social media – Page 3 – Michele Christensen

Be up front with your opinions

I’ve been writing and posting web content for business in various forms for several years. When I first started, I was shy about causing controversy. I didn’t want to offend

anyone or go on record saying something that someone found offensive. I was striving to be accurate and useful but not necessarily bold in my work. Over the few years I’ve been writing for business, I’ve gotten just a little bolder and in the last few months I’ve really begun to write about what I believe, what I value, what I’ve learned and what I think. It has been a bit unnerving to be so up front when you know that lots of people could read it and that your writing could exist forever. My own business has undergone some big changes in the last year and some things were just bubbling up and needed to be said.

The surprising result is how much more successful my writing is! I’m getting more Tweets, comments and emails from people reacting to things I’ve written. My community is growing. Believe me, nobody expected this less than me. It felt a little self-centered to be honest, spouting off about what I think and feel. I kept thinking that I should be sharing what the big name gurus say, not what I say. Results don’t lie though, and I’ve changed my thinking to reflect that this is how I can provide value. Here are some ideas you can use to be more up front in your business writing:

Pay attention to what people ask you. Even if just one person asks a question, chances are more people have the same question.
If something happens that you feel strongly about, see if you can use the experience to generalize a larger point.
Conversely, if you are writing about a general rule try to use some specific points to illustrate it. Including your own experiences can be great!
Don’t be afraid to show your mistakes. Successful business owners do make mistakes, they just react to them differently than unsuccessful business owners. Be sure not to undermine your authority when sharing your mistakes.
If something disturbing happens, by all means you can use it in your business writing but take some time to react to it privately first. Don’t use your business writing to process your feelings.
Sharing yourself is great, but {opinion here!} I don’t appreciate hearing the gory details of someone’s personal issues when I’m part of their community to read their professional work. Everyone goes through things, and sometimes you can illustrate coping skills and fortitude by sharing some of your personal life in your business writing but keep it in check.

If you have great things to share, try being a little more bold with your opinions. You can be strong in your beliefs without making others wrong for disagreeing.

Using Facebook as your Facebook business page

If you use Facebook for business, you’ve probably heard about the feature they introduced a few months ago that lets you use Facebook as your page. For example, instead of using Facebook as Michele Christensen I can use it as Michele Christensen, Business Strategist. Any comments I make, things I like, content I share, etc all are attributed to my page name not my personal name. At first, I didn’t think much of this feature but now that I’m fully using it I think it is genius. This ability to change how you use Facebook allows you to do some great things.

First, it allows you to separate your business and personal use of Facebook. For some business owners, there’s a lot of overlap between their personal and business use. For me, I the two worlds only have a little bit of intersection. On my personal page, I post the not-so-interesting minutiae that my friends and family are interested in, and just once or twice a year I might post a business item if it would seems relevant. On my business page it’s just the opposite – almost all business with a little bit of personal news tossed in for interest. Being able to do almost all of the same functions as your page instead of your profile lets you pick how much your two Facebook circles overlap.

Second, you can like other business pages as your page now. This is great because I can keep my personal likes – restaurants, vacation spots, causes I’m involved with, etc. on my personal page and my business page can like businesses that I’m interested in. It’s great to be able to focus exclusively on business or personal when I’m looking at my news feed. It’s also a great way to share with your fans the businesses you think warrant a like.

Third, you can comment, like, post and share all under the name of your page which means great exposure for your page just for doing what you would do anyway. If you’ve made an interesting comment, someone can click right over to your page and see your professional presence rather than pictures of your pets and last vacation.

I’m probably more in favor of separating personal vs. business use of Facebook than a lot of people are but I’m sure there’s loads of ways for anyone with a business page to benefit from this new feature. How do you use this feature? Do you think it’s important to separate your personal and business use of Facebook?

Using Facebook for business – a range of options

When I started to write this post, I began with with all the stats and numbers to support the idea that you should be using Facebook for your business. It was turning into a big proof for Facebook rather than a backdrop for what I want to say, so I’m going to start from the assumption that you already know all the benefits of using Facebook for your business. I wanted to write this post because I’m amazed at how often I hear people in heated arguments over the one right way to use Facebook for business. I’ve heard everything from use only a business page (what used to be called a fan page) to use only your profile and everything in between. The truth is, like may business issues, there isn’t one right answer and the best choices depend on the situation, the individual and the desired outcome of using Facebook for your business.

I’ve seen people get great results using only their profile for business. The two broad categories would be people that only use their profile for business and don’t do any personal interacting on Facebook and people whose business is so closely tied to themselves, their lifestyle, values and personality that their business is indistinct from the person.

I’ve also seen great results from people making full use of a business page. This is pretty much what I do. When I first got onto Facebook, it was before it was used much for business so I made all sorts of personal connections there. Since I focus on a small niche, my work isn’t relevant to most of my friends so I don’t post it on my profile. Similarly, my business community probably wouldn’t find the mundane details of my life interesting. Those people are part of my business contacts because they trust me to bring them valuable business information, not because they care about the killer parking spot I just found.

Then of course, there are myriad ways to use both your page and profile to promote your business. Some people are very comfortable mixing both.

The bottom line is, Facebook is a great free resource to get the word out about your solopreneur business in a forum where people already are. The important point here is that there is no one right way to promote your business on Facebook except that which fits you best. I would avoid the extremes though – don’t post too much information about your work to your personal connections if it doesn’t apply to them, and don’t inundate your business community with mundane details of your personal life if it’s not interesting to them. Above all, don’t make your Facebook strategy choice based on someone else’s advice unless that person is a trusted advisor with a proven track record.

Update profiles regularly when using social media for business

First of all, if you aren’t using social media for your business you probably could benefit from it. How to use social media for promoting your business is more complex than can be covered in one article, but watch for future articles explaining some of the benefits of using social media to promote your business. For starters, it’s mostly free of monetary cost and has a huge reach. No matter what your business is, your customers are probably hanging out somewhere on the social sites.

If you’ve been reading my articles or been in my community for any time, you probably know I love processes and systems. Any time you have to do a task over and over, it pays to create a simple system for doing it. Make sure to also include an automatic reminder so you don’t have to remember to do the task. I use this strategy for updating the profiles I use to promote my business.

I recommend you keep a simple, clickable list of the social media profiles you use for business, including any you use mainly for personal use and update (or at least review) them monthly. It should take under half an hour unless you have a very large number of profiles you are using for social media. If you aren’t in the habit of updating regularly, this may seem like a lot of updates. I hardly ever looked at my profiles when I first started using social media for business. It seemed like something to do once and then the goal was to provide regular content. Once I started checking monthly though, I was surprised at how often I changed my language, tag lines, current service array and activities. I’m learning constantly, so often I take a look and realize I haven’t put my newest bit of knowledge into a profile. Your profile is a really important piece of your social media strategy, so it’s important to keep improving it.

One month is a good interval to use for updating the social media profiles you use for business. It’s long enough that you’ll have a fresh outlook every time you look, and short enough that you won’t have information out of date for very long.

When using social media for your business, don’t treat your profiles like a one-time task – they are business asset and the first impression your new connections have of you.

Want to connect? I’m on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.