grow your business using social media (a step by step guide)

grow your business using social media – a step by step guide – JuLY 2009 BY PhiLiP van ZYL... The principles and step by step process in this guide will help you to use the power of soci

grow your business

using social media

– a step by step guide –

JuLY 2009

BY PhiLiP van ZYL

letter from the author……

Welcome

If you are a business owner, this guide is written for you It is also for those who work in new

media teams or marketing departments, and for individuals who are their own brand The

principles and step by step process in this guide will help you to use the power of social media to grow your business

It does not matter if you live in Barcelona, Tokyo, Boston, Rio, Brisbane, Moscow, London,

Canterbury, Dublin, Singapore or Cape Town Or anywhere else for that matter This step-by-step guide will shepherd you along the quick and proven path to successful social media engagement, customised for you and your business needs

I have cut straight to the good stuff You’ll find links to the software I use, as well as to a bunch

of excellent alternative sites, platforms and software Almost all of these are free There are tips

in here that you won’t find anywhere else in one place

If you received this guide from a friend or colleague and you would like to pass it on, please pass

on this link to the original guide and an area where you can sign up for further information &

resources http://www.getsocialmedia.net/guide

The ten steps in this guide will give you the solid foundation you need From there you can

weave your unique magic and express your creativity as the individual you are After all, it’s your business

I suggest you don’t skip any parts of the guide Every part links to the others and forms one road map

Here’s to your social media success!

Philip van Zyl

Social Media explorer and navigator

Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/philipvanzyl

Copyright Statement: All content © 2009 by Philip van Zyl - Copyright holder is licensing this under the Creative

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table of contents

executive summary 4

about this guide 5

mindset 6

part 1 - understanding social media 7

what is social media really? are all social media the same? part 2 – social media and my business 9

how can my business benefit from social media? how do I align my social media goals with my business goals? why is my website optimisation so important for social media? the ten steps to social media success 12

step 1 – define your company goal step 2 – define your website goal and specific call to action step 3 – listen to what individuals are saying and where they are saying it step 4 – map and list how it is being said and who the influencers are step 5 – decide on your social media presence and register accounts online step 6 – select your posting and tracking platforms step 7 – define all metrics – clearly, and measurably step 8 – listen, engage and grow your network step 9 - use diverse social marketing strategies step 10 – measure, adjust, listen, engage part 3 – your social future 28

outsourcing advertising on social media think laterally my social media roadmap 30

resources 40

executive summary

This free guide contains the principles and processes for business owners, marketing departments and media teams to build their brand and to grow their businesses, using the power of social media.The focus of the guide is on understanding social media and getting started efficiently and

effectively, and then streamlining your online activity into those areas where you are most effective More than just a theoretical look at the social media landscape, it offers the practical step by

step process to get a social media strategy in place right away, and monitor its ongoing success.Most people are aware of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, but aren’t sure how to use them in a business environment This guide explores the relative merits of many different social media sites – and explains how to use them for business benefit

It defines social media for non-experts and includes a step-by-step guide to successful social

media engagement, including a list of helpful resources, software and sites

Engaging with social media successfully requires a shift in some key principles of selling

and marketing online It requires businesses to embrace the concept of entering a two-way

conversation with customers through multiple channels, rather than one-way communication

through traditional marketing tools such as advertising

Social media doesn’t need to be hard work This is a guide to engaging customers and

stakeholders online in a rewarding, productive and enjoyable way

It explains how businesses can benefit from a carefully considered social media strategy –

beginning with the recognition that companies and their products are already being discussed

online The guide shows how you can start to listen to and participate in these discussions, and build trust with your existing and prospective customers

The ten practical steps in the second half of this guide are a step by step roadmap to social

media success for businesses and brands They include tips on defining a company’s social

media goals and linking them to other business goals

These ten steps are used in conjunction with the “social media roadmap” document at the end

of the guide, where the guide user’s actual strategy is mapped, recorded and designed by them.The majority of social media strategies are built around a “main” website or blog The importance

of optimising this “main” site is emphasised and the process explained This optimisation is

done for both social media links as well as Google and other search engine ranking success The report also explains what you want your prospective customers to do once they get to your site

It includes tips for the most effective way to post new content online, and to monitor content

posted online by others – including a guide to selecting the most relevant material from the huge volume added to the internet every day

Should you or your company be a blogger? This guide will help you decide And if you do decide

to enter the blogosphere, it gives you some excellent tips on how to be successful

The whole social media environment is changing fast The biggest and the most successful businesses

in the world are getting involved Isn’t it time you found out what it could do for you and your business?

about this report

Engaging social media successfully requires a few basic and yet fundamental shifts in the

practice of selling and marketing online Start by reading the next section called “Mindset”

The sustainability of your social media engagement depends upon it

If you read this report and complete each of the ten steps as they are detailed here, you will

lay a solid foundation for success in using social media to grow your business You will also be

engaging meaningfully in the community that keeps you in business, and your business will grow

If you skip any of the steps or don’t complete them your chances of success are slim Very slim (But at least you’ll have found your twice removed cousins who live in Spain, and have seen all of their christening photos on Facebook)

One of the greatest enablers of success in social media for your business is ACTION Start small and think big Do that today and you’ll see the benefits stack up before your eyes, day by day

Everything you need to get started is contained in this report or linked to in the References

section You ready to get going?

Everything in this report is informed by three assumptions They are the big picture “keys” to

unlock the doors to your success

the three keys to social media success

1 If you do not have clear goals for your business, nothing you do offline, online or any-other-

line is going to help you realise them It is essential to have clear and measurable business goals

2 If you do not have clear goals and a clear call to action on your “main” website, you will be diluting your social media efforts before you start Your “main” site could be your blog or an HTML-type site The “main” site action may be to take a free 30-day trial, sign up for a

newsletter, or actually buy a product online right there

3 Your social media sites will act largely as “feeder” sites and – collectively – as a feeder

network for your main site Remember this and engage in social media with this in mind

Your mindset about Social media will inform your attitude towards social media even before you begin

the old way

Let’s think of the old way of getting your message about your company products and services out there Newspaper advertising, for example A few thousand

bucks for a big newspaper advert Pay a few thousand bucks Hmm, fun.

Next hire a research company to find out whether those few thousand bucks

were well spent and what your customers and prospective customers thought of

it Pay a few more thousand bucks Now we’re having fun.

Rinse, repeat, and try to run your business at the same time.

the new way

Listen to your customers from the comfort of your desk, through multiple channels, mostly at

no cost You are part of a big focus group of people that actually use your products or products

in your market They are speaking about their wants, frustrations, loves, pains, desires (as we

speak)…all of which you can engage in and influence Did I mention that the focus group is free?

By engaging with some of the influencers in your community you’ll have access to top

information on your marketplace, trends and insights

How about social bookmarking? By having one (start with delicious.com) you are not just trying

to get more links to your website to schmooze Google (not exclusively anyway), you are easily

finding top-notch information on your competitors, articles about your market and posts about

your products It’s like an online library put together specifically for you to use And it is a free way for you to bookmark all the articles, posts, reports, videos, interviews etc that you find

online, using tags rather than the confusing “Bookmark” facility in your browser

I could go on, but my point is that social media does not have to be a slog And the more you

find ways to benefit as an individual and as a business owner or worker, the more you will enjoy yourself Could that be the reason we’re all here in the first place?

And when it comes to sustaining your social media strategy to grow your business, which of these two options do you think will last?

Social media is a painful mission and I am going to drag myself through it each day because

1

there may be a benefit to the company somewhere

Social media is an exciting opportunity for me to engage people online and spread messages

2

virally, to learn from my peers and my customers, and to stay on top of my game in my field.Moving right along…

part 1 - understanding social media

The secret of social media is that it is not about you, your product or your story It’s

about creating value for the communities that happen to include you If you want to

make a positive impact, forget about what you can get from social media, and start

thinking about what you can contribute Funnily enough, the more value you create for

the community, the more value they will create for you Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media

what is social media?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the park for the last few years - without anyone to talk

to and without an internet connection - you’ve probably heard of Facebook It’s a key example of social media

A quick definition Social media is a phrase that describes the platforms and other tools that

connect people into social networks (of their choosing) online Some of the household social

media names worldwide (other than Facebook) are MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube There are

many, many more, and we’ll look at some of them in detail in this report

The individuals that make up these online networks, use social media to organise themselves

according to (1) their interests and (2) their preference for the way they choose to share, store

and deliver information within their community (or “network”)

Individuals have made it clear they wish to connect with other individuals that they choose to, in the way that they choose to, and around topics and for reasons that they choose to

The individual is at the centre of the social media revolution And this is changing the

way business is done Hint: kiss goodbye the idea of solely hiding behind the company PR

department door and sending out anonymous press releases “in the name of the company”

Delete delete

are all social media the same?

No they aren’t Most sites are a combination of four elements - text, images, video, and audio

Many sites focus on just one of these elements Youtube, Viddler and UStream.tv are examples

of video sites They also allow text descriptions, images (e.g a photo of contributor) and audio Despite these peripheral elements, they are still known as “Video sites” and video is their core

offering

There are also photo sites, such as Flickr, SmugMug and many others See the diagram that

follows here for a comprehensive view of the key categories with examples

Brian Solis is one of the “godfathers” of social media and was jointly responsible for constructing

“

”

http://www.briansolis.com/

part 2 – social media and my business

Here’s a quick revision of the three keys to social media success described in the “About this

Report” section earlier

key 1 – If you are not clear on your core business goal(s), nothing you do will help you realise them (including social media) Get clear on your business goal(s) right now Set goals that are

measurable

key 2 – If your “main” website is not optimised to get every visitor to your site to take the

action that you want them to, you simply have to sort that out Optimise your main site, and keep

it optimised in a way that directly supports your company goals

key 3– Your engagement in social media will open new paths to your main website door

Social media sites will act as “feeder” sites to your “main” site Bear this in mind as you engage.Before we begin the ten step plan to get those three keys into action, here are some final

thoughts and details to smooth our way

How can your business benefit from social media? How do you align your social media goals with your business goals? Why is your website optimisation so important?

how can my business benefit from social media?

The individuals that buy and use your products and services are having conversations within their social networks right now Some of them are discussing your products and their experiences of

using these products and services, returning them, breaking them, loving them…

Some of them are discussing your competitor’s products and services and what they love and

loathe about them Others are discussing your market place, what they really want, what they will pay good money for

By engaging and participating in conversations in your business’ social network you are going to add value, show that you care, handle specific issues that come up, and in that way build your

credibility and reputation as a caring and in-touch company/brand

People will begin to like and trust you When you then share details of a special offer some

people will click through to look and some will buy When someone tweets about the shocking

service they experienced trying to return your product, someone will reply with their positive

experience

By listening, you will find out how you can best package your product, deliver it, support it,

charge for it etc Your network will tell you and you will be able to listen in while two or more

members in the community discuss it publicly

Once you have become an engaging and contributing member of this particular network, you can

how do I align my social media goals with my business goals?

In a nutshell, you are going do this by knowing what your company goals are right now You’ll be driving increasing numbers of people to your “main” website so it will need to have a clear call to action and be optimised for your chosen keywords

If you want to raise brand awareness, then have useful information and cool things about your

offering at your website If you want to increase sales of a product then feature that product on your website prominently and have a clear call to action (in this case – click here to buy)

Because much of the social media you will be engaging in will serve as “feeder” sites to your

“main” site, you may only have one shot at converting a visitor into a prospect, or a customer

into a repeat customer Social media will get visitors there, so pre-sell them as much as possible.Social media will help you here in two ways It will spread links and good vibes about your main site and people will click directly from articles and tweets and posts to your website

The second way it will help you is that all of the incoming links to your site - that have spread

around the internet - will increase your ranking on Google and the other search engines

To locate your social media strategy properly within the context of your business, try sketching it out freehand if you don’t want to use software to do this

Here is a diagram I recently sketched for a client to map the flow of people to their main site - and through their sales and retention process as well The more integrated the diagram is into

your complete business flow, the better It includes social media as well as all other avenues for this specific business

why is my website optimisation so important for social media?

Part of the optimisation of your main site (website or blog) is to have a set of keywords and

phrases that you have identified, and that your prospective buyers use to search for you on

Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines If you have not optimized your website for specific keywords, look under Resources at the end of this report for links to sites designed for this

Social media plays a decisive part in Google’s decision as to how relevant your website is to the term being searched for – and as a result, whether to put you on page one or page 101 of the

results for that word/phrase

the ten steps to get you there.

Ok, let’s get cracking with your social media path (roadmap) to success We are shifting now from

theory into the nitty gritty detail of how to craft and implement your roadmap

The ten steps you will take to succeed in growing your business with social media start here An

explanation of what you will need to do in each step is detailed below The working document

(roadmap) that you must fill in is at the end of this report These are intended to be used

together – i.e read the steps below and write the details for your business on the attached

roadmap document in the spaces provided.

step 1 – define your company goal

There are two kinds of goals that fall into this category Let’s call them the big picture goals, and

the second let’s call the immediate, operational goals

Let’s take an example Your big picture goal may be to be the market leader (by sales volume) of

all new solar panels for households in your city – be that Rome, Vancouver, Melbourne, Maine

or Cape Town Or you may aim to be the market leader in your province or state, or even for your

whole country Be specific and be realistic You intend for this to happen within the next 18

months

As part of your big-picture goal you also aim to stock the widest range of quality solar panels for

households of any supplier online, or in your city (if you have a store) or in your country? You get

the idea The same applies whether you offer your product and service online, offline or both

What we are interested in for this stage of planning our social media strategy are the immediate

or “operational” goals you have in order to realise the “big picture” goal(s) Make these as

specific as possible The more concrete they are, the easier it will be to measure your success

For example, in order to maintain the status of market leader by sales volume of solar panels, we

could focus on providing excellent service, including after sales service The rationale for this is

that the happier our existing customers are, the more they will buy future panels from us and the

more they will spread the good word about us to their networks

Still using our example, we will minimise the number of product returns by offering active

support in troubleshooting and problem identification as soon as an issue is raised by a customer

This will help reduce the number of returns due to incorrect installation or other factors

Fill in your main goal(s) as well as the secondary goals that support them under step 1 of your

attached roadmap document If the goal is not measurable in some way, you will want to refine it

until it is How will you know when you achieve it/them?

step 2 – define your website goal and specific call to action

If you do not have a website that is the online “home” of your company it is going to be a lot

more difficult to leverage your social media engagement You may still benefit from a social

media campaign without a website or blog, but we’ll focus here on having one

1

2

Some people prefer to have a blog as their main “home” site This works well for individuals who essentially are their brand and they are seen as “being” the company.

If you do have a website it should be optimised in two main ways The first relates to getting people to your website and the second is what action that person takes when he or she gets there

goal 1: getting people to your website

Your site (blog or typically html-type site) should be optimised for search through search engines (SEO) What this means is that when someone types in the search term “solar panels for homes” your main website should appear on the first page displayed by Google or any of the other search engines that people in your target area use

You begin accomplishing this by selecting the keywords and keyword phrases most suited to your business or specific products These are also the keywords that have the greatest chance of resulting in a visitor following your desired call to action You then optimise your website copy and the information on your site for those keywords and phrases

This is not a complicated process but it does require specific attention to detail that I cannot do justice to in this report Look for links in the resources section to information on how to do this or where to outsource this to

Each website and each web page on the internet has a “ranking” given to it by Google and other search engines Google calls this “Page Rank” One of your goals is to raise the Page Rank of your website and blog as high as possible

The higher your page rank the better your chances of making the first page of Google search for any of your desired keywords If your own site has a low page rank, the next best thing is to be linked to and linked from other websites that have a high Page Rank The easiest way to do this and the way that is most in the spirit of social media, is to freely provide superb content in ways that other blogs and users of information will lap up and use - and in the process link to your page

Hint: Most social media platforms have a high page rank

goal 2: getting people to take action when they get to your website

Once an individual arrives at your site, you want him or her to execute your call to action If you want that person to sign up for a free trial of your product or service, tell them so and give them

an easy way to do that The same goes for getting them to buy a product immediately, or to sign

up for your newsletter by entering her name and email address Be clear and explicit Make it possible for the person to do what you ask them to do with the least amount of fuss, with as few clicks as possible

It won’t hurt to have a free scan of your website to see how well the basic design and SEO factors are handled Go to http://www.websitegrader.com, enter your url and see the detailed results No Charge

1

2

step 3 – listen to what individuals are

saying and where they are saying it.

One question before we get online and start listening is this: “what are you listening out

for?” Ask yourself that regularly throughout this listening stage and for all your social media

engagement

Here are four things that will guide what you will listen out for Fill them in on the social media

roadmap document

They are (1) your company name, (2) a description (maximum of three) of your marketplace, (3)

the “types” of products or services you are promoting

(e.g solar panels, photovoltaic solar panels) and (4)

the brand names of your products or services (e.g

Rainbow, Green Queen and Top panels)

Armed with this, begin listening to what is being said

online right now Do this first – sign up for Google alerts

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and log in

You will need to sign up for a Google account, which is

free Do it There are many useful tools offered by Google

for free, you can use your single account with them to

log in to any of the services they provide

Once you are signed in, enter your company name as a

search term If your name is two or more words, be sure

to click on “Advanced search” and then type the phrase

into the “With the exact phrase” field If you are doing

a search for a specific area, then enter the city, state, or

country in the field further down: “Return only articles

about a local area”

Select email every day If that becomes too much in the future, just log in and change it to once

a week

A second Google search you should do right away makes use of Google’s (surpisingly little known)

feature called “Show Options” To get to this feature first type in your search term at Google.com

and hit Search

The first results will appear and so too will the “Show Options” link at top left

If you find that the conversations around your keyword or key phrase are not related to buying, then try adding an “action” word

to the phrase

For example, if you are not having luck with the term “solar panels”, try “buy solar panels”

or “buying solar panels” and see the difference

If you are not having much luck with your company name, try “Dragon Mist products” or

“Dragon Mist service”

idea:

3

Click on the “Show Options” link and the options will appear down the left of the screen.

Start your listening by clicking on the videos, forums and reviews links and see what the first page results are Do this for each of your keyword phrases as well

as for your company name and product brands

Google has been focusing on real-time search recently as this was never previously their strong point The “Any Time” options now allow you to search for results that were posted in the last 24 hours and often more recently than that

Twitter (advanced) search is our next stop It is one of the busiest and buzziest connectors of people to information out there at the moment The results will also give you an idea of what kinds of other social media sites are being pointed

to and are central to the conversation on your topic

Once your account is set up at Google Reader, simply click on the RSS feed you see at any blog online that you would like to receive feeds from Google Reader is your RSS aggregator for the information coming from the sites you choose to follow

The second good use of Google reader is to find blogs Once you have signed up for an account, click the “Add a subscription” button and enter a search term

Multiple pages of links will be displayed which you can then browse and click through to in deciding whether you want to follow them via RSS or not

You can subscribe to the RSS feed of any of them (or just scan them)

Be discerning about which RSS feeds you subscribe to, which newsletters you sign up for etc.Source quality information that

is highly relevant to you and what you are in the process of achieving with your business

It is very easy to become overwhelmed with information

If the post, article or idea does not have a “wow” impact on you then why subscribe to it?

Some people try desperately

to get the maximum number

of followers and huge email lists regardless of their quality Remember – it’s about conversions at the end of the day, not follower or list size idea:

3

It’s worth seeing your keywords and keyword phrases from a few different angles to add some

depth There are new tools coming to market literally every day, each with a slightly different

search angle

The key categories of social media search are available as search options in many of the social

media search platforms Let’s look at one now:

http://www.socialmention.com

Above the search field at SocialMention there are tabs for you to select any one or all of the

following: Blogs, Microblogs, Bookmarks, Comments, Events, Images, News, Video, Audio and

For now this is a very adequate place to listen in

At this stage do not get bogged down in months of research Spend time every day listening to

the conversations, and recording them on the Roadmap document Do this for an hour or two a

day for a week Patterns will emerge that will guide you to the social media locations where you

will find your people Depending on the progress you make, you may want to continue for a few

weeks I suggest maximum of one month for this stage

step 4 – map and list how it is being said

and who the influencers are

The kinds of things you are going to be listening out for in your tweets, blog post etc

conversations in your market are:

What are the emotional triggers?

•

What lingo is being used (e.g LOL (“Lots of Love” or “Laugh out Loud”), WTF (work this

•

one out for yourself ;-) A tip If you ever see an acronym that you don’t know simply Google

“what does WTF mean?” and you’ll get an answer (It sometimes means “What’s This

step 5 – decide on your social media

presence and register the accounts online.

Stake your social media real estate claim now Make sure you understand the difference between your company name and your username, as detailed below

register effectively

If your company name consists of many words – such as

“Dragon Mist Solar Panel Company” - you will need to decide

on a shorter name DragonMist will be a good company username

You will enter your company name as Dragon Mist (two words) on any sign up information asking for your company name You will use DragonMist (one word) as your username for that social media

Use the same spelling and the same use of caps for ALL your social media you intend to use your username for

You will be asked to fill in a description of your business and what you offer This could be a short description (e.g the bio space in Twitter) or a long description If you sign up for LinkedIn you will start with your own personal details (mini CV) and then fill in your company description as the place that you work or the business you own

When you fill out the business description, include some of your top keywords you’ve identified for your business, and make it interesting Add some spring to your business description step If you are struggling with this, take note of the descriptions you see while you are listening online and which ones you think are great

What are they doing? See if you can replicate that energy in yours

Search here to see if the name you have chosen is taken One easy step here http://namechk.com

If your name is taken, don’t panic There are lots of creative ways

to set up social media names

Register your name on these accounts because sooner or later you are likely to use them It works the same way that registering your company domain name protects you from someone registering it and using it for their website

By registering your company name you are not committing to using these accounts immediately

Importantly, do not link to your registered but unutilized pages in any of your articles, messages, bios etc until you are actively using them You do not want to provide a link for someone to click through to an empty page

When you register for the sites that you are not ready to use actively right away (e.g Squidoo), fill

Posting is a big subject and worth staying on top of by reading good posts on the topic, experimenting, watching what the leaders in your community are doing and by being authentic

One mistake that many people make is to write one post and submit it as is to all of their social media sites You may have

a facebook update that is 300 characters long, describing your new blog post That is perfect for facebook

However, when it appears on Twitter it is cut off after 140 characters and the link may not appear Anyone seeing your post and is intrigued cannot get to the post and is frustrated

Make your post relevant to your social media site it is going to appear on They can still all be sent from the same platform (in

my case ping.fm)

tips for posting

4

5

Set the intention of using them all and do so when the time is right.

If you don’t already have a personal facebook account then

you’ll need to set one up in order to get a business page or

start a group Start by setting up a Facebook Business Page

You may set up multiple pages, covering different topics or

relating to your various keywords Great for SEO

Visit this URL: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Take a few minutes to decide on the best category for your

business as this isn’t easy to change later Enter your business

or product name and click “Create Page”

Add your bio and main website address and your company logo

at the link “Add Information To This Page”

Now click on your business name that has appeared in the top

left corner of your screen (a hyperlink) and click “Publish this

Page” Only now will people be able to see your new page

To finish off, you must click “Add to my products”, and you

become your first “fan” of your business Don’t skip this last

step or your site won’t go live

Next, register a Facebook group You set up a group at the link

below Choose an “Open” group to allow anyone to join

http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php

You will be able to invite friends and colleagues from your

personal Facebook account and elsewhere to join the group

MySpace

MySpace does not currently approve of accounts being set up

with a purely business focus To use MySpace effectively you

QQ, leader in China, is the largest

social network in the world (300 million active accounts)

Facebook has almost colonised

Europe and it’s extending its global reach with more than 200 millions users

Maktoob is the most important

Arab community/portal

Myspace lost its leadership

everywhere (except in Guam), but

is still prominent

V Kontakte is the most popular

in Russian territories (looks a lot like Facebook)

Orkut is strong in India and

Brazil

Hi5 is still leading in Peru,

Colombia, Ecuador and other scattered countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania (Hi5 is a San Francisco based Company)

Odnoklassniki is strong in some

former territories of the Soviet Union

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/ archives/post_2.php

good to know

Set the intention of using them all and do so when the time is right.

register at:

LinkedIn

On linkedIn you are going to set up your own personal profile that includes information you would

typically have on your CV LinkedIn is really an online CV profile of individuals

There will be a space for you to fill in the name of the company you work for or own

https://www.linkedin.com/secure/register?trk=hb join

Facebook

If you don’t already have a personal facebook account then

you’ll need to set one up in order to get a business page or

start a group Start by setting up a Facebook Business Page

You may set up multiple pages, covering different topics or

relating to your various keywords Great for SEO

Visit this URL: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Take a few minutes to decide on the best category for your

business as this isn’t easy to change later Enter your business

or product name and click “Create Page”

Add your bio and main website address and your company logo

at the link “Add Information To This Page”

Now click on your business name that has appeared in the top

left corner of your screen (a hyperlink) and click “Publish this

Page” Only now will people be able to see your new page

To finish off, you must click “Add to my products”, and you

become your first “fan” of your business Don’t skip this last

step or your site won’t go live

Next, register a Facebook group You set up a group at the link

below Choose an “Open” group to allow anyone to join

http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php

You will be able to invite friends and colleagues from your

personal Facebook account and elsewhere to join the group

it conversational and don’t stuff it with keywords

Use a picture of yourself, or your company logo It makes your tweets much more personal

Remember – as always – to link to your “main” website

Signup here: http://twitter.com/signup

Delicious

Your bookmarks will be made public and when someone finds your posts and your contribution to

a community useful, they may view your delicious links to see what you read

Start using it as your bookmarking tool in place of your browser as a good way to start seeing the value in this service Select tags for each link you choose to bookmark, that you can then sort your favourites by

http://secure.delicious.com/register

YouTube

Signing up for YouTube is pretty straight forward Remember to use your business name as your username and fill in all details including your website link

Sign up here: http://www.youtube.com/create_account

When you have your account up and running and you are comfortable posting videos and optimising them for search as part of your social media engagement, you may be ready for your own YouTube channel

Everything you need to set up your own channel is here:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_claim_create_youtube_channel.html

Digg

Press the Change Icon link in the right top corner and now you can upload your pic, bio (“About

In the words of Digg themselves:

Digg is not for commercial use Please don’t use Digg for selling or promoting products and

services If we discover that you’re involved in Digging for profit we reserve the right to terminate your account permanently

At Digg you will discover, select, share & discuss

http://digg.com/register/

Squidoo

Squidoo is the brainchild of internet marketer extraordinaire Seth Godin Each account is a

“lens” on a particular subject It is popular and has a high page rank and features prominently in Google search

Go to the registration page and fill in all of your personal information Once you’ve confirmed

your e-mail address, go ahead and create a lens It will ask what your lens is about and here

enter your main keyword phrase that you’ve used to optimise your main site (e.g “Solar Panels for Households”)

Next, select “I want to do my own thing.” Now you are able to name your lens Enter your

company name, using dashes between each word

Also pick the category that is most relevant to your business and main keywords On the next

page you’ll enter the next three main keywords or keyword phrases you have identified for your

website

Now it’s time to create and edit your lens For the “Lens Intro Title,” just use the primary

keyword phrase again

For the description, write up a quick three sentence blurb explaining what your company provides and use your main keyword phrase at least once For example, “Welcome to this lens! I am the owner at Dragon Mist and I’m passionate about green energy and specifically solar panels for

households If there is anything you’d like to know about solar panels for home use, read on or contact me…”

There is a lot of information at the Squidoo site to help you get your lens set up, looking good

and with good basic information

http://www.squidoo.com/member/registration

Register at other social media sites that your market is using

In the Arab community that may be Maktoob, in China QQ etc

do I need a blog?

Can you commit to updating your blog at least once a week?

Can you commit to making time to read and address the

comments you will receive in response to your posts? This

commitment is essential for your blog to be an asset

When posting to your blog consider adding an image or two

to your post to add depth and colour

A quick scan at a site like istockphoto.com should get you a powerful pic you can use They’re inexpensive

idea