How to Manage Your Facebook Connections

Halt! Who goes there - friend or fan?

Because your personal facebook profile and your business fanpage are inextricably linked, that can really cause some confusion about how to manage and separate your contacts.

Finding the best way to keep the personal friends on my profile page separate from my business friends and colleagues has been something of a struggle, and I admit I do keep changing my mind.

At first I thought it seemed logical to steer business connections away from my profile page, and invite them to 'like' my fanpage. But then I realized that if a business contact makes my fanpage a 'favourite page' through their own fanpage, they're not going to get any of my status updates. Not a very good way of keeping in touch.

I really don't think there's a simple answer, and I know the inability to separate personal and business is a sore spot for many people.

Here's the best solution I have come up with: I created a 'business' list within my friends by going to 'Edit Friends' and clicking on the option 'Create a List'. Now I can accept friend invitations from business contacts (and extend them), and share Words By Wendy posts with them. At the same time, by customizing my privacy settings, I can ensure that they aren't able to see pictures and posts from my personal friends.

Then it's simple enough to invite them to 'like' my business page.

If anyone has any suggestions to add to this, I would love to hear them!

Best wishes to all my 'business friends'.

Self-Education as a Marketing Tool

One of the greatest challenges for me, as a solopreneur, is staying on top of trends and constantly trying to improve my knowledge and skills.

Even if you work in a large company, learning still has to be a conscious decision, but many of us operate alone from a single-person office; and we all know how insular that can become if we don't get outside once in a while!

Obviously education can go way beyond 'no-budget', but there are a huge number of free webinars and tele-seminars out there, and of course the public library is immensely helpful.

I actually learned about the social media marketing course I'm taking from a free webinar. It ended up costing me money when I decided to register for the program, but I'm sure it will be worth it in terms of long-term investment.

The reason I'm really mentioning this now is because I just signed up for two days of free online seminars through International Freelancers Day.

There are talks from lots of incredibly successful business people, and I'm really excited about how much great information should be available.

I hope that's helpful - let's all keep learning!

Writing to Build Relationships

One of the things I'm really finding as I explore the world of social media, is that the tone of your writing will inevitably become the tone of your relationships.

It's probably not so obvious in shorter posts like tweets, but when you're blogging or writing longer facebook entries, for instance, it's important to use the chatty tone that you would use in a face-to-face conversation. That's how you create a conversation where your reader feels like a trusted, respected friend. It's actually a great way to create some rapport and is more likely to result in an audience that is interested and engaged.

As a copywriter that's a very familiar concept to me, because that conversational tone is one of the keys to successful marketing content. In fact, when writing sales copy, I try to find out how the best salesman would speak to his prospects and replicate that tone of voice. If the audience is made up of engineers or techs the tone might be full of technical terms and jargon, but for the most part it will be chatty and informal.

I also had a conversation with a colleague today about dumbing down your copy. She was worried that her prospects would be insulted if she wrote in a tone beneath their level of comprehension. It's actually quite possible to write simple, readable copy without being patronizing, and it makes good sense to use language that can be understood by the least literate members of your potential audience (I guess what I should have said there was 'it makes good sense to write in a way that anyone can understand'!)

So, if you take anything away from this, just remember to write as if you are having a face-to-face conversation, and you won't go far wrong.

Content Strategy for Social Media Marketing

If you're going to make social media part of your marketing mix, it's vital to develop a content strategy, just as you would with your print or web marketing.

In creating that strategy the most important question you need to ask is "what will provide the most value for my target audience?" Because, just like the readers of your print materials and your website, your audience is distractible and unforgiving. Keep them engaged and provide value, or they will zone out, or opt out.

So, what does that content strategy look like? A simple way to start is by developing a formula for the type of posts or articles that will provide the greatest value for your audience. Quick Tips, How To, Top Ten Mistakes - all great starting points to at least get you thinking about what information people may benefit from.

The post ideas can then of course be adapted to become longer blog articles or short, helpful snippets for twitter or facebook. No need to reinvent the wheel every time you post.

The more I get into this social media, though, the more I realize that there is such a thing as too much information. Just as with email marketing, I believe that daily posts are probably too much for an overwhelmed audience. So, consider, before you post anything, whether it really has a value.

I'm finding this strategy fairly simple to implement for Words By Wendy, as I explore this world of social media. Larchwood, who sells trees both to consumers and the landscaping trades, will have updated inventory lists to post on the Notes section of facebook. But for Greentree it is hard to see how building a social media community can work for a company that really has little potential for repeat business. Still working on that one!

So, remember to think value when planning your next posts.