Category Archives: Uncategorized

January 14, 2012

What makes you influential on social media? (It’s not what you think.)

By Giselle Bisson

What makes you influential on social media?

Just as in mainstream journalism, great content is key. Great headlines grab the reader. Posting frequently and regularly and being the first to break the news is key.

And just as magazines have long known, pass along readership is key to great circulation.

But the main thing that sets social media influencers apart (and sets social media apart from traditional “journalism”) is that they are followed by people who they themselves have strong networks.

An influencer might reach only 1000 people — but those 1000 people also reach 1000 highly connected and active people and so on and so on…which means within seconds, they can reach millions. Which is how revolutions like the Occupy movement and #Egypt managed to spread like viral wildfire.  And why your boring: “I just announced a new product” or “Please like my business” plea is often ignored.

As Haydn Shaughnessy wrote yesterday in Forbes:

“What behaviors make the key difference for people who want to elevate their status online?”  He breaks it down to:

  • Being active in a sufficient number of channels
  • Creating and maintaining a high quality network
  • Frequency of participation
But there’s more.

Social Media is interactive. To have real influence you need to be “social” — and that’s where 99.7% of businesses go wrong.

Social media not a press release or an advertisement — it’s an interactive conversation.  If your content is so engaging and interesting that followers feel compelled to repeat it–you will be retweeted and shared, and quickly reach tens of thousands or even millions of people.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in citizen journalism, damage control, Facebook, personal branding, renegade marketing, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral

March 7, 2011

What’s in a name? Everything!

By Giselle Bisson

I was talking to a client the other day who wanted more visibility. They had a hideously long URL for their company website.

I rolled my eyes. I immediately knew they were doomed to failure unless they changed their name.

I asked: “Is there any way you can find a shorter url?”

My prospective client hemmed and hawed about how attached he was to his ridiculously long company name.

There’s a reason why Google and Yahoo succeeded — and a host of other earlier search engine contenders like NorthernLights and AltaVista bombed.

There’s a reason why YouTube won the video wars and early contenders like, “uh, um, uh, whats their name, I forgot” failed.

Because YouTube is a freakin’ awesome brand. It says what it does. It has attitude. It’s memorable. You can spell it. It rhymes with things. It’s unique. It works in other languages and other cultures.

When I named my business, I spent an entire rainy day on Go Daddy typing things in at random until I found “Visibility Shift.”

Even though it’s not short, it’s memorable, it says exactly what it is.

And it’s relevant to my consulting practice, which is about shifting your visibility to a new level. I was absolutely floored when I discovered such a great website name was even available — and for $7.99.

There are several reasons you want to take time to find a truly memorable stand out URL:
- easier to type – a long or unmemorable url discourages people
- memorable - (One word is best. Two words are ok. Three is just too much.)
- Searchability (SEO) - A name that isn’t unique is going to bring up millions of search results in Google. You want a unique URL so you are the first and only hit in Google, without having to pay $$$$ to Google for adwords.
- International localization - remember the web is global and your name has to translate easily into other languages — so it’s better if it’s not a word in any language.  Run your name past some friends who speak other languages and some translation software and make sure it doesn’t translate into something embarrassing. (The Chevy Nova flopped in Mexico because “No Va” means “Won’t Run.”)
- Put less words on your site, more pictures. Especially remember that the web is international and words need to be translated.  So the fewer words, the more universal your message is.  Learn from the success of big brands like Apple and Google who take a less is more approach.
-  It doesn’t have to be a .com — You can be successful with a .us, .tv, etc. For example, Delicio.us.
- Groupon is successful in large part because their name rocks. “Group + coupon.” Brilliant. Memorable. Unique. Short. Tells you what it is.
- Get your name first before you spend time and money branding it. Changing your name later is very costly and it means you are undoing all the work you did on public relations, marketing and social media outreach.
- VCs look at your brand and name as a big reason to invest. A great logo, web design, business card, brand and name are almost as important as the product or technology behind the brand.
- Think about web branding when you name your products — and your kids, too. I’m grateful that my mother, very ahead of her time, gave me a name that is so unique that I go to the top of Google. Check that name out in Facebook, Twitter and Google and make sure it’s available. (The reverse applies if you want to protect your privacy — then John Doe is the way to go.)
- Consider adding a unique middle name to your name that describes what you do so you stand out. (ie: David “Avocado” Wolfe is a speaker in the health food field.)
This advice applies to any personal or corporate brand — a musician, band, artist, writer, book title or film. Choose your name carefully and snap up the URL as soon as you can, even if you end up sitting on it for years before you get your project started.
For more information about naming, visit Name Wire a blog about naming.

2 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in blog, bootstrapping, Facebook, personal branding, privacy, public relations, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, website

February 1, 2011

#Egypt: The First Twitter Revolution

By Giselle Bisson

In the 1980s, the Fall of the Berlin wall was attributed to television.

In the 1990s, fax machines enabled the protests in Tianamen Square.

But today, in Egypt, it’s a Twitter revolution.

Internet social networking services like Twitter and Facebook have been the revolutionary tools of communications for protesters in Egypt.

According to  Al Jezzera, as soon as Twitter, Facebook and Internet access was disrupted, Egyptian protesters resorted to low tech work arounds to get out the word, like fax machines, dial up modems and HAM radios.  Clever protesters have been dictating their 140-character messages over landline telephones to friends outside Egypt who then transcribe them immediately on Twitter and send them out, (and back again) creating a landline to mobile device to landline “virtual Internet” relay that has been quickly keeping Egyptians informed.

Today, according to Reuters, Google Inc (GOOG.O) launched a special service to allow people in Egypt to send Twitter messages by dialing a phone number and leaving a voicemail, as Internet access continues to be cut off in the country during revolutionary anti-government protests.

The service, which Google said was developed with engineers from Twitter, allows people to dial a telephone number and leave a voicemail. The voicemail is automatically translated into a message that is sent on Twitter using the identifying tag #egypt.

Though Egypt blocked Twitter following the protests that erupted on January 25th, tweets about Egypt have surged in the days leading up to and after the start of the revolution that has rocked the world.

According to Sysomos, the number of tweets that contained the words “Egypt,” “Yemen,” or “Tunisia” increased more than tenfold after January 23rd: there were 122,319 tweets between January 16 and 23 containing these terms, and 1.3 million tweets between January 24 and January 30.

According to today’s SF Gate, in a blog co-written by Twitter founder Biz Stone on Twitter’s website, Twitter said that Egypt has to restore the tweets to the country, to allow the freedom of information to flow.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in blog, citizen journalism, Facebook, renegade marketing, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, viral video

January 8, 2011

Latest excuse for sightings of dead birds and fish? Over reporting in social media!

By Giselle Bisson

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably read about the mysterious sightings of dead birds dropping out of the sky, and millions of dead fish and sea mammals washing ashore, all over the world.

The news started with a report on New Year’s Eve of redwing blackbirds falling out of the sky in Arkansas — and soon steamrolled into reports of sudden animal deaths of shellfish, sea mammals and birds, sometimes by the tons, dying suddenly en masse all over the globe.

Dozens of official theories and explanations have been offered for this “aflockalypse” — from fireworks and unusually cold weather to bible scholars saying it’s the day of reckoning and New Agers blaming it on aliens or 2012.

But today’s latest theory about this sudden flock of animal deaths is that it’s because of social media!

Twitter, Facebook, mobile devices, blogs and instant, citizen media enable stories that would have once been local, or not even reported, are now global news.

As more and more of us report our news instantly on Twitter and it shows up immediately in Google search engines, this kind of mass reporting of simple, ordinary things, all over the world, can suddenly looks like a huge outbreak.

But are these  stories that back in the era of local news reporting, may have only made the local TV news or a the back pages of small town paper?

Or is this the first example of citizen journalists revealing a truth that would have otherwise never been revealed before the social media era?

A fascinating example of community-generated collaborative media is here, in a Google map of the sudden animal death sightings.

It will be fascinating to see if the massive bird deaths are simply a series of linked coincidences, brought to light by social media — or if indeed there truly is something fishy about this “aflockalypse.”

Here’s a story in the citizen-generated Examiner that offers social media as the possible excuse:

http://www.examiner.com/headlines-in-san-francisco/dead-birds-fish-kills-update-more-evidence-that-the-die-offs-are-not-unusual

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in citizen journalism, damage control, Facebook, social media, social media hysteria, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, viral video, you tube

November 19, 2010

Are Facebook friends held to a lower standard of accountability than real friends?

By Giselle Bisson

Once a year or so, John Perry Barlow has a party called a Barlow Friendzy, a party for his “real friends.”

“A real friend is someone who will get up in the middle of the night and bail you out of jail,” Barlow quips.

A flamboyant, brilliant and outspoken character, writer and revolutionary, Barlow is best known as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead and the co-founder of the Electronic Frontieers Foundation.  He’s a guy thousands of people would gladly bail out of jail, just for the chance to spend time in his aura.

Barlow happens to be one of my over 3,379 “Facebook” friends.

I am one of his 4,251 “Facebook friends.”

I met Barlow 15 years now. He’s infinitely more famous than I am, and I don’t expect him to know me, but usually when I run into him at a party he nods, he recognizes me, he smiles, he gives me a hug. We’ve had a few fascinating conversations. That’s about it. But I wouldn’t call him if I needed help moving.

We’re, you know — just “Facebook friends.” And in my world, that’s ok.

When you’re a highly networked person, and those networks are your net worth, not every Friend is a “friend.”

Yesterday, I thought about the ridiculously large number of “friends” we are all accumulating and the way that tends to stretch us all too thin when I discovered that comedian Jimmy Kimmel declared November 17: “National Unfriend Day.” “A day to cut some of the Facebook fat from your life.”

While Kimmel declared this on a comedy show, he seemed sincerely frustrated about Facebook “cheapening” the definition of friendship.

To celebrate “National Unfriend Day” I ditched one Facebook friend for the only reason I have dumped Facebook friends who I have real world history with: I don’t want to share an energetic connection with them because they are untrustworthy.

It’s a serious statement if I dump you as a Facebook friend, because the world of the Visibility Shifter, every person you meet is the key to your future--a potential opportunity, a potential relationship. Nothing happens by chance or accident and the connections that matter can have a profound influence on your life and your success.

But I will in rare cases refuse or ditch Facebook friends because they:

- post annoying comments on my Wall that could potentially discredit me or harm my reputation

- could be judged unfavorably by an uptight potential employer or investor who is doing “due diligence”

- are constantly writing about wacko conspiracy theories

- are too provocative or not wearing a shirt in their profile photo

- have a disturbingly wierd made up name.

As our virtual friend lists grow ever larger,  how do we define who “real” friends are?

- A real friend knows your long term reputation and does not judge you by current, temporary circumstances that could be out of your control (ie: economic downturn impacting your financial status, divorce impacting your emotional state).

- A real friend knows your true nature, not just your projected image.

- A real friend knows your Facebook photo is ten years old, airbrushed or was the last picture taken when you still had hair, and that’s ok.

- A real friend shows up at your rites of passage — births, weddings, graduations, birthdays, funerals.

- A real friend is so significant you’ll pick up the phone to call them — so they are most often the ones who are not even on your Facebook list anyway.

This brings up the question, should we expect Facebook friends to be “real friends” who will be there for you, bail you out of jail, come to your funeral and stand by you when the going gets rough? Is it even realistic to hold people to such a high standard in a public forum? Isn’t that a little harsh? Isn’t that a little limiting?

Isn’t that potentially, an electronic Scarlet Letter waiting to happen?

For now, I’ll keep those “Facebook friends” in an ever-growing list.  Because some of the most amazing connections I’ve made in that past five years started and deepened on social networks. Facebook friends are a potential resource we might someday draw on. They are potential relationships that might deepen. We earned them in the past, and they continue to grow more valuable in the future.  They are our Social Capital.

I continue to believe that our lives are made richer by diversity and inclusion–not separation and exclusion. So friend me. And if you’re wearing a shirt, I’ll friend you back.

3 comments | posted in Uncategorized

November 9, 2010

Is Rockmelt just a browser for Facebook freaks? Or will it really rock our world?

By Giselle Bisson

Children, gather around the electric campfire. You might not believe this, but I remember a world without web browsers.

We had social networks back then. One of them was called The Well (for Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), but you needed to know cryptic Unix shell commands to communicate on it.

The web, in its infancy, was just characters and commands, words and numbers. No photos of Paris Hilton, no Britney Spears sex videos.

Then along came Mosaic.

I was there, back in 1992 or so, one of the first times Mosaic was shown publicly. It wasn’t a big press conference. We were crouched around a workstation monitor, and the guy demoing it talked about it in lofty, spiritual terms. I remember distinctly that he said Mosaic was something that was going to unify the planet and usher in a new era of understanding. It would give us a unified, global consciousness. Looking back, as wacked out as that statement might have seemed at the time, he was right.

Clustered there that day were a few people, many of whom are now legends in the computer industry. We were in a underground club at 9th and Folsom Street in San Francisco’s then pretty seedy SOMA nightclub district. This bar was in its “Cyber Cafe” phase, and it had bathroom walls papered with real computer circuit boards.

Everyone was wearing a lot of black leather, Cyndi Lauper-ish dyed hair and spiked dog collars and we were all kind of artsy and broke. Craigslist was a event list emailed to about 150 people.  The dot com boom hadn’t started yet, and the tech world was about geeks, long hair and iconoclasts — not venture capitalists, MBAs and big money.

If you saw a picture of it today you’d laugh at how primitive it is compared to today’s web. But Mosaic was different. So different that it was kind of hard to grasp conceptually. It was visual. It had graphics. It had colors and windows.

When I first saw Mosaic I instantly knew I was witnessing history. A chill ran up my spine. This was something that would totally change the world — a massive leap beyond anything that existed before it.

Back then, everyone had a different email account, and belonged to a different network. (Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve, MCI Mail.) There wasn’t anything that connected these networks so it was really difficult to communicate unless you belonged to several.

Mosaic hijacked the World Wide Web from the hands of scientists, researchers and geeks and made it accessible to ordinary people. It unified all of those separate networks into a single space, a browser. And it was visual.

It solved a real problem. It enabled people to do something they couldn’t even imagine before it existed. It rocked my world.

So back to the future, Rockmelt.

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When I visited the new site for RockMelt and watched the hype-filled intro video today, it did not exactly have this effect on me. RockMelt is cool. It has great marketing. They kept it simple. It is defintely already making waves. But is it a paradigm shift like Mosaic and Netscape Navigator? WIll it change the way millions of people work, interact and live?

I’m not sure.

Billed as a “social browser,” Rockmelt, which is created by some of the same folks who worked on Mozaic 16 years ago, (and later, the Netscape browser), and is funded by Netscape founder Marc Andressen, mixes the social world of Twitter and Facebook with the rest of the web. It is based on the fundamental principle that the Web today is not just about browsing and finding, it’s about sharing.

There’s a row of photos along the left (your friends), and a row of Social Network icons along the right. (Your networks.) Centered between the personal network and the public networks, lies the rest of the web, making it easy to navigate back and forth between your friends, your networks and the news and information you’re searching for, without, one hopes, having to constantly flip back and forth between tabs and log in and log out of different accounts.

Rockmelt is essentially about sharing.

If Rockmelt can do what social network integration tools like HootSuite are supposed to do, but in a more elegant way, unifying all of your social networks and friends into a single dashboard, it will definitely attract the Social Media Geeks and Freaks (like me) and the Social Web Professionals.

Ultimately, the only thing that matters is adoption — will people use it? Does it enable us to do something we’ve never done before?

Will my Mom use it?

Or will it go the way of Flock, Cruz, Fizzik and (probably, just because the name sucks) Blekko?

You can sign up for a Rockmelt beta program and decide for yourself. Let me know what you think.

Leave a comment | posted in blog, Facebook, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, Wordpress

November 8, 2010

Executive social media jobs exploding. (It’s not just for ninjas, gurus and interns anymore.)

By Giselle Bisson
Look how fat I am on your airline.

Commedian Kevin Smith posted this Twit Pic with the caption: "Look how fat I am on your airline," after Southwest bumped him off a flight for being too fat.

2010 was the year of the uber-embarrassing social media blunder:

  • Southwest Airlines threw celebrity Kevin Smith off a plane for being too fat to fly in one seat. Smith’s Tweets about the incident were not only widely read and hilarious, but a PR nightmare for the airline.
  • The Gap changed their logo and the blogosphere errupted by ridiculing it with the “Crap” logo and the “Gag” logo.

In the wake of so many embarrassing social media disasters, smart businesses are finally starting to take social media seriously. This week, social media hit a new Tipping Point and the Fortune 500 started creating new jobs and investing in seasoned professionals.

Today I did a search in one of the employment databases and found an astonishing 3,193 new jobs created in the US in the last few days for social media professionals! But more amazing, most of these jobs are senior level, VP, Director or Manager positions. This is a dramatic shift from even a few months ago.

Here are just a few of the major brands that are advertising for new social media posts:

Sony, Corning, American Express, Coca Cola, Ingram Micro, Intl, Nike, Accenture, EHarmony, Red Cross, Forever 21, Vocus, View Sonic, ToysR US, IBM, BBC News, Lowe’s, DSW, Chrysler, L’Oreal, Chase, COX, Este Lauder, Yahoo, Vonage, MGM, Citrix, GNC, Kellogg, Equinox Fitness, Bloomberg, HP, Ann Taylor, Starwood Hotels, Omnicom Group, CitiGroup, Lily Pulitzer…

Many web-based businesses and tech start-ups are also searching for social talent: Amazon.com, Tiny Prints, Elance, Moxie, Diapers.com, Yahoo, Tripadvisor, EHarmony, Shopzilla, Vocus.

But not a single ad looking for a social media “guru” or “ninja.”


5 comments | posted in blog, damage control, Facebook, many to many, press release, public relations, search engine optimization, seo, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, viral video, website, you tube

October 20, 2010

Facebook Lessons from “South Park” — Never play Farmville!

By Giselle Bisson

Everything you need to know about Facebook is in this darkly funny episode of “South Park.”

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Kyle “friends” the wrong person on Facebook.  Now all of his friends are unfriending him. His situation is desperate.

His father and even grandma start hassling him for not friending them.  Frustrated and tired of wasting his life online, he attempts to delete his Facebook profile, but gets sucked into the the inner Tron-like vortex of Facebook, where he’s forced to into exile in Farmville.

I mention this South Park episode, because it’s a biting satire about the ways that Facebook and life begin to become inexorably intertwined.

When you start a profile on Facebook, you enter into a new level of relationship with your “real world” friends and business connections.  They begin to expect you to actually read and respond to them. It’s a time commitment that can start to feel like you’ve been sucked into the Matrix and no longer have time for the Real World.

Adding the wrong friends can diminish your status–or cause your higher profile friends to “unfriend” you. Forget to check “in a relationship,” and it will inevitably lead to offline drama with your girlfriend.

And if you neglect to “friend” someone, they’re sooooo offended.  Especially people you don’t want to show your profile to, like Grandma.

“Friends shouldn’t be some sort of commodity for status,” says Stan, wisely, but it’s too late. He’s trapped in the Matrix of Facebook, where everyone (even Grandma) expects him to respond to their pokes — and Facebook won’t let him delete his profile.

2 comments | posted in Facebook, privacy, social media, Uncategorized

September 28, 2010

Holacracy and Facebook — are we creating a global brain?

By Giselle Bisson

A map of the Internet

For three weeks this summer, I was totally off the grid and more or less out of touch while immersed in a permaculture workshop near Mt. Shasta. Permaculture, which literally means “permanent agriculture”, is a systems design theory that can be applied to sustainable agriculture, architecture and community design.

While it started 40 years ago in Australia, permaculture is just now starting to hit a “tipping point” and emerge into mainstream media consciouness. (As it did recently when an actress Ellen Page talked about her permaculture workshop on the Ellen De Generes show.)

Our workshop, produced by Living Mandala, focused on teaching the fundamentals of permaculture in the context of training future leaders of intergenerational ecovillages and intentional communities, so we learned about new systems of organizational management.

As we sat in a beautiful outdoor classroom in the forest, organizational management coach and “evolutionary strategist” Shiloh Boss gave us an intriguing presentation on a new method of leadership called Holocracy. The holacracy concept has evolved out of a startup software company in Philadelphia, Tierney Software.

There are now 100 trained practitioners in Holacracy. “It is an open science, but it is also an open technology available to anyone,” says Boss.

“Meshworks are various organizations or communities that can tackle issues that are insurmountable, like climate change,” she says. “The communities in a sense become an “autonomous body” aligned to a larger purpose.”

It’s like a mushoom mycelium — an organizational meshwork that is intricately interconnected. (By the way, we learned earlier this week from a mycologist that the Mycelium of a mushroom, when mapped out, looks exactly like a map of the Internet.)

Holacracy is hybridized in other meshworks and hierarchies, creating funcational complimentaries that result in stable structures. They are localized, as well as have a strategy of interweaving.  Although meshworks result from the action of many individual and collective decision makers, they take on a life of their own.  They add themselves to individual structures operating at different scales.

Aside from the mesh of communications webs that make up a mushroom mycellium beneath the earth, one clear example of a “meshwork” is social networks like Facebook. This web makes it possible for news to travel like a “virus.”

And there is a spiritual, almost cosmic or psychic interconnectedness to Holacratic structures. Says Boss, “There is actually a larger web of the new world and the new culture, serving the greater world and a greater purpose.”

For example, within the larger network of Facebook are autonomous wholes — generally groups or organizations of 100 to 5,000 people.

In a Holacracy, a coherency of a larger whole can align and govern so that within your circle you self govern, and it’s nested into a larger whole that is always taking in greater information and aligning itself.

There is a larger movement of interconnected, interlinked and overlapping communities,  that can respond and react to the larger issues of the world in a coherent manner.

All interesting to think about, as we begin to form more of a unified and rapid communications “mycellium” amongst ourselves by using mobile devices, Twitter, Facebook and other forms of instantaneous communication forming a “global brain.”

3 comments | posted in blog, Facebook, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, website

May 21, 2010

Seven ways to get people to join your Facebook Fan Page. (It ain’t easy!)

By Giselle Bisson

My clients are always asking me how they can get more Fans into their Facebook fan page.  I tell them the truth — unless you are an established celebrity (and even if you are) it isn’t easy. It can take a year or more to cultivate a decent Fan Page following.

It’s a dirty little secret that Facebook doesn’t want you to know — you need to have Friends in a personal page first before you can invite them into a Fan page. Therefore, a Fan page is useless unless you have hundreds of Friends First. Or you’re willing to shell out the big bucks for a Facebook ad campaign.

And that’s the plan. it’s intentionally difficult to get friends to Fan your page. Fan pages are more restrictive in features and “share a bility” than regular old friend pages because it’s to Facebook’s benefit to shut you out of this “walled garden”. Your only way “in” is to buy an ad. Brilliant, right?

I figured out how to work around this limitation by creating a “human being page” first before I make a Fan page.

For example, I built a page for a “person” named “Eco Artopia” for my business “Ecoartopia” instead of a fan page. It has virally grown to more than 1,200 friends because my posts as Eco Artopia go out into the stream just like any other person, and the page can have all of the widgets, games and personality of a real person.  There are many more benefits on Facebook as a “person” than you get as a “business.”

For another client, Mystic Garden Party Music Festivals, I built a fake person page as “Mystic Garden.” This grew to 4,800 friends in one year, and is now in danger of tipping the limit of 5,000. We migrated the friends into a new fan page, but people have been reluctant to move to the Fan Page. The fan page still has only 494 fans — 1/10 that of a person page. Given that lots of people abuse their Fan pages and send constant spam to their fans, a lot of people are reluctant to join them.

Here are some tips and tricks to help you entice people to “like” your Fan page:

1. Ask all of the members of your company to invite their personal Facebook friends into the fan page.

Send an email requiring that your employees/coworkers invite their personal friends to the company fan page. Maybe 20% will join, but that will help you get it started.

2. Ask all of your best friends if you can log into their Facebook page and invite their friends into your Fan page (as appropriate.)

It’s tedious work and involves clicking hundreds or thousands of times unless you use this tip:

Separate your Friend list into Subcategories first.

Click on the category to highlight all the friends in that category, and then “select all” and you can email the whole group at once. For example, I split my list into geographic zones whenever I add a new friend. My friends are also divided into professions (ie: sales and marketing, green business), and interests (ie: vegetarians, New Agers) that might benefit specific clients that I’m using the list for when I do a targeted promotional campaign.

3. Hire a Social Media consultant with a big list so they can invite their friends into your Fan page.

I manage and administer about 15 profiles and Fan pages, giving me access to more than 20,000 potential friends that are meticulously categorized across overlapping social circles. This way, whenever I have a new client with a Fan page I want to populate or seed with new potential fans, I can draw from one of these pages for potential friends.

4. Familiarize yourself with your friend’s interests.

One of the magical things about Facebook is that if you don’t know someone, you can guess a lot about them from seeing who their friends are, where their friends overlap your friends, and their listed interests.  Get to know your list well, read all the profiles, and develop a sense of who will and won’t be interested in a potential Fan page or event before you click “send”. Otherwise you are just creating annoying spam for your friends and they might ditch you.

5. Advertise your Fan page everywhere.

On your business card, promo postcards, in your email signature line, Twitter, other social media profiles, print media ads, and with an “Add This” button on your blog entries and web pages. (WordPress now has new templates with built in “Share This” features that make this super easy.)

6. Whenever you meet a new business contact, ask them if they’re on Facebook.

Jot their page names down on their card. When you get back to the office, immediately add them to your Friend page so you can invite them to your Fan page. all, just separate your “real” friends from the “virtual” and “networking” friends and message them separately.

7. Your network is your net worth!  Don’t limit your friend list to actual friends.

Every person you meet is the key to your future! You never know when a contact will be valuable. I am constantly surprised and have often found that total strangers on my Facebook page who offer to “friend” me often become my most valuable business connections, or develop into true, real world friends.

Developing a Fan page following on Facebook takes time and patience, but you’ll be rewarded again and again with the connections and customers you’ll gain. Remember that what your fan page looks like and the quantity of people is no where near as important as the quality of people who follow it, and keeping them engaged with intriguing daily updates. But more about that in a future article.

1 comment   |  tags: , , | posted in blog, Facebook, networking events, renegade marketing, schmoozing, Uncategorized

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