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Gevril and Haurex Italia dinner during Baselworld in March 2011 with Larry Brauner standing in the background.
Baselworld 2012 March 8-15.
Feb
6
OMG! I Can’t Use My Facebook Personal Profile for Business
Filed Under Best Practices, Business Networking, Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Promoting Yourself, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 12 Comments
In my 7 Issues to Consider About Doing Business on Facebook and ONE Facebook Business Page, No More, No Fewer, I strongly advised not to use your Facebook personal profile for your business, advice that was echoed in Top 5 Things Not to Do on Facebook on HubSpot.Feedback from some very concerned small business marketers using their Facebook profiles for their businesses led to this follow-up article to address their concerns.
Some have a Facebook personal profile for personal use and one or more Facebook personal profiles for business use, in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service, which state that “you will not create more than one personal profile.”I shall discuss this situation next week in You Say I Can’t Have More than One Facebook Personal Profile.
Tips for Businesses Using Facebook Personal Profiles
If you’re employing one Facebook profile page for both personal and business use (or for business use only), I offer you these eight tips:
- Don’t panic. For most users, the choice of how to market yourself and your business on Facebook isn’t really a life or death matter. (For the small minority of Facebook business users for whom this choice is a life or death matter, your panic is understandable. Seek professional or law enforcement assistance without further delay.)
- If you’re comfortable enough with the many limitations I set forth in ONE Facebook Business Page, No More, No Fewer, stop reading these tips right here and continue to do as you’ve been doing up until now. If and when you see the light, return here and keep reading.
- Create a Facebook business page. Either How to Create a Facebook Fan Page or How To Set Up a Facebook Fan Page can help you to get started.
- If you have no more than a few hundred business friends on your Facebook personal profile, send each a private message explaining the situation and inviting them to “like” your new Facebook page. If you have too many business friends for this to be feasible, limit the procedure to your most important business friends.
- To avoid raising red flags with Facebook, don’t send more than about 20 messages per day, don’t fire off messages rapidly and don’t merely cut and paste an identical script.
- Don’t say or imply that you’ll be deleting friends or threaten to remove them if they don’t comply. Such an approach is likely to backfire.
- Read Why Should I Like Your Facebook Page? and Top 10 Ways to Get Facebook Page Fans for ideas to market and grow your new Facebook page.
- Don’t remove business friends from your Facebook personal profile unless you have a security or privacy issue that compels you to do so, since removing friends can not be undone.
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Tags: Facebook, Facebook pages
Jan
31
16 Tips for Ning Social Networking
Filed Under Best Practices, Business Networking, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Ning Sites, SPAM, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 14 Comments
Ning seems to be gaining popularity since restructuring in 2010, and since smoothing some of its rough edges.Many Ning social networking sites are easier to navigate and operate than those of Facebook or LinkedIn. However, while mastering Ning’s features isn’t difficult, using Ning to network effectively can be.
I’ve been developing my network on Ning, writing about Ning and watching Ning go through changes for several years. Small Business Network is the Ning site I created and run.
Here are 16 tips to help you better understand Ning social networking sites and to use Ning sites to help build your network:- There are Ning social and business networks that cater to nearly every niche. Search the Ning home page and Google to find Ning networks that match your interests.
- Join all relevant Ning networks and create a profile on each. Be careful to bookmark the Ning sites you join, so that you can easily find your way back to them.
- Don’t worry about joining too many Ning sites. You won’t be active on all of them. All these sites will, however, contribute to your web presence.
- In 10 Tips for LinkedIn Social Networking, I stated that “your LinkedIn profile is your resume. Put at least as much effort into creating and perfecting your profile as you would your resume.” I also suggest that you also invest substantial effort to create and perfect your Ning profile.
- Save your Ning profile is a text file on your computer desktop, so that you don’t have to recreate it from scratch each time you join a Ning site. You’ll just have to customize it a bit.
- Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, Ning is an open networking platform. You’re free to reach out to any member with whom you wish to connect, even if you don’t know him or her. However, make sure that your approach is transparent and congenial.
- Ning groups tend to have a narrower focus than the overall site, and browsing group membership is a good way to locate the people you most want to meet. Creating your own Ning group is a great idea for networking and branding yourself, but follow-through is essential.
- Before inviting a member to connect, greet them and ask a friendly question in a comment on their profile wall to determine if they’re active. Most members of Ning sites are inactive, so don’t waste one of you limited invitations on them. Asking questions also helps establish relationships, and profile commenting also helps create internal links back to your profile, improving your profile’s standing with search engines.
- If you run out of invitations, delete pending invitations. Start with the oldest first, and only delete as many as needed at that moment.
- Accept invitations from others. Don’t be too fussy. You can’t have too many friends on Ning. I don’t know of any upper limit. Correct me if you know otherwise.
- The friends you make on one Ning site will be friends on all the Ning sites you have in common. You often join a Ning site and discover that you already have friends there.
- You can broadcast messages to up to 200 Ning friends at one time, but I myself very rarely use this feature. I like to write a blog post or start a discussion and then share it with all my friends on a site. I personalize the notification with a few additional words using the optional message area. Blog posts and discussions also link internally back to your profile and help with search engines.
- Before sharing content with your Ning friends, ask yourself whether the content is truly valuable or whether it just another form of spam. Avoid spamming or face undesirable consequences. Spamming — or even pasting the exact same comment on many members’ profiles — can get you banned from all Ning sites.
- Invite your friends to connect with you on other social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Your friendship will survive even if the Ning site disappears or one of you become inactive on the site.
- One you’ve formed a relationship with another Ning member, use private messages rather than profile comments to communicate with each other, unless of course, you want your conversation to be displayed to the public.
- Invite outside contacts to join your favorite Ning sites, but don’t use Ning invites. Most Ning invites are ignored or end up in your friends’ spam folders. Instead, share good content from Ning on Facebook and other social sites. When people come to view the content, they’ll be presented with the option of joining.
Please join me on my Ning site, Small Business Network.
What Ning networks have you created or do you belong to? What Ning social networking tips can you share with us?
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Tags: Ning, Ning social network, social networking, social networking sites, social networking strategy, SPAM
Jan
23
10 Tips for LinkedIn Social Networking
Filed Under Best Practices, Business Networking, LinkedIn, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Promoting Yourself, Search and Social, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 21 Comments
Social networking sites have each a unique protocol and don’t usually provide members with practical how-to advice to help use their sites effectively. They let us figure out the how-tos on our own.I share in this article my basic LinkedIn how-tos that may shorten your learning curve and save you time and frustration. They are merely suggestions, not rigid guidelines. If you have an idea or advice you find helpful, please share it with us in a comment.
Here are ten tips for maximizing your LinkedIn social networking success:- Your LinkedIn profile is your resume. Put at least as much effort into creating and perfecting your profile as you would your resume.
- SEO can help you to be findable on LinkedIn, as well as other social networking sites. Employ keywords that are relevant to your work when crafting your profile, so that you and your profile can appear in search results.
- LinkedIn permits members to view profiles of other members within three degrees of separation from each other or who share common LinkedIn groups. Increasing your visibility increases your reach.
- To increase your vertical reach (in your areas of interest), join every relevant LinkedIn group. To increase your horizontal (i.e. overall) reach, increase your number of LinkedIn connections. I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn!
- To increase your number of connections, connect directly to as many other members as you can, especially well connected members. You can send direct connections messages or emails whenever you wish.
- Don’t invite people to connect haphazardly, as LinkedIn will restrict you if people you invite complain that they don’t know you (as they sometimes do). Instead, join LinkedIn open networker groups, such as Top Linked, for people who welcome (but don’t necessarily accept) all connection requests. Reach out to fellow group members, and be receptive to members who reach out to you.
- Join discussions in groups by posting or commenting when you have something valuable to add, but don’t spam the discussion board or post anything inappropriate.
- Tell new connections you’re on Facebook (if you are) when thanking them for connecting. Facebook has made it hard to add friends, so this tactic is useful. (See 3 Key Social Media and Web Marketing Strategies for 2011: Good-Bye Facebook Open Networking.)
- Provide your Twitter handle (if you have one) where requested by LinkedIn to appear in your LinkedIn profile.
- Keep at it. It takes a very substantial amount of time to build a strong presence on LinkedIn or any of the other social networking sites.
Happy linking!
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Tags: Facebook, keywords, LinkedIn, social networking sites, Twitter
Jan
9
How to Track Your Blog Subscriptions
Filed Under Best Practices, Blogging, List Building, Measurement and Tracking, Web Analytics, Web Marketing | 12 Comments
It would be useful if you could know which social media sources, social networking sites and search terms were contributing to your newsletter and blog subscriptions.You can track newsletter and blog subscriptions to a large extent, although not fully, using web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics or Clicky, my favorites, and a trick or two I’m going to share with you.
Accurate Subscription Tracking is Impossible
I asserted in Twitter Stats Defy Measurement that “everything defies measurement and tracking.” Why should subscriptions be exceptions?
I believe that some subscriptions methods, such as blog subscription via the RSS icon in the Firefox location bar, can not be tracked, since that icon is external to your site, and you can only track your site itself, since tracking relies on script placed internally within the site’s web pages.
Fortunately, the practical researchers that we are, we’ll draw conclusions about newsletter and blog subscription from whatever data we’re able to obtain. We can obtain tracking data for some RSS subscriptions and most web form email subscriptions.
How to Track RSS Subscriptions
The following four steps will help you track your RSS subscriptions:
- Use Feedburner to “burn” your blog’s RSS feed.
- Post Feedburner RSS icons prominently on your blog, so that visitors will find it easy click on those icons instead of their browser’s RSS icon. There’s no need to be subtle about your RSS icons.
- Use off-site link clicks to your Feedburner page to segment your subscribers within your web analytics program.
- Study the sources and behavior of that segment of subscribers.
It’s possible that some members of this RSS subscriber segment will not follow through with their subscription or that they were already your subscribers but didn’t remember. It’s not worth losing any sleep over it.
How to Track Web Form Email Subscriptions
This one should be a piece of cake — speaking of which, Tuesday is my birthday and you’re invited to my social networking 59th birthday party on Facebook that runs from the 11th through the 20th.The key to tracking web-form email subscriptions is to set the subscription thank-you page to a page on your blog that’s used only for this purpose and to segment your email subscribers as a result of their visiting the thank-you page. Some visitors who submit web form fail to confirm their subscriptions. Don’t let this issue ruffle your feathers either.
You can track visitors who do confirm by using a subscription confirmation welcome page on your blog. However, after their original tracking session has timed out, they can no longer be connected to their original tracking source, so you might not be any better off than simply tracking visits to your thank-you page.
I implement both thank-you and welcome pages as part of my sign-up process, not only so that I can keep my options open, but so that I can also bring the subscriber back to my blog twice instead of once.
Additional Remarks
I use Aweber for my email subscriptions, but you can use almost any good email contact service. I recommend that you not use Feedburner for your email subscribers, because Feedburner will not afford you sufficient control over your email list.
I sometimes use Google Analytics to merge the RSS and email subscribers into a single segment, but it can be interesting to study the two groups separately.
Now, one final question: How do you prefer to subscribe to this blog, by RSS or by email?
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Tags: blog, Blogging, email marketing, Measurement and Tracking, Web Analytics
Dec
19
How to Hit the Right Mix of Website Traffic Sources
Filed Under Best Practices, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Web Marketing, Website Traffic | 5 Comments
A Facebook friend inquired about my top website traffic sources for 2010. I looked, and my sources for website traffic haven’t really changed much since I published My Top 10+ Blog and Website Traffic Sources in January.
My list of traffic sources is a good start for most web marketing endeavors, but it’s only that — a good start.
Hitting the Right Mix of Website Traffic Sources
Each marketing initiative is different and needs its own mix of resources. Exploration is necessary to determine an appropriate mix of traffic sources for each project.For example, StumbleUpon sent this blog 281 visitors in the past 30 days, but in the past 17 days alone, it sent the new Gevril Group web domain I’m building 991 visitors!
So far it appears that StumbleUpon may be more responsive to my luxury watches and watch brands content than it has been to my social media and web marketing content, an observation I would not have gleaned had I written off StumbleUpon based on past disappointing results.
Lists of traffic sources are easy enough to find, so too few traffic sources can’t be the cause for not hitting the right mix of traffic sources. A lack of proper experimentation, adequate traffic diversification and perseverance is a more likely cause for disappointing website traffic.
Too Little for Too Short a Time
Most new marketers do too little for too short a time to hit their mix of website traffic sources, especially with regard to SEO, a major website traffic source that requires substantial time to grow.
Check out my increase website traffic articles for many more tips and, by the way, in case you’re new, this is a good time for you to subscribe and leave a comment.
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Tags: Gevril Group, increase website traffic, Web Marketing, Website Traffic
Nov
28
Gevril Group Launches Social Media and Web Marketing Initiative
Filed Under Best Practices, List Building, Networking and Marketing Strategy, News, Search and Social, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Targeting, Web Marketing | 16 Comments
Mastering social media one bite at a time the past few years was an effective strategy for me, as the needs of my small number of clients were modest enough.
That’s changing, as I’ve been engaged as social media and web strategist by the Gevril Group in Valley Cottage, NY, luxury watch distributor, a forward-thinking business with ambitious marketing goals.
A one-bite-at-a-time social media marketing approach for Gevril would be way too laid-back and totally unrealistic.
Gevril’s Social Media and Web Marketing Plan
I’ve crafted for Gevril a multi-faceted web marketing plan that matches the company’s far-reaching objectives.All parts of my plan are to be managed and executed concurrently:
- Community and List Building - Developing a community and building a subscriber base are impacted by nearly all social media and web marketing functions.
- Content Creation - The story of each Gevril Group brand needs to be told, and articles, newsletters and press releases need to be written, as well.
- Web Sites - Ivo Jackson and I are designing GevrilGroup.com. The Gevril Group website will be the hub of the Gevril web presence and a key resource for contact list building.
- Blogging - Blogs will be used to post fresh content, such as news and product information. We’ve launched several Gevril Group blogs: Watch Brands and Luxury Watches and Men’s Watches.
- Search Engine Optimization - SEO and social media complement each other very nicely. About 50% of my blog’s traffic comes from searches. Whenever new content is created, SEO needs to be applied. The free Google Keyword Tool is my favorite SEO resource.
- Email Marketing - We’ll email press releases, and news about products and events to our email marketing lists.
- Facebook - I’ve set up a facebook.com/GevrilGroup on Facebook, a social networking site I’m quite comfortable with. I hope to build an active community of watch enthusiasts around Gevril’s Facebook page.
- Twitter - I’ve set up @GevrilGroup on Twitter and will use Tweet Adder to manage the Gevril account and build a targeted following.
- LinkedIn - While still working on a strategy for LinkedIn, I’ve already joined many relevant LinkedIn groups. I will next create a Gevril company page.
- Social Bookmarking Sites - I’ve lately received a lot of quality blog traffic from Business Exchange, so I created a Business Exchange topic for the watch industry. I’ll also use Digg, StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking sites.
- Niche Social Networks - Social networking sites and forums catering to watches or luxury will help Gevril connect with watch enthusiasts.
- Group Buying - I’ve ruled out Groupon and similar sites as potential marketing channels, but very much like GroupGain, a new website with a new group buying concept that has yet to launch.
The ultimate goal of Gevril’s marketing initiatives is to increase sales by enlisting vendors and by creating more consumer demand.Therefore, every aspect of Gevril’s social media and web marketing plan must contribute directly or indirectly to an increase in Gevril’s sales.
Please visit and follow the Gevril Group on Facebook and Twitter. I hope to see you there.
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Tags: branding, business branding, Gevril Group, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, social media marketing, social media strategy, Web Marketing
Nov
5
10 Keys to Building a Social Media and Web Presence
Filed Under Announcements, Best Practices, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box, Search and Social, Web Marketing | 10 Comments
Seven years ago in November 2003, I began my online networking exploration on Ryze, a new social web site which was, along with LinkedIn, one of the first social networking and business networking sites.It wasn’t until 2006, after I’d already joined a number of additional social networking websites, that I learned that these sites were the precursors of a much larger social media phenomenon. I also learned about the importance of blogs, explained by Darren Rouse in his video which I embedded in Not Ready for Social Media Marketing.
I launched this blog, Online Social Networking, in November 2007, and yes, I am celebrating my third blogiversary. 
In Social Media One Bite at a Time and 7 Tips for Winning the Social Media Marathon, I discuss the social media mindset and some of the social media strategies I’ve found very helpful.
Building My Social Media and Web Presence
Here is a list of my 10 top strategies for building my social media and web presence:
- Partnership - Building relationships though blogging, online social networking and social bookmarking sites.
- Content - Writing and publishing well thought-out and occasionally useful articles on my two blogs.
- Search Engine Optimization - Ongoing keyword research and SEO. 50% of all my web site traffic comes directly from search engines.
- Diversification - Creating a presence on diverse social media sites and cultivating diverse web site traffic sources.
- Innovation - Experimenting with many ideas, some work out and others flop, while resisting any urges to follow the crowd.
- Boldness - Haven’t been afraid to test the limits of social websites and social media strategies. Twitter removed @larrybrauner from their search results, Sphinn terminated my account, and Facebook sends me sweet little love messages when I become more ambitious than they like. All I can say is, “C’est la vie.” Meekness isn’t a good quality in a marketer.
- Planning - Always researching and frequently reevaluating and refining my web marketing and branding plan. Flexibility must accompany social media and web marketing planning.
- Attitude - Persevering, staying upbeat and focusing, even when I didn’t feel like it, such as when my Dad passed away last year, or when my search engine traffic dipped during this past summer.
- Tools - Taking advantage of a variety of social media, SEO and web analytics tools.
- Widgets - Integrating social media with my blogs through using website widgets.
Thank you for partnering with me and helping me all these years with my social media and web marketing efforts.
Share Your Social Media Strategies
What are your most successful strategies for building your social media and web presence?
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Tags: blog, Blogging, online social networking, Social Media, social media strategy, social networking sites, Web Marketing
Oct
31
7 Issues to Consider About Doing Business on Facebook
Filed Under Best Practices, Business Networking, Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 28 Comments
As an entrepreneur or small business owner promoting your business on Facebook, you face a number of difficult challenges and tough marketing decisions.Here are seven key issues to consider when networking and marketing your business on Facebook:
- Facebook profile pages are intended for networking with family and friends and not for business networking, and you can’t separate your personal and business networking on Facebook. Your family and personal friends are being irritated by business posts showing up in their News Feeds, while at the same time business connections are eavesdropping on your personal conversations.
- By connecting directly with business associates and total strangers on Facebook, you compromise the privacy of your family and friends, which is already much too limited. Your loved ones become “friends of friends” with your business connections and consequently more exposed to their scrutiny. If you’ll decline the invitations of family and personal friends to connect in order to protect them, you’ll surely have an enormous amount of explaining to do.
- You can’t legitimately set up a profile for personal use and one for business. Having multiple Facebook profiles is against Facebook’s Terms of Service. I haven’t done so, and I do not recommend that you do so either, unless you’re ready to risk deletion of both your Facebook profiles.
- Lack of privacy extends far beyond family and personal friends. Each of your business connections become “friends of friends” with all your other Facebook business connections and therefore more exposed and at-risk — something most Facebook users do not realize. This explains why Facebook business networking is suspect, and why Facebook demands that you connect only with people you know.
- If you aggressively grow your business network on Facebook, you risk having your Facebook account suspended. Proceed carefully.
- Facebook fan pages are more useful for marketing large businesses than small ones, since they won’t help to build your web presence unless, to some degree, you already have a web presence. Haven’t you noticed how many Facebook business pages barely have the 25 fans needed to claim their Facebook name? Business networking on Facebook is a way to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” but it’s also problematic and at best a slow process. A big businesses also has the marketing budget to create compelling Facebook applications.
- Twitter, Ning networks and search engine optimized blog sites are better for building your web presence than Facebook. Once you have a web presence, you can easily grow your Facebook page fan base with well-placed Facebook widgets and links. The main point is that you’ll need to reach far beyond Facebook to develop a following for your business, the kind of following that big brands already have.
In the future, I’ll continue to explore ways in which businesses can build their web presences on and off Facebook, but for now, keep in mind that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Or in a week or in a month.Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to my RSS feed or by e-mail. Visit my About, Services, Media Buzz and Connect pages to learn about Building Your Audience and Brand on the Web. See also my Disclosure Policy regarding affiliations and compensation. Sharing is Caring! Please use the SHARE widget.
Tags: Business Networking, Facebook, Facebook pages, Marketing, Web Marketing, web presence
Sep
6
Facebook, LinkedIn and Digg Content Sharing Tip
Filed Under Best Practices, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Twitter | 13 Comments
This is a quick heads up about a content sharing error that’s easy to avoid.When you share content on Facebook, LinkedIn or Digg, the site looks for thumbnail pictures it can show with your link and suggests one to you.
I’ve noticed people accepting whatever thumbnail Facebook, LinkedIn or Digg suggests. This isn’t a good practice, because that thumbnail may be irrelevant or even worse, an ad picked up from the linked page.
It’s important to show a thumbnail picture that’s relevant and if possible, one that can pique people’s interest. Therefore, you should go through all thumbnail choices to find the best one. If none are suitable, choose not to display a thumbnail at all. Having no thumbnail picture is much better than having an unsuitable one.
On Facebook, you should also write a sentence or short paragraph to introduce the content and consider tagging the author if you follow that person or it’s a friend.Packaging content and retweets is also a good practice on Twitter, even though Twitter doesn’t use thumbnails in the same way as Facebook, LinkedIn and Digg.
How you package content can be just as important as the content itself.
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Tags: content sharing, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
May
30
Social Media Marketing Inside Out
Filed Under Best Practices, Real Estate Marketing, Search Engines, Web Marketing | 9 Comments
I envisioned when launching my social media consulting practice spending my time creating and executing traffic generating and branding strategies using a wide range of social media sites. I did not envision spending my time optimizing clients’ websites and blogs.Your Website or Blog
What I found, however, was that clients’ websites had not been designed to appeal to visitors and convert them into subscribers or customers, nor were they set up to attract search engine traffic.
This problem concerned me very much. As I’ve written numerous times, the core of a social media marketing campaign is always your website or blog. Consequently, I decided to offer a full range of services to help clients make more effective use of the web.
Social Media and Web Marketing in Action
I was asked very recently to market the website of Welkin Capital Group, a high-end real estate finance company. When I accepted the assignment, I knew that my work would encompass more than social media and search engine optimization. It would include a total website makeover, as well.The transformation of Welkin’s website has been dramatic. The best way to appreciate the changes we made is to compare the new website to the old website. We still plan to add a newsletter and a blog but already, the new site has a better look and feel, more room to maneuver, additional content and a social component.
While working on the Welkin site’s new design, we began optimizing the site’s content for search engines — and for human visitors too:
- During the first six weeks, March 7, 2010 to April 17, Welkin received 51 unique search engine visits from 25 search terms.
- During the next six weeks, April 18 to May 29, the company received 152 unique search visits from 63 terms.
We’re still working on the website’s content. Writing and tweaking content is an ongoing aspect of web marketing.
If you’re interested in real estate, you can follow Welkin on Facebook and Twitter.
Conclusion
Your main takeaway from this article:
Web marketing begins with your website or blog, the core of your web presence, and without which your social media marketing plan isn’t complete and cannot succeed.
Please subscribe to Online Social Networking and leave a comment telling me what’s on your mind.
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Tags: consulting practice, Real Estate Marketing, SEO, social marketing, Social Media, social media marketing, web development, Web Marketing, web presence
