We recently had the honor of participating in the new tips booklet produced by Paulette Ensign of Tips Products International.

This was an esteemed group of social media experts and how they were able to use social media to their advantage. Here are just a few of the tips they shared from “Tips from a Collection of Experts”.

Susan Chodakiewitz of Booksicals. 

• Invite visitors to participate in some aspect of your product. It can be to help name a character in your book or the location for the setting of the book.

Dr. Debra Condren author of Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word

• Take the pressure off. Hire a Virtual Assistant with social media expertise.

JoAnn R. Corley-Speaker, Author, Coach

• Use a company Facebook page to indirectly advertise. Have the page show pictures, videos, and audios of customers talking about and/or using your products or services.

Jan Wallen-Selling Your Expertise LLC

• Differentiate yourself. Write your profile like a story. Tell people why you and your company are the best ones to hire so they contact you.

These are just a few excepts from the booklet. To download your free copy, you can go to http://www.serenityva.com/tipsbooklet.htm

I currently manage and maintain several business pages for clients on Facebook.

Over the past couple of years they have seen an increase in sales and interest in their services as well.

When using this tool it is important to remember that Facebook is just that, a tool. It is one of many, but I have found it to be extraordinarily useful.

Here are just a few ways in which you can use your business page to promote:

1. Post items to your status updates that pertain to your area of expertise using keywords in the content.

2. Set up Google Alerts to find content to share with your fans. This can be from blogs and other websites.

3. Use the Events function to create events that you are hosting or promoting.

4. If you have a blog, import your blog into your “Notes” on your business page and you will have ready-made content every time you post a new entry to your blog.

5. If you know Facebook Markup Language (Facebook’s version of HTML) or know of someone that does, add your newsletter sign up box to your page. You can even add your products as well. See side bar at http://www.facebook.com/TheMusiciansGuidetoBrides

6. Create a music library of your music and share with your fans.

7. Post your videos to your page. If you are a musician, post your music videos. If you are an artist, post videos of the creation of your art.

8. Post photos and lots of them. They are a great way of showing you at your gigs, book signings or gallery openings.

There are many ways in which to use Facebook to promote. For more ideas on missed opportunities on Facebook, go to Serenity Virtual Assistant Services to receive your free tutorial on how to create a Facebook profile or purchase the CD  or transcript of “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook”.

The countdown has begun . . . are you going to meet the deadline? Last week I shared on Facebook with you the exciting new Stay-on-Track program recently launched by Ariane — and today I am writing this blog posting to make sure you understand what it is that she is offering . . FOR F.REE!
 
If you are anything like me, you’re a visual-experience-oriented person — who sometimes struggles with online information, especially when it’s packed full of IMPORTANT career-boosting information. I get overwhelmed to say the least, and panic at the thought that my money will be wasted because I might miss some of the crucial information provided by the speakers. Will I remember what I needed to take away from the session, will I understand what they were trying to portray to me?
 
With the Stay-on-Track program, it’s like Ariane read my mind and said… “I will prepare the Telesummit for you in CD and transcript form — AND I’ll also give you the Stay-on-Track program to make sure you succeed!” She WANTS you to get all the fruit off the tree… and she makes that possible for F.R.E.E if you purchase the Home-study program on or before midnight (Eastern Time), on April 15th!
 
The Stay-on-Track Program is a simple system to organize, prioritize, and create YOUR action plan as you hear the Telesummit presenters — so you’re immediately able to feed your energy and the wealth of information into creating and developing your first project!
 
No more feeling like you are flapping in the wind… the Stay-on-Track Program allows you to be grounded in your creative process and utilize all the valuable information from the Telesummit Home-study Program!

This is an ongoing conversation. How does one measure their ROI on Facebook?

Facebook has provided a tool in which we can measure our ROI on Facebook if you have a fan page.  I can go into my fan page and look at the “insights” section on the left hand side of your page.  This is where I can measure exactly what kind of traffic I have had. It measures everything from male/female, to where your fans are coming from.

Of late, I have had some success with clients and their fan pages. For instance, I have several clients that have a newsletter. We have now taken those newsletters and “sliced and diced” them. We have posted them as notes on their Facebook fan pages such as Joan Stewart’s, aka, The Publicity Hound. What this has shown is an increase in sales.

How do we know that? Well, when I post the note, there is always a call to action. Such as, “read more at ….” or “sign up for my newsletter at….”. We have also been “tagging” her friends in these notes. You have to be careful when “tagging’ as it can be overly promotional, but if you believe it is of value to them, by all means, do.

On social media sites, do you broadcast when you’re leaving your
home or office?

Lots of people do. And every day, their avatars and “Here’s where
I am now” messages are showing up at PleaseRobMe.com, a site that
mocks them for announcing to the world that they aren’t at home
and actually makes it easier for burglars to rob them.

You put yourself at risk when you use Foursquare.com, a social
media site that makes it easy to “check in” with your friends, in
conjunction with blasting out those messages to your Twitter and
Facebook friends.

Find out how it works and what you can do keep yourself from
showing up at this nasty site.

This post was originally written by Joan Stewart.

Last week one of my clients came to town. What a week she picked too! She is from Annapolis and her timing was impecible. We had sunny skies and they got 4 feet of snow.

She is a fairly new client and I was thrilled to actually meet her. Her name is Kristina Von Rosenvinge who specializes in self-growth and relationship skills for personal and business success. Her website is GrowWithKristina.com (I have her permission to mention her in this posting).

I have been managing her Facebook page and doing odd jobs here and there for her, but we had not really defined what my role was and how I was going to assist her outside of social media.

So, I picked her up at her hotel on a Sunday morning, we met in the lobby, shook hands (I then gave her a hug) and we proceeded to have coffee at the Hotel del Coronado foundly known as “The Del”. It is a San Diego landmark and if you have never been there and are ever in the area, it’s a must see.

We walked around the hotel for a bit as I wanted to show her the beauty of the architecture and the decor. We then ordered our coffee and sat outside to enjoy the view and the weather. It was sunny and warm. What’s not to like?

We chatted for a bit about our families, our interests and so on. Basically, we got to know each other a bit.

After about an hour, we did start to discuss business. What her goals were and how she thought I could assist her with her new projects and marketing plan.

I know, I know. Why am I writing about this? Very simple. It describes exactly what social networking is all about. This is how it should be approached. Friendly, non-invasive and certainly not promotional at all. If you are confused about social media, especially Facebook, see 11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook. I was Joan Stewart’s guest on this 70 minute teleseminar.

We had a lovely chat and I then took her back to her hotel so we could go on with our day.

Thank you Krisitina for allowing me to share this.

I was recently a guest panelist on The smARTist Telesummit with Ariane Goodwin.  It was truly an inspiring experience.

My presentation was titled, Facebook for Artists, Beyond Beginners which included a 17 pages of illustrated handouts with easy, step-by-step instructions.

There was no way I could possible cover all the materials and tools that Facebook provides in 60 minutes.

After the presentation I was sent a list of email for artists with their questions concerning Facebook and I tried to answer them to the best of my knowledge.

Here are some of the questions and answers:

Q: What about the changes in the privacy policy?  Should we be concerned? 
A: We should all be concerned about our privacy anywhere online.  If you are really concerned about your privacy and the changes on Facebook, I read this fantastic article and follower their suggestions for not only myself, but for my clients as well.  http://tinyurl.com/yz2bbn3

Q: Is it ok to have 2 Facebooks, one for person and one for business or is this too confusing for other? 
A: Yes, it absolutely ok to have 2 Facebooks.  First of all, you need to have a personal profile.  From there you can create your fan/business page.  This is what I do and I suggest to my clients.  When posting anything business related, post from your fan/business page.  If you are conversing with a friend or family member, do it from your personal profile page.  That way, the 2 don’t get confused.

Q: I have found my RSS feed url on Wordpress.  Now, how and where do I enter it into the “notes” section of my Fan Page to get the blog to feed into that space?  Hate to be a pain, but I’m still struggling with this.  I’ve searched the FB help extensively already for an answer.  (Much thanks in advance for your help!)  — okay, now I’ve got it coming in, but it’s coming in to my personal page not my fan page.  Yikes! 
A: To do this, you need to stop importing the blog to your personal page.  When you go into your business page, go to edit page and you will see a list there.  On that list you will then see “Notes”.  Click on edit.  You can then import your blog into your fan page.

And these are just a few.  If you are confused by Facebook, I can help you to keep it straight with the teleseminar “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook“.  This teleseminar was hosted by Joan Stewart in June of 2009 and includes a 28 page handout.  You can order it as an MP3, transcript or as a CD.

If you want to know more about licensing your art, come hear Ariane’s interview with Jeanette Smith, who brings a wealth of experience to the table that I don’t want you to miss.

Get the facts you need to focus on this potential income stream:
Tuesday, Dec 15th 7-8 pm ET (NY) 4-5 pm PT (CA) 

Find the sign-up box in the upper right corner of that web page
• Enter your name and email • Look in your inbox for all the call-in & webcast details One thing I make sure of—all of my smARTist Pre-events have meat on the bone!

Registration is open for the 7-day conference in January, and for a limited time you can choose to pay over 3 installments.

I currently use Ping.fm to post to several of my social networking sites. Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap! It is just that, a snap.

I have also set up many of my clients to use this service as it is like one-stop shopping. It is fast and easy to use. Set up is a breeze.

You can post from anywhere to anywhere. You can use your phone, IM and from email as well.

I currently have it set up to “feed” to FriendFeed, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Delicious. I would caution you though that, depending on how many feeds you have set up on the other sites, you can end up with multiple postings. So, in other words, if you are using FriendFeed with Ping or Twitter, it could show up on the status updates on Facebook multiple times and it looks very strange.

The application that Ping.fm has recently added though, and I like very much, is you can now add your Facebook fan page to the feed. In the past, when you posted from Ping, it would only feed to your Facebook profile.

I like to use and also suggest free and easy tools in which both myself and my clients can use and this is at the top of the list.