The power of a Like is so big that it was replicated in many other sites. It went even beyond social media platforms and now you can see Like buttons in almost every web page (Especially since now, what you “like” appears on your Facebook stream giving brands, stories and people more exposure) Finally, the Like button even contributes now to Google rankings!

But let’s talk about the Like button for business. Beside the obvious move of “liking” stuff because you found something interesting, there are ways in which I use the LIKE button for business networking. The social networks I use to do this are naturally Facebook, also LinkedIn and Twitter (in this case, you won’t find a Like button but a “Favourite” one instead)

How to LIKE for business networking

In the past, we would probably see business people, that we wanted to network with and learn from, every now and then. That could also mean months or even years! The beauty about social networks is that you can constantly know what your business contacts are up to by just watching the desired news streams. However, by just reading your network’s updates, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re networking or that your connections know that you are reading (or there at all).

When you LIKE on any of these platforms, you are:

• Telling your business connection, “I’m here, I support you”. That acknowledgement transmits a very powerful vibe and massively contributes to longs term relationships. For example, there are people I haven’t seen in at least six months or more and the only fact that every now and then they “Like” one of my posts or comments, tells me that they are still part of my network, that they still want to learn from me and they want to stay in touch. On the other hand, it encourages me to stay in touch with that professional and reminds me that I need to maybe read their stuff more often.
• “Liking” on Facebook or LinkedIn is the same visual experience, however, people “Like” a lot less on LinkedIn that Facebook. The advantage that you have there is that when you Like on LinkedIn, it’s easier for people to notice! On Twitter, when you click on “Favourite” on a message, a tweet goes out to your followers saying that “You just favourites X tweet/content”. In this case, you’re giving your business contact the desired acknowledgement but also a nice push to their message
• “Likes” on web pages: Now, every time you click on a Like button outside of Facebook, that piece of news, article, website, etc, will show on your Facebook Wall and Live stream for all your Facebook contacts to potentially see. That’s very powerful. In this case, you’re not just telling your business contact “I’m here” but you’re also helping them spread the word!

“Liking” has become part of our lives. Simply keep in mind that the click of a simple button can also be used to build solid relationships throughout time.

Over to you: How do you use the Like button? Share your story below!

Not surprisingly, his article got a nice mention over at Small Biz Trends.

I think that you can only do this that well every so often, especially to keep it as a great technique which readers do enjoy (otherwise it may become common currency).

There are thousands of blog posts out there covering social media strategies. Today, inspired by Ivan’s technique I only want to focus on the idea of making things less about you and more “about them”. Hopefully these ingredients might encourage to spice up your upcoming strategies in 2011:

Tag like you mean it

Remember the early days in Facebook when someone was selling a car and uploaded a picture of it tagging all their friends? The first attempts seemed original; down the line it just felt impersonal (especially with situations like a female friend tagging you on things like a pic of an upcoming garage sale of unused lady shoes).
There are plenty of platforms where you may be tagging people (in your blog through mentions, on Twitter, Facebook, even commenting on someone else’s blog and mentioning a third person). Take your time to say something worth saying, spread something worth spreading, but above all, tag, to give other people or companies visibility. What goes around comes around.

Develop the habit of referring

Publicly refer people or companies on a weekly basis. This is one of my goals for 2011 and you are still on time to also make it one of yours. We all consume products and services, both at a company & personal level. Even referring people who are not online yet may have the double power of the gift & enlightenment (e.g. refer your favourite coffee shop or the old fashioned printers who sort your company’s needs just in time, every time)

Replace reactivity with pro-activity & reciprocity

If we look at re-tweeting for instance, although still effective, it is not as personal as spotting an opportunity (e.g. someone that you know who is looking for something on Twitter) and emailing the people involved. In an era full of noise, personalisation makes a difference and you’ll be putting a big quota of pro-activity there.

People commenting on your blog: Someone leaves a comment and you are prompt to reply with a compelling answer. Very good, now what? Well, jump to their blog and spot an article you like & leave a comment. Still good… but reactive. If you really like their blog, bookmark it somehow and come back recurrently & comment. Or maybe share their content without being asked. There’s some reciprocity with some extra pro-activity.

Within your content plan, include at least one monthly blog post about someone else. It could be a review, or a simple mention of a favourite service. Just do it somehow. The more you do it the more natural it comes out.

Any of these attitudes can be applied by Organisations or individuals. It’s true that many individuals may need to stand up to some selfish decision makers who want it to be all about them. But it’s probably also true that if individuals break some rules with acts of generosity, there’s little room for reprimanding.

I guess that this very blog post could be considered a “Meta”blog post, in the sense that it covers a bit of that go-give-attitude found on another post, using similar tools like the tagging & recommending.

I wonder if someone could write an article about my post and continue the chain? Regardless, if I managed to plant a few seeds in your mind I’m already happy, and thankful

What other ideas do you have? How can we bring others more and more into our updates & content?

1. The Marketing / Communications Department think that they need to do something about it.
2. During the next product launch they do everything the same.
3. At final stages they start wondering “how can they incorporate social media” to get more exposure.
4. Many of them waste even more time trying to get this “social media thing” approved by Legal or other departments before it can go live.

Does it sound familiar?

Some of you might know by now that this approach will simply not work at all, especially when social media is seen as a pure “advertising platform”.

I was reading yesterday an interview by Jesse Stanchak on social media strategy with Scott Monty (Head of Social Media, Ford Motors). He said:

“We start thinking about product launches and shows like this, that it’s baked in from the beginning. It’s not an afterthought, where you get the rubber stamp, “what are we doing for social media?” kind of thing”

This is one HUGE reason why companies like Ford are very successful spreading the word cleverly in social networks. Without this approach, it doesn’t matter if you have a big budget, your company would be wasting most of it (if not all).

If your business is getting ready to implement social media, make sure of the following:

Be open and patient

Don’t think about the Marketing or Communications Department only. There are more people within the company that will be more than happy to participate and share their creativity and social media ideas.
Also, don’t get discouraged if not everybody cooperates with the idea. One of the biggest obstacles for companies approaching social media are lack of knowledge and company culture.

Act creatively

Besides all the obvious points like having a goal, defined metrics, expectations… have a proper creative round with the team you put together for this project (maybe product launch). You will notice that this step will make a significant difference. Not all the ideas will make but you will nurture a good pipeline.
If anybody says: “I don’t have any good ideas”, answer, “tell me all the bad ones you have then”, as Seth Godin would say.

Think social

What is that same answer you deliver to clients everyday? What is your customers/prospects’ best topic/product? The answers to these questions would represent clearly “something of interest” and could be converted into “hot content“. In other words, if you are delivering that same daily answer to one person at a time by email, only one person at a time can benefit. Versus, you do a quick, creative (could be a screencast) blog post, or video of yourself/team explaining the solution and thousands of people will benefit and what’s best: more people will know that you exist
The majority of companies work very hard everyday to keep private what should be public.

Get found!

Once you incorporate the idea of social media from the very beginning, your team or Department will realise that is a lot simpler to think in terms “making quality pieces of content” (breadcrumbs) to be shared regularly (blog post, video, presentation, pictures, etc). Focus con leaving as many of these. Ensure to be there to talk with the people that will start feeling identified with your brand and content.

What’s your experience? What would you add?

Previously, every time you would click on “Like” or “Comment” on any Facebook post, the only way for others to see that would be through small calls-to-action that looked like this:

What’s new?

Now, every time you Like and/or Comment on a Facebook post, it will look like this!

NOTE: Keep in mind, this view only appears on the News Feed, not the Live stream (“Most Recent”)

We’re not sure 100% about the limitations yet but we did some research and the reach looks pretty broad. For example, in my News feed I could see comments and likes from my friends on pages that I’m not a fan of. That’s cool!

What do you think about this new addition? Share your comments below!

Now people are making public (checking in) their location in social networking sites. It means that you, as a manager or business owner have a phenomenal chance to see who are those people that visited your “Place”, keep in touch with them and also, by having your company registed in these sites, more people will naturally find you.

Facebook Places has launched already in the US, UK and other countries. However, we don’t see businesses taking action, so here’s the opportunity:

At the moment, when you check into any “Place” on Facebook (or will check-in when it’s available in your region), here’s how it will look. Simple, not too appealing:

We have registered officially our “Place”: Channelship Web Agency. London and here’s how it looks when anybody checks in

HUGE difference: You get to include a picture, a description and users can also see a link to your company’s website. Also, depending on what type of Facebook page you opened, the link to your “Place” will show on the “Information” tab and on the left sidebar as well. Currently those location links point to Bing Maps but they’ll be connected with Facebook Places very soon.

Another great benefit of Facebook Places, that will help your company get more exposure, is the fact that you can geo-tag other people and vise versa.  Here’s how it looks:

Don’t panic. Those of you that don’t want to get geo-tagged, can do so from your Security Settings.

How do I register my company in Places?

First, you need to check into the place you want. If it doesn’t come up in the list,  click on “Add a Place”. Then you’ll see a link at the bottom of any Place page that says “Is this your business?“.

Simply click there and follow the instructions. Facebook will request that you attach with your application any business document (bill, statement) that verifies the name and address. That’s it!

Your “Place” page will look like this

Finally

By registering your company with Foursquare, people will be able to also find you through Facebook Search! Another way to easily to get found.

Facebook Places hasn’t fully launched yet worldwide. That’s why there are a lot of unanswered questions. For example, Dennis Taylor asked on our Facebook page: “Can you merge your Facebook business Place with your current business Page? It seems creating a new page just for location based users is silly – rather have all my likes in one place“.
For now it would make sense to register your business with Facebook Places (plus other geolocation sites) and what’s most important: use it to check in and analyse the insights to find new people (possible customers) and keep your community growing. Yes, it would take a bit more time based on Dennis’ question but it’s worth it. Hopefully Facebook will come up with a nice “blended” option in the near future.

Will you take action? What do you think?
Best
Fred

For example,  a few days days ago, singer John Mayer decided to quit his Twitter account, leaving more than 3.7 million followers behind. Why? Apparently, the PR folks decided to use this platform to promote the latest tour only.
So, was this a wrong move? Sure was.

John Mayer carries a brand, like any other company. It doesn’t matter if you have a thousand, 100 thousand or a million followers. These are real people that took the time to connect with your brand, many of them in a deeper way that you could probably know or measure. So, if your boss or the PR team decide to pull the plug on a relevant platform that connects with your audience, you might want to think it again.

We decided to follow the progress of all the comments worldwide with our brand monitoring software. We were very curious to know if people would take it easy or would get very emotional about Mr. Mayer quitting Twitter.

Check out first where the conversations took place:

The other exciting graph to explore was “Sentiment“. Naturally, the majority of mentions have neutral sentiment since it’s just people spreading the word without making comments, necessarily about how they feel. However, when we drilled down to the negative Vs positive comments, we found that most of them were negative:

What kind of negative comments? Here are some.

Conclusion

When using platforms to communicate / engage with your audience, you’ll discover pretty soon that it’s not about the tool any more but about the people that communicate with you. If you treat any of these social networks as “disposable marketing / PR initiatives” to satisfy metrics, you’ll be incredibly missing the point.
Think it this way: If you have a direct phone line that your audience uses every day to talk to you, share their thoughts, feedback, give you business, etc… Why would you get rid of it?

A few years ago, Coca Cola received a call from Facebook saying that a page with the name of their brand had over 1 million fans. Many PR departments would have said: “It’s not official, we didn’t authorise it, shut it down”. What did they do? They took over the page and immediately joined all those folks that chose that specific platform to communicate with them.

Would you ever think about quitting Twitter or any other social network? Any exceptions? Share your comments below!

Best
Fred

The first one was : “How to build your business network with social media” and as promised, we compiled all the relevant info below:

• Full recording of the webinar
• The slides
• The conversation thread under the Twitter tag #sm4biz
• Some questions…

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The slides are already available on our Slideshare account!

My Power Point slides also contributed to the Twitter conversation
Have a look at what was said during the webinar by clicking on the image below:

Thanks very much to everyone that helped us spread the word in the different social networks.
We’re looking forward to have you on our next free monthly webinar:  “Social Media for Sales & Marketing Departments“.

Got questions or comments? Add them to the thread below!

What if you could contribute to that Twitter conversation by having each slide in your presentation send a tweet for you? And also, wouldn’t it be great to know, while on stage, what are people saying about you?

The video below will show you:

1. How to embed twitter into your Power Point
2. How to send auto-tweets from each slide
3. How to emebe the conversation from a Twitter #hashtag into your slide

Subscribe to Channelship’s You Tube channel

Have you enjoyed the video? Go ahead, make a comment below!

Best,

Fred

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I have made this quick video to share with all of you three new ways to use Tweetdeck wisely Would love to hear your comments and hopefully you can share with us other your strategies as well! Looking forward to that…

The video below will show you:

1. How to filter content from your followers’ column
2. How to find out what’s most popular from your stream of tweets
3. How to use Tweetdeck’s directory

Subscribe to Channelship’s You Tube channel

Did you like the post? don’t be shy, make a comment below and share it!

Best,

Fred

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Thousands of business owners attend networking events in Ireland. The average is once every 30 days. At that pace, is it possible to remember people’s names, companies and what they do? Also, how long does it take them to know me? What are my chances of being seen as the expert in my field in a very short period of time?
We raised these and more constraints relevant to offline business networking and tried to overcome every single one by explaining the core networking benefits of Twitter and LinkedIn. We also provided actionable advise for companies to put the tips into practice immediately.

Final thoughts on the challenges:

NOTE: Remember, networking in not about SELLING. You don’t want to be the guy on the second slide

When you walk into a networking room, you wonder: Who are these people?
By being active on Twitter and by checking every person’s profile on Linkedin before an event, not only you’ll be optimising your efforts but you will know who is in the room, their contacts and you will be making a connection with many people before you arrive!

How do I position myself as an expert?
Engaging in conversation via Twitter and providing value in your posts is one of the best ways to show immediately your expertise. Also, by having a strong profile on Linkedin, participating in Groups and in Linkedin Answers your chances are even better

How much do I remember from people I met?
Again, share good value in your interactions while using Twitter and naturally, that name, company and expertise will be in front of you every time. The same occurs when you follow other people’s Linkedin updates. Because you see “what’s happening every day”, it’s much easier to remember everything. With the exact same mechanism, also people will get to know you faster.

Check out below the full presentation in Slideshare and a quick testimonial from Kevin O’Brien at Accounting Partners.

Thanks very much everybody for all your kind comments and support.

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We are very glad that you found our presentation helpful.
If you haven’t made a comment yet, don’t be shy and sare your feedback with us below!

Best,

Fred

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