by “retweeting” messages. If someone retweets a message you sent them, all of the people who follow them will see your message.

“The entire idea of using Twitter for marketing is to get the people who already follow you to share your content with the people who follow them,” says Lacy. “That’s viral marketing at its finest.”

And there are many third-party programs that make searching the Twitter archives so easy, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be doing it.

Once you get good at this, you’ll start tweeting yourself. More on that later.

The Twitter Marketing Plan

Like all of the Dummies books, this book takes you by the hand and leads you step-by-step through a complete Twitter marketing plan.

It includes detailed instructions, screenshots, and lists of important tips and resources. It covers the following topics:

• Planning your Twitter marketing strategy
• Searching the Twitter archives
• Using third-party applications to increase your Twitter productivity
• Using analytics software to track your marketing efforts
• Building your Twitter network of product evangelists

And many more.

Do you understand now how you’re going to use Twitter to market your business? You can start by monitoring all of those messages about your company and responding to them whenever it’s appropriate.

In social media terminology, this is called reputation monitoring.

Don’t worry about being overwhelmed by all those messages. Each tweet is only 140 characters long. That’s approximately 20 words.

Once you master eavesdropping, you can start tweeting yourself. Post interesting and informative content — not advertisements! — that your followers will retweet to their followers. And those followers might just retweet it to their followers. Content like:

• Help from your customer service department
• Links to your latest blog post
• Notes about interesting news in your industry
• Product/service updates
• Announcements of events and special deals

Yes, you can still “advertise” in a tweet. But Lacy recommends that you limit advertisements to 1 out of every 15 tweets. You don’t want to come across as a “spammer” because Twitter will close your account.

Remember, you need to find people who are already talking about you and offer them help with your products and services as well as interesting content. If you do that, they will not report you as a spammer. They might even share your messages with their followers!

And when you have hundreds — maybe even thousands — of followers who each retweet your content to their hundreds of followers, you’ll understand what product evangelism and viral marketing are all about.

Here is how social media such as Twitter are changing advertising forever, according to Lacy:

• Reach your customers where they are, instead of advertising in places you hope they’ll be.
• Send your message only to people who care about your product, instead of wasting ink and money on people who don’t.
• Create frequent content and get it to customers at all hours of the day, not once a month or only at game time.

Are you ready to try the new way of advertising? Targeting the people who already care about your products and services and helping them spread the word about your company? That’s Twitter marketing in a nutshell.

And did I mention that Twitter is absolutely free?

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 5-star rating.

See “It Pays to Listen: Avaya’s $250K Twitter Sale” on SocialMediaExaminer.com to learn how Avaya employees got a $250,000 contract by tracking their company name on Twitter.  Also be sure to check out our Twitter Marketing Video Tutorial (free when you subscribe to our email updates).

How are you using Twitter to market your business? Please add your comment in the box below!

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]]> http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/building-your-business-one-tweet-at-a-time-twitter-marketing-101/feed/ 1 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-integration-big-theme-for-2010/ http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-integration-big-theme-for-2010/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:00:12 +0000 Amy Porterfield http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/?p=1894 Social media integration is becoming a big buzzword this year.  As social media marketing matures and starts playing a bigger role within marketing campaigns, businesses are beginning to see that social media can be integrated into many channels.

Here are two current studies that show how the integration of social media marketing is changing the way marketers connect and engage with their audiences—online and offline.

#1:  Marketers Ditch Silo Campaigns and Report Social Media as “Critical for Success” (Alterian)

As digital and social media marketing mature, the demand for greater integration is evident. Marketers are quickly realizing that operating in a one-way marketing tunnel makes success impossible in this social media–saturated world.

Listening first and then communicating and engaging have become “musts” for any successful social media campaign. Results of a 2009 survey by Alterian indicate that social media is becoming an integral part of most companies’ marketing campaigns:

• 50%+ direct at least “a fair amount” of effort toward integrating social media marketing into their overall strategy
• 66% will be investing in social media marketing in 2010
• 40% of the 66% plan to shift more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget toward funding their social media marketing activities

eMarketer’s report on the findings of the Alterian study pointed out, “[Social Media] is yet another channel to be incorporated into an integrated communication strategy, rather than addressed on its own. And it can provide unique insights into the consumers who can now use earned media to build brands alongside marketers.”

As with earlier reports in 2009, marketers still feel a need for education and training with social media, as more than one-third reported only being “minimally prepared.”  The good news is 37% planned to invest in training in this area.  In addition to training, the survey also found that 36% are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.

It will be interesting to see how marketers begin to use not only Facebook and Twitter to reach their audiences, but also start to take even greater advantage of podcasting, message boards, forums, video sharing and the many other social media tools consumers are using today.

#2:  Online Forum Users Transcend Online and Offline Worlds, Becoming Influential Brand Advocates (Synovate/PostRelease)

Word-of-mouth has always been vital in building loyal customers. Friends—whether online or offline—and family are trusted sources when making purchasing decisions. As mentioned in my previous article, a recent study from PostRelease showed how online forum users are enthusiastic brand advocates and are taking their online activities to the streets, telling others about products and services they recommend. Not only are they recommending brands to their family and friends, they are also more likely to publish blogs and organize meet-ups, compared to non-forum users.

The PostRelease study focuses on consumer’s organization offline. Consumers are merging their online and offline influences, and this could be a huge opportunity for any savvy marketer who sees these new possibilities.

Marketers are becoming acutely aware of the need to integrate new media activities into their existing marketing plans and consumers are demanding greater social media engagement from the brands they follow most.  This could be a win-win situation if carried out strategically.

Now it’s your turn.  How have you seen the growing integration of social media marketing change your company’s marketing strategy? As social media matures, what are some ways you see this integration taking shape? We want to hear from you, so start talking!

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]]> http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-integration-big-theme-for-2010/feed/ 20 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-studies-show-value-of-social-media/ http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-studies-show-value-of-social-media/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:00:05 +0000 Amy Porterfield http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/?p=1672 There are some interesting studies surfacing lately in the world of social media.  Here’s a summary of three recent research findings covering the benefits of social media marketing, how forums help brands and how businesses are employing social media marketing.

#1: 50% of Small Businesses Say Lead Generation is Biggest Benefit of Social Networking

According to the “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010” from Ad-ology, lead generation is the biggest benefit of social networking for U.S. small businesses.

Here’s the breakdown of respondents’ top benefits of social networking:

• 50%: Generating leads
• 45%: Keeping up with the industry
• 44%: Monitoring online conversation
• 38%: Finding vendors/suppliers

This chart shows the level at which the respondents found each social networking benefit useful.

Here’s a surprising statistic: While 67% agreed that social media is a good way to increase business, 39% of those surveyed said they did not plan to use social networking in their marketing plan in 2010.  This number is likely tied to the finding that 31% reported that their customers do not use social media, 29% stated they do not have enough time to devote to it and 21% said they do not know enough about social media.

Although more businesses are beginning to adopt social media strategies into their overall marketing plans, this report suggests businesses still have a long way to go before social media is fully integrated into marketing efforts.

#2: Online Forum Users Are Enthusiastic Brand Advocates

According to a recent survey published by PostRelease, people who actively contribute to online forums are overwhelmingly more engaged in “influential” activities – both online and offline – than people who don’t use forums.

What’s most interesting about these findings is that a forum contributor’s influence far extends past the walls of the forum.  Here are some statistics:

• 79.2% of forum contributors help a friend or family member make a decision about a product purchase – compared with 47.6% of non-contributors and 53.8% overall.
• 65% of forum contributors share advice (offline and in person) based on information that they’ve read online – compared with 35% of non-contributors and 40.8% overall.
• 57.7% of forum contributors proactively recommend someone make a particular purchase – compared with 16.9% of non-contributors and 24.9% overall.

There’s also an interesting correlation between forum users and blogging.  The study found that those who contribute to online forums are 10 times more likely than non-contributors to also publish a blog, and are 9 times more likely to take an active role in organizing an offline event or meeting for a group that originally met online.

For marketers who are looking to connect with the key influencers in their niche, the findings suggest that online forums are a smart place to start; however, marketers should proceed with caution. Justin Choi, founder and president of PostRelease, writes, “Online forums are great places to find enthusiastic consumers and influential brand advocates. The people in forums are often discussing specific products, sharing advice and asking each other for recommendations.  For marketers, participating in that discussion is not quite as simple as jumping into a forum conversation – forums have rules about that.  But there are tools for connecting in a way that’s transparent and relevant.”

Here's a snapshot of the behaviors and habits of people who contribute to forums versus the non-contributors.

#3:  Only 47% of Companies Experimenting With Social Media

A study by Gartner predicts that by the end of 2010, more than 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will manage an online community.  However, another study by ComBlu brings Gartner’s findings into question.

ComBlu’s study, The State of Online Branded Communities, shows how most companies do not understand how to engage within online communities and have no real idea of what their customers want on these sites.  Furthermore, most companies are unaware that people interact on these sites in different ways, so many companies are merely pushing data with little or no interaction.

The report reveals that when companies do get people to join their communities, their lack of engagement is extremely obvious to the sophisticated user.

“Instead of engaging the visitor, the brand drives them away because they offer little of value. Consumers today are sophisticated users of social tools and seek out communities to learn, share and interact. If these elements are missing, or there is no obvious organizing structure that fulfills specific needs, the ‘faux’ community will be quickly abandoned,” stated the report.

Here are some interesting findings related to brands and their online community activity (or lack thereof):

• 47% of brands are still in the experimental phase, meaning they “exhibit lots of social activity with little connection or integration with each other.”
• 24% are community ghost towns, meaning there is no engagement and very few members with no return visitors.
• 20% show a cohesive strategy and typically had robust engagement tools and multiple activities with an active participation from their community.
• 9% show community overload with multiple messages to the same audience, most likely causing confusion and diluting the message.

Perhaps even more important, the study points out that some of the most effective online community best practices were used the least.  Of the 135 communities they examined, only:

• 44 have a community manager. A community manager acts as the face of the community. Without one, there is no cohesive bond between the community sponsors and its members.
• 44 allow social networking. This practice allows community members to connect with each other and find shared interests, thus promoting further connection.
• 35 offer social bookmarking. This best practice gives community members a tool to personalize and aggregate their online experience at the brand’s destination site.

What do you think about these study findings? As always, we want to hear from you. Have you had similar results that support the data above or does your social media experience contradict the findings? Let us know your thoughts in the comment box below!

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]]> http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-studies-show-value-of-social-media/feed/ 2 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-better-engage-facebook-fan-page-fans/ http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-better-engage-facebook-fan-page-fans/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:00:50 +0000 Mari Smith http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/?p=1433 A compelling, active Facebook fan page should be an integral part of your marketing plans. With its 350 million users and average daily session time of 25 minutes, Facebook provides an exceptional opportunity for visibility, Google indexing, live search ability, and fan engagement—whether you’re a solopreneur, a large brand or anywhere in between.

But, if you build it, will they come? And if they come, will they stay and engage?

There are two primary components to Facebook fan page engagement: 1) Sharing quality, relevant content and 2) inciting comments.  In this article I’ll tell you how to best engage with Facebook fans.

Of course, there are many other components of effective Facebook fan pages and Facebook marketing in general. However, for the purposes of this two-part post, we’ll focus on content and comments. The more comments you have, the more viral visibility and free marketing you’ll create. But your fans have to have something to comment on!

Share Quality, Relevant Content – Daily

TechCrunch recently posted a Facebook fan page study by Sysomos that revealed 77 percent of fan pages have fewer than 1,000 fans. What stood out for me in that post was this fact: “Facebook fan pages tend to be updated only once every 16 days.”

TechCrunch goes on to say, “On Twitter, you follow someone because you want to hear what they have to say. On Facebook, you fan them just to show your support or affinity. Too often, it’s a throwaway gesture.”

While this may be true for many Facebook members and fan pages, I see a lively fan page as an extension of your blog and business – a place where you can generate real community and further solidify your brand.

1) How Often Should You Post?

• For most fan pages, there is a direct correlation between frequency of posts and number of fans. Frequency is king, but there’s a fine balance – you don’t want to overwhelm your fans.
• If you’re just starting out with your fan page, I would suggest a minimum of one update per day and increase from there to several times a day (mixing up the types of posts – see below) if you’re getting a good response from your fans.
• Daily posting (at least Monday through Saturday) should yield daily comments and engagement.
• You’ll find the right rhythm with your fans. Better to start with once a day than several times a day and have your wall filled with only your own posts.
• Also, keep in mind “high traffic windows.” Depending on your time zone and the time zone of the majority of your fans, you’ll probably want to post sometime between 8:15am PST and 2:00pm PST.

2) What to Post

• I recommend a mix of your own thoughts, breaking news, useful tips, tools, resources and links from other sites in your industry and related industries. Stay on topic, stay focused.
• You could create an editorial calendar for your fan page just like many bloggers do.
• If you’re not sure what content your fans want, ask them – in a poll or status update.
• If your fan base is small and still growing, ask your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, email list, and blog subscribers. They are all potential fans. (See related post: 5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page).

In this screen shot of Volkswagen’s Facebook Fan Page, photos from a recent auto show yielded 363 likes and 68 comments and a video trailer got 121 likes and 25 comments. These are great results, as every one of the fan actions created a post on their respective walls and out into their friends’ news feeds. Free visibility, and every line item has a link back to VW’s fan page.

3) Sourcing Quality Content

• Your own blog: Import using the Notes app or, ideally, the Networked Blogs app.
• Create your own Alltop page and review each morning for fresh content to share.
• And/or subscribe to the top 15 to 25 blogs in your industry and related industries in your Google reader and review daily.
• Create Twitter lists and scan daily for new, relevant information to share (see also 5 Creative Ways to Use Your Twitter Favorites).
• Your Twitter Favorites RSS feed imported via the Notes app.
• Your YouTube videos and/or other relevant videos.

4) Cultivating Your Style

• Most people will come back to your fan page if there’s a real sense of community.
• It’s important to be open, inviting, warm, friendly and personable. Even if you’re a large brand.
• Starbucks leads the way with engagement – you might observe their style for ideas. Though they use their globally recognized logo, you’ll occasionally see posts in first person. I think this is commendable, as it really creates that personal feel so important to social networks.

5) Mix Up the Types of Posts

Text

This is your standard status update. You get 420 characters in the publisher to say what you want. As long as you don’t have a link in the update, the post automatically changes your latest Status Update at the top.

I highly recommend using the Facebook fan page to Twitter app at http://facebook.com/twitter. You simply link your fan page to your Twitter account, then choose which posts to share as tweets (Status Updates, Photos, Links, Notes, Events). You may need to experiment to get this just right.

Your posts will automatically truncate at around 120 characters and include a bit.ly link back to your fan page. Regardless of the number of characters, the tweet always contains the bit.ly link. Here’s an example of an update I posted for this blog post:

To track stats on any bit.ly link, just paste it into your browser and add a “+” sign at the end. As of the time of this writing, this post/link had 109 clicks and the post had 23 comments, plus replies on Twitter.

Video

Video is the next best thing to meeting your fans in person. There are many choices for video updates: You talking into the camera, photo montages (try Animoto), screencasts (using software like Camtasia Studio for PC or Mac, or ScreenFlow for Mac).

When you talk into the camera, always make good eye contact with the camera lens – just as if you were chatting to one good friend. You could do a video tip per day or per week. Make sure to keep the length short and the content concise. The ideal length for videos is up to 1 minute and 40 seconds.

You can record directly on Facebook or load a file onto your fan page – see screenshots below:

Here’s a video upload example from Dell Computer’s Facebook Fan Page – a 41-second ad for their nifty new customizable range of laptops, with 179 likes and 57 comments.

Or, you could pull in the video from YouTube as a link (click the Links icon on the publisher) – and this pulls in the live video player just as if you’d loaded the video file as in the example above:

Photos

Upload relevant pictures periodically and be sure to encourage your fans to upload photos anytime they wish. Each time your fans upload a photo, the thumbnail goes onto their profile wall and out into the news feeds of their friends.

Make sure your settings allow fans to post content. Just to the right under the publisher, click Options, then Settings:

In the screenshot below, there’s a photo on the Coca-Cola Facebook Fan Page – what’s neat about this photo is it was actually a fan-loaded image that Coca-Cola then reposted using the Share button (a great illustration of how Coca-Cola partnered with their raving fans who created the page).

Links

• Anytime you post a link in the publisher, Facebook displays a preview with a choice of thumbnails. (If you’re publishing content from a third-party app like Ping.fm, the thumbnail will be a default view.)
• You may at times wish to create an actual status update with a link in it, instead of a link with the preview on the wall. Here’s what to do: Before clicking the Share button, simply click the “x” to delete the link preview:

The post goes out as a status update with a clickable link:

Events

You can quickly create Event listings right from the publisher for any virtual or live event you have coming up. Fans can easily RSVP, as a regular Event page is created when you publish the event.

@ tags

This is a relatively new feature on Facebook. You can tag any friend, any fan page you’ve joined, any group you’re a member of and any event you’ve RSVPed to attend. You can include up to six @ tags in any update. Use the @ tagging strategically and your post will show up on your friends’ walls and other fan pages’ walls per the tag. (Just type the @ symbol in the publisher and the first letter or two of who/what you want to tag and a list drops down for you to select from.)

Notes app

This app is typically used to import your blog. However, I like the Networked Blogs app, so I actually import the RSS feed of my Twitter Favorites via the Notes app, which makes it easy to push relevant, regular content onto my fan page wall (and into the news feeds of my fans).

Incite Comments

Now that you have a wide variety of regular, quality, relevant content posting on your fan page, here are some points about inciting comments:

• For status updates, try ending with a question.
• Add your own comments as needed to get the ball rolling.
• 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.
• Do your best to respond to fan questions as promptly as possible. If you find you can’t keep up with the volume of questions, offer a free teleseminar or webinar in which you answer your fans’ top questions.

Vin Diesel has the second most popular Facebook fan page with well over seven million fans. Vin doesn’t post all that often, but when he does, each post yields tens of thousands of comments and likes. Just like Starbucks, there’s something to learn from Vin’s style – he talks to his fans in a very warm, caring and authentic manner.

In part two of this Facebook Fan Page Engagement post, I’ll cover:

1. How to encourage fans to keep coming back to add their own content and comments and ask questions, etc.
2. Monitoring insights – what do they mean, how to analyze the numbers and adjust your posts accordingly.
3. Should you also use the “Send an Update to Fans” feature? Do fans read their updates?
4. How to spark ongoing engagement via the Discussions tab.
5. Setting up systems for monitoring and responding to your fan engagement, given that there are currently no notifications of activity or RSS feeds to subscribe to on fan pages.
6. Integrating your Twitter followers and activity into your fan page engagement.

Editors note: Check out Social Media Examiner’s new Facebook fan page by clicking here.

Now it’s your turn: What types of content are you finding sparks the most engagement on your Facebook fan page? Where do you get stuck most with your fan page and what else would you like to see covered in future posts about social media engagement? Please add your thoughts in the comments below, then stay tuned for part two!

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]]> http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-better-engage-facebook-fan-page-fans/feed/ 16 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-marketing-everything-you-need-to-know/ http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-marketing-everything-you-need-to-know/#comments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:00:15 +0000 Ruth M. Shipley http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/?p=1142 I’m guessing many of you are still sitting on the fence when it comes to putting your business on Facebook.

“Let me get this straight,” you may say. “You want me to use Facebook to market my business? Are you crazy?”

Not if you provide products or services to postmenopausal women. Women over the age of 55 make up the fastest-growing Facebook segment, according to Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger, authors of Facebook Marketing for Dummies.

Would your product or service appeal to anyone over 35? “The fastest-growing demographic is the 35- to 54-year-olds… the next fastest-growing demographic is the over-55 crowd.”

According to the authors, Facebook has over 200 million active users, and a quarter of a million people register every day. About 3.5 million people become a fan of a Facebook Page every day.

Yes, you read that right. A fan of a Page. You don’t have to be a rock star to have fans on Facebook!

All you have to do is:

1. Buy Facebook Marketing for Dummies by Paul Dunay and Richard Krueger.
2. Register with Facebook.
3. Create a Page for your business. A Page is the business equivalent of an individual Facebook Profile.
4. Finish reading the book.
5. Start spreading the news.

Everything Starts With a Page

Your Page has multiple tabs and can include your contact information, hours of operation, recent news, upcoming events, photos, videos, podcasts, and other types of content. You can pull in blog posts and other syndicated content.

And when someone becomes a fan of your Page, they can post information to it that all of their friends will see. Their friends will even know they became a fan of your Page!

And you can respond to their posts on your Page that all of your fans will see. You can begin a conversation with potential customers about your products and services right on your own Page that will be seen by all of their friends and all of your fans!

That’s because Facebook takes every interaction and creates a “story” about it that is distributed by News Feeds. Every Facebook member constantly receives updates about their friends’ activities.

Members can even recommend a Page to their friends by clicking the Share button on every Page. If a friend raves about a product or service, aren’t you more likely to try it?

And did I mention that Pages are indexed by Google and other search engines? Are you beginning to see the business advantages of being on Facebook?

Like the business use of all social media, Facebook is all about identifying “evangelists” for your product or service. Then you let those evangelists help you build your business.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re a B2B business. If increasing numbers of businesses are getting on Facebook, that’s where your customers are hanging out! Shouldn’t you be there, too?

Engaging Customers on Their Terms

Here are some of the things a business can do on Facebook:

• Share an interesting article on your Page to engage your fans
• Comment on posts on your Page to communicate with your fans
• Update your Page to generate a story about it in your fans’ News Feeds
• Create a Discussion section on your Page to interact directly with fans
• Create or join a Group related to your industry to find more fans
• Create an Event related to your business to meet fans
• Create a Marketplace to sell your products on Facebook

Last but certainly not least, you can advertise on Facebook. There is one caveat, say the authors: “Facebook members are typically not in the habit of clicking ads. They are on Facebook for social purposes.”

On the other hand, “the Facebook advertising platform’s ability to target ad demographics is already legendary. The ad targeting capabilities make it relatively easy to get your message to the right demographic within Facebook.”

Suppose you want to target “MBA graduates who are 3 to 5 years out of school and working in Southern California who like rock music and whose favorite food is sushi.” You can!

How? Facebook indexes every member’s profile in detail, including all of those psychographic variables that make marketers drool. So when you create your ad, you can include keywords to describe your target audience.

“By adding keywords to your targeting, you can reach consumers based on the interests listed on their profile page. Never before has there been a mass medium that allows for this kind of precise targeting. Identifying and then reaching a specific audience has never been this exact and cost-effective until now.”

And because your Page has tabs – one for the Wall, one for Info, one for Photos, etc. – you can add more tabs and turn them into landing pages. “Conceivably, you can create a customized landing page within Facebook for each ad and audience segment.”

And if all of this seems too daunting, Facebook has a team of sales professionals that can help you create a marketing campaign.

Third Party Apps Enhance Customer Experience

Facebook Marketing for Dummies covers all of this and more. You can choose from over 52,000 Facebook applications created by third parties; more than 800 apps were written specifically for businesses. Here are the authors’ “must-have Facebook applications for your business”:

• My Network Value
• MyOffice
• Tag Biz Pro Business Cards
• LinkedIn Answers
• SlideShare
• Static FBML
• Phonebook

The book concludes with tips on Facebook etiquette, Facebook resources and Facebook blogs. And if you don’t want your boss to see that picture of you taken at Kelly’s Tavern, Appendix B includes extensive information about protecting your privacy on Facebook.

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 5-star rating.

Related article: 5 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

Are any of you using Facebook as part of your marketing plan? If so, please comment!

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