Infographics are hot. They appeal to visual learners, they grab great Edgerank on Facebook, they rule Pinterest and they demand to be shared. Creating an infographic for your business or brand that provides top notch visual entertainment while driving home a point, teaching something or laying out a concept in an easy to understand way can give your business or brand that viral buzz you’re longing to create.

Here’s what I learned from infographics today. Over 80% of Americans use at least one social network. That’s 245 million people.

An infographic can:

• Tell a story
• Provide a road map
• Present statistics in a surprising or powerful way
• Make us laugh

WIX, is a free website builder offering entrepreneurs and small businesses a quick and free way to create a professional looking website. They put together a terrific example of a statistics graphic that’s really a subtle and clever promotion. Chock full of interesting, retweetable factoids about the reasons every business needs to “go social,” this infographic has all the right stuff to drive viewers to post, share, pin and tweet about it. Things like “Facebook users share over 4 billion items per day” is social sharing gold and is also good for presentations to potential clients who don’t yet believe in the power of social media in a marketing campaign.  By positioning themselves as a company who understands the social web, they’re providing value to their ideal customer, giving that customer something to share on his or her pages and attaching their brand to a visual that will be widely shared; basically putting their calling card out to a potentially massive audience who are willing to pass it along.

Do you have other examples of great infographics that cast their creators in a positive light and add to their brand credibility?  Please feel free to share them here.

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.

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.

The virtuous marketing circle engages multiple learning styles to reach more potential clients and customers.

Although Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are free, the valuable resource of one’s time is required to actively engage, update and promote a brand message.  And, time is expensive. Making the content business create work harder and across multiple platforms is a good way to produce a virtuous marketing circle and increase the ROI of content creation. This tactic can help users create a wider circle of influence by spreading their brand message to an exponentially larger audience; reaching consumers wherever they spend the majority of their time online.

Below is an example of a virtuous marketing circle. The small business owner creates the circle in the follow way.

1. A blog post on his or her blogsite or website.

2. Using a Facebook application such as Notes or Networked Blogs, our business owner automatically pulls that blog post onto his Facebook Fan page, which represents his business. Having set his application controls once, he never thinks about this again. His page is automatically updated with his new blog post each and every time he posts.

3. The title and a link back to our business owner’s Facebook Page is automatically posted to her Twitter account, moments after it hits her Facebook page because she has set up an application called the Facebook Twitter App.  So now that single blog post has now been seen on three different platforms and potentially by three different audiences with some minor overlap.

4. Once or twice a month, our business owner chooses a particularly informative blog post and posts it to an e-zine articles site that accepts and syndicates articles with valuable information. Articles on e-zine sites can be picked up by other publications or blogs and helps our business owner reach a new audience with content he or she has already created. Additionally, Google and other search engines will index the articles which helps bring our business owner and brand higher up the search engine rankings.

5. Occasionally our business owner chooses one of his or her blog posts and records it as a podcast, saves it as an MP3, posts it to a Podcast site, itunes and perhaps to a special Podcast tab on the original website.  Producing the same messages in multiple formats helps engage different learning styles in potential customers.

6.  Just as our business owner was able to rework the original blog into a podcast, so she does so again, in a short how-to video about a particularly post.  This video is posted to YouTube, then brought into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and again, back to the original blog.

With the virtuous marketing circle, one blog post reaches six or seven unique readerships and our business owner has created mutiple touchpoints from which to engage with clients, exponentially increasing the chances of being seen and heard.  The original content he or she created has now been broadcast throughout the virtuous marketing circle.

How do you reuse, rework, re-introduce your ideas and messages to reach a wider crowd.  Let’s share ideas.

Simply put, Viola had five basic rules. In order to create a warm and intimate relationship with the audience, the actor must help the audience visualize:

1. Who you are, clearly, simply and honestly.
2. Where you are, in the physical and emotional world.
3. What you are as in what do you do and what do you offer or what do you need?
4. Yes, And. This is the most important rule. The actor listens to his or her parter (or client) and really truly hears what they say. Then opens his or her mouth and says “Yes, and…”, and adds value or information that helps the relationship move forward.
5. Don’t deny. Rule #4 is so important that it is repeated in new language in rule #5. Don’t deny what you just heard. If the partner/actor says “The sky is blue,” and you say “no, it’s not,” the scene is over. There is no option left but a disagreement, which adds no value to the relationship. So a better choice would be this exchange. “The sky is blue.” “Wow, that’s so interesting that you see the sky as blue. I’m seeing more green and yellow but I love that you see blue. Tell me more about how you see it. Maybe I should stand closer to you and get a better view.”

Now the scene or the relationship has a basis for moving forward.

Social media interactions are like improvisational theater. We don’t know who we’re going to meet on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or LinkedIn. We don’t know, for certain, what they think or what they offer. But we can listen, establish a clear message about who we are, where we are and make our intentions about what we do very clear. We can build relationships based on listening and on the “Yes, and” rule and by doing so we can attract friends, fans and followers who are interested in our message and in a lively discourse and at some point after trust is firmly developed and demonstrated, perhaps in a business relationship.

Just as you would create a business plan and map out your marketing strategy, take some time to figure out your brand DNA. Who are you? Where are you? What value do you offer? Then say yes, and add even more depth to your message and finally, never deny that listening to your friends, fans and followers can lead you to a richer, deeper, more profitable R.O.I or return on time spent engaging in social media activities.

How are you using improvisational techniques to build you business? I’d love to hear from you.

As someone who is currently engaged in training with Mari Smith, http://www.marismith.com (someone who also cares deeply about ethical behavior online) and who will be part of the first class of certified social media professionals, I’m very interested in hearing about your concerns, issues and ideas for perhaps a “Golden Rules” of using social media for publicity and marketing. Let’s post our ideas here and start the conversation. If you post, please include your full Facebook, Twitter or Website URL including the http:// so that others can friend, follow and connect with you in just one click. You’re welcome to list all of your preferred connection options in that way. Let’s start a movement.

Take your Social Media Image Seriously

Your Facebook® profile and your Facebook® Fan Page are two key social media touch-points for connecting with potential clients. Creating your on-line funnels in a variety of social mediums helps people find you and clearly understand the service you provide. Now, the yellow pages will do the same thing but social mediums let customers engage with you first and then decide, based on your attitude, the comments they read from your friends and followers and the value you provide in your various postings, whether or not they want to take the next step and become your customer. They can literally shadow you while deciding. That’s why it’s so critical for you to take your social media image seriously.

The Key Ingredients to your Social Media Strategy

Because your potential customer might be exploring numerous social media sites, you’ll want to be on at least Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and I highly recommend that you have a blog. If you already have your own website that becomes your home base. If you don’t, you’re blog can serve that purpose.

Now the number one rule of any great marketing campaign is to make sure that every consumer touch-point is integrated with every other one. All of your social media sites should link to each other, carry a similar look and message all while speaking to the consumer in the voice most appropriate for that medium. For example, you’ll communicate in short 120 character* bits on Twitter, longer more detailed thoughts will be incorporated into your blog and your Facebook profile and fan pages might be more personal and intimate. Yet an integrated marketing strategy means that the core values and the key message points will be the same, albeit communicated differently.

Helping Customers Find, Follow and Friend You

If you were the owner of a Deli, you wouldn’t hide the checkout counter. You’d make it very easy to find. Shoppers would never have to guess where to find you, talk with you and pay you. It’s the same with social media sites. Be user friendly. Make it easy for someone who finds and follows you on one site to find and friend you on another.

I recently installed a “Follow me on Twitter” button on my Facebook Profile and my Facebook Fan Pages. This is a nice visual addition to your profile or page and there are a lot of designers and programmers out there offering free buttons. I happen to love http://twitbuttons.com for it’s user-friendly interface. You simply enter your Twitter name in the URL box at the top of the page and all the HTML code in every Twitter Button box is changed, automatically, to customize the button for your twitter page.

So here are the instructions for adding a “Follow me on Twitter” button to your Facebook Page.

1. Log onto your Facebook Page and go to the applications link on the bottom left hand side of your screen.
2. Click “Browse applications and the find ” “Extended info” application. Add that to your profile. Then click the edit settings link to the right of the app in the list of apps you’ve downloaded. Where it says “Tab” click “add.”
3. Then go to http://twitbuttons.com and pick out your favorite button. Be sure to enter your twitter name in the black space above the buttons. This will automatically enter your correct twitter name link to the code under each twitter button image.
4. Copy the code of the button you like and go back to Facebook to the Applications list (link on bottom left of page).
5. Open the Extended info application by clicking directly on that link. A window will pop up for you to paste your code.
6. Paste the code and click the “Add to Profile” button on the upper right of that page.
7. Then click the Save changes button below the code and return to your page. You can change the look of your button at anytime by returning to these instructions and choosing a new button from the website I mentioned or another you may find. You can design your own if you’re skilled with HTML too.

Transparency is Currency in Social Media

I recommend adding your “Follow Me” button or link to all of your social media sites and using the custom options on your Twitter background to provide the URL’s for your Facebook, Linked In and Blog to your Twitter followers. You get the picture. The name of the game is to be visible. For some inspiring examples of people who are doing this well, check out these social media pros. Each one of these people are helping potential clients find them and utilizing a slightly different style. Take a look and make a plan to help yourself stand out in the crowd.

• Mari Smith: http://www.facebook.com/marismith?ref=ts#/marismith?v=app_11007063052&viewas=1048779085
• Dr. Mehmet Oz: http://www.facebook.com/droz?ref=ts#/droz?v=app_4949752878&viewas=1048779085
• Gary Vaynerchuk http://www.facebook.com/gary?ref=ts#/gary?v=wall&viewas=1048779085 (Check out his “Friend Me Up” Tab!)
• Karmen Reed at KickOff Topic: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kickoff-Topic-Marketing-Solutions-Through-Online-Visibility/56494299508#/pages/Kickoff-Topic-Marketing-Solutions-Through-Online-Visibility/56494299508?v=wall&viewas=1048779085
• The Social Latte: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tempe-AZ/The-Social-Latte-Specializing-In-Social-Media-For-Small-Businesses/80841554499?ref=ts#/pages/Tempe-AZ/The-Social-Latte-Specializing-In-Social-Media-For-Small-Businesses/80841554499?v=app_7146470109&viewas=1048779085
• Angela Albright: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Angela-Albright-Social-Media-Entrepreneur/87674098294?ref=ts#/pages/Angela-Albright-Social-Media-Entrepreneur/87674098294?v=wall&viewas=1048779085

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*Always try to keep your tweets to 120 characters so that people can Re-tweet your post. When they re-tweet, some of the character spaces are taken up with their Twitter name. At 120 characters you’ll be re-tweet-friendly.