Tweet

Are you paying people to update their Facebook profile?

Guest post by: Ian Berry

Article Overview: What is your strategy for using social media to grow your business? Most people when I ask them this question can't answer it because they don't have a strategy!

Are you paying people to update their Facebook profile?

My strategy for growing my business is to understand the challenges people in my niche markets face and the causes of these challenges, and then post my solutions in a multitude of social media channels such as articles like this one, my monthly ezine, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Slideshare, just to name a few.

I then have conversations with people who download my solutions and I convert a percentage of these people into my clients. Some of these people become part of my community and refer me onto other people.

What is your strategy for using social media to grow your business?

Most people when I ask them this question can't answer it because they don't have a strategy!

Many business leaders ban the use of social media during working hours. I regard this head in the sand approach as stupid and know it is ultimately very costly to business growth.

Some leaders I know allow employees to use the internet for non-core business purposes before 8 am, between 12 and 2 pm and after 4 pm. This is sensible however if such a policy is not part of an overall strategy then less than desired results are likely.

Are you paying people to update their profiles and engage in social media activities? The answer is yes whether you like it or not, or have given your employees permission or not.

Having a strategy for using social media in your business means you can get a return on your investment in your employees use of social media and if you involve your employees in the design of strategy they are more likely to execute it and not abuse the privileges you give to them.

What is your strategy for using social media to grow your business?

Be the difference you want to see in the world

Ian

Founder Differencemakers Community

Related Articles
  The New Facebook Profile
  Facebook Marketing Tips and Techniques
  How to Market Your Business Opportunity on Facebook - Online Marketing Secrets
  15 Ways to Create High Visibility with FaceBook
  Using Social Networking to Boost Your Business
  10 Facebook Tips for Professionals
  Getting in Social Media Marketing
  How To Use Facebook For Business | 6 Powerful Tips!
  How to Promote your Business on Facebook for Free
  Facebook Business Page- A New Approach through SEO in the Social World
  How to use online media to network and promote you and your business.
  Facebook is not just for kids anymore
  Tips to increase your visibility on Facebook
  22 Places for Coaches to Promote Teleseminars and Webinars
  How to Make Friends on Facebook
  Five Tips for Marketing Your Book on Facebook
  Facebook skeptics…
  Social Media Management Tips
  Ten Things You Didn't Know About Facebook
  Generating free leads with social media - 4 ways to set up and use facebook to market your business

Article Tags: Strategy Socialmedia



Related Forum Posts
Re: On Which Social Media Sites Are You Most Active? - Facebook, profile and pages, twitter and Youtube, with not so much emphasis on Twitter as It seems to be a spam fest every time I go on their. Facebook can be tricky, keeping business away from personal, can use a page or a different profile, just set up different email address and create another profile as normal, thats what works for me anyways
Re: Social Media Marketing - Corporate Vs. Small Business - Hi Jeff, A technique that I consider to be "Social Media Marketing" would be when a brand creates a profile on Facebook and then begins adding people they found in related groups as "friends". For instance, Prince Tennis requested to become friends with me because they saw that I had joined a Facebook group supporting their products. By adding me and other consumers as friends on their Facebook profile, Prince Tennis is able to market directly to its target audience. I've also seen record labels do the same for their music artists.
Re: Are you going to use Facebook Timeline? - Hi apu, I Recently used Facebook Timelines, actually it seems like a Facebook blog which makes profile page more attractive but i don't think it will help in internet marketing because it also slow the speed of Facebook Page. Share your Experience!
Facebook -- personal vs. business? - If you use Facebook -- do you use your profile primarily for business, personal, or a mix of both? I started on Facebook for business reasons. I accepted every friend request, and searched for new friends of friends. I posted tons of business posts. I quickly built up several thousand "friends". Then, I discovered old friends -- the real kind -- on Facebook. Old school friends, then family, started appearing. I wanted to be their friends too. So I got kind of conflicted on what I should be saying on Facebook. And I know that along the way, some of my family/friends un-friended me because they were overwhelmed with all the business stuff I was posting. At the same time, I started to hate going on Facebook. Tons of friend requests from people I didn't know (because I was friends with 157 of their friends, etc.) Event invites clogged my inbox. I stopped reading my news feed and delegated to my VA to take care of friend requests and delete event invites, and clear out my inbox. Then I got bold. I decided that my Facebook profile was for me, my friends (real ones, that I'd met both personally and professionally, but really had a relationship with) and not for casual, 3rd and 4th-party friends of friends. I created a fan page for my business, then I did a huge purge and unfriended over half of my "not-actually-friends". Now if I get a friend request, if I don't actually know them, I have a standard response that encourages them to connect with me on my Twitter profile or my business fan page instead, and if they are actually someone I know who has mistakenly been ignored, to send me a message. Now I love going to Facebook. I still see my *real* business friends, plus my personal friends and family. I enjoy reading my news feed because it is news about people I truly care about. And I'm working on amping up my Facebook Fan Page, to get more business impact from it.
Re: First Facebook Ad - Experiment! - Facebook ads are very easy to set up and manage. One difficulty I found, however, is in the difference between Facebook ads and Google ads. With Google you try and find the best keywords for your product, but with Facebook you try to home in on the demographics of the customer. Trouble with that is that I felt that anybody who has keywords such as "Internet business" on their Facebook profile is likely to **already have** what I am offering! (Of course, they might be looking for a new and better version but...). I have just broadened my ads appeal to "small business" and "independent business owner" to see if that makes a difference. It adds about 20,000 people to my potential market...


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

THE “SECRET RECIPES” OF LEADERSHIP

Mistakes Made by New or Inexperienced Sales Staff

Are You An Accidental Consultant?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.