Facebook’s new Insights have many people scratching their heads, trying to understand how these social media metrics can help their marketing and branding efforts, how best to use the information available and exact what it all means. This is the first in a series of articles on Facebook Insights. Here we’ll talk about the “Talking About This” metric.

Want to make sure everyone is Talking About This?

Talking About This: What does that mean?

Talking About This is a consumer facing number. It appears on your Facebook fan page directly below your number of fans and is visible to everyone who visits your page. This number is most likely a very small percentage of your overall fan base. In fact, recent studies show this number is likely to be 4-6% of your fan base. This number represents the unique users who have created stories about your page in their stream or the ticker by liking, commenting, sharing or tagging your page, post or photo during the 7 preceding days. This number changes daily because it is measuring a different set of days each day.

Talking About This: How can this number help me?

The rise and fall of your “Talking About This” number indicates the level of engagement your current fans have with you page and posts. If this engagement is falling, look at the content of your posts and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the content of my posts valuable to my ideal customer?
2. Does the post clearly present a call to action asking my readers to comment, like, share or tag?
3. Am I asking questions at the end of the posts that require a reader response?
4. Could I offer the reader a “bonus” for responding; i.e. “Go ahead and post your website link here and I’ll be happy to look at your landing page and give you feedback.”
5. Have I tried asking my readership how I can best serve them?

You will always have readers who simply read and move on, enriched by what you write but not motivated to leave a comment.  But, increasing your Talking About This number means increased visibility for you in the streams and tickers of your fans.  This ambient and real awareness can be considered as valuable as an endorsement or referral, so it’s worth your time and a little extra effort in the crafting of your posts to solicit a response.  Remember, 90% of your fans never return to your page after liking it.  They only see and interact with your content in their news stream or ticker.  They are only served your content in their stream IF you’ve enticed them to interact with your page recently.  Creating content that demands, elicits or excites a response is the Facebook marketing holy grail of visibility.

If you’ve noticed that your fan engagement has fallen, doesn’t respond to any of your new posting strategies and seems stagnant, you might consider a quick, creative and inexpensive Page Post Like Story Ad Campaign targeted to current fans.  We’ll talk about that in an upcoming post.

Now, here’s where we put these strategies to work.  Are you noticing a change in your Talking About This number?  If you try one of the strategies above and have success, I’d love to hear from you and perhaps highlight you in a future post.

Most new businesses fail in the first five years. Let’s beat the odds together.

I usually write about more complex tools and strategies, but in speaking to new entrepreneurs or small business owners this past year, the questions I most often get are:

• How can I add social media to my marketing without adding additional employees?
• How can I do everything you suggest and still have time to work on my products?

Lack of time and money are the #1 and #2 saboteurs of start-ups.  So to everyone who has not yet jumped into the social fray to promote their business or service, here’s my simple beginner’s guide to using social media for business.

I believe most businesses can benefit from a simple, straightforward social media strategy that includes:

• A Facebook profile for the “face” of the business; the owner or spokesperson
• A Facebook fan page for the business itself
• A Twitter Account
• A YouTube Account
• A Blog

With these five social media basics, even the most cash strapped and time deprived entrepreneur can begin to create digital footprints that lead back to their business.

Setting up the accounts is easy and entrepreneurs should not become distracted by the bells and whistles and they wish list that comes with fully tricked out Facebook pages or beautifully designed Twitter accounts.  When you’re swamped, stick to the basics and don’t let “ideal” stop you from starting with “good enough.”

Here’s a simple beginners guide to a social media marketing strategy map anyone can use.

• Blog 2-3 times per week and keep posts to 250-300 words. Make them keyword rich (words you would enter into Google Search to find YOU). Make sure each post gives one interesting or useful piece of information to the reader about your area of expertise.

• The same day you blog, post a link to that blog on your Facebook Fan Page, adding an invitation to join you on the blog for more posts on your subject matter.

• Allow this post to auto-post to your Twitter account by linking your Twitter account to your Facebook fan page through this Facebook app link: http://Facebook.com/Twitter.

• The next day press the share button under your Fan Page post and share it to your personal profile.  Your friends are your closest supporters.  Ask them to share your post with their friends, leave you comments and let you know if you can help them with your area of expertise.

• Two days later, turn your blog post into a simple, how-to video by reading it into your web cam. Put the “script” up on your screen so you can look directly at the camera.  Speak as though you’re explaining the concepts in your blog to just one person.  Post the video to YouTube and tag the video with your keywords.

This is an over simplified map, designed to get you thinking about sharing content throughout social media.  There are many, many subtle and more complicated nuances and strategies to increase your visibility, but this is a start.  If you’re a new business owner or entrepreneur who has not yet begun to use social media in your business marketing, begin here and add new strategies as you get comfortable.

I’d love to see your first efforts and answer your questions.  Feel free to post your links below and I’ll take a look at your new social media platforms.  Here’s to a year of action and success, to us all.

Soon Facebook Business page admins could be saying, please send us a private message using the message button at the top of this page.

While this feature does not yet seem to be available in the U.S., Canada or Europe, it is worth keeping an eye on as it represents a significant new opportunity for businesses to interact more efficiently with customers than previously on Facebook.  For now the experiment seems to be live only in Asia.

Immediacy

The benefits of being able to communicate back and forth, privately, with a fan who is experiencing difficulty with an order, asking for complex pricing information, or needing to exchange confidential information is obvious. Another benefit could be taking an angry customer to a private one on one conversation to get to the bottom of their problem without airing the entire chain of comments publicly.  Imagine being able to say “please send us a private message with your account name, a description of the issue and a phone number where we might reach you and we’ll make sure someone contacts you asap.”

Of course, customer service teams can do that now by asking fans to contact them at an e-mail address.  But social media has trained consumers to demand and expect instant assistance.  So even though telling them to send you a private message via Facebook is similar to instructing them to e-mail you, it feels more immediate.  It signals to the consumer that you are there, right now, answering or at least looking into their questions; not eventually when someone reads the e-mail, but NOW.

Choice

Since the fan must initiate the private conversation, the single act of agreeing to communicate on Facebook through a private message means that the customer wants a deeper relationship.  They want resolution and not just a forum to complain.  This is a big percentage of the emotional battle in customer service.  And, the opportunity to repair, enhance and soothe a disappointed customer is now increased simply because they had the opportunity and the choice to communicate directly and privately with a person at your company.

Social Interactions

Because Likes and Comments are so important to a Fan Page’s Edge Rank on Facebook, some may worry that taking a specific customer service issue off the page and into a private message forum might negatively affect the page stats.  Fan page administrators will want to continue to engage with every comment, encourage more likes and comments and post updates when issues are resolved or information delivered via private message.  An admin might reply to a comment with a short message like: “Bob, we were so glad you gave us the opportunity to work directly with you to resolve your issue.  We stand behind our product 100%.  We value customers who believe in our promise and allow us to make good on that promise, even if we needed a second try.  Thank you Bob!”

Special Offers

The private messaging function could also be used to deliver special offers to select customers in the Facebook community who comment, like, interact and engage often.  Admins could invite those fans to message them for a thank you offer.

How might your team use the new Facebook Business Page private messaging feature once it rolls out?

This is the ideal time for entrepreneurs to give themselves a few gifts to start the new fiscal year off right.

Change Your Passwords

Make a new end of year ritual.  Change your passwords.  As a small business or entrepreneur, you’ve no doubt shared your password with designers, virtual assistants, and others during 2011.  Changing your passwords sets up an automatic review of everyone who has access to your accounts.  This can momentarily disrupt the flow of work as you review and reassign passwords and access to trusted contacts, but this is an essential end of year security practice.  Adopt industry best practices for secure passwords by using a combination of capital and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.  Make sure your new password is at least 10 characters long.  Afraid you won’t remember your new passwords.  Store all your online passwords in a safe, secure site that only you can access, from wherever you are. Roboform is a terrific online resource for securing storing your passwords for easy access (by you only).  This is safer than writing them down and carrying them around with you or entering them into your mobile device.  Theft or loss could be a nightmare for your online security.

Training

Entrepreneurs and business owners need to honestly assess where the weaknesses in their knowledge base exist, seek training programs to resolve those weaknesses and then look for challenge or stretch goals for themselves and their teams.  Training in new technologies, general knowledge base upgrades and software training do not need to be expensive or time consuming.  Many trainings are served up via webinars you can view and absorb on your own schedule.  Some reasonably priced trainings that I can recommend include:

Publicity and promotional training from Ragan Communications online, on-demand courses are priced well and consistently deliver excellent resources and training.

Small Business Summit 2012 is a program run by Michael Stelzner, founder of the Social Media Examiner.  His strategy of bringing together multiple top industry resources to cover a wide range of topics and giving entrepreneurs the option of viewing the webinar material live or later on-demand is great.  This year they’ll be covering trends, copywriting, Facebook marketing, LinkedIn, Google+ and much more. I also the fact that Michael allows people to try before they buy and offers a free class to showcase the program.

BookExpo America Webinars are specifically targeted to authors, publishers, booksellers, agents and others in the book publishing industry, however, the information aimed at this audience is particularly valid for entrepreneurs, who are often solo business owners, much like an author.  At just $25 a class, these are a bargain.  NOTE: I am speaking at the next webinar on using Facebook for Business.  I do not receive any compensation for the webinar, nor for telling you about it.

Concept Inventory

Businesses and entrepreneurs need to be thinking about new products or services to add to their offerings, as well as deleting any products or services suffering from fatigue or obsolescence. Now is the time to take an inventory of your intellectual property offerings such as coaching programs, how-to books or trainings, speeches, proprietary software, apps and other products to make sure they’re up to date. For example, if you teach people how to use Facebook and haven’t including training about the new Facebook Timeline, pull that product off the shelf and update it so future customers aren’t disappointed.

What gifts will you be giving yourself and your business this year?  I’d love to hear from you.

Show clients you’re a great resource for new information with the gifts you give.

Here are a few gift suggestions that any client will appreciate.

The Gift of Time: A handwritten note, delivered through the mail, thanking the client for his or her business and offering an hour of your time in 2012 gratis is a great gift and one you already know your client wants and needs.

The Gift of Analytics: Give your client a year of deep, rich analytics for their Facebook Fan page from PageLever. For just $34, you can give them an app that will provide insights to guide their marketing efforts for the coming year and position yourself as a forward thinking, socially savvy gift giver.

The Gift of Apps: Be the source of business solutions for your client by recommending your favorite apps and giving them an app store gift card.  Turn them on to the file sharing app, DropBox or TurboScan with an Apple app store gift card. For Android users, the app store on Amazon offers gift cards and apps like Read it Later Pro, an app that lets you save webpages to read offline at your leisure.  Increase their productivity, encourage them to use their mobile device in new ways and share your favorite time saving or just plain fun apps.

Are you giving gifts to business clients this holiday season? I’d love to hear your ideas.

For free or low cost marketing tips, look to the BIG players.

The answer, of course, depends on your product, your business goals and the bandwidth of your human resources.  However, there are some no brainer’s in the small business toolkit I highly recommend adding in 2012.

1. E-mail management system: The big guys work hard to capture your e-mail during any online interaction with you. They’ll reward you, entice you, invite you and engage you, all in an effort to obtain your permission to send you future communications about their products and services via e-mail.  E-mail is cheaper than advertising, direct mail, live events and nearly every other consumer facing promotion, and your small business or brand should be following the example of industry leaders. Set up an opt in form on your website, your Facebook fan page and include the URL for that opt in page on all printed collateral customers see.  Even if you don’t yet know how you’ll use those names and e-mail addresses, start capturing them. Even if you don’t currently have a product or service to offer, start capturing them. Your “tribe” follows you because they’re interested in what you say, teach, offer or share. An e-mail database will help you deepen that relationship, share more, find out what your tribe needs and either create it for them or find a product from someone else to recommend to them. As that famous brand says, “Just Do it.”
2. Segment the List: You heard “the money is in the list?”  They’re not wrong. Your most valuable customer or client is one that has already purchased your product or service and is happy. Set up your e-mail database management system to allow you to see, at a glance, where any customer joined you.  With e-mail database management systems like AWeber, MailChimp and others, you can easily set up multiple lists to reflect their point of entry into your brand, be it Facebook, a live event, a newsletter or an advertisement.
3. Test the Opt in Offer: Experiment with different offers to see which one resonates with your customers.  Do they want discounts on your products? Are they motivated by free content? Do they take action when you make yourself available to them personally? Use your current customers as a marketing research test group?  Test your offers one at a time and see which one(s) motivate people to sign up for your list.
4. Internet Commercials: This is a fancy way to say add video to your marketing toolkit. You can create video without spending a dime. Demonstrate something and capture it in video form using the built in software on your computer. With Apple’s Keynote, you can capture your presentations and upload them to YouTube and embed the video to your website. For a relatively modest investment, you can install Camtasia or ScreenFlow and easily create video demonstrations of your activities online.  You can upload still photos and add text and create a professional looking 30 second spot using Animoto, all for free or you can purchase a pro account with much more flexibility for a just $249.  Money or lack of experience is no longer a stumbling block for using video in your marketing. Your video commerical is only limited by your imagination.
5. Google Analytics Account: You simply must know which of your marketing activities, launches and product offerings are driving interest. A Google Analytics account will tell you the number of hits your website is getting, how long people are staying on your site, which pages they are viewing, where they’re coming from (key information), where they are located and a variety of other information. This is a free tool and a must use for all small businesses and entrepreneurs.
6. Social Communications Platform: Use asocial media platforms to amplify your message. A very wide variety of free broadcasting and communications platforms are available and easy to use.  Try Tumblr, Facebook fan pages, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Blogger to name a few. Find the one(s) that fit your personal brand personality, ease of use and most importantly, make sure that the ones you choose are used by the audience you want to attract.
7. Facebook ads: There is no budget too small to use Facebook ads. I have clients who are budgeting as little as $20.00 a day and paying an average of $0.07 per click.  Some are paying about $0.75 per click and spending $50.00 to $100.00 per campaign. The price per click and the final costs depend on the keywords and competition for those words on Facebook during a given time period. You can set a daily or a lifetime budget and turn ads on or pause them. Facebook gives you the ability to micromanage your budget and to drill down to a very specific customer, when choosing who will see your ads. You can direct the end user to your Facebook fan page, to a specific tab with a specific offer or you can direct people who click to an outside website with a special offer.  Facebook ads are one of the most inexpensive advertising options available to small business owners.

Make 2012 the year that your small business or personal brand tries at least one of the success strategies used by big, successful businesses like Target special offers to Facebook fans, Lexus internet commercials, Amazon’s new product launches and Wal-Mart daily deals. If you’ve used one of these strategies and have a success story to tell, we’d love to hear about it. We also invite you to leave your company URL in the comment section below if you have an example you’d like to share.

Time is our most valuable asset as business owners.

Karmen Reed of Kick Off Topic

My password manager: I use Roboform. This awesome tool is not just a security peace of mind, but also a time saving “must have” tool. Roboform manages all your digital, online passwords and you have to remember only one master code, that you set yourself, to access any site or tool on your computer requiring a password. It can be synced between your multiple computers, and Firefox as well as Chrome extensions allow for super easy access. Extra points — Roboform is available on your iPhone as an app too.

Lisa McKenzie* of Red Carpet Strategies

Once a month I religiously use ManageFlitter to ensure that I am connecting with my ideal community and audience on Twitter.  ManageFlitter allows me to quickly delete spam and inactive accounts leaving my Twitter steam filled with people I want to stay connected with and tweets I want to read. The “drag” feature across profile avatars is my favorite for quick deletes.

Gail Doby of Design Success U

Google Docs is our baseline tool for communicating with our global team.  We are able to maintain a central filing system in the cloud, which is extremely helpful with a team working on projects at different times of the day or night.

Mary Lengle of Madison and Company

I help clients tell their stories through video and I’m able to meet with people via SKYPE to go over our scripts, shot lists and overall video strategies.  I use it on my iphone, ipad, desktop and laptop. It’s a great communication tool and time saver.

Nancy Leyes Myrland of Myrland Marketing

I set up search columns in TweetDeck, (or whatever Twitter management tool you are using) for the exact title of my three most recent blog posts, then watch those columns periodically throughout the day to find and thank those who are sharing my blog posts. Your Twitter name isn’t always included when people share your post, so this helps you catch them so you don’t miss the opportunity to nurture a relationship by thanking someone for their kindness. This also saves times because you don’t have to check different sources to find these shares of your blog posts.

Keri Francek Jaehnig of Idea Girl Media

My time-saving tip and everyday lifesaver is Workflowy.  It’s up on my computer all day long.  I use it to organize note, tasks and collaborate with clients and colleagues through the select sharing feature.

Holly Kolman of Mobile Site Store

Dropbox is a tool you can use on your computer or internet-ready phone. I have sent enormous files like audio and video files, and when I give my clients password access, they can access them at any time. It’s very convenient and makes it a lot easier to keep track of files than email.

Doug McIsaac of CBS Television affiliate, KTVQ

Use a mind mapping tool like Mindomo when you are planning projects

If you have tools, techniques and tips to share with entrepreneurs and small business people, please share them here and we’ll take a look.

*Full disclosure.  I am also a partner in Red Carpet Strategies.

Shifting your thinking from how to rank to what to rank for can be a valuable exercise in creating a solid digital marketing strategy.

Five Simple Steps for Determining Video Content

1. Content Tools: Use the Google Keyword Search Tool to find out how clients and website visitors are currently landing on your site.  While this tool allows you to search keywords and find out how many people are searching for those terms, you can also enter your own professional website URL in the “Find Keywords” feature at the top of the page and Google will show you the keywords others have entered before your site was recommended to them.

2.  Research Technique: Using a spreadsheet or a word doc, keep track of the phrases or keywords that have local monthly searches of 2,000 or more and where the competition for those searches is medium or low.  The reason for staying away from high volume, high competition words is that an entrepreneur or small business will most likely not have the financial resources to rank highly in these areas during their building phase. But if you were to rank on the first page of Google for a relevant keyword with lower competition and convert some of those searches into clients or buyers, without advertising, activities that caused this would be worth the investment of your time, right?

3.  What to Search: I searched my own website URL and found that 18,100 monthly searches are being entered for the phrase “Tools for Twitter,” and Google tells me that the competition for this is “low.”  Now Twitter marketing and Twitter Tools are right in my business sweet spot.  I lecture on Twitter Tools and write about them often.  So I will put “Tools for Twitter” onto my list of videos I may want to create for my website and my YouTube Channel.

4.  How To Interpret the Results: Next, click on the link within the Google Keyword Tool and Google will show you a search page with the number of entries for that term in gray at the top of the page.  In this test case, “Tools for Twitter” has 1,560,000 results.  That’s a heck of a lot of competition for me to go up against in landing on the first page of searches for this term.  But I’m considering using video to demonstrate my expertise in this area, so now, I’ll go to the left hand side of the Google results page for this search and click videos.  Instantly, I see that the competition for this term in videos is significantly less, 180,000, but still steep.

5.  Claiming Your Spot on Top: Next, I’ll scroll down the page and see the dates when each of the ranking videos on the first two pages were created.  I can see that for this term, not all the ranking content is fresh.  This encourages me and I’ll place this “Tools for Twitter” title on my To Create list for videos.  I may create several and roll them out as a series.  Google values fresh or new content above other content and so I have a better chance of ranking for this phrase because not all of the content on page one or two of Google (for this phrase) is new.

That’s it.  I’ve used this strategy to rank on page one for many terms including a video I created for parents about “Facebook and Kids” where I rank in the #1 spot for this phrase.

I’d love to hear about your searches and the titles of videos that you’ll create.  Please share your findings and I’ll be glad to watch your videos and comment, which can also help ranking.  Remember to always give viewers a clear call to action, which may simply be “Please let me know what you thought of this video.”

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.

10. I can’t afford to invest in expensive equipment

9. I don’t know what to talk about.

8. I don’t have anyone to run the camera.

7. I don’t know how to use the video even if I could create it.

6. I don’t like the way I look on camera.

5. I think people will think I’m boastful or vain.

4. I don’t have time to learn how to edit video.

3. I’m not convinced that video will increase my revenue.

2. I don’t have a tangible product to show on video. I’m a consultant.

1. I’m not comfortable in front of a camera.

According to a January 2010 report by research firm Forrester, optimized video increases the incidence of Google front page search results by a factor of 53x. And, Internet Retailer’s April 2010 report states that e-commerce site visitors are 85% more likely to purchase if they’re presented with a video.

Let’s debunk the top 10 concerns about using video in your brand marketing.

10. You do not need expensive equipment to create video. You can upload still photography and copy to a site called Animoto and create polished 30 second commercial style videos in minutes, free of charge.

9. The How-To category on YouTube is very popular. Any subject related to your business that you can show or tell is perfect for a video. Think about what you offer and add “How To” to any aspect of it and you’ll have your first video.

8. You can use the camera already inside your computer to record yourself. You don’t need a camera operator. You can purchase an inexpensive tripod to mount your video camera, turn it on yourself and walk in front of the camera. YouTube gives you a simple and easy to learn way to clip the unwanted beginning to a homemade video so you can start your video at the beginning of your presentation.

7. Create the video. Save it to your computer hard drive. Upload it to your YouTube Channel. Share the link on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and your website. Put the link into your e-newsletter. These are just a few ways to use the video you create.

6. Get over it. No one likes the way they look on camera. But consumers like to see the face behind the offer. They like to look into your eyes and know that a real person is making the offer. If you truly can’t do it, create a powerpoint and capture your presentation with a program like Camtasia for PC or Screen Flow for Mac and you’ll have a video without ever showing your face.

5. This is old mental programming. We’re marketing in a new very social, very connected world and to succeed, you’ll need to put those feelings behind you and operate from the knowledge that sharing the things you know if actually selfless and generous.

4. You do not have to edit your video, in the beginning, if you keep it short. Practice making 15-30 second videos where you deliver one tip or strategy or idea at a time. Put it up and repeat after me: “Imperfect action is better than no action.” Your audience will value your authenticity and watching you improve. Later you’ll be able to reference those early videos, laugh and share your journey with your followers. Sales is about storytelling. You’re early efforts become part of your story.

3. If you still don’t believe that video will increase your revenues, you haven’t been paying attention. See the intro paragraph to this article and spend some time on google.

2. Sharing ideas on video is demonstrating authority. If you are a consultant, you’ll want to position yourself as an authority and let people see you in action. Video is ideal for consultants. Consumers buy based on a “know, like and trust” factor and video is the fastest way, aside from in-person presentations, to establish a feeling of relationship.

1. Confidence comes with practice. Talk into the camera as though you are at a cocktail party or networking event. Create a heightened sense of yourself without going over the top. Practice. But above all, to borrow a phrase from Nike, just do it. You can see some of my early work and later work here, which I hope will encourage you. I am not remotely “perfect,” yet I’ve been able to impact people, share knowledge and increase my personal brand awareness.

Have you been using video in your marketing with positive results? Please share your thoughts here to help encourage the entire community.

Think your Twitter follow needs to be at 1,000,000 or more in order to monetize?  When Sponsored Tweets launched, they created connections between Kim Kardashian and products that wanted to be connected to Kim Kardashian. The idea was that for a price, and I believe Kim’s price per tweet was more than my mortgage payment, Kim would choose to tweet something complimentary about the sponsor. A simple idea and frankly, pretty standard celebrity marketing albeit with a new social twist.

But if you weren’t Ashton Kutcher or Justin Bieber, your sponsored Tweets wasn’t interested in you. That’s changed and I recently did a test drive of as a non-celebrity Twitter for Hire.

28,000+ followers = $30 per tweet

It was easy to sign up using my Twitter account and a quick click of the mouse analyzed my account to tell me that my tweets were worth about $75 each, IF someone was willing to pay me. Then I was able to peruse the opportunities that Sponsored Tweets calls “Opps.” Nearly all were for $.02-.07 cents, and I wasn’t familiar with any of the products or offerings and so I passed.

About a week later, I received an e-mail telling me a client opp was waiting for me at my account. I logged in and checked out the link that the client wanted me to tweet. It was a television show that I find interesting anyway, so I decided it was a good experiment.

Here’s how it works. Sponsored Tweets gives you the link from the client. You take a look at the offering at the end of the link and decide how to position the tweet. You write the tweet and include the link and the word “sponsored.” The client reviews the tweet and it is auto scheduled to go out from your account. Smooth, easy and you can decline the offer or cancel at any time, if you change your mind.

It was fun. I didn’t feel I was damaging my reputation with this tweet experiment and I made $30. I don’t believe this will become a revenue stream for me, but will I do it again? Maybe. It really depends on the offer, the product and my next experiment. How easy is it to collect this $30? Stay tuned.

Would you “sell your tweets?”