This one’s for the folks who are confused about what to do or not do in social media.

Social media is about sharing resources, building awareness, networking, being real, and connecting with like-minded people. It’s used for customer service, prospecting, sales, building community and more.

Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts that may help your overall strategy.

Don’t try to buy your fans or followers. Credibility and trust is earned, not bought. Social media is about being social. Join the conversation.

Don’t be in social media “Just Because.” Just because your competitors are all over social media is not the reason to hop on and do the same. Instead take a step back and ask yourself what you’d like to accomplish in social media. Think about how your clients use the Internet and social media.

Don’t make selling your first priority.

Don’t use industry jargon

Don’t just talk to one person

Don’t spam.

Don’t rant. Or be negative. Or get involved in arguments. Everything you say and do reflects on you or your brand.

Don’t use others.

Don’t neglect replies and mentions. Period

Do determine your goals every time you’re in one of the social networks. Is it to warm up your prospects? Promote an event? Connect with industry leaders?

Do share information, tips, and resources. Fans and followers love how-tos and useful tips, which are usually more effective than sharing a link to a service or product.

Do ask your followers and fans to share their comments about your product or service. Or ask them to share their own tip.

Do shrink links in Twitter to shorten those posts and make it easier for retweets. Bit.ly is a good link shortener.

Do block and hide fans and followers to protect your brand

Do keep things conversational

Do be respectful of all opinions. You’re bound to connect with people who have different values and opinions than you.

Do include a call to action. Ask your fans to “like” an update or share your content. Do thank them when they do.

Do be interested and genuine. Take the time to build those relationships. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Do shake things up. Constantly posting text gets old after a while, so post videos and photos.

Do have an online reputation management plan. There’s a seedy side to the Internet and it can be mean and nasty. Be aware.

It was this tweet from Jeffrey Gitomer, founding partner at Ace of Sales, that inspired this post about building trust and social media:

@gitomer: It may take two years to earn trust, but it takes only one minute to lose it. #gitomer #trust #business

Let’s face it.  One of your competitive advantages is how well your customers like and trust you.  Building relationships with happy customers will result in them sending you referrals.  The beauty of social media is it can help you build that trust, by talking, listening, and sharing ideas.

Everyone talks about content, creating and sharing meaningful content.  “Content is king” is constantly being shouted from the rooftops by the gurus.  The key to good content creation is to think like your customer and share content that’s neat to them.  Get inside their head.  Do you know what frustrates them?  Talk about that.  Or think about it this way.  Anything that happens to you in a day can be made into great content.  Talk to them.  Mix things up; it’s okay to be entertaining and fun too.  Share the informational stuff and definitely inquire from time to time.

Okay, sometimes it’s forgotten that customers are people too, they’re just another number or name in a database, especially if your current obsession is list building.  Being human and personable in social media bridges that gap, helping to better develop that know, like, trust factor.

Telling stories is another way to build trust.  How simple is that?  Some of the best stories are from your customers, so let them tell the story too.

Another way to build trust is to ditch the corporate-speak and mission statement.  When you’re at a networking event, you’re probably not spouting those off.  Doing so in social media is a quick way for your audience to unfollow you, because it’s meaningless to them.

Do you think having a few profiles in social media and posting occasionally is enough?  Think again.  It’s through your active, consistent participation that your customers and prospects get to know and trust you.  They may even come to think of you as a trusted advisor.

Building trust takes time; it simply doesn’t happen overnight.  Social media is a long process that is worth the time in this relationship-driven economy.

Sharing a quick list of Twitter resources that have helped me to have a better tweeting experience.

Hootesuite is a great social media management tool that allows you to monitor your Facebook biz page, personal page, LinkedIn, YouTube and more. This tool makes it easy to schedule tweets with its date and time feature.  Hootesuite also has a handy dandy link shortener with analytics to quickly see which links have been clicked.  You can also save your keywords and recover them with a click of a button.

LocalTweeps also known as the zip code level Twitter directory. Use this to find and get found by tweeps near you.  Can search by keyword, city or zip

TagDef shows you what a hashtag really means.  You can even add your own hashtag too.

Twellow a search directory of people by area of expertise, profession or other keywords listed in Twitter profiles.

Twellowhood makes it easy to find Twitter followers near you.

TwitCleaner If you’re tired of the noise on Twitter, this tool will help.  It analyzes the people you follow, identifies the time wasters and spammers and creates a detailed report of everyone you’re following.

Twitter Resources for buttons, widgets, logos and more.

TwtPoll is an easy-to-use survey/poll twitter app to get feedback from your followers.  Easy to share this in your social networks or embed it into your blog or web site.

Twubs use this tool to see if a hashtag is already used by another organization or event.  You can also register your own hashtag.

These are just a few resources and there are many more available to make your tweeting more focused and productive.  Do take the time to play around with these.  You may be surprised.

If you’re new to Twitter, some of the terms and lingo can be downright confusing to understand. So here’s a list to help get you started.

Tweet – a tweet is a public message you’ve posted that your followers see.  You have a whoppin 140 characters to do this.

# or Hashtag- used to designate a topic, category or interest.  For instance, let’s say you’re a frustrated Minnesota Vikes fan who’s interested in tracking the convos. You can see all of the related tweets about #Vikes by typing this in the search bar. The # or hashtag allows you to follow that stream and easily find others who share the same interest.

Most people are surprised to find this helpful in mining useful information.

@ - the @ symbol followed by the Twitter handle or username “tags” that user.  Also becomes a link to their profile. They’ll know you’ve mentioned them as your tweet appears in their mentions.

Avatar – is the image or photo you uploaded to your profile.

Blocking – if you block someone they are unable to add you to their lists or follow you.

DM or Direct Message – is a private tweet sent directly to a user, seen only by you and the other person. Direct messaging only works when the user follows you back.

Fail Whale - is when Twitter is overloaded and overcapacity, which means it’s down and you’re unable to tweet or read tweets.  When that happens, this graphic, the Fail Whale, pops up.

Favorites - a great feature to save your favorite tweets. I also use this as a handy bookmarking tab and favorite (save) the tweets I may want to retweet or read later.

Followers – are the people who subscribe to you and see your tweets. You do not have to follow someone for them to follow you.

Following – is subscribing to a Twitter user to get all of their tweets.

GFF (Get Followers Fast) – these are spammers who spam from your account. Stay clear of them.

Handle – a Twitter handle is the username. For instance, mine is AngCo_VA.

Mention – is a tweet that has your Twitter handle included.

OH – in Twitterland, this means overheard.

Protected/Private Accounts – is when you’ve approved your followers through an authentication process and only they can see your Tweets.  Your tweets will not show up in the search results by unapproved followers.

Reply – is when you respond to a tweet by hitting the reply button.  It always starts with @twitterhandle.

Retweet or RT – is a tweet repeated.  Used to share information, news, etc. to all of your followers.  Being retweeted is a compliment.   And people are more willing to engage in a conversation when you do this

Spam – unwanted and annoying messages and links.

Tending Topics - are the most mentioned topics on Twitter at the current time. Events are chatted about in real time with anyone and everyone using the # sign. For instance, #CyberMonday became a TT or trending topic.  Twitterers followed and commented on that in real time.

Tweet – a tweet is a public message posted that all of your followers see.  140 characters is the max.

Twitter Lists – use lists to keep track of the people and businesses you want to stay in touch with. Organize lists by industry, topic, demographics, fav restaurants, etc. For example, I have a “Virtual Assistants” list and a “Nordeast Minneapolis” list.

Unfollow – is when you unfollow another user.  You’ll no longer see their tweets in your stream.

With more and more of the purchasing decisions being driven by social media, thought I’d post a refresher on social media and online reputation management.

Be Aware

It’s important to know what people are saying about you and your business online, the good and the bad. Good posts can drive traffic to your site.  Bad posts can keep them away.  At a minimum, set up alerts in Google for you, your business, and industry.

Engage

It’s also important to engage with the bad posts too.  Genuinely listen, empathize, and diffuse the situation by taking the high road and moving the conversation offline.  As tempting as it may be, do not engage in a back-and-forth and avoid arguing.  Search engines have a long tail, sometimes as far back as ten years.

Be Human

Remember, social media is a powerful tool to connect with customers on a human level, which helps build long-lasting relationships based on trust.  When they trust you, it’s a whole lot easier to keep their business.

Don’t Drink and Social Media

Think you’re a brilliant after a few cocktails or maybe you crack yourself up?  Resist the urge to hop online and do your social media thing and sabotage your own online reputation.

So to wrap things up, remember this: your customers are defining your brand online, so think about getting an online reputation management strategy in place today.

Before you build your LinkedIn network, decide if you’ll be a LION or not, a LinkedIn Open Networker. An open networker accepts all connection requests to expand their network to huge numbers; they initiate a lot of connection requests and accept requests from almost everyone. One downside to this approach is that you don’t know your connections very well.

Another approach is to connect with only with those people you know and trust, which means fewer connections, but it’s a great way to strengthen your network by really interacting with others to get to know them better. One drawback: you’re not expanding or building your network with new connections.

Another approach is midway between the other two, which gives you the opportunity to expand your network to possibly meet new connections and people who may need your help or vice versa. If someone wants to connect with you and there’s a possibility to be referral partners or they have an interesting profile, then consider connecting with them. You can always disconnect with them later if it doesn’t work out.

So there you have it. What’s your strategy for building your LinkedIn network? Do share!

Is it a snoozer?

It’s really important to avoid having your profile look and sound like your resume, blah blah blahing about previous roles and responsibilities. Yes, these do lend credibility, but think of it this way. When you first meet a prospect, do you hammer them with the details of your previous positions, employers, roles and responsibilities?

Probably not.

Or do you say who you help and the problems you solve, the value of your product or service?

So with that in mind, keep your LinkedIn profile client-focused (the ”what’s in it for me” perspective) and treat it as if you were at a networking function, an introduction that tells folks what issues you solve and for whom.

For instance: I specialize in working with family-owned businesses and restaurant owners and help them to really connect with what they love to do and become booked solid.  My clients are taught the “how to” steps to implement a successful strategy to reach their ultimate vision.

Super easy.

Stay tuned for quick LinkedIn tips in following posts.

Until then!

I recently read that many online users will choose to watch a video before they choose to read text.  So videos are now playing a greater role in educating and sharing information with web site visitors, a pretty powerful marketing tool.

YouTube, The Big Video Site Kahuna

If you’ve been online for awhile, you probably already know that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.  Another stat I recently read is that 25 percent to 30 percent of all Google searches are done through YouTube.  So clearly people are looking to YouTube to find services, products, information and solutions for their problems.

Humanize Your Biz

The days of buying from faceless brands are long gone.  For a lot web site visitors, seeing someone and their personality in a video helps build that know, like, trust factor. It’s a terrific way to convey all of those things that set you apart from your competitors.  Simply put, sometimes it’s easier to project emotions, such as honesty and integrity, in a video rather than text.

Link Love

Google indexes YouTube vids incredibly fast.  Since Google is the number one search engine who owns the number two search engine, YouTube, that makes a lot of sense.

There are many other video sharing sites other than YouTube that help with search engine optimization too.  And using videos as a method to build backlinks to your site is an excellent strategy.  What’s really great about these sites is that they allow you to include your web site in the description (a nice link pointing back to your site).  The more videos, the more backlinks, and all of this helps to increase your ranking in the search engines.

Using videos as a strategy to market your business –  while at the same time improve your SEO – is seriously worth your consideration to expand your online presence and better reach your target audience.

Have a Facebook business page and not sure what to post?  Below is a list of 15 ideas to help get you started.

• Share milestones and anniversaries about your business, any job openings, promotions, new services or products.
• Do some B2B and “like” other business pages as your business page and share their updates with your audience.
• Promoting others in Facebook is very effective, so tag other business pages.  A tag links that page to something you post; it’s also a nice compliment.  The key is to not over do it, so tag in moderation.
  • To tag: in the status box type the @ symbol, then pick the name you’d like to tag
    from the dropdown menu.   For example:  @angco
• For increased engagement tag people in your status updates too.  Remember to tag in moderation.
• Invite someone to be a guest host for your business page.
• Share a link to your newsletter.  If you use Constant Contact, MailChimp, iContact consider installing your email application on a custom tab on your business page.  Invite your audience to sign up for your newsletter.
• Be engaged.  Reply to comments, tags, and likes on your wall.
• Ask your audience for their opinion.  Ask them for blog topic suggestions or events, etc.
• Do a compare and contrast on a product or service.  Ask your audience for their feedback.
• Shake things up with a joke or riddle or a true/false question.
• Get creative and customize your page.  Use the photo strip at the top your page to spell out a word or highlight a product or service.
• When sharing a link, pull one key point or tip from the post as a “teaser” in your status box.  Share a link to your blog post or a great article.
• Pictures are a fun way to connect with your audience, so post some of your product or
  service and add the descriptions in the captions.
• Post photos of your employees, you, happy customers, a business mascot.
• Check out your Facebook Insights to see which updates get the most engagement and continue to share that type of content.

These are just a few suggestions to get the creative juices going.  If you’ve had some great posts on Facebook, we’d love to hear about them.  Share away!

Hey small business owners and solopreneurs, are you still trying to do everything yourself?  Still wondering what to delegate to a virtual assistant?  Here’s a list of 21 tasks that could easily be outsourced to a VA.

Keeping You Connected – list all of the important people you haven’t seen or talked to in a while and have your virtual assistant schedule a call with them.  Space them out at one or two a week.

Stay on Top of Mind Correspondence - VAs can send thank-you notes, email blasts, holiday cards, etc., to your clients and colleagues, regularly staying in touch.

Reminders – a VA can help you remember everything so nothing falls off the radar.

Follow Up – a VA can follow up on those bothersome outstanding items.

Expenses – VAs can manage your expenses and compile them into a spreadsheet for your accountant.

Coordinate - meetings, appointments, speaking engagements, special events, and conferences.

Travel – a VA will search for the best deal and plan itinerary.

Data Entry – a perfect task for a VA, especially if this is time-consuming and repetitive.

Record Management – if your database is missing information, a VA can search and locate those hard-to-find numbers, addresses, and any other needed info.

Manage Contacts - into categories that are easy to locate.

Product Research – outsource your research for competition, quality, features, and price.

Presentations – jazz up your PowerPoints to showcase your product or service.

Transcribe – notes and audio.

Brainstorm - a virtual assistant can suggest ideas for your newsletter, blog, web site, etc.

Manage User Names – have tons of user IDs and passwords?  A VA can manage those so you don’t lose them.

Proofread and Edit – two pairs of eyes are better than one.  There’s a lot of value in having someone check your grammar and spelling and most VAs are happy to do this.

Collect Testimonials – for use on your web site or print materials.

Web Site – make changes, tweaks, update content or embed videos on your web site.

Research Networking Events - admittedly a lot of networking events are a waste of time. A VA can help you be more strategic by searching events your target audience would likely attend.

Accountability Buddy and Motivator – need somebody to keep you accountable? A VA will be happy to take you to task.

You’re Unavailable - a VA can field your calls when you’re off-site, in meetings or even when you need a day off.

So that wraps up the starter list.

Outsourcing effectively is one of the differentiators in successful businesses.  So what’s stopping you from getting started?  Reduce your stress and start delegating those pesky tasks from your to-do list today.