If you’ve written a book, developed a program, created a keynote speech but no one knows about it, you have a hobby and not a business.

How long you can remain in the developmental and launch phase of your business depends on your upfront funding.  But if your business is bringing no money whatsoever into your accounts receivable, it’s time to take evaluate your business model, your marketing strategy or both.  Social media can give entrepreneurs valuable promotion, advertising and market research without an enormous additional outlay of cash.  And, most importantly, it can bring income into your bank account quickly.  Let’s take a look at three easy opportunities for promotion and income creation available to entrepreneurs, right now, through their current social media platforms.

1.  Build your database so you can market directly to people who’ve already expressed an interest in you, your book or your product by gathering e-mail names directly from your Facebook page by adding a custom box under your cover photo. These custom boxes or apps, as Facebook calls them, are created in an iframe and can contain a special offer such as a sample of your book, a free 15 minute consultation, or a checklist of success strategies.

2.  Sell directly from your Facebook page, again by using an iFrame app.  You can import your store, your product pages or your entire website right to a Facebook app or tab. The website will retain all of its functionality which means if people can buy your book or services on your website, they can buy it directly on your Facebook page. Here’s an example of a custom app I created for my Android and iPhone Marketing Tips app using a drag and drop app maker, Lujure.com.  With no design skills, I can import my assets and links and create a customer opportunity right on my Facebook page, which I can then promote through Twitter, my blog, my personal profile and through other social sites.

3.  Create an Amazon affiliate store and import the entire thing directly to your website and to Facebook in a custom app. Now every product you recommend or mention, including you own book, can immediately be purchased on Facebook without your fans ever leaving the platform.

There is more to being a successful entrepreneur than generating quick income, but the process of thinking through your offering, marketing it to others and generating income is a good start.

How are you creating income through social media? Let’s share some best practices to create more successes for the entrepreneurial community.

By now everyone is going through the 5 stages of grief over the loss of default landing tabs as the fact that all Facebook fan pages will convert to the new Facebook Timeline for Pages Design on March 30, 2012 sinks in.

Questions about the content housed on the millions of custom tabs created by businesses and entrepreneurs such as contests, opt-in offers, streaming video channels and e-commerce pages have people scrambling and questioning whether or not Facebook fans pages will be a worthwhile investment for small to mid-sized businesses and entrepreneurs, in both time and money.

All of your custom tabs still exist. You just need to think creatively about how to market them.

As of this writing, all of the content on custom tabs is still live and accessible. The only change has been that you cannot set up a default landing tab for non-fans. So how does a page entice fans to search for and click on a tab now that they are no longer displayed on the left hand side of a page?

Page admins can upload a custom image to represent the tab or app as Facebook is now referring to all tabs. Imagine seeing a series of evocative, engaging images in this 180 x 180 pixel format under the cover photo.  Color, words, and images will call out to the reader like carnival barkers. “Come see the amazing offer.”

Page admins can also rearrange the order in which the apps appear. Four apps are “above the fold” and the rest live under the drop down arrow on the right hand side. Three of those app spots are available to admins to highlight the apps of their choice.  Photos will always display.  So admins can change the view to highlight specials, sales, contests or whichever three apps are most important to a page in any given time period.

I created two simple word images just to illustrate what’s possible. It was easy to upload the new app cover images and I expect to see brands and entrepreneurs doing some very creative work with these images.  If you have examples of fun, enticing or downright awesome images fan pages are using to highlight their custom tab offerings, please post their URL below.  Let’s amass some examples to inspire one another.

According to a post today on the Lujure blog, and at Hubz, Facebook will announce they are dropping some older ad formats and adding some new premium features as of February 29th. The ads will be larger, have more engagement options such as comments and likes directly on the ad, and include video or photos. Basically anything you post on a page can be marketed as an ad.  A complete slide show of the Facebook presentation is available here.  According to Facebook’s presentation, people are four times more likely to make a purchase when they see their friends interacting with a brand. So Facebook is set to release upgraded premium ads that are heavily weighted to interaction with the comments box, like option and perhaps even the share button under the ads.

Facebook is set to launch six new premium ad options on February 29, 2012.

The new suite of premium ads includes an option to create an ad out of a “Post Like Story,” which is nothing new.  But Facebook says brands will now be able to choose to run ads that appear to be posts to their wall, but will only appear as ads and not as wall posts.

Why is this interesting and potentially useful to a brand? Say you’re launching a new product, having a sale or desire to hammer home your biggest brand promise and you want to target only people who are not yet your fans because those folks are already aware of your offer.  In the past, your brand would have had to post the special offer to your page wall several days in a row so that the Post Like story would continue to run that offer.  Basically, you’d have to spam your own wall to keep the offer as the ad image and message.  This new options will allow brands to create a Page Post Story that never runs on their page and is only served up to non-Fans or whomever the brand chooses at set up.

The upgraded ad units are called photo, video, questions, status, events, links, which are all types of posts a brand currently can make to their page. Currently these new ad options may only be offered to premium advertisers who already have, or will have, a Facebook advertising account rep.  But rumors persist that these options will be offered to everyone soon.

Along with the expected announcement that Facebook fan pages will migrate to the Timeline design, and these new ad options, administrators and brand managers are scrambling to prepare their clients for change.

So what do you think? Will your brand or business try the new ads when they’re available?

UPublishU, an educational arm of BookExpo America, will host a keynote presentation by Brand New Brand You President, Cindy Ratzlaff on Sunday, June 3rd as part of their educational outreach to self-published and self-publishing authors.

Ratzlaff’s presentation at the first ever BEA sponsored UPublishU is entitled “Do This, Not That: The Social Media Roadmap for Authors.” Ratzlaff will share the “must do’s” versus the “nice to do’s” to helped authors save time, money and frustration as they build a platform to promote their book.

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.

You may know Moll Anderson from her award-winning  entertainment reporting or appearances on national television programs such as “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show,” HGTV and E! Entertainment’s Style Network.  An accomplished interior designer, and lifestyle expert, Moll Anderson’s celebrity and private clients are drawn to her “seductive living” brand.  She’s also an author, now on tour promoting her newest book, The Seductive Home.

Moll’s expanding digital footprint helps her share her brand message with a whole new audience.

Moll Anderson

I spoke with Moll recently about the process of expanding her personal brand, and asked her to share some of the things she has learned in the process.

Cindy Ratzlaff: Is there one lesson or takeaway that you’d share with first year entrepreneurs who are transitioning from corporate life to running their own businesses?

Moll Anderson: Hire a great Business consultant! If I leaned anything in business so far it’s that you need to know what your strong suits are! I am a total visual, creative and positive person. I’m smart enough to know that because I did not go to business school that I needed to hire someone that could guide me and challenge me continually. Most importantly help me to make a strong business plan. Always surround yourself with a strong and positive team.

Cindy Ratzlaff: How do you determine which new projects are right for your brand?

Moll Anderson: Continually ask yourself, “Does this help the brand?” For me, I am the brand so it’s quite simple. If it’s not good for the brand then we have our answer. Choose ventures that will aid you in advancing your brand in the direction you are pursuing. Set a path and follow it. Whenever I speak to marketing classes, I  tell them that my company and brand are unique. Why? I am the thing that my little company sells and it’s different for each and every company. For example, if you’re a company that sells cups, then you can hire salesman to go out and travel around to sell cups. When you think of my company, I am the cup. No one can sell me like I can; If I get sick or I don’t look good or I need to take time off, it affects the company. It’s just not the same for anyone else to show up.  I am the brand and the business.

Cindy Ratzlaff: Promotion is always challenging for entrepreneurs.  Any advice for entrepreneurs on what works best?  Advertising, publicity, social media?  What works for you and your brand?

Moll Anderson: The challenging part of promotion is the financial commitment. Print media is great but costly. However, in social media you can reach a lot of people quickly at a much more cost-effective rate. There comes a time in business, and with entrepreneurs, when you need to  say “Go big or go home.” Do it, do it right, or don’t do it at all. It will serve you well.

Cindy Ratzlaff: You’re a designer and you are very visual.  Where should start-ups focus their attention when developing their own visual identity for their brands?

Moll Anderson: Nothing should begin visually without first creating a strategic brand statement. You must know your brand and who your audience is before you can begin to start any visual. When you have your statement in place, you’ll find the visual easily follows because it speaks for the brand.

Cindy Ratzlaff: As a business owner or entrepreneur begins to grow and branch out with new brand extensions, they face challenges about how the new products fit their current brand. You’ve done a fabulous job of staying true to your core brand by adding new touch points for fans with video, television, books, and live events.  How do you determine what’s a good fit for “Brand Moll,” and do you have any guidelines you’d recommend to others facing expansion?

Moll Anderson: I’m very lucky in that, once again, I am the brand so for me it has to make sense. If you are authentic to what you sell and you believe with all your heart that what you are selling is important and needed then the doors open that are part of your path and doors close that are not. My favorite saying is “That’s mans rejection, is God’s protection”

Cindy Ratzlaff: What’s next? Tell us a little about where you see your brand going in the coming year.

Moll Anderson: Wow! I’m really excited about this year. We finally have turned a very important corner in gaining traction in media awareness. We still have a long way to go, but what I am experiencing is very positive. We are launching a new book this month, and are developing products that compliment our brand messaging.

Moll’s digital footprint includes a Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube Channel, Pinterest, a recurring guest column at Magazines.com and her own MollAnderson.com website.  She’s currently traveling to promote her newest book, The Seductive Home.

As entrepreneurs, we are all our own brands and everything we do or offer as products or services are our brand extensions. Asking ourselves the question “does this represent my brand” will help guide the development of brand you.

What are your biggest concerns, questions, or challenges in developing and delivering your brand message? Let me know and I’ll find the experts to answer your questions.

Large companies pay consulting firms big bucks for this information and Facebook gives it to entrepreneurs free of charge.

For newbies, you’ll find your Facebook Insights on the left hand side of your business or fan page under your avatar. Click on the Insights link and for the purpose of this tutorial, scroll down the page until you see a grid of your most recent posts called “page posts.”  We’ll be discussing the fourth column called “Engaged Users.”

Facebook Insights are a suite of information tools built into the Facebook platform to help you test and refine your marketing and branding strategy.  Understanding each of those metrics or insights is powerful information about your current communications style, the tribe you’ve gathered and whether or not your current messaging is hitting home or falling flat.

Engaged Users, according to Facebook, is a measurement applied to individual posts. It is the number of unique people who have clicked on a individual post. The data reflects actions taken on that post in a 28 day period.  There are several key pieces of information attached to this insight.

• Total Engaged Users: This overall number is interesting in and of itself and your insights can be sorted, high to low, to see which posts are garnering the most clicks. You can look for patterns, tone, and content to see which types of posts are most interesting to your current tribe. As a percentage of your total fans, this number also gives you an idea of the reach of your posts. If you have 20,000 fans and 12 engaged readers, it’s time to evaluate your conversation.
• Pie Chart: When you click on the Engaged Users number, you’ll see a pie chart to give you even more details about user behavior.  You’ll see metrics for photo views, other clicks and stories generated.
• Photo Views: The first number you’ll see tells you if users viewed your photos at full size.  This means they clicked on your photo to make it larger. This means they were highly motivated to interact with, spend time with, and look over your visual content.  This is an indication of how strongly Facebook values photos in their algorithm. Using photos in your posts will increase your likelihood of being served up in the news stream of your fans and Facebook believes (and I agree) that Facebook has evolved into a much more visual platform. Photos add value and appeal and attract more eyeballs to your content.
• Other Clicks: Other clicks is the measurement of additional actions your viewers took, within a post, such as clicking on the number of likes to see who else liked your post, people’s names, or the timestamp. Facebook says this is a strong indicator of the attention viewers are paying to your content. They’re digging deep, looking for more information, interacting with the content longer.
• Stories Generated: A story is generated when a fan likes, comments on, shares your post with his or her friends, answers a question or responds to an event. This is an important number because it reflects the ability of your content to cause a second action. Your fans actually read what you wrote, they were compelled to share, like or otherwise amplify your content, creating a story or action in their own news stream that subtly tells their friends they “endorse” you or at least found what you wrote to be engaging enough to make them take an action.
• Negative Feedback: This number tells you how many people hid your content in the newsfeed or otherwise gave it negative feedback, perhaps by blocking you or reducing the number of posts they see from you by choosing “only important.”  Again, this is great information and if this number begins to climb over time, you’ll know that some of the people you’ve gathered to your tribe are not resonating with your message. Do an audit of your posts and decided whether you want to adjust the message or gather a different tribe.  Both are valid choices.

Information gathered from insights is just that; information. What you do with that information is up to you. These insights can help you understand if you’re communicating to a receptive crowd or shouting into the dark. They can help you find “hot” topics that are important to your crowd so you can hit those more often. They can show you what doesn’t interest your readers and if what doesn’t interest them is what you care about most, then you’ll know you’ve got some work to do either on the message or on building a new, more diverse tribe.

Take a look at your fan page insights, and please let me know if you have questions.

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.

XYDO’s tagline is Social News Evolved and I have to say I think they’ve nailed it.  The individual buckets or lenses through which XYDO filters my news experience has been terrific.  About 80% of the news items served to me have been spot on in my target interest area.  The other 20% have at least been interesting.

After signing up for an account, I was able to choose the topics, areas of interest and daily briefs I was interested in receiving. I receive world news, top social media news, breaking news and other topics that interest me professionally.  I’ve elected to receive a daily brief of these headlines, which I’m able to scan in minutes each morning and share with my network, right from the brief.  XYDO offers me the opportunity to “teach” it what I like so I’ll receive more targeted news in the future.

In a recent call with XYDO co-founder, Eric Roach, I learned that they curate nearly 2,000 topics selected by their users.  What I love about XYDO is the fact that they don’t just serve me stories from trusted sources (which they do) but that they measure and cluster the stories based on the buzz about a topic, measuring social endorsement and applying their own algorithm  that prizes freshness.

Roach pointed out that because of this formula, XYDO often identifies breaking news and serves it to clients before it hits mainstream media like CNN.

So what’s new for XYDO? I told Roach that I use the briefs more often than I visit the website and that’s something that he would like to influence.  They’re working on improving the experience on the website with a major redesign, making it easier to navigate and will be launching an iphone and ipad app shortly that Roach promises will incorporate a “beautiful, elegant user experience.”  I also asked Roach how he plans to monetize XYDO and he mentioned corporate sponsorships are in the works in the near future.

Bottom line?  XYDO saves me time, serves me news I can use and I’m going to continue to use the service.  I recommend you take a look to see if it’s right for you.

What news aggregating site  or curator do you use?