10 tips for setting up Twitter for max success

20/07/2010 By Saz Bailey 7 Comments

Laying the right foundation…

I’ve just been making some bite size training videos for Social Media Marketing just for those people who don’t have time to complete full courses and need to take baby steps. Today was setting up your Twitter profile to lay a good foundation. I thought it might be useful to list the very basics of how to go about setting up your Twitter account so that you don’t do anything to trip yourself up down the line.

So here you go; my 10 tips for laying a great foundation for maximum success on Twitter.

Full Name ::

This is a directory listing. When people type your name to search for you they will put a space between first and last names so you should set your name likewise. If you don’t have you are risking not being found.

User Name ::

This is the name people see when you Tweet. If you are Blogging or generally branding yourself as an expert in your field then I strongly suggest you use your name here. It’s a social platform. People want to interact with real people.

If your name isn’t available then get creative with verbs – I use SazBaileyTweets. I advise against using numbers as this is what spammers do. People are wary and take a milli second to decide not to click.

Make it easy to read and connect with you by capitalise each word or placing an underscore between them. Many user names blend together so difficult to read and get passed by.

Profile Picture ::

Again if you are positioning yourself as your brand then you need a good picture of you looking directly at he camera. People will feel they connect with you if they can see your eyes. This equals more followers and more re-tweets!

Bio ::

Remember this is a fast paced social space. People need to be given reasons to connect with you. Be fresh, get creative. You can take inspiration from other people in your field. The more thought you give to this the more likely you are to connect with the people who are a good match for you. Again, more matched followers and more re-tweets!

Protect my Tweets ::

I know this sounds obvious but don’t check this as it locks your profile away from view!!!!

Mobile phone ::

It’s great idea to set up your phone to use apps or text to send tweets and pictures across from your phone. It will help you keep on the pulse and enable you to be more responsive and productive when away from your computer. We are after all in a mobile, virtual business!

Location ::

Some Twitter applications use your location so you need to consider if this is relevant to your venture.

Your website URL ::

Twitter only displays 18 characters. I suggest you drop the www and capitalise any individual words to massively increase click throughs. Twitter is a very skeleton service so you get little opportuntiy to promote your identity. Make sure your domain is as visible as possible.

Don’t use a shortened link like bit.ly or tiny URL. Again, spammers use this and people can be afraid of clicking through them.

Scheme ::

Make the effort to change the background of your Twitter Home page. Remember this is a people place, so show your character. The more authentic you are in setting up your whole profile, the more engaging you will be. If you don’t make the effort it looks like you don’t really care when others go to such an effort.

Don’t change the colour of your links. People are now pre-programmed to expect them to be blue. Don’t mess with them or you’ll risk hijacking your click throughs!

Direct Message new followers ::

It’s a good idea to send a Direct Message to your new followers. This is a good thing to do for two reasons; 1- it’s good relationship building, first contact sets a good impression and sets an expectation of your standards, 2 – it’s an opportunity to automate a message with a link to drive traffic to your Blog.

Now you’re set to leverage all the interaction you’ll be having in the Twittersphere!

Short and sweet but hopefully useful. If it has been helpful then be sure to RT! – Re-Tweet!

Thanks, I appreciate your interaction.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing, Twitter Tagged With: Top Tips, Twitter

7 ways to ‘work’ your Facebook Profile for online business

09/07/2010 By Saz Bailey 2 Comments

Saz Baileys' Facebook Profile

One of the easiest ways to build your seed online business is through connecting with likeminded people on Facebook. You can do this really easily through your Facebook personal profile. There are benefits to using Profile/Page/Groups – I’ll cover these in another post.

Many people find it difficult to separate the personal friend aspect of social networking from the wider use for business but once you get your head around correct implementation of privacy settings you can start to leverage the awesome potential of the most amazing networking environment you could hope for.

Working from your personal profile is a comfortable environment to get yourself started from. People will connect with you if you genuinely want to share your personal value with them. Once you have built a bit of a following, and your confidence, you can think about starting a Facebook Group or a Facebook Page to help you communicate in a more structured way.

So let’s get your Profile page up to scratch and get you connecting with people who want to here you……

Hint: don’t mix your message. Either do it properly or don’t bother using for business networking.

1. Image ::

RIght or wrong, your Profile image is the most immediate way that people will decide if they want to know you. You should think about the brand you are portraying. Is it professional, fun, quirky? People want to connect with people. The image should be of you – not a logo. You should look directly at the camera so they can see your eyes – it appears more genuine. Once you are established you should not change you Profile shot. People will be used to your picture and potentially ignore something they are not expecting.

2. Comment Box ::

Put a real friendly message here to connect with people. Be explicit about what you stand for. Be simple and direct – you only have a few words to make an impression.

If you have a web site or Blog put your URL in here. Make it a clickable link so that people are more likely to click through it by including the http:// before the domain. You can also drop the www and capitalise the individual words to make it cleaner and clearer to read. E.g. https://sazbailey.com

3. Friends ::

You should be networking with people who are going to support your business growth in terms of potential customers but also influencers and evangelists in your field. Now set your friends up to permanently display those who support your brand image to your visitors to re-enforce your commitment to what you are doing.

4. Opt-in ::

Your primary goal in creating a following – traffic to your Profile, Blog or Page must be to grow a list, a database of potential customers. You can set an Opt-in form underneath your friends list to capture Emails of visiting Facebookers.

5. Info tab ::

Create a really compelling Bio. This is your chance to let people hear what you are passionate about. Come alive. Let your voice be heard. Don’t be afraid to stand for something. You’ll be surprised that people want to be inspired. Your either about something….or your just not. You either know your own mind and have an opinion…. or you just don’t. Your either someone worth my attention….or I’ll just pass you by. Leap into my face and tell me why I should connect with you!

Make sure you complete the likes and interests to help people identify with you, making sure that plenty supports your brand. Facebook uses these as key words to find you if people are looking for what you are promoting.

6. Profile updates ::

If you have something quick to share or Tweet use this to keep yourself present in peoples news feeds. Remember profile updates cannot be ‘shared’ so your post won’t go any further. You can use a URL with http:// to enable people to click through to your Blog if you have one or other peoples content you’re syndicating.

7. Notes ::

If you want your content to be ‘shared’ across Facebook you should be creating Notes or if and when you get to Blogging, importing your Blog to your Notes. I have other posts that go further into the huge leverage potential of Notes.

Go now and action any of the things that you haven’t done. Come back and let me know if you changed anything and what difference you think it makes to connecting with people.

If this has helped you please share it with other Facebook users. Thanks so much.

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Facebook, Hello!, Networking, Social Media Marketing

Easy Peasy Ways To Maximise Facebook Time for Business

17/06/2010 By Saz Bailey Leave a Comment

A checklist to bookmark:

Entrepreneurs are by nature creative people, easily distracted by new directions and ideas, so being an Internet Entrepreneur can be a nightmare – the internet is the worst place in the world for being distracted!! Now concentrate that to Facebook……if your not careful Facebook can take over hours in your day.

If your seriously wanting to leverage your social networking for maximum effect in your professional role then you really need to try and curb the fun stuff to maximise your time by connecting with people in the most productive way. Once you’ve got that out of the way – it’s our choice how you spend the rest of your day!

So here are my tips – my check list – for staying connected whilst being as productive as I can:

(If you find this useful then Bookmark it to use daily – like I have :))

1. Set a timer to 15 mins

2. UPDATE YOUR STATUS – let people know what your up to, include URL’s to click through to your Blog if you have something of real value to share (use Ping.fm or Socialoomph.com to update all your social media accounts together)

3. CLEAN UP YOUR PROFILE PAGE – delete posts that don’t support your brand. If you’re concentrating on building your friends network for a launch then leave your connections in view. Both will leave a positive influence on viewers of your wall.

4. Go to your Home Page

5. REVIEW YOUR EMAIL INBOX – look for 1-1 emails where you’ll have meaningful connections. Remember you also receive updates from Groups, many people miss these, scan them quickly to see if there is anything that grabs your attention.

6. SCAN YOUR NEWS FEED – stay connected with people and find Friends it’s great place to showcase your expertise and value through your whole network. If your really short on time then look for posts that have the largest number of commentaries because –

1) your addition and expertise will hit all of their walls

2) you can quickly Friend people who are active in your area of interest.

7. REVIEW NEWS FEEDS OF FRIENDS who are influencers & evangelists for you – you should have your friends segmented into lists that help you manage how you communicate with them. Select the most influential friends lists to connect with in the time you have and again concentrate on posts that have high commentaries.

8. REVIEW STATUS UPDATES of your friends (Most Recent tab) – Many feed their blog posts which make it easy for you to get to their Blog directly to comment. Remember to share the love my fellow entrepreneurs!

9. ACKNOWLEDGE BIRTHDAYS – it’s a great opportunity to show you pay attention and make a personal connection. Try and be a bit more original than ‘Happy Birthday’ – show you know something about them if you can or offer them a personal gift in terms of how you can help them. Ensure your gift is genuine, don’t use it as a sales pitch!

10. REVIEW FRIEND REQUESTS – I advise you set perimeters here to make quick decisions i.e. target market definition/influencers/evangelists – remember you are looking to build a business.

11. REVIEW FRIEND SUGGESTIONS – Facebook will suggest friends to you based on previous connections. Again, have a criteria and if you decide to be-friend include a personal note explaining the value in your connection so they know you are genuine and not randomly spamming.

12. RESPOND TO EVENT INVITATIONS – don’t feel obliged to attend but do respond. Select those where you will add value to others or yourself.

13. RESPOND TO GROUP INVITATIONS – again, don’t feel obliged, but you can always join a Group to see if you can genuinely contribute your expertise for the benefit of the community and leave if that doesn’t transpire to be the case.

14. REVIEW NOTIFICATIONS – this is a good tool for prompting you to connect with people who are within your sphere of influence.

All the above might be obvious things to as they are right there on your Home Page. But just having a SET TIME and an ACTION checklist can make a massive difference to they way you operate.

Well alrighty, now you’ve done all that in double quick time you can have a bit of fun! Reward yourself by connecting with your ‘Favourites’ (you know – one of the lists you should set up to connect with those in your closest circle, those who light up your life, with privacy settings that show you at that costume party dressed as Fred or Wilma Flintstone. Careful though – I’d set that timer again if I were you!)

Has this helped you ? Did you bookmark? ……..I’d love to know. If you have time please comment below and share with others who come to mind. Thanks, I appreciate your support.

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Check list, Facebook, Productivity

Why Social Media Marketing?

16/06/2010 By Saz Bailey Leave a Comment

Well – it’s FREE – d’oh!

Seriously though, many, many people are not understanding the immense power of Social Media in business. It is clear that people who don’t use it for business networking purposes don’t ‘get it’. To them paid search campaigns are king but if your whole online marketing strategy is dependant on this then you leave yourself exposed. The thing about Social Media is that you really have to go about it the right way. The vast majority get it wrong. Frank Kern is an Internet Marketing GURU. He commented on one of our coaching sessions that he doesn’t see how it can deliver. My view; he just knows his thing well and does it exceptionally well. I noticed he’s appeared on Facebook adverts since then though!

Eric Qualman created this slide show on his Blog: Socialnomics to grab attention to the current statistics – it’s a great Blog to check out.

These create quite a compelling argument for using Social Media as a primary force in your Online Marketing.

I’ll be posting more about how to use Blogging and the matrix of wider Social Media to gain massive exposure to an audience that’s ready and waiting to hear what you’ve got to say – resulting in masses of free, pre-qualified traffic.

I noted some of the stats that stood out for me below…….

This year GenerationY will outnumber baby boomers & 96% of them have joined a Social Network (Source: Grunwald Associates National Study)

GenerationY & Z consider email to be outdated compared to social media (source: Metro Newspaper)

Social Media has overtaken porn as the No.1 activity on the web!!!!!! (source: Huffington post)

If Facebook were a country it would be the worlds 3rd largest country (source: Facebook)

Fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 females (source Fb blogg)

80% of twitter is outside of Twitter – mobile = anytime, anywhere (source: Attempting to relocate)

There are now over 200m Blogs (source: Technorati)

34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands (source: Universal McCanns, Social Media Research Wave3)

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations (source: Neilson Global Online Consumer Survey)

25% of search results for the worlds top 20 brands are links to user generated content (source: Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs)

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world – in the next year video usage is going to quadruple (source: TG Daily)

Only 14% trust advertisements (source: Marketing to the social web, Larry Weber)

Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser.

I hope this is useful information to you. If you’ve seen value in it please comment or share it.

Now go on and get social !!

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Hello!, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Marketing Statistics, Statistics

Top 10 Newbie Internet Marketing Mistakes

16/06/2010 By Saz Bailey Leave a Comment

A checklist to bookmark as you get started:

I was chatting with a friend last night. I’m coaching her in her first Online Business venture. There were 2 parts to the conversation, she was asking how to get started without wasting a whole heap of energy, time and money on stuff that was just noise, and I was wondering how I could give her some tips to get started without getting overwhelmed. This was me also thinking about how on earth I was going to start getting all my knowledge across in my Blog.

She said; ‘just tell me what the biggest mistakes I could make are’ ……so I did, and she did me a favour as it’s helped me get started in helping you as well.

So here you go……I hope my list helps you. If you’re not a newbie then pass it on to someone you would like to help.

Top 10 things NOT to do when your getting started:

10) Spamming social networks under the guise of ‘Networking’

Just don’t do it. Seriously. It’ suicide. Spamming is where you post your opportunity or URL all over other peoples spaces. You’re not connecting with any one person or group to give them any value. It exposes zero communication skills. It’s like entering someones home and spraying their walls with graffiti. I certainly wouldn’t ever invite them to any future parties. My door would be tight shut forever more.

9) Crying wolf in your email campaigns

Here’s another way to piss people off. Have you received emails that say Urgent! Last Chance! Confidential! only to open and find that it wasn’t really the whole truth. They’re obviously designed to grab your attention but they just insult your intelligence. There are smarter ways to get people to open your mail that won’t damage your reputation or personal branding, and burning your list. I’ll teach you.

8 ) Not targeting your market effectively

Some will tell you to build yourself a big list, even buy a big list. The bigger the better. Not so. I’d rather have 10 valued connections who I know love what I do than 10,000 random maybe’s. They trust me and value me so that when I actually have something to share with them, they are the first in line to buy from me. Your message should be crystal clear. Precision targeted marketing will give you a better prospect match, higher conversion rates which ultimately results in more income.

7) Trying to cut corners & save money in the wrong places

If you are committed to your life as an Internet Entrepreneur then you should take the time to learn about the tools of your trade. Find out from other people what they use and why. Notice what successful people use. Google product reviews. Things like Blogs, Auto-responders etc. have different functionality that you should consider in line with where you want to take your Online Business. Don’t just buy the cheapest to get started as you may be shooting yourself in the foot. You may ultimately outsource, you may hire others to do piece work for you, but you should have enough knowledge to make informed decisions.

6) Being too attached to your desired outcome

If your focus is always on what you want rather than how you can help people then you’re likely to repel them. You’ll come across as needy instead of having a higher purpose that’s in their interest. You should come from a place of wanting to serve. You should trust that you will attract the people with genuine interest in what your doing and then work out what value you can give them right away to retain their following. People will take action (with your help) when they are ready.

5) Give Google more attention than people

Do some SEO (sales engine optimisation) and then get on with connecting with people. I know the internet is a space connected by links and Google ‘owns’ how people find you through those links but seriously, you can give this far too much energy. Your energy should be used in connecting with people to spread your message. Provide great content and great value and people will find you.

4) Isolating yourself

I seriously suggest you get yourself 1) a community of like minded people….2) a Mentor or Mentors….3) a Coach. Being an Internet Entrepreneur can be inherently isolating. After all it just takes you and your laptop to get up an running – that’s what’s so great. But you’ll only get so far before you start to experience obstacles and hurdles that will wear you down. Don’t try to go it alone, you’ll waste time and money doing lots of things you don’t need to and risk throwing in the towel. Connect with like minded people, join networking groups and build yourself a mastermind to plug the skill sets your lacking.

3) Not investing daily in your own personal growth

Any wealthy person that you meet (I don’t just mean financially) will practice some type of intentional personal growth. Successful people thrive on expanding their comfort zone, they will seek out challenges that help them to grow as individuals. Adverse situations present them with opportunity. Set backs become a chance to review and do better. They don’t perceive failure as relevant to their situation because all circumstances advance their learning and therefore their growth. They live life on a higher positive note as they choose daily outcomes and design the results they want. I highly recommend you take steps every day to evolve. If you’re not evolving you’re standing still.

2) Failing to lead

Have clarity of purpose and evangelise what it is that you do. BE what you believe in. DO what you believe in. HAVE what you believe in. As an entrepreneur you are in the driving seat. You took a decision to do what you’re doing. You should know where your’re going & why your going there. If you don’t feel you’ve found the passion to lead then the time may not be right for you……keep searching within yourself, it will come.

1) Waiting until everything is ‘right’ and not taking ACTION

This is the No.1 area where people let themselves down in my book. The world is full of frustrated genius’ who can’t understand why they never made it. Oh, and there’s those who invest in the courses and the biz opps but never see any benefit through them. Your circumstances aren’t right, you don’t know enough yet, your website isn’t ready – it’s all procrastination. There’s a reason why only 3% of the population ‘make it’……that’s because they take MASSIVE ACTION. They don’t just start, they stay committed – taking persistent and consistent ACTION. They begin with their end in mind, stay unwaveringly focused on their passion and purpose, and take every little step it takes to get them there.

Well there you go!…….my TOP 10 DO NOT DO’s. I hope they help you today.

If you like the post please share it with people it may help. Just click below………..

To you’re unstoppable enthusiasm for getting started!!

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Be Do Have, Biggest Newbie Mistakes, Email Campaigns, List building, Personal Growth, Spamming, Success, Support Network, Taking Action, Top 10