If I can ease the anxiety a bit on this one, I actually don't think this is a place to worry too much about making the "right" decision from the start. If you know (and abide by) these three reasons you'll be able to switch tools at a whim without much, if any, remorse:

Think of your goal as finding one or two tools and then being mindful not to do anything that *removes* content from the Twitter database while using them.

So without further ado, here are some Twitter tools that can help you put in play your tweeting master plan.

I Can Email You With the Next Update
Click here to get notified of new posts to The Internet Strategist by Email

Mobile Apps - Twitter Tools to Manage Accounts, Posts, Replies and Multiple Users

Let's face it, some of our best ideas happen when we're in the car, brushing our teeth, just about to fall asleep or otherwise un-tethered to a traditional computer. Here are some great Twitter tools for the mobile in you:

Seesmic - this application is especially nice for devices operating on Android. It has a clean, thorough interface and connects with URL shorteners and photo/video sharing. It's a great tool if you want a single software for both mobile and desktop.

TwitterBerry - If you've got a BlackBerry, this is a must-have app. It provides most of the basic Twitter functionality you experience at your desktop including the ability to tweet pictures, view timelines, search, and send and receive direct messages. Note however this is only for BlackBerry and as of the time of this article does not have a desktop version.

Tweetie - in addition to the Twitter functionality you'd expect, Tweetie can also do a restoration of your user interface if you're interrupted by a phone call and your offline Twitter actions can also be synced up when you come back online. Note that as of this article this tool does not have a desktop version.

What do you like/dislike about these mobile twitter tools? Which ones did I leave out?

Next time we'll talk about desktop apps, tools to boost engagement and tools for measuring your success.

Follow me on Twitter at @maishawalker. Special thanks to Dave Clarke, Communications Strategist at Churnless, for his excellent help in compiling the data for this article! You can ask Dave about his favorite Twitter tools at @thedaveclarke.

Read Related Articles by Maisha

Not only did I meet some amazing business owners, I also had the opportunity to collaborate with Deluxe (yes, the check printing company!) who is making a bold move to extend their business beyond branding printed items to supporting small businesses in their need for digital branding as well.

Deluxe hosted a dinner on Monday night with approximately 50 business owners in attendance. They invited me to be their guest speaker and lead a discussion on how growing businesses can get the most out of online marketing.

From innovative product retailers like Rich Johnston of KeyPlex Direct who had some excellent questions like "When is blog content considered too old and no longer trustworthy?" to fine art photographers like Anne Day of Anne Day Photography who was at the conference helping to produce social video content for an inspring book project targeting youth entrepreneurs, to builders like Peter Feinmann, who was "hoping that I would be stimulated by new and creative ways to grow my residential design/build business. I was not disappointed." The dinner hosted a dynamic group of successful businesses that all had unique and fascinating challenges, questions and experiences to share about how to maximize their online brand.

One of the biggest topics of discussion for almost all of the business owners was deciding whether to and how to market using a blog. It is a question many business owners are still facing. How do I get started? How do I come up with content that is interesting? How often should I post? How important is blogging for Search Engine Optimization? What else can blogging do for me?

Luckily I had answers! We had a passionate discussion about these and other topics during the cocktail hour and over a fantastic dinner at The Ritz Carlton. I thought in honor of our event I would post some quick references for you to get answers to those questions and share with everyone what was discussed at our intimate dinner.

Growco Attendee Question: How do I get started?
The Internet Strategist: Dive in! One thing you'll definitely want to do is make sure you've thought about the purpose of your blog and how often you plan to post. Make sure you're choosing a frequency you can keep up with for the next 2-3 years minimum. To test the waters you can even start posting without making your blog public. Take a look at my 10 Step Guide to Blogging and use it as your step-by-step planning guide to get you started with your blog.

Growco Attendee Question: How do I know if my content will be interesting?
The Internet Strategist: I strongly recommend not worrying too much about this one. The best bet is to write about things you are a) passionate about, b) extremely knowledgable about, and c) will be able to stand writing about for the next several years! The wonderful thing about the Internet is that there are just so many darn people on it. There's likely to be a sizable group of people who are just as passionate as you are about just about anything. Keep in mind however that your goals will impact your topic choice - are you looking to drive advertising revenue or are you looking to build credibility in your industry? Make sure you choose a topic that is appropriate for your goal and don't worry about the traffic yet. That comes with marketing. But do be honest with yourself - if you're really not a great writer, blogging may not be the venue for you. There are so many other Internet Marketing Techniques available to you. You can download my free Internet Marketing Checklist to get your head around what they all are. When it comes to marketing it's all about the cost/benefit. If you have limited resources (as we all do) make sure you are making the most of them.

Growco Attendee Question: How often should I post?
The Internet Strategist: So I get this question a *lot*. This is completely based on your goals. If you are looking to create a high traffic blog that will generate advertising revenue, minimum once per week but even better is once per day. Time and time again bloggers have seen that the more you post, the more traffic you receive. If you are not looking for advertising revenue, my advice is don't sweat it. Do what you can handle now (monthly, even quarterly is ok) and then build up to more frequent posts if you can.

Growco Attendee Question: How important is blogging for Search Engine Optimization?
The Internet Strategist: blogging can be a great way to boost your search engine rankings and is often a large factor in choosing to blog. But note - to reap the benefits of SEO, you have to have your blog content built within the same site you want optimized. So you can't build a free blog at WordPress.com and then just have a link to your corporate Web site if you want your corporate Web site to improve in the search rankings. If you want more detail on this take a look at these two articles: "Build Your Blog" and "Blogging for Coin"

Growco Attendee Question: What else can blogging do for me?
The Internet Strategist: That's a big question. There are so many things from building credibility, creating content that can go "viral", being the basis of other kinds of social media marketing, Twitter links, LinkedIn profile content (see this post for details), being fodder for other materials (ebooks, printed books etc.), helping people truly understand what it is that you do and what your expertise and strengths are. To help you understand the myriad benefits of blogging and decide which benefits you want to pursue, I would strongly recommend referencing these three articles:

I'm looking forward to the next big Inc. event and hope I'll see you there! I've been promised some video from the dinner - if it's not too horribly embarrassing I'll try to post it here!

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

Of course that starts with having good content, and many of the techniques we discussed for getting new readers will also help you keep the old ones because some of your existing readers will be found in the places you're looking for new readers.

But you need to find ways to turn new readers into loyal readers, and then turn loyal readers into a real community.

So today we focus on loyalty — how do you get people who liked your content once to remember you and come back? Well actually, you don't. Just like it's hard to break through the noise with new readers, it's also really hard for people you've already convinced! So you have to help them out...

Building Your Blogging Tribe

Be Predictable

For those of us who sometimes like being predictable, here our chance to shine! Making regularly timed posts, at a frequency your readers can come to expect is a great way to get readers loyal by helping them make you a part of their daily/weekly/monthly routine. It also builds a certain trust with your reader knowing that s/he can always rely on getting new content from you.

Cross Promote in your "Owned" Venues

Cross Promote in Your "Outposts"

Another great place to cross promote is — you guessed it - Social Media.

Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse (of ProBlogger) have a name for this which they call "creating outposts". It starts with having a presence in a few social sites (I would suggest picking 1-2 social sites until you get your bearings on how to do this well) and it can grow to creating entire online communities around your brand and your work within these venues.

Jacob Morgan of The Social Media Globetrotter confirms that "to this day twitter is one of the largest traffic drivers to my site".

Fatemah Khatibloo of TimesTwoMarketing was surprised to find that "Facebook Fans drive a substantial amount of our blog traffic."

For Chris Clark of The Senior List his Facebook fan page has made it to his "top 5 tactics" list.

A key tactic with social media is being able to automatically feed your blog posts to sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Delicious. Two popular tools that enable this automation include FriendFeed and Ping.fm. Even previously Twitter focused tools like Hootsuite are starting to add this functionality.

At the end of the day, every business is as different as is the community of people who follow it. You must identify which methods will actually work well for your business as well as for your resources. Also keep in mind that until you have significant numbers of followers you will be using these tools slowly but surely to build your numbers over time.

Keep Your Inner Circle Updated

There will definitely be moments when a post you've written deserves it's own mini-audience among people you're connected to. Don't deny them! Send individual posts in response to questions, to relevant clients, or to friends and family. Email certain relevant posts and be careful you don't spam them with content that doesn't interest them.

Diane Menke of Myers Constructs, Inc. takes a good approach "We send relevant posts to people we speak to on the phone or in emails if we think they may find it interesting. For example last week I sent an architect we want to work with a link to a post about bids and why we do not do bids." When considering who to send to, specific groups can include:

Email is Still Critical

These days, anyone who volunteers to give you his/her email address, requesting that you add yet another piece of email to their ever-unmanageable inbox has really got to love what you're saying.

These people are gold. Do not leave them hanging by not providing an email subscription option. Feedburner and Feedblitz are the two most popular tools that enable your visitors to get an email each time you add a new post. It's a great way for them to stay up to date with your new content and it's wonderful for you because it's fully automated! Feedburner is very easy to use and is free.

Feed Me Baby!

In last week's 13 ways to drive new readers to your blog, we mentioned RSS as a "find new readers" tactic by getting other Web sites to publish your feed. But RSS is traditionally known for it's ability to send content directly to an individual. For those of your readers who know what RSS is, it's a great tool for getting them to stay abreast of what you're writing about and click whenever a headline appeals to them.

Cross Post Linking

One of the best things you can do is encourage visitors to get more of what they already like. Linking *within* your blog is an important way to increase "stickiness" (the amount of time visitors spend on your site) and encourage visitors to read more content or save content they find and want to come back too. Andrea Toochin of Trendcetera Magazine uses a tool called LinkWithin to automate this process for her blog and confirms that it has increased the time people spend on her site.

Monitor your traffic

Take Care of Your Voice

Your blog is an excellent way to build your brand (see my discussion of blogging goals and strategies) and as such you want to be careful about the brand you're inviting people to engage with.

I really like the way blogger & filmmaker Hugh Rhodes put it:

"A blog conveys a voice, a visual aesthetic, and a record of opinion, all in one. I don't write about my film exclusively - I write about movies I have seen, filmmaking strategies, and personal issues related to my career."

Be conscious of the overall presentation of your blog. In addition to making sure your content is useful & relevant you also need to:

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

Of course your first responsibility is providing content your audience will actually find relevant and useful. Your second responsibility is to tell them, often, that your content exists. If it sounds simple, that's because it is. There's no magic trick to building blog traffic if your content is good (and sometimes even if it isn't!)

But it *is* time consuming — and that you should be prepared for.

You should also be aware that in driving traffic to your blog you have 2 distinctly different jobs:

1.Get new readers to find out about your blog and visit
2.Get past visitors to come back

This second one is critical. Meeting your goals will be nearly impossible if you can't get readers to come back to your blog on a regular basis. Sometimes the same tactic can be used for both goals but there are some that are specific to each.

Today I outline the top 13 techniques for getting new readers to your blog, and share experiences from business owners just like you. Next time we'll discuss how to keep people coming back.

How to get New Traffic and New Readers to Your Blog

Link Building

These days the idea of "link building" is almost loosing it's meaning because so many online marketing techniques could fit into this category. Link building for your blog has essentially two major benefits — 1) introducing the audience of another Web site to your blog and 2) boosting your search engine rankings. Link building techniques for your blog include:

But be very careful — commenting carelessly can get you banned from a community or worse — silently (or vocally) tagged as a spammer which will damage your credibility and your brand. Spend some time in the community to see which method (if any) would be most welcome. And by all costs take the advice of business owner and reader Brock Green of JustinAamir.com in avoiding "shameless" self-promotion "do not ask a blogger and its readers to 'come check out your blog'...thats so tacky." I would heed Brock's advice.

Here are 3 ways you can approach posting comments or new discussions:

a) write a meaningful comment that links to your post as a follow up

b) write a meaningful comment and include a standard signature in all of your comments with your name and a link to your blog

c) start a conversation around the topic you discuss in your post.

If commenting is welcome at all, using one of these approaches should keep you out of trouble!

Syndication
There are many modern ways to allow others to repurpose your articles as content.

SEO

Online & Offline PR

While really a combination of link building and syndication I mention online PR specifically because of it's potential to be viral. This is an aspect that many people do not consider. When you post a release online it has the possibility to be picked up and spread as "news" by a variety of publications looking for content. Consider whether some of your posts are worthy of an online press release that can be submitted to places like PR News Wire.

Don't forget about the power of the live and in person. Kimberly Ward of Pinkeggshell hands out cards, sponsors industry events and does high profile charity work, Brad Officer of BradOfficer.com who is in the highly competitive real estate industry says he uses his online blog for real offline help "In this industry, people always ask questions about their mortgage, their home, their situation." He can collect a business card and after the event email his new contact a link to a specific blog post that answers their question. It's a great way to follow up in a meaningful way.

Content Design

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

PRDYKZGP6KEF

But when you think of maximizing what your blog can do for you there are some other tools you'll want to make sure you have. Blogging can be awfully time consuming and I want to help you blog smarter not harder. While there are a many many ways you can get the most out of your blog, some ways are simpler and more universal than others.

Here are 13 of the simplest yet important tools and techniques you should be using to maximize the value of your blog:

Two important notes:

Get Your Blog Featured
I will be highlighting a variety of companies as examples in upcoming posts. If you've had success with your Blog and can describe results/back it up with real data, you can submit your Blogging strategy here.

Get a Free Blog or Web Site!
Even in a bad economy there's a silver lining. I'm giving away a free Web site! If you'd like to be the lucky business owner tell me about your business and why you should win here. I acknowledge I'll be choosing the winner purely based on my own discretion. Heck I may even choose more than one. I look forward to seeing your entry!

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

These are some of the basic blogging features that pretty much all blogs provide.

Next time I will describe another set of features that you may not know about but will definitely be useful to maintain your blog.

Two important notes:

Get Your Blog Featured
I will be highlighting a variety of companies as examples in upcoming posts. If you've had success with your Blog and can describe results/back it up with real data, you can submit your Blogging strategy here.

Get a Free Blog or Web Site!

Even in a bad economy there's a silver lining. I'm giving away a free Web site! If you'd like to be the lucky business owner tell me about your business and why you should win here. I acknowledge I'll be choosing the winner purely based on my own discretion. Heck I may even choose more than one. I look forward to seeing your entry!

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

Last time we began the discussion of blogging software, focusing on ways you can build and maintain your blog for free using services like WordPress.com, Blogger.com, or Blogher.com. The key with free blogging software is knowing what you're getting.

Here are some explanations these companies have provided outlining the features they offer:

WordPress
free features: http://en.wordpress.com/features/
premium (paid) features: http://en.wordpress.com/products/

Blogger
(all free) http://www.blogger.com/features

Blogher
features http://www.blogher.com/using-this-site

But as anyone who has experienced "buyer's remorse" would know, equally important is knowing what you're NOT getting with these services. Since we all tend to be rather shy about broadcasting our deficiencies, I'll respectfully let you in on some of the downsides. These services do come with some caveats, namely, that you have to abide by their Terms of Service, the details of ownership can be somewhat nebulous, you have limited control over the look and functionality of your blog, a free service (because it's hosted separately) will limit the SEO value of your blog and you cannot, as of this writing, place ads on your blog.

For those who want design control, functionality control, clear ownership of content and want to be able to generate advertising revenue -- installing your own blog is probably the ticket. If that's you, let's talk about the two other options for how to build your blog — paid upgrades and downloadable version.

What ponying up will get you

Most blogging software have more or less the same features. Google owned Blogger really surpasses in terms of what it offers for free, but if you throw a little coin into the game you can get everything you need. The two options when you're considering upgrading from free are:

These two paid options give you more control over your blog, your brand, and your content. Here is a chart showing who offers each option from least control to greatest:

Free Software Free Hosting
With a completely free tool like WordPress.com, WordPress owns the server, provides you the software to build your blog and hosts it for you, all for free. They can generate advertising revenue off of the blog you build but as of this writing you cannot. Note also that this version most likely means your Web site and your blog (if you have both) are completely separate hurting your SEO and possibly weakening your brand with very different designs.

Paid Software Free Hosting
Here again, the software and hosting are both provided by a company like WordPress but you can get more by paying a one time or periodic fee. For example on WordPress you can pay to use your own non-WordPress domain, to get extra hosting space, to customize the blog's design, to upload & store video, or to turn off advertising on your blog. Note that as of this writing WordPress still does not let you post your own ads or upload a completely custom theme even if you pay for an upgrade. Also note that Google-owned Blogger, although far less popular, lets you do all of these things for free.

One other note on either free or paid software hosted by the blogging company, if you ever decide to move your blog beware. The process of moving the content itself could be a little challenging but more of a concern is your links. Each post you create will have it's own "permalink" or a permanent link that people can share, bookmark etc. If you move your blog it may be difficult or impossible to re-create the same structure on your new blog as you had on your old blog, meaning all of your links will no longer work.

Free Software Download Paid Hosting (by your hosting company)
This is the most flexible option. You get a hosting company (like HostGator), get your own domain name and have a developer download your own copy of WordPress or other software and install it into your hosting account for you. The options for customization are unlimited, you can use whatever design theme/template you like or hire someone to create one from scratch. You can install whatever widgets or tools you like to add to your blog's functionality, you of course own all of your content, you can post whatever you like (within the terms of service of your hosting company), and you can sell ads on your blog as a revenue stream. Just like the "paid software" version above, you pay a monthly fee but it goes to your hosting company. This version can be set up just as quickly but usually with the help of a development company. Basic hosting will be anywhere from $5-$15 depending on what you need.

How to choose?

Generally I suggest the free version if you don't plan to generate advertising revenue, and don't need sophisticated customizations or a custom design. Also if you're not planning to generate a lot of traffic to your blog in the beginning, you won't be as concerned about moving it (and breaking the links) later.

The paid upgrade gives you a bit more but it doesn't eschew the limitations and restrictions that are inherent in working with the blogging companies.

If you are ready to invest I generally recommend the downloaded version which will give you total control over your content, your design, your features and maximum SEO benefits if you have an existing site you want to integrate the blog with.

I hope this has helped you understand a bit better how the world of blogging software works and how to decide which path is right for you.

If you're still wondering which version is right for you, post your question below. I'd like to hear from you.

Read Related Articles by Maisha:
Build Your Blog
Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs pt 2
Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs
To Blog or Not to Blog
]]> Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:00:00 -0500 Maisha Walkerhttp://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/11/blogging-for-coin.html http://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/10/build_your_blog.html We are knee deep in the basics of blogging!

In my last few posts we covered what a blog is, and the benefits of blogging as a technique to boost your business.

If you've decided you'd like to blog, or if you just want more information before taking the plunge, there are a few more steps, namely:

Deciding what you'll write about is clearly a highly subjective decision that goes beyond our scope for today (although maybe a good idea for a future feature? Hmm'). But I read a nice piece on this very topic the other day by Sonia Simone on copyblogger. The article was "Steal This Trick: The #1 Secret of Confident Bloggers". When choosing a topic, Sonia advises:

Her overarching point: write about a topic lots and lots of people are interested in, but write about it in a way that is uniquely you.

Once you know what you're going to write about (or if you plan to work through it publicly) the "how" then takes center stage.

To construct a blog you will need two things.

To get the blog-style Web site, pretty much everyone uses some form of blogging software.

Blogging Software

Just like any other site you can build your blog from scratch (I don't know a single person who does this) or you can use a Content Management Tool aka Content Management System aka "CMS". The CMS is a piece of software. In the same way that Microsoft Word allows you to create and maintain Word documents, a CMS allows you to create and maintain a Web site.

Pretty much every blogger uses a CMS. Popular CMSs include:

WordPress
Blogger
TypePad
Live Journal
Movable Type
Expression Engine

the list goes on. With blogging software you can design and create your blog. If you keep it simple you can even do it without needing a developer. The CMS also enables you to add text and images to your blog in the form of posts.

While these tools are very similar, they're not actually the same and they each have variations. This takes us to the second thing you'll need...

Blog Hosting

As with any Web site that you build, you need a physical home for your site — literally. You need a computer where all the files that make up that site are stored and from where your Web site can be viewed by others. That computer is called a "server". The good news is that to keep things simple, all of the companies we mentioned above (except Expression Engine and Movable Type) in addition to offering the blogging software also will host your blog.

Software as a Service

This model of providing software and hosting that software for you (instead of you having the software installed on your computer) is what's called Software as a Service -- if you always wondered what SaaS stands for, now you know.

The Software as a Service model is very popular in the blogosphere. As I mentioned all of the blogging companies listed above offer you their CMS and most of them will host it for you too. Another bonus, some of them are free.

You can go to WordPress.com, sign up and instantly have your CMS and hosting and be ready to create your first post in about 5 minutes. No joke.

Making a choice

The catch with all of these services is that they have both limitations in terms of how much you can customize their software (design, features etc.) and they have somewhat daunting and controversial Terms of Service that restrict the kind of content you can publish, allow them to shut down your blog, prohibit you from selling ads on your blog (so no revenue generation) and generate questions about whether they in some way have ownership of your content. A bit scary.

I think these tools are a great way to get started with blogging — especially the free ones. They let you dip your toe into the world of blogging to make sure that it's somewhere you really want to be before diving in completely.

If you are going to be a serious blogger however (meaning using it to really build a brand and/or drive traffic and search rankings to your site) I would suggest another option.

Next time we'll cover some of the blogging options that cost money. They are typically not that expensive and will give you total control over your blog setup, design, revenue generation and your content.

Read Related Articles by Maisha:
Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs pt 2
Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs
To Blog or Not to Blog
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)
]]> Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:45:00 -0400 Maisha Walkerhttp://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/10/build_your_blog.html http://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/10/bloggings-11-big-payoffs-pt-2.html From the comments and emails I've received, the benefits I described in the first half of Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs have hit home but also helped you think of new ways that your blog can help you build your business.

I liked the issue raised in a comment by SaveMoneyCostCutting from last week. Sometimes it is a fine line between too much marketing and just enough. It is important to establish a position on this that will work based on what you're selling and to whom you're selling it. There's no one-size-fits-all on that one. Blogging is a tool you can use creatively to get out what you need to say to the world, and/or as a serious business tool for driving leads, creating advertising inventory (aka traffic), generating sales and building a brand. Just be true to the brand and the tone you establish.

I also like jimfracis' comment that blogging helps him "shape his convictions". As I mention towards the end of the "Credibility" paragraph helping you to actually articulate what you know or believe is definitely a big benefit.

If you think that blogging might be a great leads or revenue generator for your business, the problem is how to justify the fact that blogging is *really* time consuming, especially when you consdier that typically you'll spend at least the same amount of time marketing your blog as you do writing it, often more, sometimes, 2-3 times more.

So to help you to decide whether to blog or not to blog, I'll outline the final 5 of Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs.

Networking

I think many people don't understand what it really means to "network" (not that I'm a guru). But instead of focusing on "networking" I'd like to talk specifically about "how to build" a network that will educate you, inform you, support you emotionally, and tell you about opportunities, and one that will also enable you to inform, support, provide opportunities for and educate it. This is a network that serves your needs 360 degrees. When you're building a network it's critical that people in your network know what it is that you need, and what you have to offer. Regularly publishing content that makes clear your areas of focus is a great way to help people very tangibly understand why they should connect with you. It's one thing to say you're an expert, it's another thing to write 50 articles about it that are read, appreciated, forwarded, reposted etc. Making it very clear what how you can help people is ironically also a great way for other people to figure out how they can help you.

Customer Loyalty, Customer Service & Customer Education

Product details, how-to instructions, usage hints can all be smart content to provide to build both sales and loyalty especially if your product is technically complex or has a lot of hidden features. A blog can be used like individual FAQ posts to answer both old and new customer questions. And just like FAQs, your posts/answers can highlight features that customers don't know about, or help customers understand the best way of using your product or service.

Case Studies

One of the greatest benefits of Case Studies is self-identification. Case studies offer detail and context about a specific situation your product resolved and provide more information about the customer you worked with. This is wonderful for potential customers, enabling them to see themselves and see their specific needs, situation, challenges not only laid out in front of them and tangibly understand that you can fix it.

Social Media Content

Social media strategies and campaigns are built around content. Whether the content is video, images, or text, those businesses who invested in the idea that "content is king" now have a leg up in creating social media strategies because they have a store of content that can be used to support, encourage and extend dialog. If you have a blog you also have the beginnings of a wonderful social media strategy.

Consistent Presence

Presuming you blog with some regularity, blogging, like all social media tools, has the excellent benefit of helping you strengthen more of your weak ties by communicating with large numbers of people frequently and with relevance.

Advertising Revenue

Not that I created this list in any order of priority, but I do advise making a mental note of how far down on the list this one is (at the bottom). While generating significant revenue from your blog by selling advertising can still work for some bloggers, these days it is a difficult way to justify the investment if advertising revenue is the only payoff. You have to either have a significant amount of traffic (I'd think about 50,000 page views minimum) or have a captive audience of readers who are extremely difficult to reach else where, or both. While Google AdWords are great it generates tiny amounts of monthly revenue for most bloggers so don't assume that's all you'll need!

So Now What?

You may have looked at this list of payoffs and recognized several that fit squarely into your business strategy. So now what?

Armed even with knowledge of what reasonable goals are, I find that businesses trying to dive into the world of blogging are still somewhat at a loss for how to start. How on earth do I build an effective blog? How much time will it take? What tools are available and which ones make the most sense for our needs? How do I actually get all the payoffs?

Stay tuned — next time we dive into the technical side of blogging and how to get started.

Till then I look forward to hearing more about blogging benefits and what you get out of blogging for your business.

Read Related Articles by Maisha:
Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs
To Blog or Not to Blog
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)
]]> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:00:00 -0400 Maisha Walkerhttp://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/10/bloggings-11-big-payoffs-pt-2.html http://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/10/bloggings_11_big_payoffs.html In last week's article I discussed what a blog actually is and its relationship to both your business and to your regular Web site if you have one.

The purpose of blogging in general, is usually to establish and/or support an existing brand with an understanding of how that brand generates revenue.

This week, as promised, I'm getting into the real payoffs. Why does it make sense to spend hours of time each month, writing content, then giving it away for free and if that's not enough, even more hours marketing that free content to make sure people will know it's there?

Here's what makes that multi-hour investment worth it.

Intimacy

I loved this advice from Oliver Vass on LinkedIn who according to his title, is not a marketing industry professional, but a customer and business owner.

I found this so wonderfully put and direct (erudite even) I had to give kudos. Thank you Oliver.

By posting content on a regular and even reliable basis, your blog can not only have a huge impact on your efforts to establish your brand, it can make your relationship with your audience and customers far more intimate. In mature industries where products and services become almost commoditized, the difference between Company A and Company B may be entirely built upon this intimacy.

Search Engine Optimization

Because you are writing so much content on a (presumably) regular basis, your blog can be an excellent way to improve search engine rankings. Note if you want to leverage your blog to optimize a whole Web site you really need to have your blog integrated into your domain name — so that your blog and your non blog content are part of the same Web site. So that means if you're a consultant and you want your consulting company's Web site to show up higher in search results, having a blog at myconsultingcompany.wordpress.com just won't do it for you. Keep everything at myconsultingcompany.com -- install a copy of WordPress wherever you are hosting your existing site and build your blog, and your SEO rich content there.

Building Community

As I stated in an earlier post, every business needs a team or as Seth Godin would put it "a tribe". Being open with your content through a blog can help you establish one. When you share content you not only define your areas of expertise, you also create good will in addition to attracting relevant people to your brand. An added benefit is that simply showing that you have a community of people interested in your content can help that community itself grow in addition to growing your business.

Customer Research

The interaction you receive from your readers in the form of comments, feedback and emails is a great way to learn who your blog is attracting, but also what are your consumers interested in? What needs do they have and how can you meet them? What questions do they really need answered? Almost every company can do a better job of understanding the needs of its customers and a blog is an invitation for your readers (and customers) to help you do just that.

Credibility

There's nothing like a blog to truly help people understand what it is that you do, what your area of expertise is, and that you are, in fact, an expert or highly knowledgeable. The simple fact of posting useful content, on a specific topic, that is of course also relevant to your target audience, and on a regular basis, will help people understand very specifically what you do, how you can help them and the depth of your abilities. One added benefit of this is that blogs force you as a writer to come face-to-face with what you do and do not know, and fill in any gaps in your knowledge. It can also help you to be able to articulate what you know (because you've spent so much time thinking about how to write it!). When I told my father that I would be writing this blog for Inc. and that my postings needed to be weekly, his response was "wow — do you really know that much to write about?" If I've managed to convince my dad I'm an expert, there really must be something to this blogging thing.

Differentiation

This morning I was on a live radio show sharing Internet Strategy tips for solo entrepreneurs with Ed Able the founder of Skillpreneur.com (I'll post the link to the podcast tomorrow -- subscribe here if you'd like me to email you when it's up). The focus of the show was "differentiation". How can you differentiate yourself from all those competitors out there? I think you know what I'm going to say. BLOG! While blogging isn't necessarily the solution to differentiation woes anymore (because, well, so many people are blogging) it is a way to broadcast your differentiators once you know what they are. Because the point of blogging is to blog regularly, one of the best things a blog can do for you is brand you. Branding has many benefits and getting the point across about what makes you different is one of them. Choose carefully what you decide to cover in your blog and/or how you decide to cover it — it can be a great way to help you separate yourself from the crowd which again will help both your business and your blog grow.

More to come! Next time I'll cover the last 5 -- but I'd love to see you beat me to it!

Read Related Articles by Maisha:
To Blog or Not to Blog
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)
Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedIn
]]> Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:34:17 -0400 Maisha Walkerhttp://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/10/bloggings_11_big_payoffs.html http://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/09/to-blog-or-not-to-blog.html Outside of the fact that you happen to be reading one right now, I find that there are lots of smart, business savvy folks out there who when placed in the position of having to explain, strategize or build a blog (or decide if one should be built at all) are at a bit of a loss. Blogs are usually easy for most people to recognize but harder for folks to define.

When I hosted a free class on the subject (as I do from time to time) it "sold out" (in the way only free classes can!) the room filled to capacity.

Even those who can sort of describe a blog, often find it hard to understand when, why and how to create one so that it will actually create benefit for a business, organization, cause etc..

Of course everyone who manages a successful blog has found themselves in a similar position at least once and gotten past it, so I thought I could impart a few words of advice.

First of all, what is a blog really?

A blog is just a Web site.

Let me repeat that for the non-believers — A BLOG IS JUST A WEB SITE.

But it's a special kind of Web site.

Let's start by looking at the different kinds of Web sites that exist. Many of the students of my in-person classes will recognize this.

According to my calculations and ruminations, there are essentially 4 kinds of Web sites you can build based on how your business attracts revenue:

A branding site like Dove is working hard to immerse the viewer in the company's ethos. You can't actually buy any product from their site, they don't seem to sell ads, nor are they pushing hard for you to give up your contact information. Dove's site is all about convincing you of their commitment to improving women's natural beauty and self-esteem in the hope that this will generate an emotional affinity to their brand.

An advertising revenue site like Inc.com has articles and information as its content. It is designed and organized into categories like "Business Advice" "Tech Startup" "The Internet Strategist" to display that content in a way that's easy for you — the reader — to find, read and pass along.

An Online Store like Zappos.com has products — shoes - as its content. So it is organized and designed to make it easy for you to find the kind of shoes you're looking for. One of reasons Zappos is so popular is it provides a variety of ways to find what you're looking for.

A service Web site like message medium has services as its content. So our site is organized to make it easy for you to find our services and also to find the things that make us a credible company to work with — testimonials, articles, client samples, news clippings etc.

As a business owner, more than likely you are not looking to spend millions of dollars on a branding Web site so let's focus on the other three.

So How do Blogs fit in?

Blogs are an interesting breed of Web site. In structure, they are most like Advertising Revenue sites. Like a newspaper, they usually publish content with some predictable regularity, and the content is typically arranged by date and/or by category so that it can be easily found by readers.

But what's interesting about blogs and has made them so ubiquitous, is that they, with all of their content and social elements, can be used very effectively to support an Advertising, eCommerce or Lead Generation Web site.

The blog of Tony Hsu, the CEO of Zappos, is designed to generate brand loyalty and increase sales of the products Zappos sells.

This blog also does double-duty, helping you the reader understand my areas of expertise as an Internet Strategist, which my company message medium hopes will help us generate more consulting, Web site design and construction, and Internet marketing clients as well as attendees in our classes.

So the first thing you have to identify when considering blogging is — what kind of business do I have and how do we stay afloat? How do we generate revenue? This will help you determine your ultimate blogging purpose.

Next time — I'll discuss "The Big Payoff" what can you expect a blog to actually accomplish for you?

Post Your Comment

Have a question? Got something to share? Something I missed?

Your feedback, comments, real world experience and tactical questions are an important part of the discussion. If you have a comment, question or feedback post it below.



Share:
Click here to share "To Blog or Not to Blog" with your fans on Twitter

Stay up to date:
Follow me on Twitter Add "The Internet Strategist" RSS updates to your reader or your Web site

Read Related Articles by Maisha:
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)
Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)
Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedIn
LinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small Business

I started the series with an overview of LinkedIn concepts, then moved into a guide for creating your LinkedIn profile, followed by a list of the 11 most powerful LinkedIn tools for small businesses. Finally, I outlined 6 core strategies that small businesses use to leverage LinkedIn for building a tribe and covered the first three:Building a live community (LinkedIn tribe part 1)Business development (LinkedIn tribe part 2)Promoting a blog/branding/building traffic (LinkedIn tribe part 2)

I also hosted an in-person Social Media Marketing workshop in New York City in which I provided the hands-on help many small business owners need to translate these strategies into action. If you missed it, click here to be notified of my upcoming Social Media Marketing events.

Today we cover the final 3 strategies.Getting work as a freelancer or consultantPromoting a productStrategies for everyone

The Freelancer or Consultant

As a consultant, outside of being good at what you do and generally being able to successfully run a business and manage clients, success is heavily dependant upon two things:making sure people remember who you are and what you do

making sure enough people are in group number 1 to keep your pipeline full.

Finding ways to stay on the radar of people who will either hire you or refer you to new business is a critical challenge for freelancers and consultants.

You will find many examples of business owners who are using LinkedIn's "Q&A" feature as a significant element of their visibility and lead generation marketing.

Heidi Cool, owner of Heidi Cool Consulting is one great example. Heidi shared with me how by providing excellent answers to the questions of other LinkedIn members, she has built visibility and credibility for her business, more and higher quality traffic to her Web site and more leads.

Here's what Heidi did...

Using LinkedIn Q&A

The key for Heidi is not generic visibility, but high quality visibility - where her answers set her apart. She focuses on answering questions that are directly relevant to her areas of expertise and will possibly get selected by the questioner as "best" answers. When this happens, both the question and the answer show up in her profile further building her credibility as an expert in her field.

To give you a sense of scale, Heidi has spent 1-2 hours per week over the last 6 months answering questions related to Web site design. Questions her take about 5-30 minutes each to answer properly.

As a great example of the inherently holistic nature of social marketing, Heidi relies heavily on her existing blog content to make sure that questions get a thorough response in a way that would not be possible by just answering the question on LinkedIn alone (as of this writing there's a limit of 4,000 characters for responses).Heidi's ResultsRelated Articles by Maisha:

Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)

Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small Business

How to Use your LinkedIn Profile — a ChecklistHeidi received more than 3 times the number of visitors to her site in July when she focused heavily on this technique. She adds:"I can generate traffic from other sites for much less effort, but the quality of visitors isn't as high"Heidi defines quality as both how many pages visitors view on her site ("stickiness") and how many real inquiries/leads she receives from site visitors. For example, the visitors from an article aggregator site she posts content to are not "high quality". 86% of those visitors leave after viewing only one page, "and so far none have made an inquiry through my contact form".


But during July when she ramped up her Q&A strategy, LinkedIn visitors sent her 29 email requests for more information or project proposals.

Other Freelancer/Consultant techniques:Create an Email Signature and consider including your LinkedIn Custom URL on your business cards and on more of your marketing materials to enable potential customers to learn more about you and your company
Create a group
Send connection invitations immediately after conferences and events
Recommendations as strategy. Michael Zittel Owner, Serr.biz LLC offers this advice (in response to a LinkedIn Q&A of course):We use, and recommend to our clients, to at least utilize Linked In as a validation service of testimonials and "recommendations." It's easy for anyone to write a bogus testimonial about their services and post it on their site. It is not possible to do so on Linked in. So, having recommendations here, and posting on your site, then linking to LINKED IN so people can validate the reference is, in our approach, one of the simplest methods of utilizing LinkedIn.

The Product Promoter

LinkedIn is a very interesting tool for those who have a product to sell or promote. The same way communities must be built for the purpose of congregation, businesses also need to build communities around services and products.

Author Gary Unger shared a great example of how he uses LinkedIn to regularly sell out of his book which is available for sale at Amazon.com. In July 2008 he published the book "How to Be a Creative Genius (in Five Minutes or Less)". Gary spends about 4 hours per day on LinkedIn, reading messages, looking for questions to answer, writing answers and interacting with people he meets. His results? He explains that for every good answer he posts, about 15 people will email him asking to connect. For his Web site he gets up to 500 unique visitors per week if he is as he says "in the zone" - active in answering questions. He also regularly checks his book sales during these periods and says that he will easily sell 20 books per week and see his Amazon ranking jump when he is actively posting.

Supporting this experience, freelance copywriter and marketing consultant Leon Altman cautions "You shouldn't try to sell directly from LinkedIn. But you can start building the bridge to marketing your products and services". Leon's also underscores the importance of landing pages "on your website you must get people to opt-in."

To Connect or Not to Connect?

One of the questions that often plagues early LinkedIn users is deciding who to connect to.

LinkedIn offers these suggestions:Thoughtfully select those people you know and trust because these are the people you will seek advice from and request a recommendation about your/other's quality of work. Because of this, the quality of your contacts is always more important than the quantity of contacts. It is important you know your connections because you may be asked to recommend one of your connections to another. If you know little about the connection you weaken the integrity of the recommendation and your network...Choose your connections wisely as there are certain questions you might only ask a connection because you know and trust that member with this information. Be sure you trust your connections with the information you make available to them."

However on the opposite end of the spectrum, many members of LinkedIn support what's called "open networking" meaning they will connect with pretty much anyone who sends them an invitation.

Also keep in mind these LinkedIn facts:all connections are visible to your direct connections by default (although you can change this)

maximum number of connections is 30,000

maximum number of invitations you can send is 3,000

My take on this is that I think once you know your goals, resources and the tools you have to work with, the question of who to connect with no longer takes on the same importance. If you need to build out a community of 500 people with very specific goals like Daniel Tunkelang from LinkedIn strategies part 1, perhaps open networking is not necessary for you. If however you're trying to build a community of 5,000 people with broad interests it's probably more important. Keep in mind that the more people you have in your network, the more people you can contact directly. This is probably the biggest advantage to accepting most of the invitations you receive.

Strategies for Everyone

Here are tips for other things you should do regardless of what category you fit into:Update your job description — your profile and the details in it are the center of ALL activity on LinkedIn and are at the core of your credibility for whatever you do on LinkedIn. Keep it current with new accomplishments by updating it a few times per year.

Check in — often a tactic used by successful business owners as a core of their business success. Use your profile as a Rolodex and check in with a few contacts each week or month just to say hello

Check References & Interests — it is always good to do a little research in preparation for a new relationship. In fact these days it's not at all creepy, it's respectful. The same way you'd research a company before an interview or a big sales presentation, these days each person is his or her own walking brand. Research their interests and know a little before you interact with them to help make the interaction more successful

Find people you should meet — if you know who your target audience is, you should also know some search criteria for finding them on LinkedIn. Perhaps it's not cost-effective for you to try to reach out to every one of your potential customers individually, but perhaps it's super smart to reach out to that guy or gal who runs the local chapter of the retailers association who could make a great strategic partner for your business.

Consider a LinkedIn ad — and tailor the reach to your target audience

What are you working on now? — this feature is often not noticed by your connections in my experience, but it can be used to share good news, newly completed projects, new hires with your connections

Maximize Travel - check the locations of your connections before you travel so you can schedule time to see people in the city your going to. (Thanks to @merylkevans for the reminder on this one!)

Maximize New Connections — Barbara Rozgonyi offers these words of advice "After you accept an invitation, consider replying with a quick personal message that includes a few bullet points about what you do, an opportunity to ask questions about your industry and additional ways to connect with you online such as your blog, ezine or forum." A great tip and something I try to do as well. Thank you, Barbara!

Connect Your Connections - helping others find the people they need from within your own network can go a long way. (Thanks to ]]> Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:00:00 -0400 Maisha Walkerhttp://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/09/building_your_tribe_-_6_linked3.html http://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/08/building_your_tribe_-_6_linked.html I hope that you have thought of or already found some ways to put last week's list of LinkedIn Strategies for Small Business to good use.

We covered the first of the 6 LinkedIn Strategies that I'll share with you:

Business Development

A piece of advice that I will never forget receiving from an older, wiser mentor of mine who started and ran 2 successful businesses including a luxury goods marketing firm — he has a rolodex of more than 1,000 people who he keeps in touch with on a regular basis. How does he do this? For him it's a simple phone call that usually lasts no more than 5-10 minutes and if appropriate leads to a follow up email and possible work. This very simple technique kept him busy.

One of the simplest ways of using LinkedIn is just as a "modern Rolodex" a list of the people you want to communicate with on a regular basis so that they remember you're out there, what you have to offer, and why they like you. The only tools you need for this is your LinkedIn profile, sending LinkedIn invitations to people you know and an hour per day to make phone calls. One of the biggest challenges for a freelancer or consultant is just making sure people remember you when they need something you offer. These quick check-in calls (with an appropriate time lapse in between) are a great way to just stay on your prospect's radar.

Of course LinkedIn search is also a great tool for this — whether you are searching within your networking or outside of it, using keyword searches on LinkedIn to find people who match your target audience is a great way to "mine the network".

NileGuide, a trip planning website, used LinkedIn to help with a variety of successful "business development" campaigns.

The primary tools? LinkedIn Search & LinkedIn InMail. Here are the 3 ways they used it:

Let's look more closely at how they leveraged LinkedIn for strategic partnerships'

How NileGuide used LinkedIn to build Strategic Partnerships

The results - roughly 33% of their inquiries yielded immediate results, which is an incredibly high success rate. These partnerships have yielded customers, brand benefit, content, and a variety of other valuable assets for NileGuide.

Promoting a Blog — Traffic and Brand Building

A blog is basically about building a community. Instead of a community of people who meet, it's a community of readers and comment-ers. So generating traffic for a blog can certainly use all of the "tribe" techniques, although when you are using it to drive traffic to your own blog, you have to be a little more careful about how you reach out. Connecting with other practitioners, industry experts, leaders of communities where your target audiences congregate, and directly with the communities themselves needs to be done respectfully or else face the "spammer" label which could get your ability to email and invite people on LinkedIn dramatically limited.

A great example of how to drive traffic to a blog or content site and build your brand via LinkedIn is the new content portal Ventureneer started recently by Geri Stengel. Ventureneer offers free Webinars and other content relevant to socially driven enterprises.

When launching her business and Web site Geri had three goals — 1) to build her brand, 2) to build relationships with content providers and 3) to build her "contact" list including email subscribers and Twitter followers.

Here's what she did:

Her results — having launched her site just a few months ago, she has more than 1,600 followers on Twitter (@ventureneer), more than 300 LinkedIn connections, and gets about 150 attendees per week to her free Webinars. Way to go Geri!

Tune in next week'

We still have a whole block of advice, stories and strategies to share.

Coming up:

I look forward to hearing more about your LinkedIn strategies in the comments below and to hearing from you the next time I'm looking for businesses to feature!

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

Part of my goal in writing this column is to help along this information equalization - who knows how far it will go, but for now the shift is great for small business.

In this article in my series on LinkedIn for small business, I'm sharing the case studies of individual small businesses who took nothing but their time, their creativity and (mostly) free tools and turned them into successful marketing strategies on LinkedIn.

Each of these business owners has gracefully shared their knowledge, experience and prowess not just for a few moments in the spotlight, but because they know the transparency is coming, and they have much more to offer the world than just the ideas I'm sharing with you. I owe them thanks for their contributions to this article. I hope you too will reach out and send a quick note of thanks for sharing some of their secrets with all of us. And I hope to see your business here — sharing your story and your success so that the world can see that what else you have to offer us.

The most persistent theme in the LinkedIn strategies that I've used and encountered, is that people are seeing success when using LinkedIn as a very targeted, high-touch marketing tool. Not as a spam blaster. When people spend the time to craft targeted messages to targeted groups of people, they see fantastic results. But this isn't a big shocker -- this is marketing 101. The more specific your audience and the more targeted your message, the better your results. So if this is marketing 101 why doesn't this kind of targeting happen all the time?

Often the reason business don't target (outside of not knowing who to target!) is that typically targeting is hard or expensive or both. How do you find all those small businesses owners in Arkansas in the welding industry? In the past you had to buy a list, spend $$ for an ad that was mostly wasted or do a lot of cold calling. Now? Do a search on LinkedIn. LinkedIn makes it much FASTER, CHEAPER and EASIER to find and communicate with exactly the right people.

And we can all understand the value of fast, cheap and easy when it comes to marketing.

While a lot of marketing can be just a numbers game, that's not really the point on LinkedIn. I mean, it still gets down to numbers, but not in the anonymous, send-a-million-spam-messages-because-at-least-one-of-them-will-get-suckered-in kind of way. In fact that same search that allows you to find exactly the people you know you want, can even help you figure out who you want by simply looking for the commonalities and/or the points of difference in your search results.

The "killer app" for LinkedIn, is its particularly effectiveness for maintaining your weak ties with a purpose. That purpose is what I called "building your team" and what Seth Godin calls building your "tribe".

Building Your Tribe on LinkedIn

Building a tribe is good advice for any business. Who is that group of 1,000 people who will be ecstatic about what you're doing? For a lot of industries, I'll bet you can find a good number of them on LinkedIn.

Once you have an understanding of:

And the most important question:

You can build a tribe that even your networking-iest friend would be envious of.

The List of LinkedIn Strategies for Small Business

While we cannot possibly cover every LinkedIn strategy in a single article, and I unfortunately could not include every example I received, I've chosen some of the most widely used strategic goals and provided great examples of what small businesses have done to make LinkedIn work for them. They include:

Building a Face-to-Face Community
LinkedIn can be an excellent tool for pulling people offline to congregate in the real world. Anyone looking to build a very targeted community of people who share a common and specific interest can use LinkedIn extremely successfully to find and build that community. Whether building a community that congregates online or in person, there are 3 tools that can put your group on the map quickly:

Using LinkedIn Search
Daniel Tunkelang who is the Chief Scientist at Endeca is a great example of how a very well thought out search for exactly the right people can turn into a huge win. He was helping to organize an event called the Workshop on Human Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval and wanted to let people who had a strong interest in these topics. After conducting a search on LinkedIn for everyone who matched "human computer interaction" and "information retrieval" and chose just 100 people to send a personalized connection request.

His results? More than 50% of the 100 people he contacted accepted the connection. Only 1 person responded with LinkedIn's "I don't know this person" field which is the equivalent of invite spam. This is an excellent return. He adds

Create a LinkedIn Group
Groups offer an easy way to enable your community members to congregate, an easy way for you to invite people to participate and an easy way for you to communicate with those who are already participating through group emails. This is a great option if you have a specific topic or idea around which people can freely congregate. Not such a great idea if you just want them to be "fans" of your business.

Use LinkedIn Events within a Group to build Offline Community
It's debatable whether the free LinkedIn Events are effective for promoting an event outside of an existing LinkedIn group. There is a paid option that allows you to promote your event to the top of the events list. But using them to promote an event within an existing group can be very successful. A great example of this is what Larry Moffet, who is an e-strategy business consultant in Brussels, did. Over several years, Larry's business partner had built a group of "expats" in Brussels. His goal was to use LinkedIn to launch a series of events that would enable expats to congregate and network professionally once a month, but at a time of the evening that was unusual for that community. And so, Larry and his partner created the "Expats Networking in Brussels" group on LinkedIn, began inviting their Brussels based connections to join it, and then began inviting group members to events.

Within 2 months they had about 117 members in their LinkedIn group, and as of May that number had doubled to 232. They estimate it took them about 3 hours per month to manage this process on LinkedIn.

Also of note, the LinkedIn group not only served as an administrative and marketing tool to build his offline community, it also made the community and the events themselves better!

Tune in next week...

I've received so many wonderful submissions that I'm going to split this coverage so as not to overwhelm everyone with too much of a good thing.

Coming up:

I look forward to hearing more about your LinkedIn strategies in the comments below and to hearing from you the next time I'm looking for businesses to feature!

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

One of the things I have found fascinating about LinkedIn (which was corroborated by the conversations I had and emails I received), is that the individual tools on LinkedIn seem to form their own intense user groups. One person may focus their whole strategy on maximizing LinkedIn Q&A, another might focus on LinkedIn Events, while a third builds an entire strategy around participating in LinkedIn Groups discussions.

Once you have completed your profile an individual tool on LinkedIn can be a cornerstone of your business' marketing.

Next Monday I will publish the much anticipated and well contributed article on LinkedIn strategies. I have received many submissions by small business owners and look forward to sharing them with you!

This week — a primer on LinkedIn Tools and when we discuss strategies we'll all be on the same page about how the underlying tools used in the strategies work.

Note this is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all the tools on LinkedIn, just of the ones I think are most useful for small business owners. Next week we'll put these into some perspective by exposing how small businesses are successfully using these tools.

All About LinkedIn Applications
In the bottom of the left column on your LinkedIn profile is a section called "Applications". You might notice that in comparison to Facebook, there are relatively few applications available on LinkedIn. But the dearth of applications is more of a strength for LinkedIn — there's far less clutter and the apps are focused on a single purpose — helping you present your professional wares. Many of the tools listed below are actually LinkedIn "Apps" that were developed by 3rd parties (i.e. not LinkedIn). There are only 4 third party apps that I've included in this list (and they only represent 2 "Tools"). The rest of my recommendations are tools that are core to your LinkedIn profile.

So here's my Top 11 list...

LinkedIn Events
This feature is very simple. You can submit your event allowing you to promote it to other LinkedIn users both within and outside your network. You can also go here to find events you might be interested in attending. Both live and virtual events can be included.

Blog Link or WordPress
If you write a blog (a professional one of course), have the blog content automatically "sucked in" by one of these 3rd party applications so that your most recent posts are actually displayed and promoted in your profile.

SlideShare or Google Presentation
Have a smashing presentation you did in PowerPoint? You can use this 3rd party application to post your presentations publicly on LinkedIn to help you build credibility and clarify your areas of expertise.

LinkedIn Groups & Discussions
This is one of LinkedIn's most useful features (and I would hazard a guess that it's the most used too). Individual LinkedIn members start groups where other members have discussions, share news and post jobs. The wonderful thing about these groups is they are basically segmented mini-markets ready and waiting for you to tap into. As of this posting, there are more than 357,000 groups on LinkedIn ranging in size from 0 to more than 100,000 members. Approximately 5,000 new groups are created each week. Some groups have a spam problem but often there are worthwhile discussions to be had and news to read. Groups are also a great place build visibility among people who are interested in your area of business (we'll dive into this more next week!). Be careful though — the line between "sharing information" in the form of links to your site or blog and spam can be very faint.

LinkedIn Searches (within your network and outside it)
Many people use LinkedIn as a simple contact management database. Having a lot of people in that database can provide you access to any company, person or network with whom you want to connect.

In fact especially if you don't know who to reach out to for a particular question, need or opportunity, a quick keyword search on LinkedIn can tell you who you already know that meets your criteria, and can also find people you don't know but should - and that's where the magic begins!

Network Updates
These updates are useful obviously to keep up with what people are doing, but also as an excuse to reach out to someone and reconnect, and as a means of finding people you might want to know. You receive a list of updates both via email and at the bottom of your profile letting you know of the changes people have made to their profiles. Did they change their headline? Change their current job? Are they connected with 5 new people some of whom you might know?

LinkedIn Browser Toolbar
This application installs a thumbnail into your browser bar. The application simply opens different pages on LinkedIn to save you the time of typing them in. http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=browser_toolbar_download

LinkedIn Q&A
This is a tool that many LinkedIn users swear by. This tool can provide a great deal of exposure. When you answer a question, and your answer is rated "best answer" it will also appear in your profile which not only adds to the good will surrounding you but help you build credibility as an expert in your field. Beware however — this can be very time consuming.

Send Mass Emails
LinkedIn does limit your ability to do this outside of groups, typically you can email up to 50 people on your list at a time. But it can be a great way to get the word out. Note that when you post a "question" in Q & A, you can send the question to up to 200 of your connections in addition to making the question public.

Job Postings
For $195 for a 30-day posting, you can use LinkedIn to post jobs to a wider network of people or you can post jobs for free through groups that you're a member of if the group owner has turned on the "Jobs" feature. Note that job descriptions are limited to about 3,900 characters.

Tagging
I included tagging in the last article on How to Set up your LinkedIn Profile but it really belongs here in the list of tools. It is a great tool for organizing your contacts into groups that are personally meaningful. Right now the tool is in Beta so it may not be visible yet to everyone. But when it becomes available I would definitely suggest checking it out.

That's my power list of what I think are the most important "tools" for small business owners on LinkedIn.

Stay tuned next week for LinkedIn Strategies. Much like the article I wrote covering Twitter strategies I will highlight how real people actually use these tools to create successful LinkedIn marketing campaigns. I will share with you examples of how small business owners did it, how much time it took them and what their results were.

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

Just getting the lay of the land on LinkedIn is a great start but wouldn't it be nice if more of the social marketing tools come with a "recommended usage" manual?

Twitter has just launched Twitter 101 which I think is pretty great.

If you are on LinkedIn profile but wondering how to maximize your use of it, I've created this profile "Cheat Sheet" so you focus your attention on the features that deliver the greatest impact AND understand how much time you should reasonably expect to spend on it.

Overview on Completing Your Profile
As I described in "A Guide to Social Media Tools and their Uses" all social networking sites begin with a single user creating a profile. Unlike other sites where your profile questions ask you to reveal your secret lust for sci-fi action flicks, your LinkedIn profile is showcase of your professional preferences and accomplishments.

You want to consider how you'll be using your profile when you complete it. I'll be covering LinkedIn strategies in one of my next articles (and I welcome your submission of your LinkedIn strategies here).

Linked in also offers its own suggestions on the LinkedIn Tips and Tricks blog, plus user submitted LinkedIn case studies which may be helpful to you.

Let's get started'

The Photo
I do recommend including a picture. LinkedIn profiles seem incomplete without them. Also try to be consistent with your photo — if you have a photo on other social networking sites it's a good idea to use the same photo everywhere. Note: it's also wise to be consistent with your name — use the same spelling, middle initial, honorific etc. everywhere. This is important for SEO and for building your online brand.
5 minutes

The Headline
The headline is a bite-sized explanation of what you do and what your value is. Note that your headline shows up ALL OVER LinkedIn, especially in lists. Your headline very often accompanies your name. Make sure your headline is at least clear and concise. If you are building "brand you" consider making it more engaging.
You could spend countless hours tweaking and refining this single 120 character field. Just try not to.

"Current"
Hopefully I'll save a few minutes of confusion by noting that yes, your "current" section is created directly from the Experience items for which you check "I currently work here". It is not editable separately from the Experience listing but do consider what you use for your "title" for your most current jobs since this will show up at the top of your profile.
15 minutes

Web Site fields
You get to include three active links to external sites. Links you include in other parts of your profile won't be clickable so these are valuable. Make sure you use one of these for your company's Web site, then perhaps use the other two for your professional blog, and perhaps another profile like your company's Facebook page. TIP: don't use the generic "My Website" labels. Instead select "Other" and you will be able to choose your own label which will become the text of your link.
10 minutes

Public Profile
Social networking sites are now giving you the opportunity to create a "custom URL" for your page on their site. Here I explain how to set up a custom URL for your Facebook Profile or Facebook Page. On LinkedIn you edit this through your "Public Profile" field.

For example, my standard LinkedIn page is: http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=257307&trk=tab_pro
But my lovely custom URL is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/maishawalker
5 minutes

Your Summary
Use this area in a similar way to a cover letter. Explain in (relatively) normal-speak what makes you unique or different, why someone might want to connect with you, and possibly few details about your products or services. Note that you cannot create clickable links in this area.
30-90 minutes

The Resume or "Experience"
While it might seem tedious to enter every job you've had for the last 20 years this really is an opportunity. Think of it this way, while it would be strange for you to randomly send your resume to everyone you meet, sending your LinkedIn profile is perfectly reasonable and can give you that extra edge.

As LinkedIn user Divya Gugani aptly describes "Adding my profile link in outgoing emails adds credibility and the extra qualification nudge with certain requests... I like being able to subtly sell my expertise."

There is some debate how long each job description should be. I think this depends on your experience. If listing more than 5 jobs, perhaps use brief descriptions that include important keywords. If listing 5 jobs or fewer, longer descriptions won't be as problematic.
1-4 hours (depending on how badly your original resume needs an update!)

Contact Methods
If you would like to receive emails from strangers who might have opportunities for you, choose to accept "Introductions and InMail" so that anyone can email you. Also use the checkboxes to indicate what kinds of inquiries you're interested in.
5 minutes

Build Connections
LinkedIn doesn't have a lot of value without connections. This also tends to be a big strategy question for most people — do I connect broadly or intimately? I will address this question in my future post on LinkedIn strategies, but for now, if you're just starting out you don't have to worry about this. Just go into "Imported Contacts" and check your email address books for people who are on LinkedIn. The best and easiest way to gain useful connections is with the people you already know.
30 minutes

Create your Company Profile
Lots of people miss this one. When you mouse over or click on a company name in LinkedIn it takes you to a profile describing that company and displaying it's current and former employees plus details like where the company is located. To do this for your company, you first have to add your company to LinkedIn beyond adding it in your "Experience". Here are instructions for how to add your company profile to LinkedIn (you'll need a valid and accessible company email address). Once your company is added, click on your company name from your profile and then you can alter the company description to your liking by clicking on the Edit Profile link in the top right corner.
45 minutes

Set updates to be sent weekly not as they happen
If you don't want to receive an email every time someone in your network makes an update, you can change your settings to send you messages weekly or not at all. Just click on the "Account & Settings" button in the top right corner. I pretty much set everything to weekly except discussion replies, connection invitations, and emails from my connections
5 minutes

Recommendations
I've seen a lot of recommendations lately on LinkedIn. Unfortunately the more I see them, the less of an impression they make on me. Often people send generic emails out asking for recommendations from almost everyone in their network, and often people get generic recommendations back. The recommendations that most impress me are the ones that are not generic but really specific and sincere. Did the recommender use a specific product? Attend a specific event? See high return from a specific service you provided? Were they one of your partners in a venture? Sometimes a profile's long list of recommendations shows only that the person knows how to get lots of people to write something generic about them. Is this meaningful?

If you want a meaningful recommendation, sometimes the best way to get one is to write one if that's feasible. And while there are always exceptions, if you can't write a meaningful recommendation for someone there's a reasonable chance they won't be able to write a meaningful one for you. Writing recommendations is time consuming so I suggest that you write them only when you really have something worthwhile and not generic to say.
15-30 minutes per recommendation

Sneak Peak: Tagging
For a natural categorizer like me (INFPers unite!) LinkedIn's tags are a dream come true. It's a quick way to categorize the people in your network in a way that is personally meaningful. So if you are trying to build out a client base in Cincinnati, you can do a search for all of your contacts who have the word "Cincinnati" in their profile, and then "tag" the relevant profiles for future reference. After getting very excited and telling a colleague about this feature, I discovered "tagging" is still in beta so not all LinkedIn users have access to it yet.

One problem I've found with tags so far is they aren't integrated with other LinkedIn features. So as of this posting you cannot for example select all of the people you tagged as Cincinnati and send them all an email. Nor can you use tags in the "compose message" area. But you can export your tagged lists for use in other software.
30 minutes - several hours depending on # of contacts and # of categories

Keywords & Search Engine Optimization — this is a profile bonus
Keep in mind that when someone does a Google search for your name, it's likely that your LinkedIn profile will be one of the first links that shows up (unless you have a very common name or share a name with a celebrity). Take advantage of LinkedIn's high search-ability. Think about the keywords you'd want to be found under on search engines and on LinkedIn itself. Make sure that you include keywords relevant to your industry and position. You might decide to go back and rewrite things at the end to address this.
30-90 minutes

A Warning
Some have complained about the difficulty of deleting a LinkedIn profile. While LinkedIn does provide instructions for how to terminate a LinkedIn profile or close a LinkedIn account there have been some posts that describe user frustration in not being able to delete one's profile.

So, what's the damage?
According to my estimates, doing all of the things I outline above should take you between 4.5 hours and 9.5 hours (not including recommendations or the countless hours you'll spend transforming your 120 character headline into iambic pentameter). That's 1-3 days working a few hours per day, or 1-3 weeks working just a few hours per week - stretching it over a longer period is often a better plan for additional objectivity and less burnout.

I look forward to your comments outlining things I may have missed and your submissions of LinkedIn strategies for my upcoming article! We'll also cover things like Groups, Applications and other ways you can use LinkedIn beyond basic profile setup.

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

Inevitably many users have an "aha" moment when, after spending a quiet afternoon digging a little deeper they stumble upon some feature of LinkedIn that they find immensely valuable. At that moment they become converts, thirsty for knowledge about how to do more. This is what happened to my friend of the quote above. But many businesses never get there.

LinkedIn is a far less frenetic tool than most of the other social networking sites. As noted by blogger Sam DeReign "On LinkedIn, I am able to share the things I am most proud of — accomplishments that show what a capable person I am in the workplace. My contacts on LinkedIn aren't going to tag a photo of me attempting to do the Cha-Cha Slide after a bottle of wine." Thanks to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman for hipping everyone to this simple but spot on blog post. It is LinkedIn's subtlety which makes it powerful.

So how do you use LinkedIn effectively to help your business in ways you cannot really do on Facebook? As with all of the social media tools, there are three keys to unlocking the value in LinkedIn. Since LinkedIn is designed specifically to be used in a professional context, I think it is worth investigating them here in more depth.

I remember when I first discovered LinkedIn back in 2004. I had spent a considerable amount of time with social networking sites from many perspectives:

and perhaps most importantly

With all of that experience when I stumbled upon LinkedIn back in '04, it was easy to see that it was different from all of the other online communities that were popular at the time. LinkedIn was attempting to mold restrictions in usage, interface design choices, and a carefully selected but limited feature set into a social network that actually stuck with it's stated purpose - to be both perceived and used for professional networking and nothing else.

Their success in sticking with this stated purpose, and limiting the site's functionality around that purpose is what enables you as a business owner to use LinkedIn as perhaps the most significant tool in your social media marketing tool box. It is this context of (usually) subtle limitations that gives the three keys I describe above their great usefulness on LinkedIn.

There's a lot to cover, far too much for a single post, so next week I begin breaking down those keys one-by-one.

In the meantime I'm giving you a homework assignment!

Below is a screenshot of my LinkedIn profile with the areas of most interest highlighted. Take the next week to start investigating LinkedIn. There are probably gems there that you didn't even know existed. Come back with your questions, strategies, tactics and stories.

If you've had particular success with LinkedIn and can describe results/back it up with real data, let me know. I will be highlighting a variety of companies as examples. You can submit your LinkedIn strategy here.

Read Related Articles by Maisha:

Homework Assignment - investigate the LinkedIn profile hotspots:

(click to view the full the image with hotspots highlighted, it will open in a new window)

Below, I've outlined 9 methods of interacting on Twitter. This list should either allow you to comfortably ignore Twitter because none of these methods of interaction are feasible or meaningful for you, or recognize an opportunity for yourself or your business.

The Personality
This applies both to actual celebrities, and people who are building a brand that can be clearly defined as having a "voice". People like Perez Hilton, Oprah Winfrey and Tony Hsieh of Zappos immediately come to mind. All of them have Twitter feeds and each of them has a very distinct voice. "In waiting room at doctor's office. In addition to magazines, they should offer a selection of paint so people can watch it dry." A recent post from the CEO of a company with projected 2008 revenues of $1 billion. People follow these feeds for a variety of reasons but mainly because they receive something emotionally satisfying from the postings.

The Guide
The Guide is typically a person or people assigned to seek out messages posted by people who have a question related to your business, products or services. Here is a great case study of a company who did just that and has shared their results. Note that to maximize their efforts they have someone spending 30 minutes per day on Twitter in this role.

The Brand Watchdog
Someone proactively seeks out mentions of their company name or product name and responds personally to each post. Two companies that immediately come to mind are GeekSquad Founder Robert Stephens (thanks @DanielRiveong and @britopian) and ComCast's Director of Digital Care Frank Eliason @ComCastCares. Companies can win big brownie points by having very senior staff members respond to customer service questions. The idea here is that by providing direct access to someone who really knows what they're talking about, companies can prevent damage to their brand from disappointed customers.

The Customer Support Rep
Very similar to the Brand Watchdog, this too is focused on watching for and responding to customer service questions. But while I would put Frank Eliason in the Brand Watchdog category, this category is usually filled by the unsung Twitter heros (Twiroes?). They are likely handling questions in other (non-Twitter) venues and have added Twitter to the ways they communicate. The catch here is that the expectation is that Twitter customer service reps will actually help you resolve your issue. We'll see how long that lasts!

The Publisher
People and companies will often use Twitter as a way to simply feed followers information about their area of influence. A lot of news is now breaking on Twitter before it hits major publications. But you don't have to be first, just relevant and somewhat consistent. A really interesting take on the publisher model is The Brooklyn Museum who is monetizing their social content and their community by offering memberships to a "socially networked museum membership" for $20 per year.

The Promotion Channel
Unfortunately I think both spammers and ecommerce sites fit into this category. But the ecommerce sites I've seen use Twitter in interesting ways to do promotion and inform customers about products they are interested in. Take a look at Amazon on Twitter. Their feed is a little bit all over the place in terms of content and they don't have an individual person that followers can connect with (which limits conversation and can limit your follower numbers) but they've still managed to collect almost 4,000 followers as of this article. Contests, Twitter only discount codes, free giveaways are all part of the promotion channel arsenal.

The Conversationalist
Many of the most popular "tweet"ers are those who actively engage with their followers. In essence this is what really makes Twitter unique as a communication tool, although it's also what scares the bejeezus out of small business owners. Being the Conversationalist can be very time consuming, but the rewards are high in terms of building a loyal following and truly connecting with people who are interested in what you have to offer, from whom you are interested in learning and with whom you can build strategic relationships. We're talking several posts per day many of which are directed at specific people.

The Curious
There are many people who don't post to twitter at all. They use it as an information resource, watching the "twitter trending topics" to "crowd source" their news or following people they find interesting or informative. This can be a great way to use Twitter and learn a thing or two. The key here is to be careful about who you follow — you want people with a high signal to noise ratio usually with far fewer posts but each post is a gem.

The Entertained
Again here it's not about posting information but consuming it. There are many feeds on Twitter (The Onion is one of my favorites) that are purely about entertainment, putting a smile on your face or making you think.

As you'll no doubt notice, some Twitter strategies combine these methods.

The Conclusion

If you are not interested in any of the 9 methods above then Twitter is probably not for you. But really the best way to find out is to use it. Sign yourself up - it takes only a couple of minutes to sign up and if you're looking for somewhere to start, start following me and then look at other people who follow me. You don't have to know someone to follow them. You can even sign up under what I like to call an "incognito name" — a name that won't be associated with you or company so that you can experiment without worrying about making an embarrassing mistake. After a few weeks drop the incognito account and sign up with accounts branded for you and/or your company.

The Future?

On a more serious note, I can't help noting how many meaningful events have occurred in the last few weeks, and the very different way we experienced them. I am struck with the realization that every real moment can be played out near real time on a global scale.

These little 12-17 inch screens and keyboards we've become so intimate with, that bring close the lives of far away friends, over the last two weeks opened up a world of individuals sharing their grief, and made a political maelstrom that might before have seemed "far away," personal in a way many of us have never experienced.

As people, we know instinctively that how the world makes it's way into our lives is changing, dramatically. And not just how it reaches us, but where it comes from, who filters it (if anyone), how we seek it out and find it, that we can share it, comment on it, alter it and then pass it along. As people we struggle with concepts like authenticity while trying to grasp the ever-slipping confines of the personal within the ever-growing realm of the public.

And while those lines are being blurred and redefined, as businesses we must be careful not to loose sight of the very human, once personal context in which we're operating more and more. I think it's keeping sight of this context which in part keeps us authentic and relevant - regardless of the tools we use. While some debate whether or not Twitter is useful, others are simply putting it to work, filling a need, and reaching an audience they would never have reached before.

I thought something I read recently put it well:

While you definitely can learn from how others are using tools like Twitter both successfully and unsuccessfully, keep in mind that a) the communication is still yours b) the content is still yours c) everyone is still figuring this stuff out so don't be afraid to dip your toe in the water and don't be afraid to make a few mistakes d) do try to remember that there are humans on the other side of that message. There is something they probably want and want from you. What is it that they're looking for?

Related Articles:

So in keeping with my "start at the beginning" methodology — I'm going to break down what the 3 different choices are for Facebook, how they're different and how each can be used.

Before we go any further, it is vital for your own sanity to understand that only the Facebook Profile can exist on it's own. In order to create a Group or a Page you have to attach it to someone's profile. For a Page that attachment is hidden, for a Group that attachment is public.

Places where Facebook Profiles, Pages and Groups are the same

I think the reason why it's so confusing to figure out which one to use is because most of the things people want to do on Facebook can be done with all three.

They all enable you to:

At first glance this may seem like all you'd want to do with Facebook which is why it's hard at first glance to tell the 3 presence types apart. But the features that differentiate a Profile from a Page from Group, while usually not top of mind for most users, can become important as your usage of Facebook becomes more sophisticated.

Differences in Facebook Profiles vs. Pages vs. Groups

Audience Terminology — this one's quite simple. For each type of presence the people who are connected to you are called something different to help underscore the purpose of that presence. People connected to your Profile are your "friends". People connected to your Page are "fans" and people connected to your Group are "members".

Custom URLs — Facebook has just recently announced that you can now create "pretty" URLs for your Facebook presence.

For example, my old Facebook page was:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1002729552281

My shiny, new, custom URL Facebook page is now:
http://www.facebook.com/maishawalker

But these custom URLs are only available for Pages and Profiles. It is currently not in the plans to give Groups this feature.

Facebook Apps (Applications) — if you want to use any of the applications that are available on Facebook but not already part of the Groups functionality, you're out of luck. For now at least, Facebook Apps are limited to Profiles and Pages. Also note that some Apps only work in Profiles.

Individual Membership Control — of course in your Profile you have the ability to decline any friendship invitation you're sent. In Groups you also can use settings to allow you to accept or decline anyone who tries to join the group, i.e. creating a group focused on alumni of a specific company or school. Facebook Pages do not give you that ability. You can only control fans in large groups by age and country, not on an individual level.

Discussion Boards — if you want lively discussions that aren't swept away by the speed of your friend's updates, you'll want a Group or a Page so that you can use the "Discussion" feature.

Delegation & Shared Credit — although each of us has at least two people who technically share in the credit of our existence, Facebook isn't in the business of forcing those connections on your profile. You cannot delegate your Facebook Profile within Facebook, nor can you make someone else a "point person". Pages on the other hand have to have an "Administrator" — someone who has a Profile and is fully responsible for maintaining the page. Groups have to have an "Administrator" as well, but they go a step further. Groups also allow you to create "Officers" who have no ability to maintain the Group but are listed for recognition and perhaps as a point person for the group.

Visitor Data — only Pages give you access to information about who is visiting you.

Messaging Ability Limitations — currently, Groups that have more than 5,000 members do not have messaging ability as a way of preventing spam abuse.

Connection Limitations — you can't have more than 5,000 friends on your Profile but you can have an unlimited number of fans on your Page or members in your Group.

So'

Profiles — are for an individual. You are limited in the number of friends you can collect.

Pages — are for promoting a public brand. You must attach it (not publicly) to a profile that will administer the page.

Groups — are for organizing people based on criteria you define. You can interact with group members in a very limited number of ways since you can't install additional Facebook Apps, but Groups do give you the ability to accept members based on your own criteria (or whims).

You can also read up on how Facebook defines Pages and how Facebook defines Groups in their FAQs.

To tie it all together, I'm putting together a Facebook comparison chart. Contact me if you'd like my Facebook comparison chart for free when it's finished.

Related Articles:

Stay up to date:

Now I'd like to talk about how. How does one do this? It all starts with knowing which tools are most useful for your business. In fact I'm often asked "what are the best online marketing tools for small businesses?". I'll save that question for another post. For now let's focus on a subset of that - what are the best social media marketing tools for small businesses?

First let's take stock. Here is a list of some of the most popular social media tools (at least in the US market, in other countries it's a different story mind you). I want to give a nod to Seattle based Creativetechs for doing the thinking and the legwork to gather these sites into tidy categories!

Social Tools

All of these tools enable you to interact with people but in each group a different kind of content is the focus.

Social Directories — in some ways the simplest because it is the content focus is YOU. Each individual creates a profile and the directory enables you to find and connect with people based on the information they supply about themselves in that profile. This has extended beyond individuals to "entities". So that a company or group can also create a profile. Which brings me to one of the most confusing things about these directories - that not all of them approach "entities" the same way and most of them don't make it very easy to figure out how to create a profile for your entity. Facebook invites you to create a Facebook "page" for your business but does not want you to create a "profile" for your business even though pages and profiles can use many of the same features and tools (but not all). On the other hand, LinkedIn has a very limited "page" for businesses providing very limited functionality. Small businesses often struggle to figure out which kind of existence they should have in these directories (should it be me? Should it be my company? Should it be someone else within my company?) both to stay within the terms of service and still maximize the tools marketing potential.

Social Bookmarking (also called Link Sharing) — these tools allow you to highlight and share individual Web pages you like by sharing a link to them. People can "vote" on each link that has been shared and the links with the most votes move to the top of the page making the site a portal to the "best" content as filtered by the community. Note that an individual profile is connected to the posting of each link so over time you can get to know your fellow bookmarkers by their sharing habits, genre, frequency etc. These sites are useful if you post a lot of content and would like that content to be found and read by more people.

Video Sharing — sites like YouTube are usually very straightforward in functionality. They make it very easy to upload your own video and once the video is uploaded, it is also easily viewed and commented on by others. YouTube also provides ways for the video to be shared and embedded in other sites increasing their ability to turn "viral". Because video can be far more useful for branding than for sales, and because small businesses often do not have access to the budgets or marketing expertise to leverage the benefits of viral video, this tends to be a useful tool only when the business has ready and very easy access to a good quality video writing, production and editing resource that is willing to work for free or at low cost (i.e. close friend, owner, family member).

Photo Sharing — these sites are usually quite simple in functionality. Members can post photos which then can be viewed and commented on by the general public or only by those who are invited to see them. Small businesses sometimes use these sites to share photo galleries instead of building photo gallery capability into their own Web site. I think this usually poses a branding and user experience conflict. Especially since photo galleries are usually pretty inexpensive ($300 or less) to integrate into one's own site.

Blogging — the content is your creativity, your voice. You post content on a regular basis whether it's text, video, photos, podcasts or all of the above. Blogs enable you to be an individual publisher, and usually enable readers to participate in the conversation by posting comments.

Out of all of these tools, the top 3 in my list perhaps will not be a surprise:

Next time I'll go into more detail about each and why I prefer these tools for small businesses.

I also am fond of blogging (go figure!) but that deserves to be covered separately.

Also next week on Tuesday, June 16th I will be hosting a Social Media Marketing hands-on workshop for around 20 small businesses. If you'd like to be one of them learn more about it and register here.

Related Articles:

Stay up to date:

This weekend I went back to Princeton for my college reunion and spent 48 hours either with people I hadn't seen or spoken to in many years and yet because of Facebook and LinkedIn still felt oddly knowledgeable about, or with people I had actually never met but again felt oddly knowledgeable about through the sheer quantity and intensity of the virtual communications we shared. As inevitably strange situations and new sensations came and went at my reunion (because reunions are kind of wonderfully odd), I couldn't escape constant little reminders of how the new technologies we've so quickly become immersed in, are playing a role not only in our need but also our ability to be connected.

While I was on campus, I gave a lecture on social media marketing (and giving a "lecture" at my alma mater was certainly odd for me in so many ways). We looked at the Susan Boyle phenomenon. Note that according to The Telegraph the episode of "Britain's Got Talent" in which Susan Boyle debuted (it was the show's season premiere) had was viewed on television by 11.8 million people. But in just a few days, the video of that same show on YouTube had generated more than 80 million views. That's TV 11.8 million, YouTube 80 million. Anyone who grew up with television as the quintessential mass medium may need to take a moment just to absorb that fundamental shift.

And more and more people have a nagging suspicion that things like Susan's YouTube video are stark examples that social media tools really are changing the way that we communicate, and wondering what to do about it.

I agree with this suspicion because I think such change is inevitable.

What we now call "social media" are just the latest in a long and continuing evolution of communication tools. From smoke signals to Morse code to radio to television, each new tool we invent changes the way we communicate.

If you imagine with me for a moment, communication tools shifting over time in four respects:who sends the communicationwho receives the communicationthe ease of communicationwhat's in the communication

we seemed to have had a long progression toward an ever increasing number of recipients from tools like Morse code (only a few people can send complex messages to a few other people, so presumably senders and recipients are chosen carefully as are the messages they send) to tools like television (once the infrastructure is built, a few people can send messages to massive quantities of people relatively easily and so senders are chosen carefully while the recipients not so much & the messages can be drivel or not).

But Social Media seems to have taken this progress on a new path where we are growing not just in the numbers of recipients but also of senders. Large numbers of people can now relatively easily reach large numbers of people, as if we are each our own publishing house.

But the tools go beyond that too. In the past large numbers of recipients meant one-directional messages -- you could reach lots of people but they were passive recipients of your information. Now, these large numbers are also interactive. You can reach out to lots of people and every single one of them can immediately reach back. Instead of controlled, one-directional messaging, these tools enable a constantly evolving, living dialogue on a huge scale.

In it's novelty, just the fact that the power to create large scale dialogue is in the hands of individual people is kind of amazing. As a business owner though, the fact that you can now communicate interactively and regularly with 10 or 1,000 times more people can seem overwhelming.

There is a middle ground.

In the 1970's a sociologist named Mark Granovetter introduced a concept called "the strength of weak ties." It is the idea that as we reach beyond our closest friends and families, we have "weak" but vitally important ties that connect us to other people and their networks and the important information and opportunities that those networks hold. It is far more often through the networks of our "weak ties" for example, that we get referrals for business and find opportunities for new jobs.

What's amazing for small business owners about these new social media tools is that they are incredibly good at empowering individual people to efficiently and inexpensively maintain a far larger number of "weak ties".

Half the battle of being a successful business is just making sure people remember your business and what you offer when it's time to make a purchase or a referral. Through social media tools, a business can stay connected to a larger number of "weak ties" and the networks they belong to, have access to the information and opportunities in those networks, and do it better and faster.

By helping you maximize those weak ties Social Media Marketing provides small businesses with a powerful tool that doesn't need an overwhelming amount of complexity to be useful. Its power is based on the simple human desire to be connected and the tools that now exist to enable you, as an individual to fill that desire.

Here are a few steps for how to maintain your sanity while using social media tools effectively.

Related Articles:
The Marketing Skills You Can Learn from ObamaGetting Good Rank: Search Engine Primer
The Outsourcing Paradox


Stay up to date:
Follow my posts on Get "The Internet Strategist" updates sent to your myAOL, myYahoo or iGoogle page
Share:
Click here to easily share "The Weakest Link - Your Social Media Marketing "Killer App"" with your fans on
]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:21:37 -0400 Maisha Walkerhttp://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/06/the_weakest_link_your_social_m.html http://www.inc.com/maisha-walker/2009/05/link_building_-_what_to_do.html So now that we know that Link Farming is bad and reciprocal links may have limited value, how do we convince other Web sites to link to us without linking back to them?

One Directional Link Sources

First - where can you get these one directional links? Great places include:

If your site has a lot of free and useful content you will have a much easier time getting incoming, one directional links.

How to Ask for a Link

Also if you plan to reach out to other sites to link to you, make sure you use the right approach.

Related Articles:

Stay up to date:

Now let's cover the third and final step: link building.

Just like the other steps, link building is very simple on the surface, but getting it done can be more challenging that it appears.

What is link building?

In essence, you want to get other Web sites to link to you. That's it.

When another Web site links to you, it's as if that site is "voting" for your site. Their link is an indication that they believe your site's content is valuable.

If your site gets a lot more "votes" or incoming links than your competitors', this will help boost your search engine rankings higher.

In the past, getting incoming links was quickly and easily accomplished through "reciprocal links".

For example, you own that wonderful diner in Durham, and a motorcycle shop owner in Santa Fe emails you and says "Let's exchange links. You link to my site and we'll link to your site and we'll both improve our search engine rankings." What a great idea! Right?

Link Farming vs. One Directional Links

In the high-rolling '90's, entire businesses were formed based on this concept. You could pay a company a fee and they would instantly add your link to 100's of sites overnight. It was dubbed "Link Farming" and it was all the rage. Link Farming focused simply on buying the most links, not on sites meaningfully "voting" for your site. And Google found that it "unnaturally" inflated the rankings of sites who participated, diluting the value of the search results.

To combat this, Search Engines now focus on "one directional" links — where sites link to you but you do not link back to them. These are harder to get of course. Search Engines also penalize sites they suspect of artificial link building. If you have any reciprocal links, you can avoid this penalty by making sure you don't have too many and that for any reciprocal links, the two sites have content that is related. So avoid motorcycle shops linking to diners, no matter how good the pancakes are, unless that motorcycle shop happens to have a "road trip" feature listing great places to eat across the country.

Now that you know what *not* to do, next week I'll provide some tips on what *to* do - how to find sites that will give you one directional links and then how to ask for them.

To see the other installments in this Small Business SEO Guide visit:

Getting Good Rank: Search Engine Primer — what are SEO, SEA and SEM and should I really care?
Search Engine Optimization in 3 Easy? Steps — the three elements of SEO
10 Tips to Avoid the Biggest SEO Mistake — all about how to choose your keywords
The 9 Places to Put Your Keywords for SEO Power — what to do with your keywords


Tools to stay up to date:

Last time we covered how to create your keyword list - the foundation of all of your other SEO and SEM efforts.

Now let's talk about what to do once those keywords are selected — step #2 is building keyword density.

According to Wikipedia, the definition of keyword density is: "the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. In the context of search engine optimization keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase."

Basically - on a given page, what percentage of all the text is used by a specific keyword phrase? So for example, if a page has 100 words, and your keyword phrase is used 5 times, that keyword's density is 5% for that page.

The part that small business owners sometimes don't know is when we say "text" that doesn't only mean the readable text on the page. It also includes text that is found in your HTML code.

In a shout out to readers Sherri and James R. who appreciates the practical and tactical, (thanks for your comments! How am I doing?), here is a very specific rundown of what elements of your HTML code are recognized by search engines. You'll want to put your keyword phrases in these places to ensure the SEO power of each of your pages. Note that depending on how your site is built, some of these places you will have access to and some you may need your developer's help with:

A big note - this list does NOT include the Meta Keywords tag. While that used to hold weight with search engines, it's pretty much ignored now. It's too easy to put whatever you want in them, so companies used to stuff them with totally unrelated but super popular terms like Janet Jackson or Britney Spears. Search Engines got wise to that scheme and stopped paying attention to them.

Keyword density is where large, content focused sites have an absolute advantage. The more text or pages you have the more you can repeat your keywords in all of the places outlined above. If you have a 5 page site there's only so much you can do against a 500 page, optimized competitor.

Incidentally, this is one reason why businesses blog. Frequent blogging is an opportunity to create many pages of content that can use your keywords. But you have to believe that SEO (and blogging) is going to be a valuable way to generate new business for you in order to use this tactic. Read my post on that here.

For some additional research get it direct - try Google's Webmaster guidelines and their answer to the question: How can I create a Google-friendly site?

Now here's an offer - do you have questions about keywords and keyword density? Post them over the next 7 days by Thursday, May 7th and I will try to answer as many as possible and encourage everyone to join in the discussion!

Tools to stay up to date:

As we learned last week, the first of those 3 elements is your keyword list. Your keyword list is critical because it is these keywords that will be used for optimizing your your HTML code & programming and build your incoming links. When you start doing SEA you'll find that your keywords are critical there too.

So what are keywords?

Keywords are the word or phrase that someone types into a search engine to find something they are looking for — like "buttermilk pancakes" or "cannon digital camera".

When a searcher types in one of these phrases, a "search engine results page" (aka SERP) is returned with a list of Web sites that the search engine has decided best fits that phrase.

Here are the SERP pages for "buttermilk pancakes" on Google (top) and Yahoo (bottom):

So let's say you own a diner in Durham, NC and you'd like anyone who searches for "buttermilk pancakes" to see your diner at the top of the results page.

That sounds pretty good, right?

I mean the #1 ranking, I know the pancakes sound good and yes — that was a trick question.

In fact, choosing "buttermilk pancakes" as your keyword phrase could not only waste a lot of your resources, it could also cause problems for your business.

Here's why.

First — there is such a thing as too much traffic. How many phone calls do you need from someone in another state trying to place a delivery order or asking you'll mail them your pancake recipe? If your staff time get's maxed out by inquiries from people who won't ever do business with you, your staff won't have time or energy for the people who will.

Second — you will have devoted valuable time and money on a top position for a keyword that may hurt your business rather than help it. Those resources could have been spent far more productively elsewhere.

Unfortunately, many small businesses fall into the trap of choosing the keywords based on volume — thinking the ones that provide the most traffic will be the best investment. But what you really want is to focus on the keywords that will bring you the most business, even if they bring a small amount of traffic.

So how do you do that?:

Have you been burned by keywords or have they been the path to success?

Share some of your keyword tips below!

Tools to stay up to date:

You may be surprised to discover that Search Engine Optimization is essentially comprised of only 3 things:

That doesn't sound so hard right?

Well theoretically it isn't. But what makes SEO difficult for most small businesses is what my friend calls "the blind spots" — those major roadblocks you suddenly hit but never even saw coming.

Let's redo that list now with the blind spots added in...

Now we're getting somewhere! So now that we've out-ed the blind spots, what's a business owner to do?

For starters, we can identify how to avoid each of these roadblocks. I'll start with keyword list creation next week.

But before all of that, there's really a much BIGGER question we haven't even talked about.

As you follow the tactics in my coming posts, and start to see the resources you'll need to invest in SEO, you want to ask yourself — is this really worth it? Does it actually make sense for me to spend time optimizing my site for search engines?

I know, given all the SEO hype this may seem like a shocking question (do I hear gasping?). But you really do need to find the right answer for your inidividual business.

Think of one of those old balances you used to have in chemistry class. On one side of the balance you'll have the cost - the time, money, and strategic focus you'll be spending on SEO that you could be spending on something else. After all, marketing decisions at some point boil down to "is this where I can invest my resources to generate the greatest profit?" SEO should not be immune to this filter.

So, on the other side of the balance is "what will I get out of it?" meaning how likely is it that you'll a) beat out your search competitors given the resources you can put towards SEO and b) get real, live, paying customers from all of this? If 80% of business in your industry is driven by high-touch sales and personal referrals, does it really make sense to spend your resources ranking on a few search engine results pages that frankly leave a lot to be desired in the personality department?

For many businesses the answer is somewhere between an emphatic yes and a mitigated yes. For some it turns out to be a resounding no.

As a business owner, I encourage you to be skeptical of any marketing technique until you understand the "cost" involved and the realistic payoff for your business - no matter how much hype surrounds the technique. By walking you through the "cost" involved with SEO and where the possible payoffs are, through this and the next posts I hope to help you decide if and what amount of SEO is right for you.

Stay tuned next week for some fun with keywords!

Tools to stay up to date:

Clearly this is an exaggeration but those commercials crack me up. Perhaps it's because durng my careeer I've been on both sides. Perhaps it's also because I've spent more than 13 years sitting right in the middle - translating.

A little while ago I found myself in such a situation. I was moderating a panel for a great group of entrepreneurs-in-the-making and the topic was Search Engine Marketing. Much like the "Universal Business Adapter" lots of people eye Search Engine Marketing with a bit of awe and a lot of mystique.

One usually finds mystique in situations of information scarcity, not so with SEM (just do a search for search engine marketing and you'll see what I mean) and yet, the topic is still little understood.

I think part of the challenge is with the way SEM is covered:

So I've decided to tackle the problem and share it not only with the people who attended that event, but with Inc.com readers here.

First let's address the biggest question — what does Search Engine Marketing actually mean?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the act of optimizing your Web site and what I like to call your "digital footprint" so that search engines like Google will rank your site above other sites when people search for things. When looking at Google, this refers to the left side of screen or the "organic" listings which can draw more than 70% of the search engine clicks. If you want to get really in depth check out Google's Webmaster Tools http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 (beware, there's a LOT of information there).

Search Engine Advertising (SEA) is making a payment directly to a Search Engine (or through a broker or service provider) so you can place a text advertisement on the search engine results page (or SERP) when people search for things. This is also called "sponsored links" or "Pay Per Click (PPC)" advertising. You bid for a certain keyword phrase and you pay the search engine each time someone clicks on your ad.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) — has come to mean different things. Some people use the terms Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Advertising synonymously. I think this isn't really accurate or especially useful. Marketing is not just advertising. I think the better use of "SEM" is to refer to all of the ways that you can use search engines to market what you have to offer.

Next week I'll cover the most critical factor in any search marketing campaign — your keywords. How do you choose them? How should they be different for SEO vs. SEA? How do you keep from loosing your shirt by buying the wrong ones in a PPC campaign? Stay tuned'

Tools to stay up to date:

We looked at the data from a recent programmer project posting which resulted in a variance of more than 250 hours and $5,000 in cost.

While we anticipated the candidate responses would turn out the way they did, the question remains, where do you go from there?

Often business owners set out on outsourcing adventures and only realize how unprepared they are when they're at the point like this one where a decision needs to be made, but they don't know how to make it.

Here are the primary things you'll need to navigate your next technical outsourcing project:

1.Know the outsourcing market — outsourcing sites have their own modus operandi and the programmers who use them have devised theirs too. It's good to know what those are so you know what to expect out of the process.

2.Product detail & clarity — all too many times we've consoled business owners who felt locked into a project costing far more than anticipated because the programmer had to go through so many iterations of (sometimes still unsuccessfully) translating their idea into a working site. The problem is if you're working directly with a programmer (and not a Project Manager, Technical Lead or other go between) that's not their job. Your programmer shouldn't be figuring out the best way for your Web site to sell your product or what pages it should have. You should work that out in advance and provide all of that information to your programmer in the form of technical specifications'

3.Site specifications — a 3 page description of what you want does not a specification make. When you're building a site that has a certain complexity, a strategically thought out set of features that is then turned into a well written specifications document is essential to creating a site that you (and your customers) will be happy with, and your programmer will be able to do correctly the first time.

4.Technical Expertise — I know, the expertise is what you're trying to hire. That's the paradox. You need a certain amount of expertise in order to accomplish steps 1-3 for technical outsourcing to be effective. However you find it, you need someone who can effectively interpret and document your needs, evaluate & choose from candidates, manage the ensuing relationship, and evaluate the work being done to ensure it's good quality. Just looking at links to a potential programmer's work and speaking to their references is usually not enough to confidently hire for a technical project.

At the end of the day it is often a wise decision to hire an independent third party to act as your sounding board and guide to help you outline your project clearly, hire the right people, and if budget allows also assist you in managing the relationship either by being the point person or by acting as your behind the scenes adviser.

If you're not a technical person (and don't want to become one) make sure you come to the outsourcing party neither alone nor empty handed. Don't let your outsourcing dream transform into a money wasting, hair pulling nightmare — just be prepared.

Tools to stay up to date:

Tools to share:

Often the idea of outsourcing is equated with the idea of an efficient system – the fastest, most efficient way to find and hire the best help within the budget available.

Sites like getafreelancer.com, odesk.com and guru.com are easy to get started on. You can do a bit of due diligence and comparisons, post your projects, and start receiving bids almost instantly. But once you start reviewing those bids, you might soon find that mastering the outsourcing game is a little trickier than you thought.

Case in point: a posting was done recently for a freelance programmer. Included in the posting was a job description, a set of instructions (as in, send links to your work, indicate what time zone you're in, provide your contact information). For those who made it past the first cut, each candidate was provided a set of identical tasks and asked to provide a time and cost estimate.

Here were the results:Initial Replies - more than 50 initial candidates replied. Unfortunately 48 (or 96%) of the replies were generic "throw it against the wall" replies that had no bearing on the post and did not follow the instructions.Follow up – each candidate was sent another email asking that they follow the instructions in the first email*Real Replies* - this time 15 of the 50 candidates (or 30%) responded with their details and all of them were invited to provide estimates on the list of tasks.Estimates - 6 of the remaining 15 candidates (40%) responded with estimates. I'll detail the estimates below.

The process up to this point required:4 initial postingsapproximately 70 follow up postings emails and replies (since communication had to be done one at a time with each candidate, "mass" responses were ignored)approximately 15 hours between reading and writing responses, devising the list of tasks to estimate, and working with slow and somewhat clunky freelancer Web sites.

Here's where it gets particularly interesting. In the end the exact same list of tasks received wildly divergent estimates.

The lowest estimate: $450 for 15 hours of work.The highest estimate: $5,210 for 289 hours of work.

I kid you not. The exact same tasks procured estimates with a gradual variance of more than 250 hours and almost $5,000.

At this point after so much time spent and such wildly differing results, many a business owner would throw up his hands. How can this be so complicated, time consuming, unpredictable and hard to evaluate?

Herein lies the paradox. Many small business owners try to use the method of casting a wide net to hire a technical person, but don't realize that if you're going to do that, you really need some technical expertise just to get through the process, know who to hire and then get the most out of the relationship.

So now that we've had a chance to see what an outsourcing project response might look like (without you having to spend 15 hours to find out), next time I will break down the four things you'll need as a non-technical business owner, to get you through your next technical outsourcing project.

Most people seem to agree that the campaign used a number of techniques to capture an audience and even inspire the traditionally unenthused. Some of my favorite attributions are:

Audacity - the fact that Obama wasn't afraid to "redefine his target audience" and go after states like Indiana who this November voted for a Democrat for the first time in 44 years.

Mobilizing Large Numbers and doing it "Grass Roots" - unprecedented fundraising success by generating large numbers of small donations rather than small numbers of large donations to raise more than an estimated $600 million (McCain raised an estimated $250 million).

The Message Consistency - the message never waivered from the idea of being an "antidote" to the status quo.

But perhaps the most obvious and (to a techie like me) inspiring elements of witnessing this campaign was its focus on social technology to support and propel all of the other techniques.

The use of "new media" from friend building on Friendster to the seemingly simple text message proved to be a powerhouse for the campaign, as it extended the concept of "Team Obama" far beyond campaign headquarters literally into the hands of millions of Americans who voted and vocalized with their typing fingers.

For all the small business owners who couldn't help wondering, wow - can I do that? My answer is Yes you can! (Sorry couldn't help myself).

In taking a closer look, the technologies used form a rather familiar list:Official Web site: http://www.barakobama.com and http://my.barakobama.com
Text messaging strategy - enabled via collecting phone numbers on a mass scale
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/barackobama
Twitter: http://twitter.com/BarackObama
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom
Meetup.com: http://barackobama.meetup.com/

The list reads like a "who's who" of social media marketing.

But the real power in these technologies is understanding that the goal is not just to "set up" one tool or another, but to understand each tool's potential. That potential in the Obama campaign was brought to fruition by:having a consistent message
providing free and open access to "making a connection"
*always* keeping the tool up to date
providing pertinent digestible bytes of information that could be read, downloaded, passed on
leveraging the sheer quantity of enthusiasts and supporters on each tool to disperse messages almost instantly across an unbelievably wide, new network of venues and communities that hasn't been seen since the invention of television.

Think about the leverage that a database of 948,000 people on MySpace and 3.1 million people on Facebook provides when you have a message to communicate (and consider that vs. McCain's 221,000 on MySpace and 600,000 on Facebook).

As you think about your business and consider the challenge to build brand, generate buzz and stay on the radar as a small business owner with limited time and a limited budget, there are some very simple lessons to learn here:

1. everybody needs a team. Whether you're trying to build a team of millions of voters or a few thousand supporters of your business, build a team by building a venue for them to get involved. Even the simplest involvement can be powerful.

2. email, the Web, and cellular technology have created an unprecedented venue for that involvement. Know who should be on your team and know the different ways they like to be involved.

3. Use wisely. Learn how these technologies work and learn by example how they can be leveraged to build a community of supporters for you.

This is an advantage that won't last forever. As businesses gain competency in these techniques and learn to invest wisely, these techniques will slowly become standards rather than competitive advantages.

But it is possible for a growing small business to build a strategic, cost-effective and impactful social media campaign. As "Team Obama" has shown - yes you can.

That's right. You may not be the legal owner. Whoever is the legal owner of your domain name, that person has total control over it including – what Web site it points to, what domain name registrar maintains it, changing information about your domain name account, controlling who administers it, and being able to sell it.

In the many classes I've taught there's always someone who unfortunately has to deal with this issue. Here are some tips on how to find out who owns your domain and what to do if it isn't you.

First find out who owns it – Go to the WhoIs database and search for your domain. Whatever contact information is listed for both the "Registrant" fields and the "Administrator" fields, all of it, including any email addresses for these two fields, should be yours.

If you find this information is not yours, there are three possible reasons:

1.Private Listing – If you see something like "Domains by Proxy" listed as the registrant, more than likely the domain has a private listing which protects your privacy by not displaying your contact information. Contact your registrar to find out what contact information is behind the private registration. This is often stored in a separate account with a separate username and password.

2.Host Hijacking – Sometimes when you get a domain name included with your hosting account, the host will put their information as the registrant and administrative contact. Usually you have the ability to change this information by logging into your account. Don't let the host convince you that it should stay as it is.

3.Designer/Developer Hijacking – Sometimes unscrupulous practitioners will set this information to theirs without telling you. Sometimes this is done out of ignorance, but other times it is purposely intended to enable them to hold your domain name hostage should your relationship go sour.

Remedies – If a hijacking of your domain name has occurred here's what you can do:

Option 1 – Ask: for a host hijacking, developer hijacking or anyone else who's name appears where yours should, contact them to see if they'll change it. If not or you don't think this will work, you may need Option 2.

Option 2 – Legal Recourse: if you have a trademark it will make this easier. First, to find out your registrar's policy on domain name disputes, try searching your registrar's help section for the word "trademark." Most registrars adhere to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy which is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The UDRP starts at $1,500 to arbitrate a dispute.

Here are some helpful links describing their policies:

WIPO General Domain Dispute Information

WIPO's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy

The key is to keep your calm, know your options and find out as soon as possible if your domain name is in peril.

And always, always keep the details about your domain name registration account. You should know who your domain is registered with and the username and password for your domain name registration account. You should be very careful about giving this information to anyone since you are potentially handing over the legal rights to your domain name. Try using the various tools registrars now provide to give someone limited access to manage things in your account. If you have to give someone a username and password, change it before you give it away and then change it back once they're done.

Stay tuned for more insights next week and if you've had a domain name story that might help another entrepreneur please share your experiences. Help you take a bite out of domain name crime.

When you reach this point, it's time to create a bigger budget for your Web site. I've created this breakdown of cost factors that should help you in creating an RFP and gauging the estimates that you receive in response.

What will affect the cost of your Web site?

Number of Pages – Expect to spend $50-$200 per page for your site's construction.

Number of Pages Designed – How many pages actually need their own design? Most (non-shopping) sites use a "Home page" design and maybe an "Internal page" design. The "Internal page" design is used throughout the rest of the pages. But some pages like a photo gallery may need a special design. Expect each additional design to cost 10% of your initial design fee.

Number of Design Mockups – Would you like to have the designer show you three different potential layouts? Or will you start with one and then add others if needed? Additional mockups can cost 25-75 percent of the original design fee.

Template or "From Scratch" Design – Templates have come a long way baby. In the last few years there has been a revolution in the template market and you can actually get a really good full Web site design for less than $100. With the help of a designer you can also do minor (or major) customizations to a template. In fact, many designers will present customized templates as "original" designs so you might be getting this anyway. A "from scratch" design will cost between $1,500 and $5,000.

Flash – Flash is what's used to create sophisticated animations on Web sites. Take a look at tetris.com for a little break and a good example of a full Flash Web site. Flash instantly increases the cost of your site between several hundred to several thousand dollars. Flash templates are also available at 1/10 of that cost – but they'll still need to be customized with your content.

Automation Features – Things like Photo Galleries, Intake Forms, Contact Us forms require programmers. Programmers work hard and they are expensive. Expect these added features to cost a few hundred dollars each if there's a tool that can be bought and customized. Possibly a couple thousand dollars if it has to be created from scratch.

Email Newsletter Tool – The vast majority of Web sites should have a formal mechanism for collecting visitor email addresses that does not involve copying and pasting into Excel (those of you still doing this, you know who you are). Email newsletter tools usually start at $15-$50 per month. You can integrate the code into your site yourself or to have your developer do it expect a few hundred dollars to create a signup page and add signup links throughout your site.

Online Shopping – Adds a whole other level. Typically built using an off-the-shelf shopping cart software, expect the installation and configuration of your store to add $1,500 to $15,000 to the cost of your site. PayPal and the new Google checkout are great alternatives if you have fewer than 20 products to sell. You can set up an account for free, you're only charged when someone makes a purchase and you don't need shopping cart software.

Maintenance Fees – The most popular are hosting (around $5-$20/month) and your domain name ($5-$25/year). If you have an online store you'll also need an SSL certificate ($20-$50/year), and a merchant account and payment gateway ($30-$40/month plus transaction fees). You should also consider budgeting 10-20% of your original Web site budget annually for software upgrades, new features and consulting.

Marketing Costs – These can vary widely depending on your site, industry and budget. For a good budgeting rule of thumb, gauge the percent of your marketing budget to spend online according to the percent of your customers you expect to get online.

Now that you have some figures in mind you should have a sense of what your site should cost and be closer to getting bids from a Web development company. For tips on how to hire a Web site development company check out How to Hire a Web Designer.

If that's you, never fear, after 13 years of Web site projects large and small, I'm going to break it down for you.

1.Planning – This is the part where you figure out what you want. If you don't know how to do this, read on! Check out this post on 10 Vital things to give your Web Designer and this one on Web Site Costs to get you started. Your goal should be to create a Site Map and a set of Wireframes (an outline of what will be on each page).

2.Design – Will you build it yourself, buy a template or hire a designer? Take a look at my 3-hour Web Site Plan and see the section on "build it or buy it." Then get yourself a design or a designer.

3.Copywriting – This is often an afterthought but if you can afford it it shouldn't be. Good copy can really make or break a Web site - being the difference between being convincing and being boring.

4.Construction – Your Web site will typically be built in one of three ways: plain HTML, Flash, or a Content Management Tool (see below). Which one depends on your needs. Also part of the construction process is testing and optimizing your site for search engines " SEO."

5.Marketing – How will you generate traffic to your site? What techniques will you use, who will implement them and how often?

6.Maintenance – Make sure you know how your Web site is going to be updated. Who will do it and what tools will they need? Many a small business has fallen into the trap of launching a beautiful site that they can't update, by a designer who has disappeared. Don't let that be you! Strongly consider using a Content Management Tool like Joomla! or Drupal so that you can have control over updating the text and images without relying on your designer/developer.

That covers the 6 essential elements of building and maintaining a Web site. Stay tuned for our next topic – Web Site Cost Breakdown! where I'll help you figure out what your project should cost.

In the meantime, tell me how you've fared with any of these steps. Have you used a Content Management Tool? Which one?

1.Create a List of Pages – Even if they change at the advice of your site team, you should outline the pages you think your site should have as a starting point for discussion.

2.Sites You Already Like - Create a list of 3 to 5 Web sites you like for their design – and explain what you like about them. Are there specific colors or fonts? Do you like the site's layout or background pattern? Spend a week or so looking at other Web sites both in and out of your industry. What sort of special tools and features do they have that you might want? It is extremely smart to point to visual examples of what you want.

3.Special Features - Are there any special tools or automations you want? For example, do you want the site to automatically send emails to people who submit a form, or save the form submissions into a database? Do you want to be able to upload a bunch of pictures and automatically create photo galleries? Anything automated is typically going to cost more and you want to make these things clear to find the right company and get an accurate quote.

4.Investigate the Competition – What do your competitors do well and do really badly? Learn from their success and avoid their mistakes. It is easiest to identify the good, bad and ugly before diving into your project so that you'll be looking at things with a fresh eye.

5.Budget – What's yours? Do you know what's realistic and how much you have to spend? (If not, keep an eye out here, I'll be providing a Web Site Budget Benchmark).

6.Timeframe – Do you need the site up by a certain date? Is there an event or marketing push that the site needs to be online for? Typically you'll want give a basic HTML site 6-10 weeks and an eCommerce site 8-12 weeks.

7.Existing Materials – Do you have a logo, business cards, brochures or corporate font? Remember to send your designer anything you can showing how you've presented your company in the past.

8.Content! – Write as much of your text in advance as you can stand. One can never really understand a site so well as when one actually reads the text that is going to be used. Write as much of your text as you can will also help you clarify your needs.

9.Web Site Goals – Exactly what do you hope to accomplish with your site? I always tell people "a Web site is like an employee" you wouldn't hire someone without giving them specific tasks and knowing how they are going to directly impact the bottom line would you? You should treat your Web site the same way.

10.What are your calls to action? – What do you want visitors to do. "Click around and read about my company" is not an acceptable answer. If you are not selling ads, there should be something your site inspires people to do. Call you? Buy something? Join a mailing list? Make sure you know what that is and make sure your Web site accomplishes it.

This is a list that should make most Web site service providers smile with glee.

Have you had experiences trying to create these items? Was it a project saver or did you pull your hair out? Share your experiences below and everyone benefits!

As with many products, the task of building a good Web site is typically done by a team of people who each has a specific area of expertise.

As the entrepreneur and business owner, you want to focus your time on managing the team and making sure the final product is going to be a hit for driving revenue and leads.

Here's who you'll want to have on your team when embarking on a your Web site project:

Marketing or Account Manager

This is your "big picture" thinker and advisor. The person who should know all the bells and whistles you could have but should faithfully advise you against them. This person should help you plan your Web site to serve your needs for the long term. On smaller projects, this role might also be served by your Project Manager (see below).

Project Manager

Your Project Manager will interact with the rest of the team (and possibly you) on a day to day basis, as the driving force pushing everyone through each step of the process to completion. This person is also responsible for making sure deadlines are met and the project stays on budget.

Information Architect

The role of the Information Architect (lovingly called an "IA") is to make sure your Web site makes sense. Does it have the right pages? Are they in the right sections? Is your terminology consistent? Are the navigational techniques consistent? Sometimes "usability" also falls into this role – making sure that each page and the site as a whole is easy to navigate and use. On smaller projects the IA role is often played by the Account Manager or Project Manager.

Graphic Designer

The graphic designer decides what your Web site actually looks like. What colors and fonts will it use? Where will the elements be placed on the page? Make sure you are working with a designer who has a good deal of Web site design experience. Designing for the Web is a specific skill and is not the same as designing for print.

Copywriter

If you need someone to spruce up or "webify" your text or write it from scratch the copywriter is your friend! Copywriters should be able to write within your style or tone and should understand SEO so that your text will be optimized from the start.

HTML/JavaScript/CSS Coder

This is a vital role for most Web sites. HTML is the fundamental language of the Web and all Web sites have some amount of HTML code included. If you don't need a programmer (see below) you will certainly need at least an HTML coder. This person takes your flat design file and converts it into text, images and interactive HTML code so that it can operate as we expect Web sites to operate.

Programmer

This often misused term really refers to professionals who use true "programming languages." HTML, JavaScript and CSS are not programming languages and thus professionals who focus on those languages are not technically programmers. You will need a programmer if you have any sort of automation on your site or forms for visitors to submit. Programmers work in languages such as PHP, ASP, Java, JSP, and mySQL. They usually can also do the job of the HTML coder but because a programmer is usually more expensive that's usually not cost effective.

QA/Tester

This is the person who will click on every link of your site to make sure they all work, and submit your forms in various ways to ensure everything works and shows the user appropriate error messages when something goes wrong. For smaller projects the HTML coder and/or Project Manager will usually do the testing.

Now that you know the role each person plays, you're ready to go out and hire the right team for your project! Note that for smaller projects often you may find a Designer or a Programmer who is the "project leader" and will wear several hats. This can work splendidly, especially if your site is a simple 5-pager, but be careful not to go too far – at the end of the day you want a site that doesn't just work, but works for you.

So how do you first find someone to build your Web site and how to do you make sure that you get what you want from the relationship?

As hiring someone to build a Web site becomes more and more popular, here is every small business owners guide to making the decision wisely:

Get your act together!

Not understanding Web technology is no excuse these days for looking like a dear in the headlines when asked – "what are you looking for?" Not knowing what you want will usually lead to quotes that can't help but be inaccurate, a lot of time (and possibly money) spent having your Web designer make mistakes so that you can tell them what you don't want and eventually get to what you do want.

Especially if you are working with a very limited budget you will want a clear plan for your site. See next week's post for coverage of some vital questions I ask all of my clients and students to help them get ready:

Be realistic and open about your budget

It is important that you know what you have to spend. If you are selling online and want to hire a reputable company, expect to spend between $1,200 and $5,000 for a Web site that can generate leads for you depending on whether you want a custom design. If you're planning to sell online (excluding a simple PayPal sales) expect to spend from $5,000 to $20,000 to get a site set up.

Get a Referral

Technology can be a murky business. I have heard both wonderful and horrible stories about business owners who hired a Web site developer from a simple online search. I strongly recommend asking people you trust for referrals. Also consider going to your local business support organization like the New York City Department of Small Business Services or Seedco and asking for suggestions.

Use The Horse for the Course

No we're not talking about OTB, and there should be no "longshot" factor in your Web site construction project. There are different kinds of practitioners involved in building, marketing and maintaining a Web site and they all have different skillsets. It's not hard to know who they are and what they do, and this is one thing you really should know.. Do you just need a designer? Do you not need a designer at all? Do you need a programmer? Maybe you'll be fine with an HTML coder who is usually less expensive than a programmer? Check out next week's post for a description of Web site roles and players.

I know it can be hard to figure out what you want and a lot of times, the person you hire will help you do that. But you want to hire people with the right skillset to even be able to answer those questions for you.

1.Weebly – I do not know how these guys make money. One of the biggest challenges with do-it-yourself websites is the designs. They're usually TERRIBLE. As in, don't touch it with a 10-ft pole terrible. The designs on Weebly are great – provided you want a very simple, clean streamlined website that does not require robust e-commerce. I built a website in literally 15 minutes.

2.Site2You – You still need a hosting company and there's a $59.95 fee after your 7-day trial period, but you can get yourself up and running at no cost for the first seven days. The templates are a mix of great and overly busy. The site is easy to set up. This one took me the full hour, but I ended up with a more professional looking website.

3.freewebs.com – While there is a difference between the free version and the pro versions you can still set up great looking website. In the pro version you have access to lots of features (in future articles we'll help you decide if you actually need any of these features). The free version is completely free – no trial period.

4.Blogger and Wordpress – Two great blogging sites that are totally free. But did you know you can also build regular website using Blogger & Wordpress? These can be great, free tools and you can point your domain name to them so that it doesn't read "yourbusiness.blogger.com"

5.Apple's website building tool - I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of websites I've seen my students build using Apple's iWeb software. They're clean and simple and with a bit of guidance from a professional about what to include and how to avoid common mistakes you'll be well on your way. Of course, you want to have a Mac computer and you'll get the most mileage from the tool if you have a .mac account or another hosting account. Mac users can consider iWeb a good source for building a simple free website.

With all of the DIY tools remember one thing – your website is only as good as its content. Make sure your content isn't just "descriptive" or leading nowhere. Create content that asks for an action - moving visitors one step closer to being customers.

In part 1 we discussed domain names, logos and the buy vs. build question.

In part 2 we discussed your design, structure and content.

Now, in the 3rd and final part, we'll discuss construction, hosting and email, and the often forgotten elements of marketing and maintenance.

We're breaking down the 10 essential elements of a Web site plan, and pinpointing the fundamental decisions you'll need to make based on your goals and your resources. The direction you choose to take for each of these 10 essentials will form the foundation for your Web site and enable you to move on to getting your Web site done with the confidence that you have the right plan in place.

Let us know in the comments which way you chose and other fundamental decisions you've faced in your Web site projects.

7.Construction – This is directly linked to the build or buy question but goes beyond it as well.

The decision: You have essentially three options:

'Learn how to program – this means getting familiar with tools like PhotoShop, Dreamweaver and FTP software and possibly taking a couple of classes. Don't attempt this if you don't like computers. Fifty to a few hundred hours can be the expected time investment.

'Use a site building tool – most hosting companies offer one for free or you can use services like GoDaddy.com or Yahoo.com. Note that you are limited in the designs you can use with these tools. Expect to spend 30-40 hours learning the tool and building your site. (A little less if you've used these posts to create your plan first!)

'Hire someone – beware that the lone, jack-of-all-trades Web site designer/builder is becoming less and less likely to give you a quality Web site these days. The individual Web site elements (like design, HTML coding, programming, SEO etc.) are becoming far more specialized. You'll typically want at least a true HTML/JavaScript coder who's up to date with the best coding techniques, and a programmer (HTML is not programming) to do things like create working forms for you. Make sure you have the right people on your team.

8.Hosting & Email – Every Web site needs a host. Your hosting company maintains the computer (server) where your Web site files and company email accounts sit. Make sure you set up email addresses using your domain name. It will give your business added credibility and work to promote your brand. Free email accounts like Hotmail and Yahoo are great for personal use, but actually damage the credibility for your business. If you have any trouble setting up your email accounts, contact your Hosting company for support.

The decision – Finding a reliable hosting company is usually a matter of speaking to satisfied customers. Ask your colleagues not only if they're satisfied but why. If they've never called customer service but good customer service is vital to you, you want to know this before using their satisfaction as a barometer of your own.

9.Site Marketing – How will people find your site? Networking and word of mouth are usually not enough without a plan (no matter how simple) behind them. It's helpful to know how you'll market your business so you can decide if there are any pages or text you'll need on your site to support your marketing activities.

The decision – Identify which pages on your site are turning points for site visitors. These are pages where the visitor take some kind of action toward become a customer. A Contact Us page for example is a classic turning point page – this is where potential customers contact you to discuss your services to see if you might be a good fit.

10.Site Maintenance – Although this is last item on our list it is one of the most essential essentials. I meet so many businesses who tell me the person who built their Web site has disappeared or moved away or is charging them more than they expected to make updates. Make sure you have a plan for how your site will be updated. Know what technologies, pages and frequencies are needed to maintain your site before you agree to a specific construction plan. For example, if you have a Flash Web site, you will typically need to own and know how to use the Flash software to update it! And find out what the ongoing maintenance costs will be.

The decision: Outsource - hire your Web developer to handle task of keeping the Web site up to date? Or have a Web savvy member of your staff update the Web site? Or invest from the beginning to save later by building the site using a Content Management Tool which will let you or your staff easily update the site without needing to know any HTML or programming.

That covers the 10 essential elements of building a Web site. Stay tuned for our next topic – 5 Ways to Free! where I'll uncover 5 tools you can use to build a free (good) Web site.

In the mean time – review part 1 and part 2 of the essentials, get working on your 3-hour plan and tell us what kinds of challenges you've faced making decisions about the initial planning of your Web site.

In part 1 we discussed domain names, logos and the buy vs. build question.

In part 2 of our 3-Hour Web Site Plan, we'll discuss three major elements of your Web site planning – your design, structure and content.

We're breaking down the 10 essential elements of a Web site plan, and pinpointing the fundamental decisions you'll need to make based on your goals and your resources. The direction you choose for each of these 10 essentials will form the foundation for your Web site and enable you to move on to getting your Web site done with the confidence that you have the right plan in place.

Let us know in the comments which way you chose and other fundamental decisions you've faced in your Web site projects.

4.Design – Don't *overspend* on design. Design is important but you want to spend a significant amount of your time and money on other elements of your site to make sure the site is profitable and meets the goals you've set. Generally avoid a home-grown visual site design if you're not a Web site designer. We find that home grown designs usually leave business owners very unsatisfied and take up an inordinate amount of time so…

The decision: Use a design template? Or get a custom design? Design templates have come a LONG way. Some of them are still terrible but some are fantastic and can be purchased for less than $100. In addition to the price, the benefit of a template is you see exactly what you're getting right from the beginning and you can work with a designer if desired to have the template customized or tweaked. The benefit of a custom design is you have the opportunity for a completely new creation, however it will be more time consuming and a little riskier.

5.Structure – What will your pages be and how will they be organized and linked together? For most service oriented businesses a simple 5-10 page Web site is plenty – especially if you're just starting out. If you plan to sell things online you will probably need a lot more including product categories and policy pages.

Make sure you decide your site sections based on what makes sense to your customers. Build a "Site Map" using PowerPoint to determine what your pages will be and how they'll be connected.

The decision: Basically try to be as clear and straightforward as possible with your site sections/navigation. Look at other Web sites to see what makes them successful or failures in this area and then try to do better!

6.Content – "Content" refers to your site's text and images. A few tried and true content tips:

'Write simple text that's easy to scan. Try not to "lift" text directly from pre-existing brochures without editing it for the Web.

'Focus on text that helps to answer the questions of your potential customer and includes a "call to action" on as many pages as possible.

'Include images in your site to break up the text if you can, but only if they are relevant images.

'Beware of "over-used" stock photos that you see on other Web sites, they usually make your site look generic and unoriginal.

'Using "royalty free images" helps keep costs manageable. A great resource is istockphoto.com.

The decision: Most business owners write copy and find images themselves. Alternately you can hire a designer to find images for you and hire a copywriter to write or edit your text for you. Expect this to add about 10-30 percent to the cost of your project if you hire.

Stay tuned for the 3rd and final part where we discuss construction options, hosting, e-mail, marketing & site maintenance!

In the mean time – get working and tell us what kinds of challenges you've faced making design structure and content decisions.