In addition to using Facebook to promote my business, Organized Assistant, I create and manage Facebook pages for many of my clients, so I am always eager to learn new tips and techniques. After attending Mari Smith’s two sessions on Facebook at Social Media Success Summit 2010, I found myself hungering for even more information, so I ordered a copy of Facebook Marketing an Hour a Day, which she wrote with Chris Treadway.

Before reading the book, I had thought it would explain how you can maintain a strong presence for your business in only 60 minutes a day, but that’s not quite what it’s about. It is actually a sixteen-week program, taking you from planning to implementation and evaluating your results. Every day has an assigned task which should take approximately one hour to complete, making it ideal for readers who prefer a practical, structured approach to learning.

The “course outline” is as follows:

Month 1: Create the Plan and Get Started

Month 2: Establish Corporate Presence with Pages and Groups

Month 3: Create Demand with Facebook Ads

Month 4: Advanced Tactics and Campaign Integration

The principles are the same whether you are a solo entrepreneur or in charge of marketing for a major corporation, however, it is my impression that much of the material in the book would be more relevant to the latter. Quite a bit of space was devoted to how you can justify to management why Facebook marketing is important, and although this might be useful to me if I’m trying to sell the idea to a client, most of the people that I deal with simply can’t relate to a $10,000 marketing budget, and simply scaling down the numbers doesn’t necessarily make sense.

I was hoping that this book could teach me how to create the beautiful custom tabs you see on so many Facebook pages. It did not address that, but it provided enough insight that I have been able to learn the basics on my own and create a simple one for Kathy Stinson, and I’m looking forward to doing more in this area.

Even though it wasn’t quite what I expected, I am pleased to report that there is a wealth of valuable information in this volume, much of which is not limited to Facebook but is relevant to any form of social media marketing. As was discussed at WordCamp Toronto 2010, it’s next to impossible to talk about any component of social media in isolation, because they all work together so closely.

Facebook changes so often that no one can know for sure what the future will hold, so the Appendix containing the opinions of six industry experts on “The Future of Facebook” was particularly fascinating. It is clear that social media in general, and Facebook in particular, are going to continue to play a major role in people’s lives, so it’s going to become increasingly important for businesses to get involved if they don’t want to get left behind.

Whether or not you choose to follow the daily steps, this book is an excellent guide for anyone wanting a better understanding of how Facebook works and how they can leverage it to promote their business.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Book Review: Facebook Marketing an Hour a Day.

It’s hard to believe that the Summit is over. It was starting to feel like part of my regular routine, to pack up work early and start listing to great speakers for a while!

There were 18 sessions in total, and I told you a bit about the first seven in my previous posts Kicking off Social Media Success Summit 2010 with Guy Kawasaki and Social Media Success Summit continues… Rather than providing an overview of the remaining 11, I’ve decided to share the nine things I learned that I found most interesting or valuable, and that I’ll be most likely to use. Some of these were new concepts to me, and others important reminders of things I knew but may not be doing as well as I should.

1. Not only does the Tweetmeme button make it easy for people to share your blog posts on Twitter, because of its prominence it also encourages them to do so. It also provides you with metrics, because it displays the number of tweets that link to your post, not just those tweeted via the button. (@GuyKawasaki)
2. It’s better to use the Networked Blogs application rather than Notes to import your blog feed to Facebook. For one thing, it brings in your posts more quickly, so people get to read them when they’re fresh. Secondly, when your friends or fans click on the link, they are taken to your actual blog, which is of course good for traffic, but it also means that any comments will be left on your blog, instead of having some on your blog, some on your personal Notes, and some on your business Notes. (@MariSmith)
3. You can easily export your LinkedIn contacts to be imported into your email application. (@LewisHowes)
4. If you think of your website or blog as your home base, your various social media profiles are your outposts to direct people back to your home base. You should choose the outposts that are used by the people in your target market. (@JayBaer)
5. 25 to 50% of users access social media via mobile phone, so many of us are using mobile marketing and don’t even know it, so this market should not be ignored! (@KimDushinski)
6. Automation is important, however, rather than substituting for active participation, it should be used to give you more time to engage with your audience. Overdoing it may cause people to hide your feed or stop following you. (stressed by nearly everyone!)
7. Titles of blog posts are very important! People are much more likely to click through to a post with a compelling title, and titles with numbers in them generate three to four times as many clicks! In addition, using appropriate keywords in your title will help with search engine positioning. (@DeniseWakeman)
8. There is an Editorial Calendar plug-in for WordPress which is ideal if you decide to post specific types of posts on certain days. (@ChrisGarrett)
9. To be effective on social media, you can’t just show up – you need to have specific goals, a plan to achieve those goals, and a way to measure your results. (message carried throughout the Summit)

I hope these tips are helpful to you!

I’ll be sharing further details of these strategies and much more in my upcoming Social Media Strategies for Small Business Workshop in Hamilton. Hope to see you there!

Photo Credit: Mark Smiciklas, Intersection Consulting

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Top 9 Things I Learned at Social Media Success Summit 2010.

With 18 sessions over a three-week period, I’m finding it a challenge to fit them all into my schedule, so if you were hoping that I’d blog about each one, you may be disappointed. I will, however, do my best to let you know what you’ve missed by not signing up, with the help of some of the other participants.

Since my last post, six more sessions have taken place:

Optimizing Your Facebook Fan Page for Profits with Mari Smith

This was fantastic, and I actually did cover this one over on my other blog, Your Organizing Business, because it tied right in with a presentation I made earlier this week.

5 Ways to Measure Social Media Marketing Success with Jason Falls

Another great session! Jason began by pointing out that to measure your ROI on social media, like anything else, you first need to have specific, measurable goals and objectives, then develop strategies to help you achieve those goals, and make a to-do list based on those strategies. Your goals will depend on the reasons you’re using social media; some of the most common ones are:

• Branding and awareness
• Community building
• Customer service
• Research and development
• Direct sales

He gave excellent examples of businesses who are successfully using social media in each of the above areas, and suggested some free and low cost monitoring tools, including www.socialmention.com and www.trackur.com.

How a Chicago Pizza Franchise Used Social Media to Create Raving Customers (A Case Study) with Ramon De Leon

Knowing that I couldn’t fit all the sessions into my schedule, I decided to skip this one, thinking that the strategies used by a pizza franchise would not be relevant to my business or those of my clients, most of whom also run small home-based businesses. When I read Nelson Wee’s write-up, I realized that I was mistaken, so I’m glad I’ll have the chance to listen to the recording later on.

All three of the above sessions were also covered in Randy Duermyer’s Day 2 Wrapup: Social Media Success Summit 2010 (#SMSS10).

Getting the Most Out of LinkedIn: The Business Social Network with Lewis Howes

It’s hard to say whether which was more valuable: this one or Mari Smith’s session on Facebook. Both were jam-packed with information that I can’t wait to put to use.

Lewis Howes confirmed my suspicion that most of us just aren’t using LinkedIn to its full potential. He said that it may not be the largest social network, but it is the strongest, and that one of its most powerful features is the ability to export your connections to Outlook and other email applications – something I had not realized. He also stressed the importance of optimizing our profiles by using appropriate keywords in our headlines, current and past work experience, summary, and specialties.

Unfortunately, because there were so many people trying to access LinkedIn during the session, we knocked it offline.

How Big Businesses Are Leveraging the Power of Social Media – A Panel Discussion with John Bernier from Best Buy, Marla Erwin from Whole Foods, and Sarah Molinari from Home Depot

I passed on this one, for the same reason that I missed Ramon De Leon’s, but I may listen to the recording at some later date.

3 Reasons You Need a YouTube Marketing Strategy (and Tips to Help You Generate Results) with Greg Jarboe

I’m not a huge fan of online video myself, because I’m a fast reader and I don’t have the patience to sit and watch a video when I could read the information more quickly, but I’m seeing it used more and more, so I was quite eager to learn more about YouTube. For some reason, this particular session was much shorter than the others so it wasn’t very in-depth, but I did learn some important tips about optimizing a video for YouTube search, which is quite different than optimizing for Google.

For those wanting to learn more, Greg recommended YouTube’s Creator’s Corner blog or his own book, YouTube and Video Marketing an Hour a Day.

Randy Duermyer also covered these three sessions in his Day 3 Wrapup: Social Media Success Summit 2010 (#SMSS10).

I’ve learned so much already that it’s hard to believe that we’re less than halfway in! I’ll be back next week with some more highlights.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Social Media Success Summit continues….

I hate to say it, but the end of summer is not very far away. I’m not talking about the official end of summer on September 21, but the start-up of fall activities. In fact, in some places, they’ve already gone back to school!

Even when the school year had no bearing on my own schedule, I’ve seen September as the ideal time to establish new routines, even better than New Years Day. After all, New Years is so tied up with the holiday season that it’s hard to really focus on making positive changes, but in September, many of us are getting back into a regular routine after vacation or a more relaxed schedule. So why not start off on the right foot?

I know that one area where many of us could benefit is using social networking sites more effectively. Social networking can be lots of fun, and because of that, it’s easy to lose track of why you’re doing it and to spend time on activities that don’t benefit your business. It’s fine to use these sites to stay in touch with friends and family, and to get to know business contacts better, but if your reason for joining a social media site in the first place is to get more clients, it’s important not to lose sight of that goal.

On Friday, August 14, Biana Babinsky, who is a social networking and marketing expert, is presenting a free teleseminar on How To Get Clients With Social Networking. In this class Biana will teach you how to get more results from your social networking, while actually spending less time on it. For access to this free call, simply enter your email address on the How To Get Clients With Social Networking registration page. If you’d like to establish a productive social networking strategy, this call could be just what you need!

Don’t wait to think about changes you’d like to make until it’s time to put them into practice! Whether it’s marketing or some other aspect of your business, a little time spent planning can pay huge dividends.

Graphic Courtesy of Mark Smiciklas, Intersection Consulting

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Using Social Networking to Grow Your Business.

The second workshop I attended at the Forum on Virtual Assistance (FoVA) was Creating a Marketing Budget & Plan to Help Your Business Grow. The session was presented by Jeannine Clontz, the recipient of this year’s Thomas Leonard International Virtual Assistant of Distinction Award.

A week or so prior to the conference, I received a marketing budget worksheet which I was to fill out before attending, so I suspected this wasn’t going to be one of those sessions where you just sit and listen to the speaker – and I was right. In fact, the budget was only one of seven sections of the worksheet which we completed with Jeannine’s guidance. The others were:

• Developing your Ideal Client Profile
• Locating your Target Market
• Listing what problems our prospects have and how we can solve them
• Listing the different marketing media we will use
• Creating a detailed plan for each medium
• Drafting response e-mails for different scenarios

The whole exercise was quite eye-opening, and I was able to come up with some great new ideas as well as expanding on those I already had.

Since having a documented plan makes it a lot easier to make decisions when various marketing opportunities arise and to respond to inquiries on a timely basis, it tied in very nicely with the workshop on Standard Operating Procedures which I attended next, and which I’ll blog about in an upcoming post.

In addition to the exercises, some of the interesting things Jeannine covered in the workshop were:

• You should plan to spend 5 to 10% of your sales goal on marketing.
• The best testimonials describe measurable results.
• Most clients prefer to pay for individual services or packages rather than an hourly rate, so they’ll know exactly what they’re getting and how much it will cost.

To learn how to create your own marketing plan and lots more about starting and growing a home-based business, check out Jeannine’s book, Enterpreneurial Freedom.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Creating a Marketing Plan.

Even before I started blogging, I was sharing helpful articles on the main Organized Assistant website, and when there became too many to be user-friendly, I set up OrganizedArticles.com. In addition to my own, you’ll find articles by Marcia Francois on organizing, C.J. Hayden on marketing, Donald Wetmore on time management, and many other experts in their respective fields. If you haven’t already been there, be sure to check it out! New articles are added every week, so you might even want to sign up for the RSS feed or an email subscription.

We’ve recently made it easier for authors (or their virtual assistants) to submit articles to OrganizedArticles.com with a simple submission form. No need for you to worry about formatting, html code, or anything else! Simply copy and paste your text into the appropriate fields, and we’ll do the rest. We can’t promise to publish every article we receive, but Scott and I personally review every one, so if it’s well written and fits under the theme of Maximizing Your Business and Your Life, there’s a good chance we’ll use it.

Come on – show us your stuff!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Read Articles? Write Articles? Read This!.

New business owners are often advised that public speaking is one of the best ways to promote their business. If you’ve been afraid to try this free form of marketing, you’re not alone – according to Chase’s Calendar of Events 2009, 97% of Americans have a fear of public speaking. This is not news! Consider this, said over 100 years ago:

“There are two types of public speakers:
those who are afraid and those who are liars.”

Mark Twain

In other words, there are very few people who are NOT afraid to stand up and speak in front of a group – this includes the many polished speakers you may have seen and heard in your life. They may not appear to be afraid, but they probably are. And if they’re not, they probably were at one time. So how can YOU overcome this fear? Here are a few suggestions.

You could start by reading a book, such as Dale Carnegie’s Public Speaking For Success or The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking. There are also hundreds of articles online on overcoming the fear of public speaking. Just reading about public speaking probably won’t give you the confidence to actually do it, but it may motivate you to move on to the next step.

Sign up for a seminar through the Continuing Education Department at your local high school or community college. I did this, and although not everyone had the opportunity to speak in class because it was only a single session, I was able to pick up some valuable tips in a “safe” environment.

Thousands of people around the world belong to Toastmasters. I’m not a member myself, but I know several people who are, and they swear by it. I once had the opportunity to co-present with a Toastmasters member, and I learned strategies from her that I continue to use to this day. (By the way, they have some great free resources on their website, including an article, The Fear of Public Speaking: 20 Ways to Get Over It!)

If you’re more comfortable with one-on-one support, work with a speaking coach until you’re ready to go public.

Just bite the bullet and do it! It’s easiest if you start with a small group of people that you already know, such as a networking group that you attend on a regular basis. This is basically what I did, and I’m not going to lie to you and say it was a piece of cake, but I didn’t make a fool of myself, and if I made any mistakes, nobody knew it but me.

Local groups are looking for speakers all the time, so there’s no shortage of opportunities out there. Once you get known as an expert in your field, people will even be willing to pay for you to come and speak for their organization. The great thing is, once you’ve developed your material for one presentation, you can reuse it for other groups, reworking it as needed. That same material can also be developed into articles, teleclasses, e-books, and maybe even a book!

Public speaking doesn’t only provide benefits to your business – it can help you grow personally. You become a more effective communicator, and more confident in yourself. Don’t deny yourself this opportunity!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Speak Up and Succeed!.

As small business owners, it’s helpful to know how new clients have heard about us, so we know which of our marketing and/or advertising methods are effective. It can be as simple as adding the question to the contact form on your website, or remembering to ask every time you receive an inquiry, but to get a good overall picture, you also need a system for tracking this information. We recently compiled our data for last year, and the results look like this:

I was thrilled to see that the highest percentage of business resulted from referrals from other clients – obviously we’re doing something right! I wasn’t surprised at the outcomes for live networking, as it has traditionally been the most important means of connecting with potential clients. Over the last few months, we have begun seeing positive results from online networking, so it will be interesting to see if these numbers shift in 2009.

If you don’t yet have a system in place to track your results for the year, it’s not too late to start! Let us know if we can be of help.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Where do you find your clients?.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve described many ways that an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant can support your online marketing activities. Today I will wrap up this series with a look at a task that you’re likely to find valuable even if you have the time and desire to carry out your own marketing activities. Regardless of the forms of Internet marketing you choose to promote your products and services, your efforts will nearly always be more profitable if you begin with some research.

Here are just a few of the types of research a VA can conduct to support your Internet marketing.

An IMVA can help you:

• locate websites related to your industry or which your target market is likely to frequent. These may be social networking sites, blogs, article directories, business directories, regional directories, or other sites where it will be beneficial for you to have a profile or to advertise. Although many sites offer free listings, others require a fee, and your virtual assistant can compile a list of these sites and their costs, so you can decide the best use of your advertising dollars.
• locate ezines and newsletters that are popular with the people you want to reach, where you can submit articles or advertising.
• locate people for you to connect with. Identifying potential customers is one possibility, but certainly not the only one. Perhaps you’d like to interview someone for your blog, invite them to be a guest blogger, or offer to write a guest post for their blog. Maybe you’d like to trade links on your blog or website with someone whose business is complementary to yours. Or maybe you just want to learn how they’ve become successful, by following them on Twitter or reading their blog.
• suggest topics for you to write about in your blog or articles, by identifying current trends and themes that may interest your target audience.
• research data to support an article or blog post you are writing.
• recommend the technology that will best suit your needs, whether it’s for email marketing, blogging, or some other form of Internet marketing.
• identify the right keywords and phrases to use in your website, blog, and/or profiles, to ensure that your messages are found by the people you are trying to reach.

Certainly you could do your own research, but is that really how you want to spend your time? Partnering with a virtual assistant gives you more time to do what you love to do – whether it be developing products or delivering services – that made you decide to start your business in the first place! In addition, an Internet Marketing VA can offer up-to-date expertise as well as a fresh perspective on your situation, so rather than thinking of it as an added expense, consider it an investment in your future success.

This concludes my series on Internet Marketing Virtual Assistance. I’ve listed the previous entries below in case you missed any of them or would like to read them again.

• What is an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant?
• How an Internet Marketing VA Can Support Your Social Networking Activities
• How an Internet Marketing VA Can Support Your Article Marketing Activities
• How an Internet Marketing VA Can Support Your Email Marketing Activities
• How an Internet Marketing VA Can Support Your Blogging Activities
• How an Internet Marketing VA Can Support Your Search Engine Optimization

I’m sure that you and your business can benefit in one or more of these areas, and perhaps this series has even inspired you to come up with ideas of your own. Please keep this information in mind as you create your marketing plan for 2009, and don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like to explore this possibility further.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on How an Internet Marketing VA Can Support Your Business with Research.

Today I will continue my series on Internet Marketing Virtual Assistance with a look at the many ways a virtual assistant can help improve the chances that your website(s) will come up in the first page of results on the search engines.

Your search engine positioning is affected by a number of factors. Some of these factors are within your website, and others are outside it, and an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant can work on either or both aspects of your SEO (search engine optimization) campaign.

To make your website more search engine friendly, an IMVA can perform any or all of the following tasks:

• Keyword research to determine what words or phrases people use when searching for your services or products
• Identifying the search terms your competitors are using, as well as those they have overlooked
• Editing your website’s content and/or metatags to incorporate important keywords
• Reviewing your website to make sure that its structure and navigation are search engine friendly

If your VA is also your web designer, he or she can complete these tasks while creating your website, which will give you a definite advantage as soon as your site is launched!

The search engines estimate the value of your website based in part on the number of other sites linking to it. There are many ways your virtual assistant can help you get listed on other websites, including:

• Submitting your site to general, industry-specific, and regional directories
• Submitting articles you’ve written to article directories and other appropriate websites
• Submitting your press releases to press release distribution sites
• Submitting your blogs, podcasts, or videos to relevant websites
• Contacting owners of complementary websites to request a listing on their links page

Inbound links are best acquired gradually over a period of time, so you will benefit greatly from working with a VA on an ongoing basis. When you form a long-term relationship with your virtual assistant, he or she will become very familiar with your business, and will be able to suggest even more strategies to free up your time and increase your profits. To learn how we can help you with your Internet Marketing and other projects, contact me to request a free 30 minute telephone consultation.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on How an Internet Marketing VA Can Support Your Search Engine Optimization.